Innocent : her fancy and his fact. Marie Corelli
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 sadness 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!"
"Oh, Robin!" And straightway Innocent ran back into her room, there to throw on a dark cloak which enveloped her so completely that only her small fair head showed above its enshrouding folds,—then returning slowly she watched with mingled interest and trepidation the gradual ascent of her lover, as, like another Romeo, he ascended the natural ladder formed by the thick