THE BEGINNING OF A NEW LIFE.
The shock of finding her baby gone, together with the removal from
Dorset Street, in her weak state brought on another faint; and when the
carriage stopped before the house in the vicinity of Belgrave Square,
Edith lay unconscious in the arms of her mother, who carried her up the
steps and into the large airy room, where for a time they were to stay
until she had decided upon her future course, and her daughter’s health
was restored. In a few weeks at most they should move again, Mrs.
Fordham thought, but in this she was mistaken. Edith did not rally; the
fainting fit was succeeded by a low nervous fever, which lasted for so
long that the hedge roses were in blossom, and the breath of early
summer was stealing in at her window when she was at last able to walk
across the floor.
“Now, mother,” she said one morning, when for the first time in months
she was dressed and sitting up. “Now, you must go for baby; go
to-day,—will you,—or shall I send some one else?”
She spoke decidedly, and Mrs. Fordham, who felt that there was a change
in her daughter, and that henceforth their relations to each other must
be different from what they had heretofore been, did not oppose her, but
answered, readily:
“I will go myself;” and an hour later she stood again at the door of ——
Street Foundling Hospital. She was a clergyman’s widow, she said, and
had come to make inquiries concerning a child named Heloise, which was
left there some time in January. Could they tell her anything about it?
They could tell her, and they did, and with a throbbing of the heart and
a relieved expression on her face, she started home, where Edith was
waiting for her.
“Where is it, mother?” was the question asked eagerly.
“Edith, baby is dead. It only lived three weeks, they told me. It was
born, it seems, with some affection of the heart, which, under any
circumstances, would have ended its life in a short time, the physician
said. It had every possible care, and died with little or no pain. I was
particular to inquire about that, as I knew you would wish to know.
There, there, my child, don’t take it so hard,” and Mrs. Fordham laid
her hand on the bowed head of the sorrowing girl, who was weeping
passionately. “It was wrong perhaps to take it from you, and I am sorry
now did it. I thought then it was for the best, for a baby would be in
our way. Forgive me, Edith, and let us bury the past forever.”
She stooped to kiss her daughter, in whose mind there was no shadow of
doubt that what her mother had told her was true. Her baby was dead, and
though she mourned for it truly she knew that it was far better off in
heaven than in that hospital, with only strangers to care for it; and
gradually, as the days went by and she felt her strength and health
coming back again, the sense of loss and pain which at first had weighed
so heavily upon her, began to give way, and more than one of the lodgers
in the house noticed and commented upon the great beauty of the young
girl, whom they sometimes met upon the stairs or saw sitting by her
window. They knew the grave woman dressed in widow’s weeds was Mrs.
Fordham, and as the young girl was her daughter they naturally supposed
her to be Miss Fordham, a mistake which the mother took no pains to
rectify; while Edith, who had suffered so much, began to feel an utter
inability to oppose her own will to that of her mother, and when the
latter said to her, “It is not necessary for you to explain to others
that your name is not Fordham,” she passively acquiesced: and thus none
of the lodgers ever heard the name of Lyle, or dreamed of that grave
across the sea at Schuyler Hill, or the dreary room in Dorset Street,
and the scenes enacted there. All these were buried in the past, and
there was nothing in the way of Mrs. Fordham’s plans, except, indeed,
the means to carry them out.
Once the mother had hoped much from her daughter’s voice, which was a
fine contralto of great power and compass; but that hope was gone, for
on the dreadful day when, with the fury of a tigress, Edith had invoked
Heaven’s curse upon her mother if so much as a hair of baby’s head was
harmed, it seemed as if a hand of iron had clutched her throat with a
remorseless grasp, which had for a time deprived her of her powers of
utterance, except in a hoarse whisper. At intervals, even now, she felt
the grip of those fingers, and would start suddenly with a sense of
suffocation, which soon passed away, and left her breathing free as
ever. But the glorious voice did not come back, and though she sometimes
sang some sweet, low song, her voice was very weak, and a musical
education, so far as singing was concerned, was of course out of the
question; but for all other branches the best of teachers were procured,
and Edith, who possessed a fondness for books, progressed so rapidly as
to astonish even herself, while her mother would have been perfectly
content but for one little annoyance which haunted her continually, and
which increased with every succeeding day. Her finances were fearfully
low; nor did she know where aid was to come from.
Since leaving Dorset Street she had assumed a mode of life far above her
means, and she was seriously considering the propriety of taking lodgers
herself instead of being lodged, when fortune sent in her way a kind,
simple-hearted old man, with less of brains than money, as was proved by
his offering himself to Mrs. Fordham, whose comely face and dignified
bearing attracted his fancy, and who accepted him at once and became
Mrs. Dr. Barrett, with a pleasant home in a quiet part of London, and
money enough to supply every comfort of life, as well as some of its
luxuries.
Though twice married Dr. Barrett had never had a child, and his kind,
fatherly heart went out at once to Edith, whom he loved and treated as a
daughter, and who spent under his roof the happiest, most peaceful years
of her life.
As it is not my intention to narrate in detail the incidents of those
years, during which Edith was first a pupil, then a governess, and then
an organist at St. John’s, I shall pass over them silently, and take my
readers with me to a time when in her full maturity of beauty and grace,
such as few women have ever possessed, she stood just on the verge of
the brilliant life her mother had so desired for her, and which proved
to be so different from anything of which the wily, scheming woman had
dreamed.