Signing the Contract and What it Cost

Hearing his cry as she neared the door of the sick-room, Ada hurried in, full of wonder and alarm.

“Rolfe!” she exclaimed in astonishment.

“Ada, make haste! Throw up the window to give her air! Hand me that bottle of ammonia – quick, quick! she’s dying! she’s dead! Oh, Ethel, my life, my love! have I found you only to lose you again?” he groaned, redoubling his efforts to restore her to consciousness, while Ada, divided between amazement at his presence there and excessive agitation, and her fear that life was really extinct, hastily obeyed his orders.

“Thank God, she yet lives!” he said in tones tremulous with emotion, as at length the eyelids began to quiver and a long, sighing breath came from the white lips.

“Rolfe,” they whispered very low and feebly.

“Yes, yes, I am here, my poor little Ethel,” he answered, kneeling by her couch and fondly caressing her hair and cheek. “You will live for me, and nothing in life shall ever part us again.”

A beautiful smile crept over her face as she opened her eyes for a single instant; then closing them again, she fell asleep with her hand in his.

Ada stood on the farther side of the bed, looking and listening in increasing surprise and wonder.

Mrs. Heywood and the nurse stole in on tiptoe and beheld the scene in no less astonishment and perplexity, but Rolfe motioned them all away, and kept guard over the slumbers of the invalid as one who had a superior and undoubted right.

She slept quietly, awoke refreshed, and refused neither food nor medicine at his hands.

But he would not let her talk.

“Wait, my Ethel, till you are stronger,” he said, “and then we will tell each other all. In the mean time we may rest content in the knowledge that we are restored to each other, and no earthly power can part us.”

Lips and eyes smiled brightly, and a faint color stole into her cheek, but faded again as she moaned sadly, “My baby, my baby!” the tears stealing down her face.

“We will find her; she shall be restored to you. Nothing is impossible to a determined will,” he said with energy.

She believed him, and once more resigned herself to peaceful slumber.

It was now near midnight, yet a bright light burned in the sitting-room. Mr. and Mrs. Heywood and their daughter, too much excited to think of retiring, sat there waiting for they scarce knew what. Reluctantly leaving Ethel to the care of the nurse, Rolfe joined them.

“Yes,” he said, in answer to their inquiring looks, “we knew and loved each other years ago in Jefferson, where I first set up business. She was an orphan, and the sweetest creature I ever saw, but very much under the influence of an older sister – a proud, selfish, scheming, domineering woman. She, I have always thought it was, who came between my love and me. I meant to speak before I left, and tried to do so, but she contrived to foil every attempt. Then I wrote, and the answer was, I have little doubt, dictated or forged by her.”

“She rejected you?”

Mrs. Heywood’s tone was both inquiring and indignant.

“Yes, mother; but don’t condemn her unheard,” he said, with a smile of filial affection. “That in so doing she did not follow the dictates of her own heart I now know beyond a question.”

“I don’t want to be uncharitable, or to wound you, Rolfe,” returned his mother, flushing slightly, “but that any woman should reject the man she loves and marry another seems to me both weak and wicked.”

“Wait, my dear, till you have heard her story,” said the old gentleman. “We don’t know how she may have been deceived and betrayed.”

A few days later Rolfe came to his mother with an explanation which even in her eyes exculpated Ethel.

“Ah, well, poor thing! she’s had a hard time of it,” said the old lady, wiping away a tear. “And I hope, Rolfe, if she falls into your hands you’ll try to make it up to her.”

“I shall indeed,” he said, with a peculiar and very happy smile. “Come, mother, come to her room with me. The minister is there, my father and Ada too, and Ethel and I are now to be made one for life.”

“Rolfe!” she cried in astonishment.

“Yes, mother; I cannot let her feel herself alone in the wide world any longer, and I must have the right to nurse her back to health. You will not withhold your consent, mother dear?”

“No,” she said, with a half-bewildered look as she accepted the support of his offered arm, “not if it is to make you and that poor young thing happy; but it is very sudden.”

CHAPTER IV

A STRANGE REVELATION

“The web of our life is of a mingled
Yarn, good and all together.” —

    Shakespeare.
For a few days the little Ethel was quite inconsolable, crying sadly for “Mamma;” but the new parents were very tender, patient, and affectionate, and the old love gradually faded from the baby memory, till at length it was utterly forgotten in the new. So also was the name her true mother had given her, Mrs. Kemper changing it to Florence, which she liked better.

Anxious that the child should believe herself their own by birth, the Kempers considered it fortunate that it was while journeying to a new home in the West, among strangers, in the little town of Cranley, that they obtained possession of her.

They breathed no hint of the little one’s history, and none of their new acquaintances had the least suspicion of the truth, as indeed how should they when to both parents “our little Floy” was evidently as the apple of the eye?

So loved and cared for, and blessed with a sweet, generous, affectionate disposition, hers was a bright, sunny childhood. She was spared even the loneliness of many an only child, finding companion, playmate, and friend in the little son of the nearest neighbor.

The grounds of the Aldens and Kempers adjoined, and immediately upon the arrival of the latter, friendly relations were established between the two families. Mrs. Alden called upon her new neighbors, taking with her her five-year-old Espy, a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed boy, who straightway fell in love with the lustrous, laughing brown orbs and dark curls of baby Floy.

She sat on a cushion by the side of her new mamma, daintily habited in white, a gold chain about her neck, knots of blue ribbon at her shoulders, and a wide sash of the same at her waist. The plump little arms hugged close to her bosom a doll half as large as herself, while the sweet baby voice sang cheerily, “Bye, baby, bye!”

“What’s your name?” asked Espy, regarding her with admiring eyes.

“Florence,” answered Mrs. Kemper quickly, “but we call her Floy for short.”

“That’s a pretty name, and you’re a pretty baby,” he said, giving her a kiss. “Nex’ time I come I’ll bring my kitten. She’s a nice cat, and I love her; but I’ll just give her to you, if you want her.”

“I was never more surprised,” remarked Mrs. Alden in an aside to Mrs. Kemper. “He prizes that kitten above all his other possessions.”

And thus it ever was from that first moment. Nothing could be, in Espy’s esteem, too good, beautiful, or precious to be given to Floy – “his little wife,” as he began to call her before she was three years old, challenging a special proprietorship in her with which no other boy was allowed to interfere.

A day seldom passed in which he did not present some offering at her shrine, though it were no more than a sweet-scented clover-blossom or a brightly-tinted autumn leaf.

They shared each other’s joys and sorrows: all her little griefs were confided to him; to her he recounted all his boyish dreams of future achievement when he should arrive at man’s estate.

He was a born artist, and found in Floy his chief inspiration; for while his parents and older brothers and sisters laughed at and discouraged him, she believed thoroughly in him, and was sure he would some day be a Rubens, a Raphael, a Michael Angelo, or something even greater than any of them or all put together; and her graceful little figure and winsome face furnished him with a model that he was never weary of copying.

Mr. Alden, hoping that this son would embrace one of the learned professions, determined to give him a liberal education; and the first great grief either Floy or Espy had known was the parting when the latter went away to school. Yet there was compensation in a steady correspondence, kept up with the knowledge and approval of their parents, and in the joy of the reunion when vacation brought Espy home again.

Cranley could boast of a good school for girls, and Floy did not go from home for her education. At seventeen she was a very pretty, engaging girl, and as Mr. Kemper had prospered, and was known to be in easy circumstances, she had plenty of admirers; but she remained true to Espy, though theirs was as yet only a tacit engagement.

Floy graduated from school in June of that year, and Mr. Kemper took her and his wife on a summer trip to the East. They spent several weeks at the sea-shore, visited Philadelphia and New York and other places of interest, then turned homeward.

All had gone well with them, and now within a few miles of Cranley they were speaking of this gladly, thankfully.