There are still a few old houses left in rural England which are as yet
happily unmolested by the destroying ravages of modern improvement, and
Briar Farm was one of these. History and romance alike had their share
in its annals, and its title-deeds went back to the autumnal days of
1581, when the Duke of Anjou came over from France to England with a
royal train of noblemen and gentlemen in the hope to espouse the
greatest monarch of all time, "the most renowned and victorious" Queen
Elizabeth, whose reign has clearly demonstrated to the world how much
more ably a clever woman can rule a country than a clever man, if she
is left to her own instinctive wisdom and prescience. No king has ever
been wiser or more diplomatic than Elizabeth, and no king has left a
more brilliant renown. As the coldest of male historians is bound to
admit, "her singular powers of government were founded equally on her
temper and on her capacity. Endowed with a great command over herself,
she soon obtained an uncontrolled ascendant over her people. Few
sovereigns of England succeeded to the throne under more difficult
circumstances, and none ever conducted the government with such uniform
success and felicity." Had Elizabeth been weak, the Duke of Anjou might
have realised his ambitious dream, with the unhappiest results for
England; and that he fortunately failed was entirely due to her
sagacity and her quick perception of his irresolute and feeble
character. In the sumptuous train attendant upon this "Petit
Grenouille," as he styled himself in one of his babyish epistles to
England's sovereign majesty, there was a certain knight more inclined
to the study of letters than to the breaking of lances,--the Sieur
Amadis de Jocelin, who being much about the court in the wake of his
somewhat capricious and hot-tempered master, came, unfortunately for
his own peace of mind, into occasional personal contact with one of the
most bewitching young women of her time, the Lady Penelope Devereux,
afterwards Lady Rich, she in whom, according to a contemporary writer,
"lodged all attractive graces and beauty, wit and sweetness of
behaviour which might render her the mistress of all eyes and hearts."
Surrounded as she was by many suitors, his passion was hopeless from
the first, and that he found it so was evident from the fact that he
suddenly disappeared from the court and from his master's retinue, and
was never heard of by the great world again. Yet he was not far away.
He had not the resolution to leave England, the land which enshrined
the lady of his love,--and he had lost all inclination to return to
France. He therefore retired into the depths of the sweet English
country, among the then unspoilt forests and woodlands, and there
happening to find a small manor-house for immediate sale, surrounded by
a considerable quantity of land, he purchased it for the ready cash he
had about him and settled down in it for the remainder of his life.
Little by little, such social ambitions as he had ever possessed left
him, and with every passing year he grew more and more attached to the
simplicity and seclusion of his surroundings. He had leisure for the
indulgence of his delight in books, and he was able to give the rein to
his passion for poetry, though it is nowhere recorded that he ever
published the numerous essays, sonnets and rhymed pieces which, written
in the picturesque caligraphy of the period, and roughly bound by
himself in sheepskin, occupied a couple of shelves in his library. He
entered with animation and interest into the pleasures of farming and
other agricultural pursuits, and by-and-bye as time went on and the
former idol of his dreams descended from her fair estate of virtue and
scandalised the world by her liaison with Lord Mountjoy, he appears to
have gradually resigned the illusions of his first love, for he married
a simple village girl, remarkable, so it was said, for her beauty, but
more so for her skill in making butter and cheese. She could neither
read nor write, however, and the traditions concerning the Sieur Amadis
relate that he took a singular pleasure in teaching her these
accomplishments, as well as in training her to sing and to accompany
herself upon the lute in a very pretty manner. She made him an
excellent wife, and gave him no less than six children, three boys and
three girls, all of whom were brought up at home under the supervision
of their father and mother, and encouraged to excel in country pursuits
and to understand the art of profitable farming. It was in their days
that Briar Farm entered upon its long career of prosperity, which still
continued. The Sieur Amadis died in his seventieth year, and by his own
wish, expressed in his "Last Will and Testament," was buried in a
sequestered spot on his own lands, under a stone slab which he had
himself fashioned, carving upon it his recumbent figure in the costume
of a knight, a cross upon his breast and a broken sword at his side.
His wife, though several years younger than himself, only lived a
twelve-month after him and was interred by his side. Their
resting-place was now walled off, planted thickly with flowers, and
held sacred by every succeeding heir to the farm as the burial-place of
the first Jocelyns. Steadily and in order, the families springing from
the parent tree of the French knight Amadis had occupied Briar Farm in
unbroken succession, and through three centuries the property had been
kept intact, none of its possessions being dispersed and none of its
land being sold. The house was practically in the same sound condition
as when the Sieur Amadis fitted and furnished it for his own
occupation,--there was the same pewter, the same solid furniture, the
same fine tapestry, preserved by the careful mending of many hundreds
of needles worked by hands long ago mingled with the dust of the grave,
and, strange as it may seem to those who are only acquainted with the
flimsy manufactures of to-day, the same stout hand-wrought linen,
which, mended and replenished each year, lasted so long because never
washed by modern methods, but always by hand in clear cold running
water. There were presses full of this linen, deliriously scented with
lavender, and there were also the spinning-wheels that had spun the
flax and the hand-looms on which the threads had been woven. These were
witnesses to the days when women, instead of gadding abroad, were happy
to be at home--when the winter evenings seemed short and bright because
as they sat spinning by the blazing log fire they were cheerful in
their occupation, singing songs and telling stories and having so much
to do that there was no time to indulge in the morbid analysis of life
and the things of life which in our present shiftless day perplex and
confuse idle and unhealthy brains.
And now after more than three centuries, the direct male line of Amadis
de Jocelin had culminated in Hugo, commonly called Farmer Jocelyn, who,
on account of some secret love disappointment, the details of which he
had never told to anyone, had remained unmarried. Till the appearance
on the scene of the child, Innocent, who was by the village folk
accepted and believed to be the illegitimate offspring of this
ill-starred love, it was tacitly understood that Robin Clifford, his
nephew, and the only son of his twin sister, would be the heir to Briar
Farm; but when it was seen how much the old man seemed to cling to
Innocent, and to rely upon her ever tender care of him, the question
arose as to whether there might not be an heiress after all, instead of
an heir. And the rustic wiseacres gossiped, as is their wont, watching
with no small degree of interest the turn of events which had lately
taken place in the frank and open admiration and affection displayed by
Robin for his illegitimate cousin, as it was thought she was, and as
Farmer Jocelyn had tacitly allowed it to be understood. If the two
young people married, everybody agreed it would be the right thing, and
the best possible outlook for the continued prosperity of Briar Farm.
For after all, it was the farm that had to be chiefly considered, so
they opined,--the farm was an historic and valuable property as well as
an excellent paying concern. The great point to be attained was that it
should go on as it had always gone on from the days of the Sieur
Amadis,--and that it should be kept in the possession of the same
family. This at any rate was known to be the cherished wish of old Hugo
Jocelyn, though he was not given to any very free expression of his
feelings. He knew that his neighbours envied him, watched him and
commented on his actions,--he knew also that the tale he had told them
concerning Innocent had to a great extent whispered away his own good
name and fastened a social slur upon the girl,--yet he could not,
according to his own views, have seen any other way out of the
difficulty. The human world is always wicked-tongued; and it is common
knowledge that any man or woman introducing an "adopted" child into a
family is at once accused, whether he or she be conscious of the
accusation or not, of passing off his own bastard under the "adoption"
pretext. Hugo Jocelyn was fairly certain that none of his neighbours
would credit the romantic episode of the man on horseback arriving in a
storm and leaving a nameless child on his hands. The story was quite
true,--but truth is always precisely what people refuse to believe.
The night on which Innocent had learned her own history for the first
time was a night of consummate beauty in the natural world. When all
the gates and doors of the farm and its outbuildings had been bolted
and barred for the night, the moon, almost full, rose in a cloudless
heaven and shed pearl-white showers of radiance all over the newly-mown
and clean-swept fields, outlining the points of the old house gables
and touching with luminous silver the roses that clambered up the
walls. One wide latticed window was open to the full inflowing of the
scented air, and within its embrasure sat a lonely little figure in a
loose white garment with hair tumbling carelessly over its shoulders
and eyes that were wet with tears. The clanging chime of the old clock
below stairs had struck eleven some ten minutes since, and after the
echo of its bell had died away there had followed a heavy and intense
silence. The window looked not upon the garden, but out upon the fields
and a suggestive line of dark foliage edging them softly in the
distance,--away down there, under a huge myriad-branched oak, slept the
old knight Sieur Amadis de Jocelin and his English rustic wife, the
founders of the Briar Farm family. The little figure in the dark
embrasure of the window clasped its white hands and turned its weeping
eyes towards that ancient burial-place, and the moon-rays shone upon
its fair face with a silvery glimmer, giving it an almost spectral
pallor. "Why was I ever born?" sighed a trembling voice--"Oh, dear God!
Why did you let it be?"
The vacant air, the vacant fields looked blankly irresponsive. They had
no sympathy to give,--they never have. To great Mother Nature it is not
important how or why a child is born, though she occasionally decides
that it shall be of the greatest importance how and why the child shall
live. What does it matter to the forces of creative life whether it is
brought into the world "basely," as the phrase goes, or honourably? The
child exists,--it is a human entity--a being full of potential good or
evil,--and after a certain period of growth it stands alone, and its
parents have less to do with it than they imagine. It makes its own
circumstances and shapes its own career, and in many cases the less it
is interfered with the better. But Innocent could not reason out her
position in any cold-blooded or logical way. She was too young and too
unhappy. Everything that she had taken pride in was swept from her at
once. Only that very morning she had made one of her many pilgrimages
down to the venerable oak beneath whose trailing branches the Sieur
Amadis de Jocelin lay, covered by the broad stone slab on which he had
carved his own likeness, and she had put a little knot of the "Glory"
roses between his mailed hands which were folded over the cross on his
breast, and she had said to the silent effigy:
"It is the last day of the haymaking, Sieur Amadis! You would be glad
to see the big crop going in if you were here!"
She was accustomed to talk to the old stone knight in this fanciful
way,--she had done so all her life ever since she could remember. She
had taken an intense pride in thinking of him as her ancestor; she had
been glad to trace her lineage back over three centuries to the
love-lorn French noble who had come to England in the train of the Due
d'Anjou--and now--now she knew she had no connection at all with
him,--that she was an unnamed, unbaptised nobody--an unclaimed waif of
humanity whom no one wanted! No one in all the world--except Robin! He
wanted her;--but perhaps when he knew her true history his love would
grow cold. She wondered whether it would be so. If it were she would
not mind very much. Indeed it would be best, for she felt she could
never marry him.
"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 which, 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 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 rope-like twisted stems of the ancient
creeper, grown sturdy with years and capable of bearing a much greater
weight than that of the light and agile young man, who, with a smile of
amused triumph, at last brought himself on a level with the window-sill
and seated himself on its projecting ledge.
"I won't come in," he said, mischievously--"though I might!--if I
dared! But I mustn't break into my lady's bower without her sovereign
permission! I say, Innocent, how pretty you look! Don't be
frightened!--dear, dear little girl,--you know I wouldn't touch so much
as a hair of your sweet little head! I'm not a brute--and though I'm
longing to kiss you I promise I won't even try!"
She moved away from him into the deeper shadow, but a ray of the moon
showed him her face, very pale, with a deep sadness upon it which was
strange and new to him.
"Tell me what's wrong?" he asked. "I've been too wide-awake and
restless to go to bed,--so I came out in the garden just to breathe the
air and look up at your window--and I heard a sound of sobbing like
that of a little child who was badly hurt--Innocent!"
For she had suddenly stretched out her hands to him in impulsive appeal.
"Oh yes--that's true!--I am badly hurt, Robin!" she said, in low
trembling accents--"So badly hurt that I think I shall never get over
it!"
Surprised, he took her hands in his own with a gentle reverence, though
to be able to draw her nearer to him thus, set his heart beating
quickly.
"What is it?" he questioned her, anxiously, as all unconsciously she
leaned closer towards him and he saw her soft eyes, wet with tears,
shining upon him like stars in the gloom. "Is it bad news of Uncle
Hugo?"
"Bad news of him, but worse of me!" she answered, sighingly. "Oh,
Robin, shall I tell you?"
He looked at her tenderly. The dark cloak about her had fallen a little
aside, and showed a gleam of white neck emerging from snowy drapery
underneath--it was, to his fancy, as though a white rose-petal had been
suddenly and delicately unfurled. He longed to kiss that virginal
whiteness, and trembled at the audacity of his own desire.
"Yes, dear, tell me!" he murmured, abstractedly, scarcely thinking of
what he was saying, and only conscious of the thrill and ecstasy of
love which seemed to him the one thing necessary for existence in earth
or heaven.
And so, with her hands still warmly held in his, she told him all. In a
sad voice, with lowered eyes and quivering lips, she related her
plaintive little history, disclosing her unbaptised shame,--her unowned
parentage,--her desperately forlorn and lonely condition. And Robin
listened--amazed and perplexed.
"It seems to be all my fault," concluded Innocent, sorrowfully--"and
yet it is not really so! Of course I ought never to have been born--but
I couldn't help it, could I? And now it seems quite wrong for me to
even live!--I am not wanted--and ever since I was twelve years old your
Uncle has only kept me out of charity--"
But at this Robin started as though some one had struck him.
"Innocent!" he exclaimed--"Do not say such a thing!--do not think it!
Uncle Hugo has LOVED you!--and you--you have loved him!"
She drew her hands away from his and covered her face.
"I know!--I know!" and her tears fell fast again--"But I am not his,
and he is not mine!"
Robin was silent. The position was so unexpected and bewildering that
he hardly knew what to say. But chiefly he felt that he must try and
comfort this little weeping angel, who, so far as he was concerned,
held his life subservient to her charm. He began talking softly and
cheerily:
"Why should it matter so much?" he said. "If you do not know who you
are--if none of us know--it may be more fortunate for you than you can
imagine! We cannot tell! Your own father may claim you--your own
mother--such things are quite possible! You may be like the princess of
a fairy-tale--rich people may come and take you away from Briar Farm
and from me--and you will be too grand to think of us any more, and I
shall only be the poor farmer in your eyes--you will wonder how you
could ever have spoken to me--"
"Robin!" Her hands dropped from her face and she looked at him in
reproachful sadness. "Why do you say this? You know it could never be
true!--never! If I had a father who cared for me, he would not have
forgotten--and my mother, if she were a true mother, would have tried
to find me long ago! No, Robin!--I ought to have died when I was a
baby. No one wants me--I am a deserted child--'base-born,' as your
Uncle Hugo says,--and of course he is right--but the sin of it is not
mine!"
She had such a pitiful, fragile and fair appearance, standing half in
shadow and half in the mystic radiance of the moon, that Robin
Clifford's heart ached with love and longing for her.
"Sin!" he echoed--"Sin and you have never met each other! You are like
your name, innocent of all evil! Oh, Innocent! If you could only care
for me as I care for you!"
She gave a shivering sigh.
"Do you--can you care?--NOW?" she asked.
"Of course! What is there in all this story that can change my love for
you? That you are not my cousin?--that my uncle is not your own father?
What does that matter to me? You are someone else's child, and if we
never know who that someone is, why should we vex ourselves about it?
You are you!--you are Innocent!--the sweetest, dearest little girl that
ever lived, and I adore you! What difference does it make that you are
not Uncle Hugo's daughter?"
"It makes a great difference to me," she answered, sadly--"I do not
belong any more to the Sieur Amadis de Jocelin!"
Robin stared, amazed--then smiled.
"Why, Innocent!" he exclaimed--"Surely you're not worrying your mind
over that old knight, dead and gone more than three hundred years ago!
Dear little goose! How on earth does he come into this trouble of
yours?"
"He comes in everywhere!" she replied, clasping and unclasping her
hands nervously as she spoke. "You don't know, Robin!--you would never
understand! But I have loved the Sieur Amadis ever since I can
remember;--I have talked to him and studied with him!--I have read his
old books, and all the poems he wrote--and he seemed to be my friend! I
thought I was born of his kindred--and I was proud of it--and I felt it
would be my duty to live at Briar Farm always because he would wish his
line quite unbroken--and I think--perhaps--yes, I think I might have
married you and been a good wife to you just for his sake!--and now it
is all spoiled!--because though you will be the master of Briar Farm,
you will not be the lineal descendant of the Sieur Amadis! No,--it is
finished!--all finished with your Uncle Hugo!--and the doctors say he
can only live a year!"
Her grief was so touching and pathetic that Robin could not find it in
his heart to make a jest of the romance she had woven round the old
French knight whose history had almost passed into a legend. After all,
what she said was true--the line of the Jocelyn family had been kept
intact through three centuries till now--and a direct heir had always
inherited Briar Farm. He himself had taken a certain pride in thinking
that Uncle Hugo's "love-child," as he had believed her to be, was at
any rate, love-child or no, born of the Jocelyn blood--and that when he
married her, as he hoped and fully purposed to do, he would discard his
own name of Clifford and take that of Jocelyn, in order to keep the
continuity of associations unbroken as far as possible. All these ideas
were put to flight by Innocent's story, and, as the position became
more evident to him, the smiling expression on his face changed to one
of gravity.
"Dear Innocent," he said, at last--"Don't cry! It cuts me to the heart!
I would give my very life to save you from a sorrow--you know I would!
If you ever thought, as you say, that you could or would marry me for
the sake of the Sieur Amadis, you might just as well marry me now, even
though the Sieur Amadis is out of it. I would make you so happy! I
would indeed! And no one need ever know that you are not really the
lineal descendant of the Knight--"
She interrupted him.
"Priscilla knows," she said--"and, no matter how you look at it, I am
'base-born.' Your Uncle Hugo has let all the village folk think I am
his illegitimate child--and that is 'base-born' of itself. Oh, it is
cruel! Even you thought so, didn't you?"
Robin hesitated.
"I did not know, dear," he answered, gently--"I fancied--"
"Do not deny it, Robin!" she said, mournfully. "You did think so! Well,
it's true enough, I suppose!--I am 'base-born'--but your uncle is not
my father. He is a good, upright man--you can always be proud of him!
He has not sinned,--though he has burdened me with the shame of sin! I
think that is unfair,--but I must bear it somehow, and I will try to be
brave. I'm glad I've told you all about it,--and you are very kind to
have taken it so well--and to care for me still--but I shall never
marry you, Robin!--never! I shall never bring my 'base-born' blood into
the family of Jocelyn!"
His heart sank as he heard her--and involuntarily he stretched out his
arms in appeal.
"Innocent!" he murmured--"Don't be hard upon me! Think a little longer
before you leave me without any hope! It means so much to my life!
Surely you cannot be cruel? Do you care for me less than you care for
that old knight buried under his own effigy in the garden? Will you not
think kindly of a living man?--a man who loves you beyond all things?
Oh, Innocent!--be gentle, be merciful!"
She came to him and took his hands in her own.
"It is just because I am kind and gentle and merciful," she said, in
her sweet, grave accents, "that I will not marry you, dear! I know I am
right,--and you will think so too, in time. For the moment you imagine
me to be much better and prettier than I am--and that there is no one
like me!--poor Robin!--you are blind!--there are so many sweet and
lovely girls, well born, with fathers and mothers to care for them--and
you, with your good looks and kind ways, could marry any one of
them--and you will, some day! Good-night, dear! You have stayed here a
long time talking to me!--just suppose you were seen sitting on this
window-ledge so late!--it is past midnight!--what would be said of me!"
"What could be said?" demanded Robin, defiantly. "I came up here of my
own accord,--the blame would be mine!"
She shook her head sadly, smiling a little.
"Ah, Robin! The man is never blamed! It's always the woman's fault!"
"Where's your fault to-night?" he asked.
"Oh, most plain!" she answered. "When I saw you coming, I ought to have
shut the window, drawn the curtains, and left you to clamber down the
wall again as fast as you clambered up! But I wanted to tell you what
had happened--and how everything had changed for me--and now--now that
you know all--good-night!"
He looked at her longingly. If she would only show some little sign of
tenderness!--if he might just kiss her hand, he thought! But she
withdrew into the shadow, and he had no excuse for lingering.
"Good-night!" he said, softly. "Good-night, my angel Innocent!
Good-night, my little love!"
She made no response and moved slowly backward into the room. But as he
reluctantly left his point of vantage and began to descend, stepping
lightly from branch to branch of the accommodating wistaria, he saw the
shadowy outline of her figure once more as she stretched out a hand and
closed the lattice window, drawing a curtain across it. With the
drawing of that curtain the beauty of the summer night was over for
him, and poising himself lightly on a tough stem which was twisted
strongly enough to give him adequate support and which projected some
four feet above the smooth grass below, he sprang down. Scarcely had he
touched the ground when a man, leaping suddenly out of a thick clump of
bushes near that side of the house, caught him in a savage grip and
shook him with all the fury of an enraged mastiff shaking a rat. Taken
thus unawares, and rendered almost breathless by the swiftness of the
attack, Clifford struggled in the grasp of his assailant and fought
with him desperately for a moment without any idea of his
identity,--then as by a dexterous twist of body he managed to partially
extricate himself, he looked up and saw the face of Ned Landon, livid
and convulsed with passion.
"Landon!" he gasped--"What's the matter with you? Are you mad?"
"Yes!" answered Landon, hoarsely--"And enough to make me so! You devil!
You've ruined the girl!"
With a rapid movement, unexpected by his antagonist, Clifford
disengaged himself and stood free.
"You lie!" he said--"And you shall pay for it! Come away from the house
and fight like a man! Come into the grass meadow yonder, where no one
can see or hear us. Come!"
Landon paused, drawing his breath thickly, and looking like a snarling
beast baulked of its prey.
"That's a trick!" he said, scornfully--"You'll run away!"
"Come!" repeated Clifford, vehemently--"You're more likely to run away
than I am! Come!"
Landon glanced him over from head to foot--the moonbeams fell brightly
on his athletic figure and handsome face--then turned on his heel.
"No, I won't!" he said, curtly--"I've done all I want to do for
to-night. I've shaken you like the puppy you are! To-morrow we'll
settle our differences."
For all answer Clifford sprang at him and struck him smartly across the
face. In another moment both men were engaged in a fierce tussle, none
the less deadly because so silent. A practised boxer and wrestler,
Clifford grappled more and more closely with the bigger but clumsier
man, dragging him steadily inch by inch further away from the house as
they fought. More desperate, more determined became the struggle, till
by two or three adroit manoeuvres Clifford got his opponent under him
and bore him gradually to the ground, where, kneeling on his chest, he
pinned him down.
"Let me go!" muttered Landon--"You're killing me!"
"Serve you right!" answered Clifford--"You scoundrel! My uncle shall
know of this!"
"Tell him what you like!" retorted Landon, faintly--"I don't care! Get
off my chest!--you're suffocating me!"
Clifford slightly relaxed the pressure of his hands and knees.
"Will you apologise?" he demanded.
"Apologise?--for what?"
"For your insolence to me and my cousin."
"Cousin be hanged!" snarled Landon--"She's no more your cousin than I
am--she's only a nameless bastard! I heard her tell you so! And fine
airs she gives herself on nothing!"
"You miserable spy!" and Clifford again held him down as in a
vise--"Whatever you heard is none of your business! Will you apologise?"
"Oh, I'll apologise, if you like!--anything to get your weight off
me!"--and Landon made an abortive effort to rise. "But I keep my own
opinion all the same!"
Slowly Robin released him, and watched him as he picked himself up,
with an air of mingled scorn and pity. Landon laughed forcedly, passing
one hand across his forehead and staring in a dazed fashion at the
shadows cast on the ground by the moon.
"Yes--I keep my own opinion!" he repeated, stupidly. "You've got the
better of me just now--but you won't always, my pert Cock Robin! You
won't always. Don't you think it! Briar Farm and I may part
company--but there's a bigger place than Briar Farm--there's the
world!--that's a wide field and plenty of crops growing on it! And the
men that sow those kind of crops and reap them and bring them in, are
better farmers than you'll ever be! As for your girl!"--here his face
darkened and he shook his fist towards the lattice window behind which
slept the unconscious cause of the quarrel--"You can keep her! A nice
'Innocent' SHE is!--talking with a man in her bedroom after
midnight!--why, I wouldn't have her as a gift--not now!"
Choking with rage, Clifford sprang towards him again--Landon stepped
back.
"Hands off!" he said--"Don't touch me! I'm in a killing mood! I've a
knife on me--you haven't. You're the master--I'm the man--and I'll play
fair! I've my future to think of, and I don't want to start with a
murder!"
With this, he turned his back and strode off, walking somewhat
unsteadily like a blind man feeling his way.
Clifford stood for a moment, inert. The angry blood burned in his
face,--his hands were involuntarily clenched,--he was impatient with
himself for having, as he thought, let Landon off too easily. He saw at
once the possibility of mischief brewing, and hastily considered how it
could best be circumvented.
"The simplest way out of it is to make a clean breast of everything,"
he decided, at last. "Tomorrow I'll see Uncle Hugo early in the morning
and tell him just what has happened."
Under the influence of this resolve, he gradually calmed down and
re-entered the house. And the moonlight, widening and then waning over
the smooth and peaceful meadows of Briar Farm, had it all its own way
for the rest of the night, and as it filtered through the leafy
branches of the elms and beeches which embowered the old tomb of the
Sieur Amadis de Jocelin it touched with a pale glitter the stone hands
of his sculptured effigy,--hands that were folded prayerfully above the
motto,--"Mon coeur me soutien!"