Innocent : her fancy and his fact Part 30

"Would you have given me a name?" interposed the girl, calmly.

"Of course! I should have invented one for you--

"I can do that for myself," said Innocent, quietly--"and so you are relieved from all trouble on my score. May I ask you to go now?"

Lady Blythe stared at her.

"Are you insolent, or only stupid?" she asked--"Do you realise what it is that I have told you--that I, Lady Blythe, wife of a peer, and moving in the highest ranks of society, am willing to take charge of you, feed you, clothe you, bring you out and marry you well? Do you understand, and still refuse?"

"I understand--and I still refuse," replied Innocent--"I would accept, if you owned me as your daughter to your husband and to all the world--but as your 'adopted' child--as a lie under your roof--I refuse absolutely and entirely! Are you astonished that I should wish to live truly instead of falsely?"

Lady Blythe gathered her priceless lace scarf round her elegant shoulders.

"I begin to think it must have been all a bad dream!" she said, and laughed softly--"My little affair with your father cannot have really happened, and you cannot really be my child! I must consider it in that light! I feel I have done my part in the matter by coming here to see you and talk to you and make what I consider a very kind and reasonable proposition--you have refused it--and there is no more to be said." She settled her dainty hat more piquantly on her rich dark hair, and smiled agreeably. "Will you show me the way out? I left my motor-car on the high-road--my chauffeur did not care to bring it down your rather muddy back lane."

Innocent said nothing--but merely opened the door and stood aside for her visitor to pa.s.s. A curious tightening at her heart oppressed her as she thought that this elegant, self-possessed, exquisitely attired creature was actually her "mother!"--and she could have cried out with the pain which was so hard to bear. Suddenly Lady Blythe came to an abrupt standstill.

"You will not kiss me?" she said--"Not even for your father's sake?"

With a quick sobbing catch in her breath, the girl looked up--her "mother" was a full head taller than she. She lifted her fair head--her eyes were full of tears. Her lips quivered--Lady Blythe stooped and kissed them lightly.

"There!--be a good girl!" she said. "You have the most extraordinary high-flown notions, and I think they will lead you into trouble!

However, I'll give you one more chance--if at the end of this year you would like to come to me, my offer to you still holds good. After that--well!--as you yourself said, you will have no mother!"

"I have never had one!" answered Innocent, in low choked accents--"And--I shall never have one!"

Lady Blythe smiled--a cold, amused smile, and pa.s.sed out through the hall into the garden.

"What delightful flowers!" she exclaimed, in a sweet, singing voice, for the benefit of anyone who might be listening--"A perfect paradise!

No wonder Briar Farm is so famous! It's perfectly charming! Is this the way? Thanks ever so much!" This, as Innocent opened the gate--"Let me see!--I go up the old by-road?--yes?--and the main road joins it at the summit?--No, pray don't trouble to come with me--I can find my car quite easily! Good-bye!"

And picking up her dainty skirt with one ungloved hand, on which two diamond rings shone like circlets of dew, she nodded, smiled, and went her way--Innocent standing at the gate and watching her go with a kind of numbed patience as though she saw a figure in a dream vanishing slowly with the dawn of day. In truth she could hardly grasp the full significance of what had happened--she did not feel, even remotely, the slightest attraction towards this suddenly declared "mother" of hers--she could hardly believe the story. Yet she knew it must be true,--no woman of t.i.tle and position would thus acknowledge a stigma on her own life without any cause for the confession. She stood at the gate still watching, though there was nothing now to watch, save the bending trees, and the flowering wild plants that fringed each side of the old by-road. Priscilla's voice calling her in a clear, yet lowered tone, startled her at last--she slowly shut the gate and turned in answer.

"Yes, dear? What is it?"

Priscilla trotted out from under the porch, full of eager curiosity.

"Has the lady gone?"

"Yes."

"What did she want with ye, dearie?"

"Nothing very much!" and Innocent smiled--a strange, wistful smile--"Only just what you thought!--she wished to buy something from Briar Farm--and I told her it was not to be sold!"

CHAPTER XI

That night Innocent made an end of all her hesitation. Resolutely she put away every thought that could deter her from the step she was now resolved to take. Poor old Priscilla little imagined the underlying cause of the lingering tenderness with which the girl kissed her "good-night," looking back with more than her usual sweetness as she went along the corridor to her own little room. Once there, she locked and bolted the door fast, and then set to work gathering a few little things together and putting them in a large but light-weight satchel, such as she had often used to carry some of the choicest apples from the orchard when they were being gathered in. Her first care was for her ma.n.u.script,--the long-treasured scribble, kept so secretly and so often considered with hope and fear, and wonder and doubting--then she took one or two of the more cherished volumes which had formerly been the property of the "Sieur Amadis" and packed them with it. Choosing only the most necessary garments from her little store, she soon filled her extemporary travelling-bag, and then sat down to write a letter to Robin. It was brief and explicit.

"DEAR ROBIN,"--it ran--"I have left this beloved home. It is impossible for me to stay. Dad left me some money in bank-notes in that sealed letter--so I want for nothing. Do not be anxious or unhappy--but marry soon and forget me. I know you will always be good to Priscilla--tell her I am not ungrateful to her for all her care of me. I love her dearly. But I am placed in the world unfortunately, and I must do something that will help me out of the shame of being a burden on others and an object of pity or contempt. If you will keep the old books Dad gave me, and still call them mine, you will be doing me a great kindness. And will you take care of Cupid?--he is quite a clever bird and knows his friends. He will come to you or Priscilla as easily as he comes to me. Good-bye, you dear, kind boy! I love you very much, but not as you want me to love you,--and I should only make you miserable if I stayed here and married you. G.o.d bless you! "INNOCENT."

She put this in an envelope and addressed it,--then making sure that everything was ready, she took a few sovereigns from the little pile of housekeeping money which Priscilla always brought to her to count over every week and compare with the household expenses.

"I can return these when I change one of Dad's bank-notes," she said to herself--"but I must have something smaller to pay my way with just now than a hundred pounds."

Indeed the notes Hugo Jocelyn had left for her might have given her some little trouble and embarra.s.sment, but she did not pause to consider difficulties. When a human creature resolves to dare and to do, no impediment, real or imaginary, is allowed to stand long in the way. An impulse pushes the soul forward, be it ever so reluctantly--the impulse is sometimes from heaven and sometimes from h.e.l.l--but as long as it is active and peremptory, it is obeyed blindly and to the full.

This little ignorant and unworldly girl pa.s.sed the rest of the night in tidying the beloved room where she had spent so many happy hours, and setting everything in order,--talking in whispers between whiles to the ghostly presence of the "Sieur Amadis" as to a friend who knew her difficult plight and guessed her intentions.

"You see," she said, softly, "there is no way out of it. It is not as if I were anybody--I am n.o.body! I was never wanted in the world at all.

I have no name. I have never been baptised. And though I know now that I have a mother, I feel that she is nothing to me. I can hardly believe she is my mother. She is a lady of fashion with a secret--and _I_ am the secret! I ought to be put away and buried and forgotten!--that would be safest for her, and perhaps best for me! But I should like to live long enough to make her wish she had been true to my father and had owned me as his child! Ah, such dreams! Will they ever come true!"

She paused, looking up by the dim candle-light at the arms of the "Sieur Amadis"--who "Here seekinge Forgetfulnesse did here fynde Peace"--and at the motto "Mon coeur me soutien."

"Poor 'Sieur Amadis!'" she murmured--"He sought forgetfulness!--shall I ever do the same? How strange it will be not to WISH to remember!--surely one must be very old, or sad, to find gladness in forgetting!"

A faint little thrill of dread ran through her slight frame--thoughts began to oppress her and shake her courage--she resolutely put them away and bent herself to the practical side of action. Re-attiring herself in the plain black dress and hat which Priscilla had got for her mourning garb, she waited patiently for the first peep of daylight--a daylight which was little more than darkness--and then, taking her satchel, she crept softly out of her room, never once looking back. There was nothing to stay her progress, for the great mastiff Hero, since Hugo Jocelyn's death, had taken to such dismal howling that it had been found necessary to keep him away from the house in, a far-off shed where his melancholy plaints could not be heard. Treading with light, soundless footsteps down the stairs, she reached the front-door,--unbarred and unlocked it without any noise, and as softly closed it behind her,--then she stood in the open, shivering slightly in the sweet coldness of the coming dawn, and inhaling the fragrance of awakening unseen flowers. She knew of a gap in the hedge by means of which she could leave the garden without opening the big farm-gate which moved on rather creaking hinges--and she took this way over a couple of rough stepping-stones. Once out on the old by-road she paused. Briar Farm looked like a house in a dream--there was not enough daylight yet to show its gables distinctly, and it was more like the shadowy suggestion of a building than any actual substance. Yet there was something solemn and impressive in its scarcely defined outline--to the girl's sensitive imagination it was like the darkened and disappearing vision of her youth and happiness,--a curtain falling, as it were, between the past and the future like a drop-scene in a play.

"Good-bye, Briar Farm!" she whispered, kissing her hand to the quaintly peaked roof just dimly perceptible--"Good-bye, dear, beloved home! I shall never forget you! I shall never see anything like you! Good-bye, peace and safety!--good-bye!"

The tears rushed to her eyes, and for the moment blinded her,--then, overcoming this weakness, she set herself to walk quickly and steadily away. Up the old by-road, through the darkness of the overhanging trees, here and there crossed by pale wandering gleams of fitful light from the nearing dawn, she moved swiftly, treading with noiseless footsteps as though she thought the unseen spirits of wood and field might hear and interrupt her progress--and in a few minutes she found herself upon the broad highway branching right and left and leading in either direction to the wider world. Briar Farm had disappeared behind the trees,--it was as though no such place existed, so deeply was it hidden.

She stopped, considering. She was not sure which was the way to the nearest railway-station some eight miles distant. She was prepared to walk it, but feared to take the wrong road, for she instinctively felt that if she had to endure any unexpected delay, some one from Briar Farm would be sent to trace her and find out where she went. While she thus hesitated, she heard the heavy rumbling of slow cart-wheels, and waited to see what sort of vehicle might be approaching. It was a large waggon drawn by two ponderous horses and driven by a man who, dimly perceived by the light of the lantern fastened in front of him, appeared to be asleep. Innocent hailed him--and after one or two efforts succeeded at last in rousing his attention.

"Which is the way to the railway-station?" she asked.

The man blinked drowsily at her.

"Railway-station, is it? I be a-goin' there now to fetch a load o'

nitrates. Are ye wantin' to git?"

"Wantin' to git" was a country phrase to which Innocent was well accustomed. She answered, gently--

"Yes. I should be so glad if you'd give me a lift--I'll pay you for it.

I have to catch the first train to London."

"Lunnon? Quiet, ye rascals!"--this to the st.u.r.dy horses who were dragging away at their shafts in stolid determination to move on--"Lunnon's a good way off! Ever bin there?"

"No."

"Nor I, nayther. Seekin' service?"

"Yes."

"Wal, ye can ride along wi' me, if so be ye likes it--we be goin' main slow, but we'll be there before first engine. Climb up!--that's right!

'Ere's a corner beside me--ye could sit in the waggon if ye liked, but it's 'ard as nails. 'Ere's a bit of 'oss-cloth for a cushion."