Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli

by Marie Corelli

  She coloured a little.

  “That’s beautiful talk!” she said,— “It’s like poetry, but it isn’t true!”

  “It is true!” he said, with fond insistence. “And I’ll MAKE you love me!”

  “Ah, no!” A look of the coldest scorn suddenly passed over her features— “that’s not possible. You could never MAKE me do anything! And — it’s rude of you to speak in such a way. Please let go my hand!”

  He dropped it instantly, and sprang erect.

  “All right! I’ll leave you to yourself, — and Cupid!” Here he laughed rather bitterly. “What made you give that bird such a name?”

  “I found it in a book,” she answered,— “It’s a name that was given to the god of Love when he was a little boy.”

  “I know that! Please don’t teach me my A.B.C.,” said Robin, half-sulkily.

  She leaned back laughing, and singing softly:

  “Love was once a little boy,

  Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho!

  Then ’twas sweet with him to toy,

  Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho!”

  Her eyes sparkled in the sun, — a tress of her hair, ruffled by the hay, escaped and flew like a little web of sunbeams against her cheek. He looked at her moodily.

  “You might go on with the song,” he said,—”’Love is now a little man—’”

  “‘And a very naughty one!’” she hummed, with a mischievous upward glance.

  Despite his inward vexation, he smiled.

  “Say what you like, Cupid is a ridiculous name for a dove,” he said.

  “It rhymes to stupid,” she replied, demurely,— “And the rhyme expresses the nature of the bird and — the god!”

  “Pooh! You think that clever!”

  “I don’t! I never said a clever thing in my life. I shouldn’t know how. Everything clever has been written over and over again by people in books.”

  “Hang books!” he exclaimed. “It’s always books with you! I wish we had never found that old chest of musty volumes in the panelled room.”

  “Do you? Then you are sillier than I thought you were. The books taught me all I know, — about love!”

  “About love! You don’t know what love means!” he declared, trampling the hay he stood upon with impatience. “You read and read, and you get the queerest ideas into your head, and all the time the world goes on in ways that are quite different from what YOU are thinking about, — and lovers walk through the fields and lanes everywhere near us every year, and you never appear to see them or to envy them—”

  “Envy them!” The girl opened her eyes wide. “Envy them! Oh, Cupid, hear! Envy them! Why should I envy them? Who could envy Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew?”

  “What nonsense you talk!” he exclaimed,— “Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew are married folk, not lovers!”

  “But they were lovers once,” she said,— “and only three years ago. I remember them, walking through the lanes and fields as you say, with arms round each other, — and Mrs. Pettigrew’s hands were always dreadfully red, and Mr. Pettigrew’s fingers were always dirty, — and they married very quickly, — and now they’ve got two dreadful babies that scream all day and all night, and Mrs. Pettigrew’s hair is never tidy and Pettigrew himself — well, you know what he does!—”

  “Gets drunk every night,” interrupted Robin, crossly,— “I know! And I suppose you think I’m another Pettigrew?”

  “Oh dear, no!” And she laughed with the heartiest merriment. “You never could, you never would be a Pettigrew! But it all comes to the same thing — love ends in marriage, doesn’t it?”

  “It ought to,” said Robin, sententiously.

  “And marriage ends — in Pettigrews!”

  “Innocent!”

  “Don’t say ‘Innocent’ in that reproachful way! It makes me feel quite guilty! Now, — if you talk of names, — THERE’S a name to give a poor girl, — Innocent! Nobody ever heard of such a name—”

  “You’re wrong. There were thirteen Popes named Innocent between the years 402 and 1724,” said Robin, promptly,— “and one of them, Innocent the Eleventh, is a character in Browning’s ‘Ring and the Book.’”

  “Dear me!” And her eyes flashed provocatively. “You astound me with your wisdom, Robin! But all the same, I don’t believe any girl ever had such a name as Innocent, in spite of thirteen Popes. And perhaps the Thirteen had other names?”

  “They had other baptismal names,” he explained, with a learned air.

  “For instance, Pope Innocent the Third was Cardinal Lothario before he

  became Pope, and he wrote a book called ‘De Contemptu Mundi sive de

  Miseria Humanae Conditionis!’”

  She looked at him as he uttered the sonorous sounding Latin, with a comically respectful air of attention, and then laughed like a child, — laughed till the tears came into her eyes.

  “Oh Robin, Robin!” she cried— “You are simply delicious! The most enchanting boy! That crimson tie and that Latin! No wonder the village girls adore you! ‘De,’ — what is it? ‘Contemptu Mundi,’ and Misery Human Conditions! Poor Pope! He never sat on top of a hay-load in his life I’m sure! But you see his name was Lothario, — not Innocent.”

  “His baptismal name was Lothario,” said Robin, severely.

  She was suddenly silent.

  “Well! I suppose I was baptised?” she queried, after a pause.

  “I suppose so.”

  “I wonder if I have any other name? I must ask Dad.”

  Robin looked at her curiously; — then his thoughts were diverted by the sight of a squat stout woman in a brown spotted print gown and white sunbonnet, who just then trotted briskly into the hay-field, calling at the top of her voice:

  “Mister Jocelyn! Mister Jocelyn! You’re wanted!”

  “There’s Priscilla calling Uncle in,” he said, and making a hollow of his hands he shouted:

  “Hullo, Priscilla! What is it?”

  The sunbonnet gave an upward jerk in his direction and the wearer shrilled out:

  “Doctor’s come! Wantin’ yer Uncle!”

  The old man, who had been so long quietly seated on the upturned barrel, now rose stiffly, and knocking out the ashes of his pipe turned towards the farmhouse. But before he went he raised his straw hat again and stood for a moment bareheaded in the roseate glory of the sinking sun. Innocent sprang upright on the load of hay, and standing almost at the very edge of it, shaded her eyes with one hand from the strong light, and looked at him.

  “Dad!” she called— “Dad, shall I come?”

  He turned his head towards her.

  “No, lass, no! Stay where you are, with Robin.”

  He walked slowly, and with evident feebleness, across the length of the field which divided him from the farmhouse garden, and opening the green gate leading thereto, disappeared. The sun-bonneted individual called Priscilla walked or rather waddled towards the hay-waggon, and setting her arms akimbo on her broad hips, looked up with a grin at the young people on top.

  “Well! Ye’re a fine couple up there! What are ye a-doin’ of?”

  “Never mind what we’re doing,” said Robin, impatiently. “I say,

  Priscilla, do you think Uncle Hugo is really ill?”

  Priscilla’s face, which was the colour of an ancient nutmeg, and almost as deeply marked with contrasting lines of brown and yellow, showed no emotion.

  “He ain’t hisself,” she said, bluntly.

  “No,” said Innocent, seriously,— “I’m sure he isn’t.” Priscilla jerked her sunbonnet a little further back, showing some tags of dusty grey hair.

  “He ain’t been hisself for this past year,” she went on— “Mr. Slowton, bein’ only a kind of village physic-bottle, don’t know much, an’ yer uncle ain’t bin satisfied. Now there’s another doctor from London staying up ’ere for ’is own poor ‘elth, and yer Uncle said he’d like to ‘ave ’is opinion, — so Mr. Slowton, bein’ obligin’ though ignorant, ‘as got ’im in to see yer Uncle, and there t
hey both is, in the best parlour, with special wine an’ seedies on the table.”

  “Oh, it’ll be all right!” said Robin, cheerfully,— “Uncle Hugo is getting old, of course, and he’s a bit fanciful.”

  Priscilla sniffed the air.

  “Mebbe — and mebbe not! What are you two waitin’ for now?”

  “For the men to come back with Roger. Then we’ll haul home.”

  “You’ll ‘ave to wait a bit longer, I’m thinkin’,” said Priscilla— “They’s all drinkin’ beer in the yard now an’ tappin’ another barrel to drink at when the waggon comes in. There’s no animals on earth as ever thirsty as men! Well, good luck t’ye! I must go, or there’ll be a smell of burnin’ supper-cakes.”

  She settled her sunbonnet anew and trotted away, — looking rather like a large spotted mushroom mysteriously set in motion and rolling, rather than walking, off the field.

  When she was gone, Innocent sat down again upon the hay, this time without Cupid. He had flown off to join his mates on the farmhouse gables.

  “Dad is really not well,” she said, thoughtfully; “I feel anxious about him. If he were to die,—” At the mere thought her eyes filled with tears. “He must die some day,” answered Robin, gently,— “and he’s old, — nigh on eighty.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to remember that,” she murmured. “It’s the cruellest part of life — that people should grow old, and die, and pass away from us. What should I do without Dad? I should be all alone, with no one in the world to care what becomes of me.”

  “I care!” he said, softly.

  “Yes, you care — just now” — she answered, with a sigh; “and it’s very kind of you. I wish I could care — in the way you want me to — but—”

  “Will you try?” he pleaded.

  “I do try — really I do try hard,” she said, with quite a piteous earnestness,— “but I can’t feel what isn’t HERE,” — and she pressed both hands on her breast— “I care more for Roger the horse, and Cupid the dove, than I do for you! It’s quite awful of me — but there it is! I love — I simply adore” — and she threw out her arms with an embracing gesture— “all the trees and plants and birds! — and everything about the farm and the farmhouse itself — it’s just the sweetest home in the world! There’s not a brick or a stone in it that I would not want to kiss if I had to leave it — but I never felt that way for you! And yet I like you very, very much, Robin! — I wish I could see you married to some nice girl, only I don’t know one really nice enough.”

  “Nor do I!” he answered, with a laugh, “except yourself! But never mind, dear! — we won’t talk of it any more, just now at any rate. I’m a patient sort of chap. I can wait!”

  “How long?” she queried, with a wondering glance.

  “All my life!” he answered, simply.

  A silence fell between them. Some inward touch of embarrassment troubled the girl, for the colour came and went flatteringly in her soft cheeks and her eyes drooped under his fervent gaze. The glowing light of the sky deepened, and the sun began to sink in a mist of bright orange, which was reflected over all the visible landscape with a warm and vivid glory. That strange sense of beauty and mystery which thrills the air with the approach of evening, made all the simple pastoral scene a dream of incommunicable loveliness, — and the two youthful figures, throned on their high dais of golden-green hay, might have passed for the rustic Adam and Eve of some newly created Eden. They were both very quiet, — with the tense quietness of hearts that are too full for speech. A joy in the present was shadowed with a dim unconscious fear of the future in both their thoughts, — though neither of them would have expressed their feelings in this regard one to the other. A thrush warbled in a hedge close by, and the doves on the farmhouse gables spread their white wings to the late sunlight, cooing amorously. And again the man spoke, with a gentle firmness:

  “All my life I shall love you, Innocent! Whatever happens, remember that! All my life!”

  CHAPTER II

  The swinging open of a great gate at the further end of the field disturbed the momentary silence which followed his words. The returning haymakers appeared on the scene, leading Roger at their head, and Innocent jumped up eagerly, glad of the interruption.

  “Here comes old Roger!” she cried,— “bless his heart! Now, Robin, you must try to look very stately! Are you going to ride home standing or sitting?”

  He was visibly annoyed at her light indifference.

  “Unless I may sit beside you with my arm round your waist, in the Pettigrew fashion, I’d rather stand!” he retorted. “You said Pettigrew’s hands were always dirty — so are mine. I’d better keep my distance from you. One can’t make hay and remain altogether as clean as a new pin!”

  She gave an impatient gesture.

  “You always take things up in the wrong way,” she said— “I never thought you a bit like Pettigrew! Your hands are not really dirty!”

  “They are!” he answered, obstinately. “Besides, you don’t want my arm round your waist, do you?”

  “Certainly not!” she replied, quickly.

  “Then I’ll stand,” he said;— “You shall be enthroned like a queen and

  I’ll be your bodyguard. Here, wait a minute!”

  He piled up the hay in the middle of the load till it made a high cushion where, in obedience to his gesture, Innocent seated herself. The men leading the horse were now close about the waggon, and one of them, grinning sheepishly at the girl, offered her a daintily-made wreath of wild roses, from which all the thorns had been carefully removed.

  “Looks prutty, don’t it?” he said.

  She accepted it with a smile.

  “Is it for me? Oh, Larry, how nice of you! Am I to wear it?”

  “If ye loike!” This with another grin.

  She set it on her uncovered head and became at once a model for a Romney; the wild roses with their delicate pink and white against her brown hair suited the hues of her complexion and the tender grey of her eyes; — and when, thus adorned, she looked up at her companion, he was fain to turn away quickly lest his admiration should be too plainly made manifest before profane witnesses.

  Roger, meanwhile, was being harnessed to the waggon. He was a handsome creature of his kind, and he knew it. As he turned his bright soft glance from side to side with a conscious pride in himself and his surroundings, he seemed to be perfectly aware that the knots of bright red ribbon tied in his long and heavy mane meant some sort of festival. When all was done the haymakers gathered round.

  “Good luck to the last load, Mr. Clifford!” they shouted.

  “Good luck to you all!” answered Robin, cheerily.

  “Good luck t’ye, Miss!” and they raised their sun-browned faces to the girl as she looked down upon them. “As fine a crop and as fair a load next year!”

  “Good luck to you!” she responded — then suddenly bending a little forward she said almost breathlessly: “Please wish luck to Dad! He’s not well — and he isn’t here! Oh, please don’t forget him!”

  They all stared at her for a moment, as if startled or surprised, then they all joined in a stentorian shout.

  “That’s right, Miss! Good luck to the master! Many good years of life to him, and better crops every year!”

  She drew back, smiling her thanks, but there were tears in her eyes. And then they all started in a pretty procession — the men leading Roger, who paced along the meadow with equine dignity, shaking his ribbons now and again as if he were fully conscious of carrying something more valuable than mere hay, — and above them all smiled the girl’s young face, framed in its soft brown hair and crowned with the wild roses, while at her side stood the very type of a model Englishman, with all the promise of splendid life and vigour in the build of his form, the set of his shoulders and the poise of his handsome head. It was a picture of youth and beauty and lovely nature set against the warm evening tint of the sky, — one of those pictures which, though drawn for the moment only on the m
inds of those who see it, is yet never forgotten.

  Arriving presently at a vast enclosure, in which already two loads of hay were being stacked, they were hailed with a cheery shout by several other labourers at work, and very soon a strong smell of beer began to mingle with the odour of the hay and the dewy scent of the elder flowers and sweet briar in the hedges close by.

  “Have a drop, Mr. Clifford!” said one tall, powerful-looking man who seemed to be a leader among the others, holding out a pewter tankard full and frothing over.

  Robin Clifford smiled and put his lips to it.

  “Just to your health, Landon!” he said— “I’m not a drinking man.”

  “Haymaking’s thirsty work,” commented the other. “Will Miss Jocelyn do us the honour?”

  The girl made a wry little face.

  “I don’t like beer, Mr. Landon,” she said— “It’s horrid stuff, even when it’s home-brewed! I help to make it, you see!”

  She laughed gaily — they all laughed with her, and then there was a little altercation which ended in her putting her lips to the tankard just offered to Robin and sipping the merest fleck of its foam. Landon watched her, — and as she returned the cup, put his own mouth to the place hers had touched and drank the whole draught off greedily. Robin did not see his action, but the girl did, and a deep blush of offence suffused her cheeks. She rose, a little nervously.

  “I’ll go in now,” she said— “Dad must be alone by this time.”

  “All right!” And Robin jumped lightly from the top of the load to the ground and put the ladder up for her to descend. She came down daintily, turning her back to him so that the hem of her neat white skirt fell like a little snowflake over each rung of the ladder, veiling not only her slim ankles but the very heels of her shoes. When she was nearly at the bottom, he caught her up and set her lightly on the ground.

  “There you are!” he said, with a laugh— “When you get into the house you can tell Uncle that you are a Rose Queen, a Hay Queen, and Queen of everything and everyone on Briar Farm, including your very humble servant, Robin Clifford!”