“No, not if I loved him with all my heart!” she said, passionately— “Not without a name! — not till I have made a name for myself, if only that were possible!”
She left the window and walked restlessly about her room, a room that she loved very greatly because it had been the study of the Sieur Amadis. It was a wonderful room, oak-panelled from floor to ceiling, and there was no doubt about its history, — the Sieur Amadis himself had taken care of that. For on every panel he had carved with his own hand a verse, a prayer, or an aphorism, so that the walls were a kind of open notebook inscribed with his own personal memoranda. Over the wide chimney his coat-of-arms was painted, the colours having faded into tender hues like those of autumn leaves, and the motto underneath was “Mon coeur me soutien.” Then followed the inscription:
“Amadis de Jocelin,
Knight of France,
Who here seekynge Forgetfulness did here fynde Peace.”
Every night of her life since she could read Innocent had stood in front of these armorial bearings in her little white night-gown and had conned over these words. She had taken the memory and tradition of Amadis to her heart and soul. He was HER ancestor, — hers, she had always said; — she had almost learned her letters from the inscriptions he had carved, and through these she could read old English and a considerable amount of old French besides. When she was about twelve years old she and Robin Clifford, playing about together in this room, happened to knock against one panel that gave forth a hollow reverberant sound, and moved by curiosity they tried whether they could open it. After some abortive efforts Robin’s fingers closed by chance on a hidden spring, which being thus pressed caused the panel to fly open, disclosing a narrow secret stair. Full of burning excitement the two children ran up it, and to their delight found themselves in a small square musty chamber in which were two enormous old dower-chests, locked. Their locks were no bar to the agility of Robin, who, fetching a hammer, forced the old hasps asunder and threw back the lids. The coffers were full of books and manuscripts written on vellum, a veritable sixteenth-century treasure-trove. They hastened to report the find to Farmer Jocelyn, who, though never greatly taken with books or anything concerning them, was sufficiently interested to go with the eager children and look at the discovery they had made. But as he could make nothing of either books or manuscripts himself, he gave over the whole collection to Innocent, saying that as they were found in her part of the house she might keep them. No one — not even Robin — knew how much she had loved and studied these old books, or how patiently she had spelt out the manuscripts; and no one could have guessed what a wide knowledge of literature she had gained or what fine taste she had developed from her silent communications with the parted spirit of the Sieur Amadis and his poetical remains. She had even arranged her room as she thought he might have liked it, in severe yet perfect taste. It was now her study as it had been his, — the heavy oak table had a great pewter inkstand upon it and a few loose sheets of paper with two or three quill pens ready to hand, — some quaint old vellum-bound volumes and a brown earthenware bowl full of “Glory” roses were set just where they could catch the morning sunshine through the lattice window. One side of the room was lined with loaded bookshelves, and at its furthest end a wide arch of roughly hewn oak disclosed a smaller apartment where she slept. Here there was a quaint little four-poster bedstead, hung with quite priceless Jacobean tapestry, and a still more rare and beautiful work of art — an early Italian mirror, full length and framed in silver, a curio worth many hundreds of pounds. In this mirror Innocent had surveyed herself with more or less disfavour since her infancy. It was a mirror that had always been there — a mirror in which the wife of the Sieur Amadis must have often gazed upon her own reflection, and in which, after her, all the wives and daughters of the succeeding Jocelyns had seen their charms presented to their own admiration. The two old dower-chests which had been found in the upper chamber were placed on either side of the mirror, and held all the simple home-made garments which were Innocent’s only wear. A special joy of hers lay in the fact that she knew the management of the secret sliding panel, and that she could at her own pleasure slip up the mysterious stairway with a book and be thus removed from all the household in a solitude which to her was ideal. To-night as she wandered up and down her room like a little distraught ghost, all the happy and romantic associations of the home she had loved and cherished for so many years seemed cut down like a sheaf of fair blossoms by a careless reaper, — a sordid and miserable taint was on her life, and she shuddered with mingled fear and grief as she realised that she had not even the simple privilege of ordinary baptism. She was a nameless waif, dependent on the charity of Farmer Jocelyn. True, the old man had grown to love her and she had loved him — ah! — let the many tender prayers offered up for him in this very room bear witness before the throne of God to her devotion to her “father” as she had thought him! And now — if what the doctors said was true — if he was soon to die — what would become of her? She wrung her little hands in unconscious agony.
“What shall I do?” she murmured, sobbingly— “I have no claim on him, or on anyone in the world! Dear God, what shall I do?”
Her restless walk up and down took her into her sleeping-chamber, and there she lit a candle and looked at herself in the old Italian mirror. A little woe-begone creature gazed sorrowfully back at her from its shining surface, with brimming eyes and quivering lips, and hair all tossed loosely away from a small sad face as pale as a watery moon, and she drew back from her own reflection with a gesture of repugnance.
“I am no use to anybody in any way,” she said, despairingly— “I am not even good-looking. And Robin — poor foolish Robin! — called me ‘lovely’ this afternoon! He has no eyes!”
Then a sudden thought flew across her brain of Ned Landon. The tall powerful-looking brute loved her, she knew. Every look of his told her that his very soul pursued her with a reckless and relentless passion. She hated him, — she trembled even now as she pictured his dark face and burning eyes; — he had annoyed and worried her in a thousand ways — ways that were not sufficiently open in their offence to be openly complained of, though had Farmer Jocelyn’s state of health given her less cause for anxiety she might have said something to him which would perhaps have opened his eyes to the situation. But not now, — not now could she appeal to anyone for protection from amorous insult. For who was she — what was she that she should resent it? She was nothing! — a mere stray child whose parents nobody knew, — without any lawful guardian to uphold her rights or assert her position. No wonder old Jocelyn had called her “wilding” — she was indeed a “wilding” or weed, — growing up unwanted in the garden of the world, destined to be pulled out of the soil where she had nourished and thrown contemptuously aside. A wretched sense of utter helplessness stole over her, — of incapacity, weakness and loneliness. She tried to think, — to see her way through the strange fog of untoward circumstance that had so suddenly enshrouded her. What would happen when Farmer Jocelyn died? For one thing she would have to quit Briar Farm. She could not stay in it when Robin Clifford was its master. He would marry, of course; he would be sure to marry; and there would be no place for her in his home. She would have to earn her bread; and the only way to do that would be to go out to service. She had a good store of useful domestic knowledge, — she could bake and brew, and wash and scour; she knew how to rear poultry and keep bees; she could spin and knit and embroider; indeed her list of household accomplishments would have startled any girl fresh out of a modern Government school, where things that are useful in life are frequently forgotten, and things that are not by any means necessary are taught as though they were imperative. One other accomplishment she had, — one that she hardly whispered to herself — she could write, — write what she herself called “nonsense.” Scores of little poems and essays and stories were locked away in a small old bureau in a corner of the room, — confessions and expressions of pent-up feeling whic
h, but for this outlet, would have troubled her brain and hindered her rest. They were mostly, as she frankly admitted to her own conscience, in the “style” of the Sieur Amadis, and were inspired by his poetic suggestions. She had no fond or exaggerated idea of their merit, — they were the result of solitary hours and long silences in which she had felt she must speak to someone, — exchange thoughts with someone, — or suffer an almost intolerable restraint. That “someone” was for her the long dead knight who had come to England in the train of the Duc d’Anjou. To him she spoke, — to him she told all her troubles — but to no one else did she ever breathe her thoughts, or disclose a line of what she had written. She had often wondered whether, if she sent these struggling literary efforts to a magazine or newspaper, they would be accepted and printed. But she never made the trial, for the reason that such newspaper literature as found its way into Briar Farm filled her with amazement, repulsion and disgust. There was nothing in any modern magazine that at all resembled the delicate, pointed and picturesque phraseology of the Sieur Amadis! Strange, coarse slang-words were used, — and the news of the day was slung together in loose ungrammatical sentences and chopped-up paragraphs of clumsy construction, lacking all pith and eloquence. So, repelled by the horror of twentieth-century “style,” she had hidden her manuscripts deeper than ever in the old bureau, under little silk sachets of dried rose-leaves and lavender, as though they were love-letters or old lace. And when sometimes she shut herself up and read them over she felt like one of Hamlet’s “guilty creatures sitting at a play.” Her literary attempts seemed to reproach her for their inadequacy, and when she made some fresh addition to her store of written thoughts, her crimes seemed to herself doubled and weighted. She would often sit musing, with a little frown puckering her brow, wondering why she should be moved to write at all, yet wholly unable to resist the impulse.
To-night, however, she scarcely remembered these outbreaks of her dreaming fancy, — the sordid, hard, matter-of-fact side of life alone presented itself to her depressed imagination. She pictured herself going into service — as what? Kitchen-maid, probably, — she was not tall enough for a house-parlourmaid. House-parlourmaids were bound to be effective, — even dignified, — in height and appearance. She had seen one of these superior beings in church on Sundays — a slim, stately young woman with waved hair and a hat as fashionable as that worn by her mistress, the Squire’s lady. With a deepening sense of humiliation, Innocent felt that her very limitation of inches was against her. Could she be a nursery-governess? Hardly; for though she liked good-tempered, well-behaved children, she could not even pretend to endure them when they were otherwise. Screaming, spiteful, quarrelsome children were to her less interesting than barking puppies or squealing pigs; — besides, she knew she could not be an efficient teacher of so much as one accomplishment. Music, for instance; what had she learned of music? She could play on an ancient spinet which was one of the chief treasures of the “best parlour” of Briar Farm, and she could sing old ballads very sweetly and plaintively, — but of “technique” and “style” and all the latter-day methods of musical acquirement and proficiency she was absolutely ignorant. Foreign languages were a dead letter to her — except old French. She could understand that; and Villon’s famous verses, “Ou sont les neiges d’antan?” were as familiar to her as Herrick’s “Come, my Corinna, let us go a-maying.” But, on the whole, she was strangely and poorly equipped for the battle of life. Her knowledge of baking, brewing, and general housewifery would have stood her in good stead on some Colonial settlement, — but she had scarcely heard of these far-away refuges for the destitute, as she so seldom read the newspapers. Old Hugo Jocelyn looked upon the cheap daily press as “the curse of the country,” and never willingly allowed a newspaper to come into the living-rooms of Briar Farm. They were relegated entirely to the kitchen and outhouses, where the farm labourers smoked over them and discussed them to their hearts’ content, seldom venturing, however, to bring any item of so-called “news” to their master’s consideration. If they ever chanced to do so, he would generally turn round upon them with a few cutting observations, such as, —
“How do you know it’s true? Who gives the news? Where’s the authority? And what do I care if some human brute has murdered his wife and blown out his own brains? Am I going to be any the better for reading such a tale? And if one Government is in or t’other out, what does it matter to me, or to any of you, so long as you can work and pay your way? The newspapers are always trying to persuade us to meddle in other folks’s business; — I say, take care of your own affairs! — serve God and obey the laws of the country, and there won’t be much going wrong with you! If you must read, read a decent book — something that will last — not a printed sheet full of advertisements that’s fresh one day and torn up for waste paper the next!”
Under the sway of these prejudiced and arbitrary opinions, it was not possible for Innocent to have much knowledge of the world that lay outside Briar Farm. Sometimes she found Priscilla reading an old magazine or looking at a picture-paper, and she would borrow these and take them up to her own room surreptitiously for an hour or so, but she was always more or less pained and puzzled by their contents. It seemed to her that there were an extraordinary number of pictures of women with scarcely any clothes on, and she could not understand how they managed to be pictured at all in such scanty attire.
“Who are they?” she asked of Priscilla on one occasion— “And how is it that they are photographed like this? It must be so shameful for them!”
Priscilla explained as best she could that they were “dancers and the like.”
“They lives by their legs, lovey!” she said soothingly— “It’s only their legs that gits them their bread and butter, and I s’pose they’re bound to show ’em off. Don’t you worry ‘ow they gits done! You’ll never come across any of ’em!”
Innocent shut her sensitive mouth in a firm, proud line.
“I hope not!” she said.
And she felt as if she had almost wronged the sanctity of the little study which had formerly belonged to the Sieur Amadis by allowing such pictures to enter it. Of course she knew that dancers and actors, both male and female, existed, — a whole troupe of them came every year to the small theatre of the country town which, by breaking out into an eruption of new slate-roofed houses among the few remaining picturesque gables and tiles of an earlier period, boasted of its “advancement” some eight or ten miles away; but her “father,” as she had thought him, had an insurmountable objection to what he termed “gadding abroad,” and would not allow her to be seen even at the annual fair in the town, much less at the theatre. Moreover, it happened once that a girl in the village had run away with a strolling player and had gone on the stage, — an incident which had caused a great sensation in the tiny wood-encircled hamlet, and had brought all the old women of the place out to their doorsteps to croak and chatter, and prognosticate terrible things in the future for the eloping damsel. Innocent alone had ventured to defend her.
“If she loved the man she was right to go with him,” she said.
“Oh, don’t talk to me about love!” retorted Priscilla, shaking her head— “That’s fancy rubbish! You know naught about it, dearie! On the stage indeed! Poor little hussy! She’ll be on the street in a year or two, God help her!”
“What is that?” asked Innocent. “Is it to be a beggar?”
Priscilla made no reply beyond her usual sniff, which expressed volumes.
“If she has found someone who really cares for her, she will never want,” Innocent went on, gently. “No man could be so cruel as to take away a girl from her home for his own pleasure and then leave her alone in the world. It would be impossible! You must not think such hard things, Priscilla!”
And, smiling, she had gone her way, — while Priscilla, shaking her head again, had looked after her, dimly wondering how long she would keep her faith in men.
On this still moonlight night, when the sadne
ss of her soul seemed heavier than she could bear, her mind suddenly reverted to this episode. She thought of the girl who had run away; and remembered that no one in the village had ever seen or heard of her again, not even her patient hard-working parents to whom she had been a pride and joy.
“Now she had a real father and mother!” she mused, wistfully— “They loved her and would have done anything for her — yet she ran away from them with a stranger! I could never have done that! But I have no father and no mother — no one but Dad! — ah! — how I have loved Dad! — and yet I don’t belong to him — and when he is dead—”
Here an overpowering sense of calamity swept over her, and dropping on her knees by the open window she laid her head on her folded arms and wept bitterly.
A voice called her in subdued accents once or twice, “Innocent!
Innocent!” — but she did not hear.
Presently a rose flung through the window fell on her bent head. She started up, alarmed.
“Innocent!”
Timidly she leaned out over the window-sill, looking down into the dusky green of clambering foliage, and saw a familiar face smiling up at her. She uttered a soft cry.
“Robin!”
“Yes — it’s Robin!” he replied. “Innocent, what’s the matter? I heard you crying!”
“No — no!” she answered, whisperingly— “It’s nothing! Oh, Robin! — why are you here at this time of night? Do go away!”
“Not I!” and Robin placed one foot firmly on the tough and gnarled branch of a giant wistaria that was trained thickly all over that side of the house— “I’m coming up!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 800