Innocent : her fancy and his fact Part 60

Priscilla shook her head.

"The doctor would be no use," she answered--"She's just fairly worn out and wants rest. Her little room is ready,--I've kept it aired, and the bed made warm and cosy ever since she went away--lest she should ever come back sudden like... could you carry her up, d'ye think? She'll be better in her bed--and she would come to herself quicker."

Gently and with infinite tenderness he lifted the girl as though she were a baby and carried her lightly up the broad oak staircase, Priscilla leading the way--and soon they brought her into her own room, unchanged since she had occupied it, and kept by Priscilla's loving and half superst.i.tious care ready for her return at any moment. Laying her down on her little bed, Robin left her, though hardly able to tear himself away, and going downstairs again he flung himself into a chair and wept like a child for the ruin and wreck of the fair young life which might have been the joy and sunshine of his days!

"Amadis de Jocelyn!" he muttered--"A curse on him! Why should the founder of this house bring evil on us?--Rising up like a ghost to overshadow us and spoil our happiness?--Let the house perish and all its traditions if it must be so, rather than that she should suffer!--for she is innocent!"

Yes--she was quite innocent,--the little "base-born" intruder on the unbroken line and history of the Jocelyns!--and yet--it was with a kind of horror that the memory of that unbroken line and history recurred to him. Was there--could there be anything real in the long prevalent idea that if the direct line of the Jocelyns were broken, the peace and prosperity so long attendant on the old farm would be at an end? He put the thought away with a sense of anger.

"No, no! She could only bring joy wherever she went--no matter who her parents were, or how she was born, my poor little one!--she has suffered for no fault at all of her own!"

He listened to the dying clamour of the storm--the wind still careered round the house, making a noise like the beating wings of a great bird, but the rain was ceasing and there was a deeper sense of quiet. An approaching step startled him--he looked up and saw Priscilla. She smiled encouragingly.

"Cheer up, Mister Robin!" she said. ... "She is much better--she knows where she is now, bless her heart!--and she's glad to be at home. Let her alone--and if she 'as a good sleep she'll be a'most herself again in the morning. I'll leave my bedroom door open all night--an' I'll be lookin' in at 'er when she doesn't know it, watchin' her lovin' like for all I'm worth! ... so don't ye worry, my lad!--there's a good G.o.d in Heaven an' it'll all come right!"

Robin took her rough work-worn hands and clasped them in his own.

"Bless you, you dear woman!" he said, huskily. "Do you really think so?

Will she be herself again?--our own dear little Innocent?"

"Of course she will!" and Priscilla blinked away the tears in her eyes--"An' you'll mebbe win 'er yet!--The Lord's ways are ever wonderful an' past findin' out--"

A clear voice calling from the staircase interrupted them.

"Priscilla! Robin!"

Running to answer the summons, they saw Innocent at the top of the stairs, a little vision of pale, smiling sweetness, in her white wool wrapper--her hair falling loose over her shoulders. She kissed her hands to them.

"Only to say good-night!" she said,--"I know just where I am now!--it was so foolish of me to forget! I am at home--and this is Briar Farm--and I feel almost well and--happy! Robin!"

He sprang up the stairs and, kneeling, took one of her hands and kissed it.

"That's my true knight!" she said. "Dear Robin! You deserve everything good--and if it will give you joy I will marry you!"

"Marry me!" he cried, scarcely believing his ears--"Innocent! You will?--Dearest little love, you will?"

She looked down upon him where he knelt, like some small compa.s.sionate angel.

"Yes--I will!--To please you and Dad!--Tomorrow if you like! But you must say good-night now and let me sleep!"

He kissed her hand again.

"Good-night, sweet!"

She started--and drew her hand away.

"He said that once,--and once--in a letter--he wrote it. It seemed to me beautiful!--'Good-night, sweet!'" She waited as if to think a moment, then--

"Good-night!" again she said--"Do not be anxious about me--I shall sleep well! Good-night!"

She waved her hand once more, and disappeared like a little white phantom in the dark corridor.

"Does she mean it, do you think?" asked Robin, turning eagerly to Priscilla--"Will she marry me, after all?"

"I shouldn't wonder!" and the old woman nodded sagaciously--"Let her sleep on it, lad!--an' you sleep on it, too!--The storm's nigh over--an' mebbe our dark cloud 'as a silver lining!"

Half-an-hour later on she went to her own bed--and on the way thought she would peep into Innocent's room and see how she fared--but the door was locked. Vexed at her own lack of foresight in not possessing herself of the key before the girl had been carried to her room, she left her own door open that she might be ready in case of any call--and for a long time she lay awake watchfully, thinking and wondering what the next day would bring forth--till at last anxiety and bewilderment of mind were overcome by sheer fatigue and she slept. Not so Robin Clifford. Excited and full of new hope which he hardly dared breathe to himself, he made no attempt to rest--but paced his room up and down, up and down, like a restless animal in a cage, waiting with hardly endurable impatience for the dawn. Thoughts chased each other in his brain too quickly to evolve any practical order out of them,--he tried to plan out what he would do with the coming day--how he would let the farm people know that Innocent had returned--how he would send a telegram to her friend Miss Leigh in London to say she was safe in her old home--and then the recollection of her literary success swept over his mind like a sort of cloud--her fame!--the celebrity she had won in that wider world outside Briar Farm--was it fair or honest to her that he should take advantage of her weak and half-distraught condition and allow her to become his wife?--she, whose genius was already acknowledged by a wide and discerning public, and who might be considered as only at the beginning of a brilliant and prosperous career?

"For, after all, I am only a farmer," he said--"And with the friends she has made for herself she might marry any one! The best way for me will be to give her time--time to recover from this--this terrible trouble she seems to have on her mind--this curse of that fancy for Amadis de Jocelyn!--by Heaven, I'd kill him without a minute's grace if I had him in my power!"

Still pacing to and fro and thinking, he wore the slow hours away, and at last the grey peep of a misty, silvery dawn peered through his window. He threw the lattice open and leaned out--the scent of the wet fields and trees after the night's storm was sweet and refreshing, and copied his heated blood. He reviewed the whole situation with greater calmness,--and decided that he must not be selfish enough to grasp at the proffered joy of marriage with the only woman he had ever loved unless he could be made sure that it would be for her own happiness.

"Just now she hardly knows what she is saying or doing," he mused, sadly--"Some great disappointment has broken her spirit and she is wounded and in pain,--but when she is quite herself and has mastered her grief, she will see things in a different light--she will realise the fame she has won,--the brilliant name she has made--yes!--she must think of all this--she must not wrong herself or injure her position by marrying me!"

The silver-grey dawn brightened steadily, and in the eastern sky long folds of silky mist began to shred away in thin strips of delicate vapour showing peeps of pale amber between,--fitful touches of faint rose-colour flitted here and there against the gold,--and with a sense of relief that the day was at last breaking and that the sky showed promise of the sun, he left his room, and stepping noiselessly into the outside corridor, listened. Priscilla's door was wide open--and as he pa.s.sed he looked in,--she was fast asleep. He could not hear a sound,--and though he walked on cautious tip-toe along the little pa.s.sage which led to the room where Innocent slept and waited there a minute or two, straining his ears for any little sigh, or sob, or whisper, none came;--all was silent. Quietly he went downstairs, and, opening the hall door, stepped out into the garden. Every shrub and plant was dripping with wet--many were beaten down and broken by the fury of the night's storm, and there was more desolation than beauty in the usually well-ordered and carefully-tended garden. The confusion of fallen flowers and trailing stems made a melancholy impression on his mind,--at another time he would scarcely have heeded what was, after all, only the natural havoc wrought by high winds and heavy rains,--but this morning there seemed to be more than the usual ruin. He walked slowly round to the front of the house--and there looked up at the projecting lattice window of Innocent's room. It was wide open.

Surprised, he stopped underneath it and looked up, half expecting to see her,--but only a filmy white curtain moved gently with the first stirrings of the morning air. He stood a moment or two irresolute, recalling the night when he had climbed up by the natural ladder of the old wistaria and had heard her tell the plaintive little story of her "base-born" condition, with tears in her eyes, and the pale moonshine lighting up her face like the face of an angel in a dream.

"And she had written her first book already then!" he thought--"She had all that genius in her and I never knew!"

A deeper brightness in the sky began to glow, and a light spread itself over the land--the sun was rising. He looked towards the low hills in the east, and saw the golden rim lifting itself like the edge of a cup above the horizon,--and as it ascended higher and higher, some fleecy white clouds rolled softly away from its glittering splendour, showing glimpses of tenderest ethereal blue. A still and solemn beauty invested all the visible scene,--a sacred peace--the peace of an obedient and law-abiding nature wherein man alone creates strange discord. Robin looked long and lovingly at the fair prospect,-the wide meadows, the stately trees warmly tinted with autumnal glory, and thought--

"Could she be happier than here?--safe in the arms of love?--safe and sheltered from all trouble in the home she once idolised?"

He would not answer his own inward query--and suddenly the fancy seized him to call her by name, as he had called her on that moonlit night long ago, and persuade her to look out on the familiar fields shining in the sunlight of the morning.

"Innocent!"

There was no answer.

He called a little louder--

"Innocent!"

Still silence. A robin hopped out from the cover of wet leaves and peered at him questioningly with its bold bright eye. Acting on an irresistible impulse he set his foot on the gnarled root of the old wistaria and started to climb to the window-sill. Three minutes sufficed him to reach it--he looked into the little room,--the room which had formerly been the study of the "Sieur Amadis de Jocelin"--and there seated at the old oak table with her head bowed down upon her hands and her hair covering her as with a veil, was Innocent. The sunlight flashed brightly in upon her--and immediately above her the golden beams traced out as with a pencil of light the arms of the old French knight with the faded rose and blue of his shield and motto illumining with curiously marked distinctness the words he himself had carved beneath his own heraldic emblems:

"Who here seekynge Forgetfulness Did here fynde Peace!"

She was very strangely still,--and a cold fear suddenly caught at Robin's heart and half choked his breath.

"Innocent!" he cried. Then, leaping into the room like a man in sudden frenzy, he rushed towards that motionless little figure--threw his arms about it--lifted it--caressed it...

"Innocent! Look at me! Speak to me!"

The fair head fell pa.s.sively back against his shoulder with all its wealth of rippling hair--the fragile form he clasped was helpless, lifeless, breathless!--and with a great shuddering sob of agony, he realised the full measure of his life's despair. Innocent was dead!--and for her, as for the "Sieur Amadis," the quaint words shining above her in the morning sunlight were aptly fitted--

"Who here seekynge Forgetfulness Did here fynde Peace!"