EDITH WEST.
The London clocks were just striking midday as a gentleman drove up to
the door of No. 6, Roehampton Terrace, Bayswater. It was Lionel Dering.
He had reached London two days previously, but he would not venture to
call on Edith West without first writing to her aunt and obtaining the
requisite sanction. Mr. Garside had been dead nearly a year, but Edith
and her aunt still continued to live together. In his note to Mrs.
Garside, Lionel simply said that by a sudden change of fortune he was
again in a position to pay his addresses to Miss West, and he solicited
her permission to allow him to do so. Mrs. Garside was only too happy
to bid him welcome to Roehampton Terrace. Indeed, it is by no means
improbable that she would have welcomed him had he gone to her on the
same errand without a shilling in the world. She had discovered long
ago that Edith was too faithful to the memory of her first love for
there to be much hope that a second one would ever find a place in her
heart. As Mrs. Garside had said to herself a score of times since her
husband’s death, “It would be far better for Edith to marry Mr. Dering
without a penny than for her never to marry at all. Edith’s fortune, if
managed with economy, would suffice to keep them in tolerable
comfort—not in London, perhaps, but in some quiet country place, or in
some cheap corner of the Continent; and Edith is one of those girls who
can make themselves happy anywhere.”
Under these circumstances, it is hardly to be wondered at that Mrs.
Garside was very glad to see Lionel Dering under her roof again, more
especially as he did not come to her in the disagreeable guise of a
poor man. Tears came into her eyes as she held out her hand to
him—genuine tears, for Mrs. Garside was one of those women who can weep
on the slightest provocation. “It will be like new life to our darling
Edith to have news of you once more,” she said.
“Then she has not quite forgotten me?” said Lionel, eagerly.
“Forgotten you, Mr. Dering! How little you know of our sex if you think
it possible for us so soon to forget those to whom our young affections
have once been given.”
“Is she—is Edith here in the house?” asked Lionel.
“She was in her own room only five minutes ago. I can understand your
impatience, Mr. Dering, and will not keep you from her. I have
refrained from saying a word to her about either your note or your
visit. You shall yourself be the bearer of your own good tidings.”
Three minutes later Lionel found himself in the presence of Edith. Mrs.
Garside opened the door and ushered him in. The room was a very
pleasant one, furnished with books, pictures, and curiosities of
various kinds. At the farther end it opened into a small conservatory,
which looked one dazzling mass of bloom as you entered the room. And
there, sweetest flower of all, sat Edith, her face and figure clearly
defined against a background of delicate ferns.
“Edith, dear, I have brought a long-lost friend to see you,” said Mrs.
Garside, as she and Lionel entered.
Edith dropped her book, and started up in surprise. Lionel was half
hidden behind Mrs. Garside, and for the moment Edith mistook him for a
stranger. But he had not advanced three paces before she saw who he
was, and in a moment she was as one transformed. Her mouth dimpled into
smiles, tears came nestling into her eyes—tears of happiness—her heart
beat fast, her cheeks flushed to the tint of the wild rose when its
petals first open to the sun, and with a little inarticulate cry of joy
she sprang forward to greet her lover. She sprang forward, and then she
halted suddenly, while a look of sadness clouded her face for a moment.
With a sigh that ended in a half sob she held out her hand. Lionel
grasped it in both his.
“How long you have been away!” she said, as her eyes met his. Mrs.
Garside slipped discreetly out of the room, and shut the door softly
behind her.
Lionel lifted Edith’s hand to his lips and kissed it. Then he looked at
her with the same eager, anxious gaze that she had bent on him—he
looked and was satisfied. His heart told him that he was still loved as
fondly as ever he had been. Edith, too, after that first hungry look,
veiled her eyes modestly, but there was a wild whirl of happiness at
her heart. Lionel drew her face up to his, and kissed her twice very
tenderly. Then he led her to the sofa, and sat down beside her.
“Yes; I have been a very long time away,” he said at last. “But I am
come to-day, Edith, to ask you to keep me by your side through
life—never more to let me wander from you.”
Edith, in the first shock of her surprise, was too happy to speak. But
her fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on his hand, and her face,
resting on his shoulder, where he had placed it, nestled still closer;
her silent answer was more eloquent than any words.
“Edith, I left you—my letter told you why,” went on Lionel. “But all
through the long dreary time when I was separated from you, my love for
you never faltered, never wavered for one single moment. If I had never
seen you again in this world, my heart’s last breath would still have
been yours. Yesterday I was poor—to-day I am rich. Once more I can ask
you, as I asked you three years ago, to be my wife. Do not tell me that
I am asking for more than you can give.”
Edith’s faith in Lionel was so full and complete, her love for him so
deep-rooted, that she never paused—as many young ladies would have
done—before giving him back the affection which had all along been his,
to demand from him the reason for his apparent desertion of her three
years before. In that first flush of new-born happiness it was enough
to know that her lover had come back to her: the why and the wherefore
of his leaving could be explained afterwards.
“You know, Lionel, that my love is yours always—that it has been yours
for a long long time,” said Edith, in accents that trembled a little in
spite of herself. “But I never received any letter from you after that
last one dated from some far-away town in America.”
“No letter!” exclaimed Lionel. “Not one explaining my reasons for
releasing you from your engagement?”
“Never a single line, Lionel.”
“But I gave the letter into your uncle’s hands,” returned Lionel. “He
promised faithfully that he would give it you.”
“He did not give it me,” answered Edith.
“Perhaps he kept it back because he thought it better that I should not
see it.”
“He had no right to do anything of the kind,” said Lionel, sternly.
“The letter was sacredly entrusted to him, and ought as sacredly to
have been delivered to you.
“Lionel, my uncle is no longer with us,” said Edith, gently. “You and I
are together again. That redeems all. Let us never say another word
about the letter.”
“What a villain, what a mean wretch, you must have thought me,” cried
Lionel impulsively, “to break off my engagement without assigning you
any reason! Without even a single word of explanation!”
“I thought you nothing of the kind,” said Edith, with decision. “I knew
you too well not to feel sure that you must have good and sufficient
reasons for acting as you did. Although you did not tell me what those
reasons were—whatever may have been my disappointment at your
silence—my faith in you never wavered.”
“But when weeks and months passed away, and you never heard from me——”
“I felt then that all was over between us; felt it in a despairing,
hopeless kind of way. But I cherished no resentment against you—none.”
“But surely your uncle and aunt had some explanation to offer?”
“They told me that, through the failure of a bank, you had lost the
whole of your fortune, and that, consequently, you had resigned all
pretensions to my hand.”
“And you?”
“I thought that you might have called to see me; or, at least, have
written to me. I could not understand why, if you still continued to
care for me, you should choose to give me up simply because you had
lost your fortune.”
“You could not understand it?”
“Indeed I could not. And I fail to understand it now. If you were poor,
I was rich. What greater happiness could I have than to endow you with
my plenty? When I gave you my love, it meant that I gave you everything
I could call mine.”
“You look at the question from a woman’s point of view, Edith: I, from
a man’s.”
“If I had lost my fortune as you lost yours, would you have given me
up?” asked Edith.
“Certainly not.”
“Nor I you. With me, to love and to be loved is everything. In
comparison with that all else is as nothing.”
“Edith, I could not come to you penniless, and ask you to become my
wife. When I found myself a poor man, I had no profession to fly to; I
was acquainted with no business. I was a great hulking
good-for-nothing, able to plough and reap, and earn a bare crust by the
sweat of my brow, and that was all. How was it possible for me to
become a dependent on you for my daily bread?”
“You would not have been a dependent, Lionel. My money would have been
yours, just as my love was yours.”
“Still a woman’s view, my dearest,” said Lionel. “The noblest and the
best, I at once admit. Only, the world would never have believed that I
had not married you for your fortune.”
“You and I together, Lionel, could have afforded to set the world’s
opinion at defiance.”
Lionel ended the argument with a kiss.
A fair, sweet English face was that which nestled so lovingly on
Lionel’s shoulder. Edith West had large liquid dark brown eyes. Her
eyebrows and eyelashes were nearly black, but the thick wavy masses of
her hair had no shade deeper than that of chestnuts in autumn. The
tints of the wild rose dwelt in her cheeks. About her there was a
freshness, a sweetness, and a delicate grace, like that of a breezy
morning in spring, when flowers are growing, and birds are singing, and
all nature seems glad at heart.
“You are in mourning, Lionel,” said Edith, suddenly.
“Yes; I have just lost my uncle, Mr. St. George, of Park Newton.”
“I never remember to have heard you speak of him.”
“Probably not. I never even saw him, never had any communication with
him whatever. Nevertheless, it is to him that I owe my fortune.”
“It has come to you unexpectedly?”
“Entirely so. Three days ago I should have laughed at the idea of being
my uncle’s heir: now they tell me that I am worth eleven thousand a
year.”
“It sounds like a fairy tale,” cried Edith. “What a strange man your
uncle must have been!”
“When the will was read,” returned Lionel, “my first thought was of
you. I said to myself, ‘Has Edith forgotten me? Has she given me up? Am
I too late?’ I trembled to think what the answer might be. Now I
tremble no longer.”
“It is sweet, Lionel, to have you here, and to know that you are my own
again,” replied Edith. “But how much sweeter it would have been if you
had come to me when you were poor, and had trusted everything to my
love!”
A week passed away, each day of which saw Lionel Dering a visitor in
Roehampton Terrace. Edith and he were much together. It was the
happiest time they had ever known. All the freshness of their recent
meeting was still upon them; besides which, their long separation had
taught them to value each other more, perhaps, than they would have
done, had everything gone smoothly with them from the first. The
weather, for an English winter, was brilliant, and they rode out every
morning into the country. Of an evening, Edith, Lionel, and Mrs.
Garside had the drawing-room all to themselves; and although an
“exposition of sleep” generally came over the elder lady after dinner,
the young people never seemed to miss her society, nor were they ever
heard to complain that the time hung heavily on their hands.
They were very happy. They had so much to tell each other about the
past—so many golden daydreams to weave of what they would do in the
future! Edith could never hear enough about Lionel’s life at Gatehouse
Farm, and about his adventure with Tom Bristow; while Lionel found
himself evincing a quite novel interest in the well-being of sundry
ragged-schools, homes for destitute children, and other philanthropic
schemes of whose very existence he had been in utter ignorance only a
few days before.
But everything must come to an end, and after a time there came a
summons from Mr. Perrins. Lionel was wanted down at Park Newton. The
old lawyer could go on no longer without him. So Edith and he were
compelled to bid each other farewell for a week or two. Meanwhile, the
post was to be the daily medium for the interchange of their vows and
messages.