"When I think about love," she began presently, in a soft dreamy
voice--"I'm quite sure that very few people ever really feel it or
understand it. It must be the rarest thing in all the world! This poor
Sieur Amadis, asleep so long in his grave, was a true lover,--and I
will tell you how I know he had said good-bye to love when he married.
All those books we found in the old dower-chest, that day when we were
playing about together as children, belonged to him--some are his own
compositions, written by his own hand,--the others, as you know, are
printed books which must have been difficult to get in his day, and are
now, I suppose, quite out of date and almost unknown. I have read them
all!--my head is a little library full of odd volumes! But there is
one--a manuscript book--which I never tire of reading,--it is a sort of
journal in which the Sieur Amadis wrote down many of his own
feelings--sometimes in prose, sometimes in verse--and by following them
carefully and piecing them together, it is quite easy to find out his
sadness and secret--how he loved once and never loved again--"
"You can't tell that," interrupted Robin--"men often say they can only
love once--but they love ever so many times--"
She smiled--and her eyes showed him what a stupid blunder he had made.
"Do they?" she queried, softly--"I am so glad, Robin! For you will find
it easy then to love somebody else instead of me!"
He flushed, vexedly.
"I didn't mean that--" he began.
"No? I think you did!--but of course if you had thought twice you
wouldn't have said it! It was uttered quite truly and naturally,
Robin!--don't regret it! Only I want to explain to you that the Sieur
Amadis was not like that--he loved just once--and the lady he loved
must have been a very beautiful woman who had plenty of admirers and
did not care for him at all. All he writes proves that. He is always
grieved to the heart about it. Still he loved her--and he seems glad to
have loved her, though it was all no use. And he kept a little
chronicle of his dreams and fancies--all that he felt and thought
about,--it is beautifully and tenderly written all in quaint old
French. I had some trouble to make it out--but I did at last--every
word--and when he made up his mind to marry, he finished the little
book and never wrote another word in it. Shall I tell you what were the
last lines he wrote?"
"It wouldn't be any use," he answered, kissing again the hand he
held--"I don't understand French. I've never even tried to learn it."
She laughed.
"I know you haven't! But you've missed a great deal, Robin!--you have
really! When I made up my mind to find out all the Sieur Amadis had
written, I got Priscilla to buy me a French dictionary and grammar and
some other French lesson-books besides--then I spelt all the words
carefully and looked them all up in the dictionary, and learned the
pronunciation from one of the lesson-books--and by-and-bye it got quite
easy. For two years at least it was dreadfully hard work--but
now--well!--I think I could almost speak French if I had the chance!"
"I'm sure you could!" said Robin, looking at her, admiringly--"You're a
clever little girl and could do anything you wanted to."
Her brows contracted a little,--the easy lightness of his compliment
had that air of masculine indifference which is more provoking to an
intelligent woman than downright contradiction. The smile lingered in
her eyes, however,--a smile of mingled amusement and compassion.
"Well, I wanted to understand the writing of the Sieur Amadis," she
went on, quietly--"and when I could understand them I translated them.
So I can tell you the last words he wrote in his journal--just before
he married,--in fact on the very eve of his marriage-day--" She paused
abruptly, and looked for a moment at the worn and battered tomb of the
old knight, green with moss and made picturesque by a trailing branch
of wild roses that had thrown itself across the stone effigy in an
attempt to reach some of its neighbours on the opposite side. Robin
followed her gaze with his own, and for a moment was more than usually
impressed by the calm, almost stern dignity of the recumbent figure.
"Go on," he said--"What were the words?"
"These"--and Innocent spoke them in a hushed voice, with sweet
reverence and feeling--"'Tonight I pull down and put away for ever the
golden banner of my life's ideal. It has been held aloft too long in
the sunshine of a dream, and the lily broidered on its web is but a
withered flower. My life is no longer of use to myself, but as a man
and faithful knight I will make it serve another's pleasure and
another's good. And because this good and simple girl doth truly love
me, though her love was none of my seeking, I will give her her heart's
desire, though mine own heart's desire shall never be accomplished,--I
will make her my wife, and will be to her a true and loyal husband, so
that she may receive from me all she craves of happiness and peace. For
though I fain would die rather than wed, I know that life is not given
to a man to live selfishly, nor is God satisfied to have it wasted by
any one who hath sworn to be His knight and servant. Therefore even so
let it be!--I give all my unvalued existence to her who doth consider
it valuable, and with all my soul I pray that I may make so gentle and
trustful a creature happy. But to Love--oh, to Love a long
farewell!--farewell my dreams!--farewell ambition!--farewell the glory
of the vision unattainable!--farewell bright splendour of an earthly
Paradise!--for now I enter that prison which shall hold me fast till
death release me! Close, doors!--fasten, locks!--be patient in thy
silent solitude, my Soul!'"
Innocent's voice faltered here--then she said--"That is the end. He
signed it 'Amadis.'"
Robin was very quiet for a minute or two.
"It's pretty--very pretty and touching--and all that sort of thing," he
said at last--"but it's like some old sonnet or mediaeval bit of
romance. No one would go on like that nowadays."
Innocent lifted her eyebrows, quizzically.
"Go on like what?"
He moved impatiently.
"Oh, about being patient in solitude with one's soul, and saying
farewell to love." He gave a short laugh. "Innocent dear, I wish you
would see the world as it really is!--not through the old-style
spectacles of the Sieur Amadis! In his day people were altogether
different from what they are now."
"I'm sure they were!" she answered, quietly--"But love is the same
to-day as it was then."
He considered a moment, then smiled.
"No, dear, I'm not sure that it is," he said. "Those knights and poets
and curious people of that kind lived in a sort of imaginary
ecstasy--they exaggerated their emotions and lived at the top-height of
their fancies. We in our time are much more sane and level-headed. And
it's much better for us in the long run."
She made no reply. Only very gently she withdrew her hand from his.
"I'm not a knight of old," he went on, turning his handsome,
sun-browned face towards her,--"but I'm sure I love you as much as ever
the Sieur Amadis could have loved his unknown lady. So much indeed do I
love you that I couldn't write about it to save my life!--though I did
write verses at Oxford once--very bad ones!" He laughed. "But I can do
one thing the Sieur Amadis didn't do--I can keep faithful to my Vision
of the glory unattainable'--and if I don't marry you I'll marry
no-body--so there!"
She looked at him curiously and wistfully.
"You will not be so foolish," she said--"You will not put me into the
position of the Sieur Amadis, who married some one who loved him,
merely out of pity!"
He sprang up from the grass beside her.
"No, no! I won't do that, Innocent! I'm not a coward! If you can't love
me, you shall not marry me, just because you are sorry for me! That
would be intolerable! I wouldn't have you for a wife at all under such
circumstances. I shall be perfectly happy as a bachelor--perhaps
happier than if I married."
"And what about Briar Farm?" she asked.
"Briar Farm can get on as best it may!" he replied, cheerily--"I'll
work on it as long as I live and hand it down to some one worthy of it,
never fear! So there, Innocent!--be happy, and don't worry yourself!
Keep to your old knight and your strange fancies about him--you may be
right in your ideas of love, or you may be wrong; but the great point
with me is that you should be happy--and if you cannot be happy in my
way, why you must just be happy in your own!"
She looked at him with a new interest, as he stood upright, facing her
in all the vigour and beauty of his young manhood. A little smile crept
round the corners of her mouth.
"You are really a very handsome boy!" she said--"Quite a picture in
your way! Some girl will be very proud of you!"
He gave a movement of impatience.
"I must go back to the orchard," he said--"There's plenty to do. And
after all, work's the finest thing in the world--quite as fine as
love--perhaps finer!"
A faint sense of compunction moved her at his words--she was conscious
of a lurking admiration for his cool, strong, healthy attitude towards
life and the things of life. And yet she was resentful that he should
be capable of considering anything in the world "finer" than love.
Work? What work? Pruning trees and gathering apples? Surely there were
greater ambitions than these? She watched him thoughtfully under the
fringe of her long eyelashes, as he moved off.
"Going to the orchard?" she asked.
"Yes."
She smiled a little.
"That's right!"
He glanced back at her. Had she known how bravely he restrained himself
she might have made as much a hero of him as of the knight Amadis. For
he was wounded to the heart--his brightest hopes were frustrated, and
at the very instant he walked away from her he would have given his
life to have held her for a moment in his arms,--to have kissed her
lips, and whispered to her the pretty, caressing love-nonsense which to
warm and tender hearts is the sweetest language in the world. And with
all his restrained passion he was irritated with what, from a man's
point of view, he considered folly on her part,--he felt that she
despised his love and himself for no other reason than a mere romantic
idea, bred of loneliness and too much reading of a literature alien to
the customs and manners of the immediate time, and an uncomfortable
premonition of fear for her future troubled his mind.
"Poor little girl!" he thought--"She does not know the world!--and when
she DOES come to know it--ah, my poor Innocent!--I would rather she
never knew!"
Meanwhile she, left to herself, was not without a certain feeling of
regret. She was not sure of her own mind--and she had no control over
her own fancies. Every now and then a wave of conviction came over her
that after all tender-hearted old Priscilla might be right--that it
would be best to marry Robin and help him to hold and keep Briar Farm
as it had ever been kept and held since the days of the Sieur Amadis.
Perhaps, had she never heard the story of her actual condition, as told
her by Farmer Jocelyn on the previous night, she might have consented
to what seemed so easy and pleasant a lot in life; but now it seemed to
her more than impossible. She no longer had any link with the far-away
ancestor who had served her so long as a sort of ideal--she was a mere
foundling without any name save the unbaptised appellation of Innocent.
And she regarded herself as a sort of castaway.
She went into the house soon after Robin had left her, and busied
herself with sorting the linen and looking over what had to be mended.
"For when I go," she said to herself, "they must find everything in
order." She dined alone with Priscilla--Robin sent word that he was too
busy to come in. She was a little piqued at this--and almost cross when
he sent the same message at tea-time,--but she was proud in her way
and would not go out to see if she could persuade him to leave his work
for half-an-hour. The sun was slowly declining when she suddenly put
down her sewing, struck by a thought which had not previously occurred
to her--and ran fleetly across the garden to the orchard, where she
found Robin lying on his back under the trees with closed eyes. He
opened them, hearing the light movement of her feet and the soft
flutter of her gown--but he did not rise. She stopped--looking at him.
"Were you asleep?"
He stretched his arms above his head, lazily.
"I believe I was!" he answered, smiling.
"And you wouldn't come in to tea!" This with a touch of annoyance.
"Oh yes, I would, if I had wanted tea," he replied--"but I didn't want
it."
"Nor my company, I suppose," she added, with a little shrug of her
shoulders. His eyes flashed mischievously.
"Oh, I daresay that had something to do with it!" he agreed.
A curious vexation fretted her. She wished he would not look so
handsome--and--yes!--so indifferent. An impression of loneliness and
desertion came over her--he, Robin, was not the same to her now--so she
fancied--no doubt he had been thinking hard all the day while doing his
work, and at last had come to the conclusion that it was wisest after
all to let her go and cease to care for her as he had done. A little
throbbing pulse struggled in her throat--a threat of rising tears,--but
she conquered the emotion and spoke in a voice which, though it
trembled, was sweet and gentle.
"Robin," she said--"don't you think--wouldn't it be better--perhaps--"
He looked up at her wonderingly--she seemed nervous or frightened.
"What is it?" he asked--"Anything you want me to do?"
"Yes"--and her eyes drooped--"but I hardly like to say it. You see, Dad
made up his mind this morning that we were to settle things
together--and he'll be angry and disappointed--"
Robin half-raised himself on one arm.
"He'll be angry and disappointed if we don't settle it, you mean," he
said--"and we certainly haven't settled it. Well?"
A faint colour flushed her face.
"Couldn't we pretend it's all right for the moment?" she
suggested--"Just to give him a little peace of mind?"
He looked at her steadily.
"You mean, couldn't we deceive him?"
"Yes!--for his good! He has deceived ME all my life,--I suppose for MY
good--though it has turned out badly--"
"Has it? Why?"
"It has left me nameless," she answered,--"and friendless."
A sudden rush of tears blinded her eyes--she put her hands over them.
He sprang up and, taking hold of her slender wrists, tried to draw
those hands down. He succeeded at last, and looked wistfully into her
face, quivering with restrained grief.
"Dear, I will do what you like!" he said. "Tell me--what is your wish?"
She waited a moment, till she had controlled herself a little.
"I thought"--she said, then--"that we might tell Dad just for to-night
that we are engaged--it would make him happy--and perhaps in a week or
two we might get up a quarrel together and break it off--"
Robin smiled.
"Dear little girl!--I'm afraid the plan wouldn't work! He wants the
banns put up on Sunday--and this is Wednesday."
Her brows knitted perplexedly.
"Something can be managed before then," she said. "Robin, I cannot bear
to disappoint him! He's old--and he's so ill too!--it wouldn't hurt us
for one night to say we are engaged!"
"All right!"--and Robin threw back his head and laughed joyously--"I
don't mind! The sensation of even imagining I'm engaged to you is quite
agreeable! For one evening, at least, I can assume a sort of
proprietorship over you! Innocent! I--I--"
He looked so mirthful and mischievous that she smiled, though the
teardrops still sparkled on her lashes.
"Well? What are you thinking of now?" she asked.
"I think--I really think--under the circumstances I ought to kiss you!"
he said--"Don't you feel it would be right and proper? Even on the
stage the hero and heroine ACT a kiss when they're engaged!"
She met his laughing glance with quiet steadfastness.
"I cannot act a kiss," she said--"You can, if you like! I don't mind."
"You don't mind?"
"No."
He looked from right to left--the apple-boughs, loaded with rosy fruit,
were intertwined above them like a canopy--the sinking sun made mellow
gold of all the air, and touched the girl's small figure with a
delicate luminance--his heart beat, and for a second his senses swam in
a giddy whirl of longing and ecstasy--then he suddenly pulled himself
together.
"Dear Innocent, I wouldn't kiss you for the world!" he said,
gently--"It would be taking a mean advantage of you. I only spoke in
fun. There!--dry your pretty eyes!--you sweet, strange, romantic little
soul! You shall have it all your own way!"
She drew a long breath of evident relief.
"Then you'll tell your uncle--"
"Anything you like!" he answered. "By-the-bye, oughtn't he to be home
by this time?"
"He may have been kept by some business," she said--"He won't be long
now. You'll say we're engaged?"
"Yes."
"And perhaps"--went on Innocent--"you might ask him not to have the
banns put up yet as we don't want it known quite so soon--"
"I'll do all I can," he replied, cheerily--"all I can to keep him
quiet, and to make you happy! There! I can't say more!"
Her eyes shone upon him with a grateful tenderness.
"You are very good, Robin!"
He laughed.
"Good! Not I! But I can't bear to see you fret--if I had my way you
should never know a moment's trouble that I could keep from you. But I
know I'm not a patch on your old stone knight who wrote such a lot
about his 'ideal'--and yet went and married a country wench and had six
children. Don't frown, dear! Nothing will make me say he was romantic!
Not a bit of it! He wrote a lot of romantic things, of course--but he
didn't mean half of them!--I'm sure he didn't!"
She coloured indignantly.
"You say that because you know nothing about it," she said--"You have
not read his writings."
"No--and I'm not sure that I want to," he answered, gaily. "Dear
Innocent, you must remember that I was at Oxford--my dear old father
and mother scraped and screwed every penny they could get to send me
there--and I believe I acquitted myself pretty well--but one of the
best things I learned was the general uselessness and vanity of the
fellows that called themselves 'literary.' They chiefly went in for
disparaging and despising everyone who did not agree with them and
think just as they did. Mulish prigs, most of them!" and Robin laughed
his gay and buoyant laugh once more--"They didn't know that I was all
the time comparing them with the honest type of farmer--the man who
lives an outdoor life with God's air blowing upon him, and the soil
turned freshly beneath him!--I love books, too, in my way, but I love
Nature better."
"And do not poets help you to understand Nature?" asked Innocent.
"The best of them do--such as Shakespeare and Keats and Tennyson,--but
they were of the past. The modern men make you almost despise
Nature,--more's the pity! They are always studying THEMSELVES, and
analysing THEMSELVES, and pitying THEMSELVES--now _I_ always say, the
less of one's self the better, in order to understand other people."
Innocent's eyes regarded him with quiet admiration.
"Yes, you are a thoroughly good boy," she said--"I have told you so
often. But--I'm not sure that I should always get on with anyone as
good as you are!"
She turned away then, and moved towards the house. As she went, she
suddenly stopped and clapped her hands, calling:
"Cupid! Cupid! Cu-COO-pid!"
A flash of white wings glimmered in the sunset-light, and her pet dove
flew to her, circling round and round till it dropped on her
outstretched arm. She caught it to her bosom, kissing its soft head
tenderly, and murmuring playful words to it. Robin watched her, as with
this favourite bird-playmate she disappeared across the garden and into
the house. Then he gave a gesture half of despair, half of
resignation--and left the orchard.
The sun sank, and the evening shadows began to steal slowly in their
long darkening lines over the quiet fields, and yet Farmer Jocelyn had
not yet returned. The women of the household grew anxious--Priscilla
went to the door many times, looking up the tortuous by-road for the
first glimpse of the expected returning vehicle--and Innocent stood in
the garden near the porch, as watchful as a sentinel and as silent. At
last the sound of trotting hoofs was heard in the far distance, and
Robin, suddenly making his appearance from the stable-yard where he too
had been waiting, called cheerily,--
"Uncle at last! Here he comes!"
Another few minutes and the mare's head turned the corner--then the
whole dog-cart came into view with Farmer Jocelyn driving it. But he
was quite alone.
Robin and Innocent exchanged surprised glances, but had no time to make
any comment as old Hugo just then drove up and, throwing the reins to
his nephew, alighted.
"Aren't you very late, Dad?" said Innocent then, going to meet him--"I
was beginning to be quite anxious!"
"Were you? Poor little one! I'm all right! I had business--I was kept
longer than I expected--" Here he turned quickly to Robin--"Unharness,
boy!--unharness!--and come in to supper!"
"Where's Landon?" asked Robin.
"Landon? Oh, I've left him in the town."
He pulled off his driving-gloves, and unbuttoned his overcoat--then
strode into the house. Innocent followed him--she was puzzled by his
look and manner, and her heart beat with a vague sense of fear. There
was something about the old man that was new and strange to her. She
could not define it, but it filled her mind with a curious and
inexplicable uneasiness. Priscilla, who was setting the dishes on the
table in the room where the cloth was laid for supper, had the same
uncomfortable impression when she saw him enter. His face was unusually
pale and drawn, and the slight stoop of age in his otherwise upright
figure seemed more pronounced than usual. He drew up his chair to the
table and sat down,--then ruffling his fine white hair over his brow
with one hand, looked round him with an evidently forced smile.
"Anxious about me, were you, child?" he said, as Innocent took her
place beside him. "Well, well! you need not have given me a thought!
I--I was all right--all right! I made a bit of a bargain in the
town--but the prices were high--and Landon--"
He broke off suddenly and stared in front of him with strange fixed
eyeballs.
Innocent and Priscilla looked at one another in alarm. There was a
moment's tense stillness,--then Innocent said in rather a trembling
voice--
"Yes, Dad? You were saying something about Landon--"
The stony glare faded from his eyes and he looked at her with a more
natural expression.
"Landon? Did I speak of him? Oh yes!--Landon met with some fellows he
knew and decided to spend the evening with them--he asked me for a
night off--and I gave it to him. Yes--I--I gave it to him."
Just then Robin entered.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed, gaily--"At supper? Don't begin without me! I
say, Uncle, is Landon coming back to-night?"
Jocelyn turned upon him sharply.
"No!" he answered, in so fierce a tone that Robin stood amazed--"Why do
you all keep on asking me about Landon? He loves drink more than life,
and he's having all he wants to-night. I've let him off work to-morrow."
Robin was silent for a moment out of sheer surprise.
"Oh well, that's all right, if you don't mind," he said, at
last--"We're pretty busy--but I daresay we can manage without him."
"I should think so!" and Hugo gave a short laugh of scorn--"Briar Farm
would have come to a pretty pass if it could not get on without a man
like Landon!"
There was another silent pause.
Priscilla gave an anxious side-glance at Innocent's troubled face, and
decided to relieve the tension by useful commonplace talk.
"Well, Landon or no Landon, supper's ready!" she said, briskly--"and
it's been waiting an hour at least. Say grace, Mister Jocelyn, and I'll
carve!"
Jocelyn looked at her bewilderedly.
"Say grace?" he queried--"what for?"
Priscilla laughed loudly to cover the surprise she felt.
"What for? Lor, Mister Jocelyn, if you don't know I'm sure I don't! For
the beef and potatoes, I suppose, an' all the stuff we eats--'for what
we are going to receive--'"
"Ah, yes! I remember--'May the Lord make us truly thankful!'" responded
Jocelyn, closing his eyes for a second and then opening them
again--"And I'll tell you what, Priscilla!--there's a deal more to be
thankful for to-night than beef and potatoes!--a great deal more!"