Innocent : her fancy and his fact Part 55

"I'll wire to Miss Leigh this morning," he said. "I'll ask her to come out here with Innocent as soon as possible. I won't break the news of YOU to them yet--it would quite overpower Miss Leigh--it might almost kill her--"

"Why, how?" asked Armitage.

"With joy!" answered Blythe. "Hers is a faithful soul!"

He waited a moment--then went on:

"I'll prepare the way cautiously in a letter--it would never do to blurt the whole thing out at once. I'll tell Innocent I have a very great and delightful surprise awaiting her--"

"Oh, very great and delightful indeed!" echoed Armitage with a sad little laugh. "The discovery of a tramp father with only a couple of shirts to his back and a handful of francs in his pocket!"

"My dear chap, what does that matter?" and Blythe gave him a light friendly blow on the shoulder. "We can put all these exterior matters right in no time. Trust me!--Are we not old friends? You have come back from death, as it seems, just when your child may need you--she DOES need you--every young girl needs some protector in this world, especially when her name has become famous, and a matter of public talk and curiosity. Ah! I can already see her joy when she throws her arms around your neck and says 'My father!' I would gladly change places with you for that one exquisite moment!"

They stayed together all that day and night. Lord Blythe sent his wire to Miss Leigh, and wrote his letter,--then both men settled down, as it were, to wait. Armitage went off for two days to Milan, and returned transformed in dress, looking the very beau-ideal of an handsome Englishman,--and the people at Bellaggio who had known him as the wandering landscape painter "Pietro Corri" failed to recognise him now in his true self.

"Yes," said Blythe again, with the fine unselfishness which was part of his nature, when at the end of one of their many conversations concerning Innocent, he had gone over every detail he could think of which related to her life and literary success--"When she comes she will give you all her heart, Pierce! She will be proud and glad,--she will think of no one but her beloved father! She is like that! She is full of an unspent love--you will possess it all!"

And in his honest joy for the joy of others, he never once thought of Amadis de Jocelyn.

CHAPTER XI

It was a gusty September afternoon in London, and autumn had given some unpleasing signs of its early presence in the yellow leaves that flew whirling over the gra.s.s in Kensington Gardens and other open s.p.a.ces where trees spread their kind boughs to the rough and chilly wind. A pretty little elm in Miss Leigh's tiny garden was clothed in gold instead of green, and shook its glittering foliage down with every breath of air like fairy coins minted from the sky. Innocent, leaning from her study window, watched the falling brightness with an unwilling sense of pain and foreboding.

"Summer is over, I'm afraid!" she sighed--"Such a wonderful summer it has been for me!--the summer of my life--the summer of my love! Oh, dear summer, stay just a little longer!"

And the verse of a song, sung so often as to have become hackneyed, rang in her ears--

"Falling leaf and fading tree, Lines of white in a sullen sea, Shadows rising on you and me--The swallows are making them ready to fly, Wheeling out on a windy sky: Good-bye, Summer! Good-bye, good-bye!"

She shivered, and closed the window. She was dressed for going out, and her little motor-brougham waited for her below. Miss Leigh had gone to lunch and to spend the afternoon with some old friends residing out of town,--an unusual and wonderful thing for her to do, as she seldom accepted invitations now where Innocent was not concerned,--but the people who had asked her were venerable folk who could not by the laws of nature be expected to live very much longer, and as they had known Lavinia Leigh from girlhood she considered it somewhat of a duty to go and see them when, as in this instance, they earnestly desired it.

Moreover she knew Innocent had her own numerous engagements and was never concerned at being left alone--especially on this particular afternoon when she had an appointment with her publishers,--and another appointment afterwards, of which she said nothing, even to herself. She had taken more than usual pains with her attire, and looked her sweetest in a soft dove-coloured silk gown gathered about her slight figure in cunning folds of exquisite line and drapery, while the tender gold of her hair shone like ripening corn from under the curved brim of a graceful "picture" hat of black velvet, adorned with one drooping pale grey plume. A small knot of roses nestled among the delicate lace on her bodice, and the diamond dove-pendant Lord Blythe had given her sparkled like a frozen sunbeam against the ivory whiteness of her throat. She glanced at herself in the mirror with a smile,--wondering if "he" would be pleased with her appearance,--"he" had been what is called "difficult" of late, finding fault with some of the very points of her special way of dress which he had once eagerly admired. But she attributed his capricious humour to fatigue and irritability from "over-strain"--that convenient ailment which is now-a-days brought in as a disguise for mere want of control and bad temper. "He has been working so hard to finish his portrait of me!" she thought, tenderly--"Poor fellow!--he must have got quite tired of looking at my face!"

She glanced round her study to see that everything was in order--and then took up a neatly tied parcel of ma.n.u.script--her third book--completed. She had a fancy--one of many, equally harmless,--that she would like to deliver it herself to the publishers rather than send it by post, on this day of all days, when plans for the future were to be discussed with her lover and everything settled for their mutual happiness. Her heart grew light with joyous antic.i.p.ation as she ran downstairs and nodded smilingly at the maid Rachel, who stood ready at the door to open it for her pa.s.sing.

"If Miss Leigh comes home before I do, tell her I will not be long,"

she said, as she stepped into her brougham and was whirled away. At the office of her publishers she was expected and received with eager homage. The head of the firm took the precious packet of ma.n.u.script from her hand with a smile of entire satisfaction.

"You are up to your promised time, Miss Armitage!" he said, kindly--"And you must have worked very hard. I hope you'll give yourself a good long rest now?"

She laughed, lightly.

"Oh, well!--perhaps!" she answered--"If I feel I can afford it! I want to work while I'm young--not to rest. But I think Miss Leigh would like a change--and if she does I'll take her wherever she wishes to go. She is so kind to me!--I can never do enough for her!"

The publisher looked at her sweet, thoughtful face curiously.

"Do you never think of yourself?" he asked--"Must you always plan some pleasure for others?"

She glanced at him in quick surprise.

"Why, of course!" she replied--"Pleasure for others is the only pleasure possible to me. I a.s.sure you I'm quite selfish!--I'm greedy for the happiness of those I love--and if they can't or won't be happy I'm perfectly miserable!"

He smiled,--and when she left, escorted her himself out of his office to her brougham with a kind friendliness that touched her.

"You won't let me call you a brilliant author," he said, as he shook hands with her--"Perhaps it will please you better if I say you are a true woman!"

Her eyes flashed up a bright grat.i.tude,--she waved her hand in parting--as the brougham glided off. And never to his dying day did that publisher and man of hard business detail forget the radiance of the face that smiled at him that afternoon,--a face of light and youth and loveliness, as full of hope and faith as the face of a pictured angel kneeling at the feet of the Madonna with heaven's own glory encircling it in gold.

The quick little motor-brougham seemed unusually slow-going that afternoon. Innocent, with her full happy heart and young pulsing blood, grew impatient with its tardy progress, yet, as a matter of fact, it travelled along at its most rapid speed. The well-known by-street near Holland Park was reached at last, and while the brougham went off to an accustomed retired corner chosen by the chauffeur to await her pleasure, she pushed open the gate of the small garden leading to the back entrance of Jocelyn's studio--a garden now looking rather damp and dreary, strewn as it was with wet ma.s.ses of fallen leaves. It was beginning to rain--and she ran swiftly along the path to the familiar door which she opened with her private key. Jocelyn was working at his easel--he heard the turn of the lock and looked round. She entered, smiling--but he did not at once go and meet her. He was finishing off some special touch of colour over which he bent with a.s.siduous care,--and she was far too unselfishly interested in his work to disturb him at what seemed to be an anxious moment. So she waited.

Presently he spoke, with a certain irritability in his tone.

"Are you there? I wish you would come forward where I can see you!"

She laughed--a pretty rippling laugh of kindly amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Amadis! If you are a true Knight, it is you who should turn round and look at me for yourself!"

"But I am busy," he said, with the same sharpness of voice--"Surely you see that?"

She made no answer, but moved quietly to a position where she stood facing him at about an arm's length. Never had she made a prettier picture than in that att.i.tude of charming hesitation, with a tender little smile on her pretty mouth and a wistful light in her eyes. He laid down his palette and brushes.

"I must give up work for to-day," he said--and going to her he took her in his arms--"You are too great an attraction for me to resist!" He kissed her lightly, as he would have kissed a child. "You are very fascinating this afternoon! Are you bent on some new conquest?"

She gave him a sweet look.

"Why will you talk nonsense, my Amadis!" she said--"You know I never wish for 'conquests' as you call them,--I only want you! Nothing but you!"

With his arm about her he drew her to a corner of the studio, half curtained, where there was a double settee or couch, comfortably cushioned, and here he sat down still holding her in his embrace.

"You only want me!--Nothing but me!" he repeated, softly--"Dear little Innocent!--Ah!--But I fear I am just what you cannot have!"

She smiled, not understanding.

"What do you mean?" she asked--"You always play with me! Are you not all mine as I am all yours?"

He was silent. Then he slowly withdrew his arm from her waist.

"Now, child," he said--"listen to me and be good and sensible! You know this cannot go on."

She lifted her eyes trustfully to his face.

"What cannot go on?" she queried, as softly as though the question were a caress.

He moved restlessly.

"Why--this--this love-making, of ours! We mustn't give ourselves over to sentiment--we must be normal and practical. We must look the thing squarely in the face and settle on some course that will be best and wisest for us both--"