Toilers of Babylon: A NovelFarjeon, B. L. (Benjamin Leopold)
General
Toilers of Babylon: A Novel
Farjeon, B. L. (Benjamin Leopold)
Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
The young woman was fair and beautiful. Though cast in a delicate
mould, she was strong and redolent of health. Her face was slightly
browned, and harmonized with her brown hair and brown eyes, the light
in which was bright and tender. The man looked old, but was barely
forty-five, and on his face were signs of suffering, patiently borne.
They were dressed like persons in humble life, but with a certain
refinement, observable more in the woman than in the man. For five
evenings they had tarried on this spot. Each morning they had
harnessed the horse to the caravan, and had journeyed slowly and
aimlessly onward till noon, and then had turned back towards their
camping-ground, which lay in the shadow of the beautiful Surrey woods,
at a sufficient distance from the narrow road to escape casual
observation. The right of doing so probably did not belong to the
wayfarers, and this had disturbed the man somewhat, but he had fixed
upon the spot for a particular purpose, and up to this evening had not
been interfered with.
"At what hour last night," said Nansie, presently, "did you hear the
nightingale?"
"It must have been near midnight," replied her father. "At the same
time to-night it will sing again. Have you finished your tea?"
"Yes, father."
"Then go again to the post-office, and see if there is a letter for
me. I am growing anxious at not receiving one. You need not stop to
clear these things; I will put them away."
She rose and stood for a moment with her hand resting lightly on his
shoulder. He drew her face down to his, and kissed her. With a bright
nod she left him, carrying with her a written order authorizing the
delivery of any letters which might be lying in the post-office for
her father.
Godalming, the town for which she was bound, was within a mile, and
she stepped out briskly. But when she was about midway, and no one was
in sight, she made a little detour into the woods, and drew from her
bosom a picture. It was the portrait of a young man, and she gazed
fondly at it, and kissed it as fondly. Then she drew forth a letter,
and read it and pressed it to her lips; after which she replaced the
letter and the portrait, and proceeded on her errand. Her thoughts may
be thus fashioned into words:
"I wrote to him yesterday, and I sent him a telegram in the evening,
knowing we should be here to-day. He may be absent. I hope not; I hope
he has received both. Will he write, or will he come? Will he be angry
that I have accompanied my father? At all events he knows, and he is
never unjust. Ah! if he were here with us, how happy I should be! I
love him, I love him, I love him!"
She blew a kiss into the air.
In less than half an hour she was in the Godalming post-office, making
her inquiry.
"Mr. James Loveday," said the female clerk, looking at the order
handed to her by Nansie--she was familiar with it, having seen it on
each of the three previous days. "Yes, there is, I think."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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