Innocent : her fancy and his fact Part 58

"I'm sorry!" she panted--"Forgive!--I couldn't help it!--Amadis--Amadis!--"

And she flung herself against his breast. Her eyes, large and feverishly brilliant, searched his face for any sign of tenderness, and searched in vain.

"Say it isn't true!" she whispered--"Amadis--oh my love, say it isn't true!" Her little hands caressed him--she drew his head down towards her and her pleading kiss touched his lips. "Say that you didn't really mean it!--that you love me still--Amadis!--you could not be cruel!--you will not break my heart!--"

But he was too angry to be pitiful. Her scream had infuriated him--he thought it would alarm the street, bring up the servant, and give rise to all sorts of scandal in which he might be implicated, and he roughly loosened her clinging arms from his neck and pushed her from him.

"Break your heart!" he exclaimed, bitterly--"I wish I could break your temper! You behave like a madwoman; I shall go away to my room! When I come back I expect to find you calm, and reasonable--or else, gone!

Remember!"

She stood gazing at him as though petrified. He swung past her rapidly, and opening the princ.i.p.al door of the studio pa.s.sed through it and disappeared. She ran to it--tried to open it--it was locked on the other side. She was alone.

She looked about her bewildered, like a child that has lost its way.

She saw her pretty little velvet hat on the settee where she had left it, and in a trembling hurry she put it on--then paused. Going on tip-toe to the easel, she looked vaguely at her own portrait and smiled.

"You must be good and reasonable!" she said, waving her hand to it--"When you have lost every thing in the world, you must be calm! You mustn't think of love any more!--that's only a fancy!--you mustn't--no, you mustn't have any fancies or your dove will fly away! You are holding it to your heart just now--and it seems quite safe--but it will fly away presently--yes!--it will fly away!"

She lifted the painter's palette and looked curiously at it,--then took up the brush, moist with colour, which Jocelyn had lately used. Softly she kissed its handle and laid it down again. Then she waited, with a puzzled air, and listened. There was no sound. Another moment, and she moved noiselessly, almost creepingly to the little private door by which she had always entered the studio, and unlocking it, slipped out leaving the key in the lock. It was raining heavily, but she was not conscious of this,--she had no very clear idea what she was doing.

There was a curious calm upon her,--a kind of cold a.s.sertiveness, like that of a dying person who has strength enough to ask for some dear friend's presence before departing from life. She walked steadily to the place where her motor-brougham waited for her, and entered it. The chauffeur looked at her for orders.

"To Paddington Station," she said--"I am going out of town. Stop at the first telegraph office on your way."

The man touched his hat. He thought she seemed very ill, but it was his place to obey instructions, not to proffer sympathy. At the telegraph office she got out, moving like one in a dream and sent a wire to Miss Leigh.

"Am staying with friends out of town. Don't wait up for me."

Back to the brougham she went, still in a dream-like apathy, and at Paddington dismissed the chauffeur.

"If I want you in the morning, I will let you know," she said, with matter-of-fact composure, and turning, was lost at once in the crowd of pa.s.sengers pouring into the station.

The man was for a moment puzzled by the paleness of her face and the wildness of her eyes, but like most of his cla.s.s, made little effort to think beyond the likelihood of everything being "all right to-morrow,"

and went his way.

Meanwhile Miss Leigh had returned to her house to find it bereft of its living sunshine. There were two telegrams awaiting her,--one from Lord Blythe, urging her to start at once with Innocent for Italy--the other from Innocent herself, which alarmed her by its unusual purport. In all the time she had lived with her "G.o.d-mother" the girl had never stayed away a night, and that she was doing so now worried and perplexed the old lady to an acute degree of nervous anxiety. John Harrington happened to call that evening, and on hearing what had occurred, became equally anxious with herself, and, moved by some curious instinct, went, on his way home, to Jocelyn's studio to ascertain if Innocent had been there that afternoon. But he knocked and rang at the door in vain,--all was dark and silent. Amadis de Jocelyn was a wise man in his generation. When he had returned to confront Innocent again and find her, as he had suggested, either recovered from her "temper" and "calm and reasonable"--or else "gone"--he had rejoiced to see that she had accepted the latter alternative. There was no trace of her save the unlocked private door of the studio, which he now locked, putting the key in his pocket. He gave a long breath of relief--a sort of "Thank G.o.d that's over!"--and arranged his affairs of both art and business with such dispatch as to leave for Paris in peace and comfort by the night boat-train.

CHAPTER XII

That evening the fitful and gusty wind increased to a gale which swept the land with devastating force, breaking down or uprooting great trees that had withstood the storms of centuries, and torrential rain fell, laying whole tracts of country under water. All round the coast the sea was lashed into a tossing tumult, the waves rolling in like great green walls of water streaked with angry white as though flashed with lightning, and the weather reports made the usual matter-of-fact statement that "Cross-Channel steamers made rough pa.s.sages." Winds and waves, however, had no disturbing effect on the mental or physical balance of Amadis de Jocelyn, who, wrapped in a comfortable fur-lined overcoat, sat in a sheltered corner on the deck of the Calais boat, smoking a good cigar and congratulating himself on the ease with which he had slipped out of what threatened to have been a very unpleasant and embarra.s.sing entanglement.

"If she were an ordinary sort of girl it wouldn't matter so much," he thought--"She would be practical, with sufficient vanity not to care,--she would see more comedy than tragedy in the whole thing. But with her romantic ideas about love, and her name in everybody's mouth, I might have got into the devil's own mess! I wonder where she went to when she left the studio? Straight home, I suppose, to Miss Leigh,--will she tell Miss Leigh? No--I think not!--she's not likely to tell anybody. She'll keep it all to herself. She's a silly little fool!--but she's--she's loyal!"

Yes, she was loyal! Of that there could be no manner of doubt. Callous and easy-going man of the world as he had ever been and ever would be, the steadfast truth and tender devotion of the poor child moved him to a faint sense of shamed admiration. On the inky blackness of the night he saw her face, floating like a vision,--her little uplifted, praying hands,--he heard her voice, piteously sweet, crying "Amadis! Amadis!

Say you didn't mean it!--say it isn't true!--I thought you loved me, dear!--you told me so!"

The waves hissed round the rolling steamer, and every now and again white tongues of foam darted at him from the crests of the heaving waters, yet amid all the shattering roar and turbulence of the storm, he could not get the sound of that pleading voice out of his ears.

"Silly little fool!" he repeated over and over again with inward vexation--"Nothing could be more absurd than her way of looking at life as though it was only made for love! Yet--she suited her name!--she was really the most 'innocent' creature I have ever known! And--and--she loved me!"

The sea and the wind shrieked at him as the vessel plunged heavily on her difficult way--his nerves, cool as they were, seemed to himself on edge: and at certain moments during that Channel pa.s.sage he felt a pang of remorse and pity for the young life on which he had cast an ineffaceable shadow,--a life instinct with truth, beauty, and brightness, just opening out as it were into the bloom of fulfilled promise. He had not "betrayed" her in the world's vulgar sense of betrayal,--he had not wronged her body--but he had done far worse,--he had robbed her of her peace of mind. Little by little he had stolen from the flower of her life its honey of sweet content,--he had checked the active impulses of her ambition, and as they soared upwards like bright birds to the sun, had brought them down, to the ground, slain with a mere word of light mockery,--he had led her to judge all things of no value save himself,--and when he had attained to this end he had destroyed her last dream of happiness by voluntarily proving his own insincerity and worthlessness.

"It has all been her own fault," he mused, trying to excuse and to console himself--"She fell into my arms as easily as a ripe peach falls at a touch--that childish fancy about 'Amadis de Jocelin' did the trick! Curious!--very curious that a sixteenth-century member of my own family tree should be mixed up in my affair with this girl! Of course she'll say nothing,--there's nothing to say! We've kept our secret very well, and except for a few playful suggestions and hints dropped here and there, n.o.body knows we were in love with each other. Then--she's got her work to do,--it isn't as if she were an idle woman without an occupation,--and she'll think it down and live it down. Of course she will! I'm worrying myself quite needlessly! It will be all right. And as she doesn't go to her Briar Farm now, I daresay she'll even forget her fetish of a knight, the 'Sieur Amadis de Jocelin'!"

He laughed idly, amused as he always had been at the romantic ideal she had made of the old French knight who had so strangely turned out to be the brother of his own far-away ancestor,--and then, on landing at Calais, was soon absorbed in numerous other thoughts and interests, and gradually dismissed the whole subject from his mind. After all, for him it was only one "little affair" out of at least a dozen or more, which from time to time had served to entertain him and provide a certain stimulus for his artistic emotions.

The storm had it all its own way in the fair English country,--sweeping in from the sea it tore over hill and dale with haste and fury, working terrible havoc among the luxuriant autumnal foliage and bringing down whirling wet showers of gold and crimson leaves. Round Briar Farm it raged all day long, tearing away from the walls one giant branch of the old "Glory" rose and snapping it off at its stem. Robin Clifford, coming home from the fields in the late afternoon, saw the fallen bough covered with a scented splendour of late roses, and lifting it tenderly carried it into the house, thinking somewhat sadly that in the old days Innocent would have been grieved had she seen such havoc made. Setting it in a big brown jar full of water, he put it in the entrance hall where its shoots reached nearly to the ceiling, and Priscilla Priday exclaimed at the sight of it--

"Eh, eh, is the old rose-tree broken, Mister Robin! That's never happened before in all the time I've been 'ere! I don't like the looks of it!--no, Mister Robin, I don't!"

"It's only one of the bigger branches," answered Robin soothingly. "The rose-tree itself is all right--I don't think any storm can hurt that--it's too deeply rooted. This was certainly a very fine branch, but it must have got loosened by the wind."

Even as he spoke a fierce gust swept over the old house with a sound like a scream of wrath and agony, and a furious torrent of rain emptied itself as though from a cloud-burst, half drowning the flower-beds and for the moment making a pool of the court-yard. Priscilla hurried to see that all the windows were shut and the doors well barred, and when evening closed in the picturesque gables of the roof were but a black blur in the almost incessant whirl of rain.

As the night deepened the storm grew worse, and the howling of the wind through the cracks and crannies of the ancient building was like the noise of wild animals clamouring for food. Priscilla and Robin Clifford sat together in the kitchen,--the most comfortable apartment to be in on such an unkind night of elemental uproar. It had become more or less their living-room since Innocent's departure, for Robin could not bear to sit in the "best parlour," as it was called, now that there was no one to share its old-world charm and comfort with him,--and when Priscilla's work was done, and everything was cleared and the other servants gone to their beds, he preferred to bring his book and pipe into the kitchen, and sit in an old cushioned arm-chair on one side of the fire-place, while Priscilla sat on the other, mending the house-linen, both of them talking at intervals of the past, and of the happy and unthinking days when Farmer Jocelyn had been alive and well, and when Innocent was like a fairy child flitting over the meadows with her light and joyous movements, her brown-gold hair flying loose like a trail of sunbeams on the wind, her face blossoming into rose-and-white loveliness as a flower blossoms on its slender stem,--her voice carrying sweet cadences through the air and making music wherever it rang. Latterly, however, they had not spoken so much of her,--the fame of her genius and the sudden leap she had made into a position of public note and brilliancy had somewhat scared the simple soul of Priscilla, who felt that the child she had reared from infancy had been taken by some strange and not to be contested fate away, far out of her reach,--while Robin--whose experiences at Oxford had taught him that persons of his own s.e.x attaining to even a mild literary celebrity were apt to become somewhat "touch-me-not" characters--almost persuaded himself that perhaps Innocent, sweet and ideally simple of nature as he had ever known her to be, might, under the influence of her rapid success and prosperity, change a little (and such change, he thought, would be surely natural!)--if only just as much as would lessen by ever so slight a degree her former romantic pa.s.sion for the home of her childhood. And,--lurking sometimes at the back of all his thoughts there crept the suggestive shadow of "Amadis de Jocelyn,"--not the French Knight of old, but the French painter, of whom she had told him and of whose very existence he had a strange and secret distrust.

On this turbulent night the old kitchen looked very peaceful and home-like,--the open fire burned brightly, flashing its flame-light against the ceiling's huge oak beams--everything was swept clean and polished to the utmost point of perfection,--and the table on which Robin rested the book he was reading was covered with a tapestried cloth, embroidered in many colours, dark and bright contrasted cunningly, with an effect that was soothing and restful to the eyes. In the centre there was placed a quaintly shaped jar of old brown l.u.s.tre which held a full tall bunch of golden-rod and deep wine-coloured dahlias,--a posy expressing autumn with a greater sense of gain than loss. Robin was reading with exemplary patience and considerable difficulty one of the old French poetry books belonging to the "Sieur Amadis de Jocelin," and Priscilla's small glittering needle flew in and out the open-work st.i.tchery of a linen pillow-slip she was mending as deftly as any embroideress of Tudor times. Over the old, crabbed yet delicately fine writing of the "Sieur" whose influence on Innocent's young mind had been so p.r.o.nounced and absolute, and in Robin's opinion so malign, he pored studiously, slowly mastering the meaning of the verses, though written in a language he had never cared to study. He was conscious of a certain suave sweetness and melancholy in the swing of the lines, though they did not appeal to him very forcibly.

"En un cruel orage On me laisse perir; En courant au naufrage Je vois chacun me plaindre et mil me secourir, Felicite pa.s.see Qui ne peux revenir Tourment de ma pensee Que n'ai-je en te perdant perdu le souvenir!

Le sort, plein d'injustice M'ayant enfin rendu Ce reste un pur supplice, Je serais plus heureux si j'avais tout perdu!"

A sudden swoop of the wind shook the very rafters of the house as though some great bird had grasped it with beak and talons, and Priscilla stopped her swift needle, drawing it out to its full length of linen thread and holding it there. A strange puzzled look was on her face--she seemed to be listening intently. Presently, taking off her spectacles, she laid them down, and spoke in a half whisper:

"Mister Robin! Robin, my dear!"

He looked up, surprised at the grave wistfulness and wonder of her old eyes.

"Yes, Priscilla?"

"I'm thinkin' my time is drawin' short, dear lad!" she said, slowly--"I've got a call, an' I'll not be much longer here! That's a warnin' for me--"

"A warning? Priscilla, what do you mean?"

Drawing in her needle and thread, she p.r.i.c.ked it through the linen she held and looked full at him.

"Didn't ye hear it?" she asked.

A sudden chill crept through the young man's blood,--there was something so wan and mournful in her expression.

"Dear Priscilla, you are dreaming! Hear what?"

She lifted one brown wrinkled hand with a gesture of attention.

"The crying of the child!" she answered--"Crying, crying, crying!

Crying for me!"

Robin held his breath and listened. The wind had for the moment lessened in violence, and its booming roar had dropped to a moaning sigh. Now and again there was a pause that was almost silence, and during one of these intervals he fancied--but surely it was only fancy!--that he actually did hear a faint human cry. He looked at Priscilla questioningly and in doubt,--she met his eyes with a fixed and solemn resignation in her own.