RUTH ANSWERS A LETTER.
Mr. Gurth Egerton’s interest in Gertie Heckett was something wonderful.
It took him often to the residence of the Adrians. There he was now a
welcome guest, for he had soon found out Mr. Adrian’s weak side and
opened fire upon it.
In his travels he had been among some of the interesting people Mr.
Adrian delighted to honour, and his conversation was almost as
interesting as the books. Marvellous stories had Gurth to tell of
foreign lands, and especially of those lands where the natives were of
the barbarous type dear to Ruth’s father.
Either Egerton had seen a great deal, or he was a good romancer. But,
whether he dealt in fact or in fiction, his wares were attractive
enough to command old Adrian’s custom, and Gurth never called and
stayed ‘just to have a cup of tea’ without being invited again and
pressed to come early.
Gurth’s account of his bachelor loneliness had not been lost upon Mrs.
Adrian, and as he never contradicted her, but set himself studiously to
please her, he gradually won his way into the old lady’s good graces.
Ruth was grateful to Gurth for the interest he took in Gertie. She knew
he was rich, and she had heard he was a charitable gentleman. He
entered into all her philanthropic schemes, begged that she would be
his almoner and let him know of any deserving cases she came upon in
her visits to the sick and poor. Altogether Gurth Egerton proved
himself a most desirable acquisition to the Adrian family circle, and
was highly approved of by everyone but Lion.
Lion always growled at him, and nothing would induce him to be
friendly.
Gertie apologized for her favourite’s behaviour, and Gurth turned off
the unpleasant effect of the dog’s determined hostility with a joke.
Mrs. Adrian, when Lion had, on the second or third occasion of his
rudeness to her visitor, been turned out of the room, suggested that
the dog had been brought up among low people, and had low people’s
natural antipathy to gentlefolks.
Ruth did not take up the challenge on Gertie’s behalf. She knew that
her mother had really grown fond of the child, and that she could no
more help saying spiteful things occasionally than Lion could help
growling. In both cases ‘it was their nature to.’
Gurth played his cards so well and grew so rapidly in favour with the
Adrians that he soon felt emboldened to allow his feelings for Ruth to
become gradually apparent.
Ruth was the last person to perceive the impression she had made, and
it was forced upon her by a little conversation which is worth
repeating.
One evening, when the Adrians were alone, and after Gertie had gone to
bed, something brought up Gurth’s name, and then Marston’s.
‘They’re not to be named in the same breath,’ said Mrs. Adrian, looking
Ruth full in the face. ‘Mr. Egerton’s a man that any girl might be glad
to marry. I wonder he hasn’t been snapped up long ago.’
‘Lion would have snapped him up once or twice if we had let him,’ said
Mr. Adrian with a smile.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, John; you know what I mean. Look how he sits on
his chair. Like a gentleman. As to Mr. Marston, I never see him tilting
the dining-room chairs back but I expect to see the legs come off. He’d
ruin the furniture in a decent house in a month.’
Ruth laughed, Marston had offended her mother mortally by his habit of
sitting with his chair tilted.
‘You may laugh, Ruth,’ continued the old lady; ‘but if ever you have a
house of your own you’ll know what it is to see your dining-room suite
going to pieces before your very eyes. People that can’t sit in chairs
like a Christian oughtn’t to come into respectable houses. I’m sure I
expect to see him sit on the table and put his legs up the chimney some
day.’
‘You’re very hard on Mr. Marston, mother,’ said Ruth; ‘he’s lived in
America many years, and you know they do very curious things there.’
‘Very, my dear. Oh, I know that. And I dare say Mr. Marston’s done a
good many curious things there. Of course, my dear, I haven’t forgotten
what was between you once, but I hope that’ll never happen again.’
Ruth coloured and bit her lip.
Mr. Adrian noticed it, and tried to turn the conversation by talking
about the weather, but Mrs. Adrian was not be so easily turned from her
course.
‘It’s no good looking at me like that, John,’ she exclaimed. ‘I know
what you mean. Isn’t Ruth my daughter as much as she is yours? I say I
should like to see her well married; and if I was a young girl Mr.
Gurth Egerton shouldn’t ask me twice—there now!’
‘But, my dear Mary,’ urged Mr. Adrian, ‘Egerton hasn’t asked Ruth once
yet.’
‘Of course not. But, if I know anything, he will before very long. What
do you think he comes here for?—to chatter to you about the Ojibbeways,
or to hold my worsted for me? Nonsense! He comes here after Ruth—and
you must all be blind if you can’t see it.’
Ruth let her mother finish. It was not quite a revelation to her, this
view of Egerton’s continual visits, but it had never come home to her
so thoroughly before. Her mother was quite right. She saw it all now.
She must act decisively and at once.
‘Mother,’ she said, after a pause, ‘I hope you are not right. Mr.
Egerton has been a very kind friend to me, and I like him as a friend
and acquaintance very much. I could never look upon him in any other
light.’
Ruth gathered up her work and went up to her own room. It was a habit
of hers to do so when any little thing put her out.
‘There, John,’ said Mrs. Adrian, as the door closed behind her; ‘you
see—I’m sure I’m right. There goes her head, turned by that fellow
again. I was afraid what it would be when you let him come dangling
about here again.’
‘How could I refuse him, my dear? He is an old friend of the family. He
and Ruth knew each other as children. He has lived down the first
rashness of his neglected youth, and is now a gentleman of means,
honoured and respected. Surely I could not close my doors against a man
who, heavily handicapped as young Marston has been, has yet won his way
to a respectable position.’
‘Ah, well,’ exclaimed Mrs. Adrian, ‘I never did believe in him, and I
never shall; and if I thought Ruth was going to fling herself away on
him after all, I’d have swept him off the front door-step with a besom
before ever he should have darkened these doors again.’
‘You are prejudiced, Mary. I like Mr. Egerton, and he would give Ruth a
splendid establishment; but if she still loves Edward Marston, I should
be the last person in the world to attempt to turn her against him.’
While Mr. and Mrs. Adrian were arranging Ruth’s future, the heroine of
their conversation sat upstairs in her own little room reading a letter
which she had taken from her pocket.
It had come some time ago, and she had read it again and again, but had
hesitated to answer it.
It was dated from Dover, and was in the bold, dashing hand of Edward
Marston:
‘Dear Ruth,
‘Do you know that to-day is the anniversary of the fatal day on which
we parted long years ago? I cannot resist the temptation of writing to
you; of asking you to think of the past and of all I have gone through.
To-day I can offer you once more the heart you rejected then. You
cannot deceive me. Your love for me has survived, as mine for you. Why
should you condemn yourself and me to a lifelong mistake? Bid me hope.
Only say that I may strive with some chance of winning you, and I care
not to what ordeal you put my love. Send me one little line, to tell me
I am not, now that fortune has smiled upon me and a brilliant future
lies before me, to lose the one hope which has nerved me to the
struggle, which has been the bright star at the end of the dark, rough
road I have trodden for years. Ruth, my future is in your hands. Say
“Hope” or “Despair.” With a fervent prayer that Heaven will guide your
heart aright in a choice with which our future lives are bound up,
believe me, my dear Ruth, your old, unchanged, and unchangeable
sweetheart,
‘Edward Marston.’
Again and again Ruth read this letter, which woke old memories and
touched many a tender chord. She honestly believed all that her lover
said—that he had abandoned his old reckless life and attained the
position he held by hard, honest work and the legitimate exercise of
his talents. He had explained to her his early visit to Heckett’s, and
he had offered to satisfy her father of his circumstances if she would
only give him the right to broach the subject.
Ruth had steadily resisted every effort to break down the barrier she
had erected between the past and the present, but at each assault the
defence became weaker.
Her mother’s words to-night, and the full revelation to her of the
object of Gurth Egerton’s constant visits, brought her face to face
with the fact that her answer would have to be given some day to this
new wooer.
The very appearance of another suitor seemed to warm her heart towards
Marston. She almost resented the idea that any one should dare to think
of her while he was still unmarried.
Gurth Egerton, in this instance, proved Marston’s best ally instead of
his rival. The idea that he was in love with her so worked upon Ruth
that that night she recognized more fully than ever how just were
Marston’s claims. A rival disputed the field with him, and, like a true
woman, she resented it.
That night she wrote a letter and addressed it to Edward Marston.
It contained only two words.
And those two words were—‘Hope. Ruth’