THE MINSTER AND THE VILLA.
“I must take you to see the Minster, Innocent,” said Miss Vane. “You
cannot be in this part of the world without seeing the Minster. You will
be quite happy in it, you who are so fond of church. Put on your hat and
your cloak, and be ready when the carriage comes round. I have got a
number of visits to make and things to do; but as I know you can make
yourself happy in the Minster while I am busy, I will take you with me.
Have you ever seen any of our great Gothic cathedrals? Then you will be
perfectly happy, child; you will feel this day an era in your life.”
Little thought Lætitia Vane what she was saying. The unconscious
prophecy came lightly from her lips, and was received by Innocent with a
smile. She was not excited by the prospect of seeing the Minster, but
she was pleased to go, to do what she was told, to be with the kind but
arbitrary mistress, who had brought harmony into her life. She put on
her hat, smiling, looking at herself in the glass, which was not very
usual with her. She had gained some colour on her pale cheeks, her eyes
were brighter, her whole aspect more life-like. It was a fresh October
morning, warm in the sunshine, though a sharp little chill of autumn
wind met them occasionally at a corner, promising a cold evening.
“We must take care not to be late coming back,” said Miss Vane, throwing
an additional shawl upon Innocent’s lap before she got into the little
carriage, and took the reins. Miss Vane herself wore no conventional
costume; she had not abandoned the pleasant things of this life. She
wore rich silks, moaning over her own imperfection, which never could
attain to the virtue of serge, and was fond of her pretty ponies and her
pleasant little carriage. They had a cheerful drive into Sterborne,
Miss Vane pointing out everything on the way, and naming every house
they passed, Innocent paying little attention, yet listening to all that
was said to her, and enjoying in her passive way the air, the sunshine,
the rapid movement. Things no longer seemed to rush past her, moved by
some dreadful whirl of their own, but it was she who was in motion,
lightly, cheerfully--the centre, not a passive object in the scene.
This, which she could not have explained for her life, but which she
felt vaguely yet strongly, made the greatest difference to Innocent. She
was more alive than she had ever been before in her life.
Miss Vane took her over the Minster, rapidly pointing out all the chief
wonders; and then left her, seated within sight of the high altar, to
enjoy what everybody at the High Lodge supposed to be meditation of the
devoutest kind.
“You will be quite happy here,” Miss Vane said, kissing her softly, and
feeling, with warm compunctions for her own worldliness, how superior
was her young relation. She stopped at the door, ere she went about her
many businesses, to point out Innocent to the chief verger, and commend
her to his care. “I will come back in about an hour and a half,” she
said. Thus Innocent was left alone.
I do not think she had ever been left entirely alone before, save on the
one occasion of her visit to the Methodist chapel, since she had been
under her aunt’s care, and the sensation was sweet to her,--quite alone,
silent, no one interfering with her, free to do as she would, to be
still, without speaking, without feeling, without thinking. The solemn
nave of the Minster, the lovely, lessening arches of the apse, the
silvery glow of the painted glass in the windows, made no special
impression upon her for themselves. As she sat silent they mingled in a
confused but grateful calm with the little church of the Spina--the
lingering memories of her past life. Subdued steps came and went about
her as in the other little sanctuary by the Arno; the light was subdued
as by the influence of the place; no sound above a whisper was audible;
gliding figures appeared in the distance, into which she gazed, not,
indeed, coming there to pray, as in Santa Maria, but yet moving softly,
with a certain reverence. No gleaming tapers on the altar, no chanting
priest interposed to furnish a background for her dreams; but Innocent
scarcely felt the want. She said her prayers, kneeling down, all
unconscious of observation, on the stone pavement. She sat down again in
a hush of soft and peaceful feeling--to dream? No, nor even to think.
The mind of this poor little Innocent had no need for any exercise; she
rested, before the fiery coming of her fate.
It was not till the verger, much bewildered by a stillness of attitude
to which he was quite unused, came to ask whether the young lady would
like to see the chapter-house, or the crypt, or any of the special
sights of the Minster, that the girl was roused. She rose then, always
acquiescent, smiling upon the old man. But as she turned round,
Innocent’s eye caught a figure much more interesting to her than the
verger’s. It was Frederick, who turned round at the same moment, and
came forward to her, holding out both his hands. “Ah, Innocent, at
last!” he cried. There was real pleasure in his face.
“Miss Vane has left me here to wait for her,” said Innocent, “but, oh, I
am so glad to see you!” It seemed to her that she had found him
again--that all the intermediate time had glided away, that she was in
the church of the Spina, and he, her new-discovered only guardian and
protector again.
“I am glad that you are glad,” said Frederick. “I thought you might have
forgotten all about us among the Vanes. How is it that they neglect you
like this? I suppose you are the poor relation there, Innocent, eh? You
never were so at The Elms.”
“I do not know what you mean,” said Innocent; but she put her hand
within his arm, with her old use and wont, looking up at him brightly
with her soft smile. The verger looking on, felt that, perhaps, it was
his duty to interfere, but had not the heart to do it.
“You’ll find me in the porch, Miss, if you want me,” he said. If the
young lady had met with some one as she liked better than them
Papistical nunnery-folks at the High Lodge, was it his business? He went
away heavily, dragging his feet upon the pavement, as ecclesiastical
attendants for ages and ages have dragged them, with stooped shoulders
and shuffling gait; and the two, whom he thought lovers, were left
alone.
They were not lovers, far from that; but Innocent clung to the arm of
the first man whom she had ever identified and felt any warm personal
regard for, and Frederick looked down upon her with a complacency which
half arose from a vain belief that she loved him, and partly from a real
kindness for his little cousin, and partly from a sensation of
thankfulness to have some one belonging to him to look at and speak
to--some one not of the terrible Batty tribe, to which he was bound
until Monday morning. This was Saturday, and he had been imperatively
summoned to visit his wife, who was still ill. He could not get back
until Monday morning, and the thought that this terrible moment of duty
might be softened by the presence of Innocent, who adored him, was
sweet. He told her that Amanda was ill in bed, not able to come out with
him, or to be his companion. “I cannot spend my whole time with her,”
said Frederick, “and her father is more odious than I can tell you. You
must come to see her; you must stay with me, Innocent, till I go back.”
“If Miss Vane will let me,” said Innocent, brightly.
“You would like it? You were always a dear girl. When I take you home
with me, Innocent,” said Frederick solemnly, “you will learn a lesson
which I have learnt too late, that it is a fatal thing to connect one’s
self with people of a different class from one’s own, who cannot
understand one, whose life is a contradiction to all one feels and
wishes. I don’t speak, of course, of my wife; that is my own affair;
whatever I may have to put up with I say nothing on that score to any
one. But, Innocent, a man of honour has many things to bear which women
never know.”
These fine sentiments were wasted upon Innocent, who looked up at him
wondering, and received what he said docilely, but made no attempt to
understand. I don’t know why Frederick, knowing her well enough to be
aware of this, should have thought it necessary to make so solemn a
statement. He did it, perhaps, from the habit he had acquired of posing
as a victim to honour. He led her about the Minster, and showed her many
things which Innocent looked at with her usual docility, pleased to be
with him, if not much excited by anything else. She had been happy at
the High Lodge, but after all Frederick was her first friend, her
discovery, and to be thus alone with him, cared for by him, no one else
interfering, carried her back to the first startled awakening of her
torpid youth. He was always kind to her when she was thus thrown upon
his care, and Innocent was happy, with her hand clinging to his arm.
When Miss Vane came to recall her to the present, she looked with
perhaps a warmer personal wish than had ever been seen in her eyes
before at her temporary guardian, pleading for the granting of the
request which Frederick made, with his very finest Charles I. look, and
melancholy gentlemanlike grace. Miss Vane, a busy woman, had partially
forgotten her brother’s warning about Mrs. Frederick. She knew the young
man before her had made a very foolish marriage, but still he was an
Eastwood, of prepossessing appearance, and a compunction crossed her
mind as to her want of civility in not “calling on” the daughter-in-law
of Innocent’s good aunt. A woman takes rank from her husband, not from
her father, Miss Vane reflected, and if this poor fellow had found out,
as might be guessed from his resigned manner, that he had made a
terrible mistake, it was only right that a connexion should stand by him
as far as was practicable. After a few difficulties, therefore, as to
Innocent’s dress, &c., she consented, promising to send the gardener
with her bag, and to drive in for her on Monday morning, “when I will
take the opportunity of leaving a card for Mrs. Eastwood. I am sorry to
hear she is so poorly,” said Miss Vane in her most gracious manner.
Innocent could scarcely believe it when she saw her energetic relation
drive away, and found herself left in Frederick’s charge. “I am to stay,
then?” she said, with a smile which lighted up her whole face; then
added, with a faint shadow stealing over it, “but with you, Frederick? I
do not like--your wife----”
“You shall be with me,” said Frederick; “but, Innocent, you must not
say such things. It is imprudent--you might be misunderstood. I know
very well what you mean, and that, of course, it is impossible you
should feel towards poor Amanda as you do to me; but you must not forget
what I have told you so often, that a woman’s best policy is always to
make friends with her own sex. You are coming now, you understand, to
visit my wife, who is far from well; but I shall take care to have you a
great deal with me.”
Innocent’s enjoyment was a little damped by this long speech; but as she
was still walking with Frederick, and had, as, yet, no drawback to the
pleasant sensation of being with him, the shadow flitted rapidly from
her face. He took her all over the village, showing her everything that
was to be seen, before he turned his step towards the Villa, where
Amanda, fretful and peevish, awaited him, longing for news, for change,
for something to amuse her. Frederick cared very little for the fact
that his once-worshipped beauty was now waiting for him. His little
cousin, with her dreamy delight in his society, her refined and
gradually developing beauty, and the strange attraction of her visionary
abstractedness from the common world, was very amusing and pleasant to
him. The mere fact of not seeing her every day, as he had been in the
habit of doing, had made him perceive Innocent’s beauty, and a mingled
feeling, half wholly good, half dubious in character, inclined him
towards the girl who clung to him. She was very pretty and “very fond of
him,” which pleased his vanity highly, and made him feel vaguely
self-complacent and on good terms with himself in her company; and by
the side of this doubtful and not very improving sensation, the man, who
was not wholly bad, had actually a little wholesome, brotherly,
protecting affection for the child who had clung to him from the first
moment of seeing him. Thus they wandered through the village, round and
round the Minster, looking at everything and at nothing till the October
afternoon began to cloud over. “Now you must come and see Amanda,” said
Frederick with a sigh. Innocent sighed too. It seemed to her very hard
that there was this inevitable “Frederick’s wife” to be always the
shadow to the picture, to take him away from his family, to separate him
from herself, to worry and vex him whatever he was doing. Innocent
hesitated at the corner of the street.
“Are you sure I should go?” she said. “She will scold me. She will not
be kind like Cousin Lætitia or you. She does not like me, and I do not
like her. Shall I go back now? I have had all I wanted, Frederick; I
have seen you.”
“That would never do,” said Frederick. “If it were known that you had
met me in the Minster and walked about so long with me, and then
returned without seeing my wife, people would talk--unpleasant things
would be said.”
“What could be said?” asked Innocent.
“Upon my life, one doesn’t know whether to laugh at you or be angry,”
cried Frederick, impatient. “Will you never understand? But, come along,
it is no use wasting words. Don’t you see you must come now?”
“I do not want to come. She will scold me,” said Innocent, standing
firmly, with a cloud upon her face. It was the first time she had openly
resisted him or any one. Poor child, was it some angel who stayed her
feet? She felt ready to cry, which was an unusual thing with her, and
with a frightened instinctive recoil, stood still, refusing to go on.
Poor Innocent! Safety and shelter, and the life of order and peace which
suited her half-developed faculties, lay calm and sunshiny on one side.
On the other was conflict, confused darkness and misery, pain and shame,
gathering in heavy clouds to swallow her up. For one moment it hung on
the balance which her fate was to be; terrible moment, which we, none of
us, divine, during which we have to exercise that great and awful choice
which is the privilege of humanity, in blindness and unconsciousness,
ignorant of the issues, stupid to the importance of the decision. This
was decided, however, not by Innocent. Impatient Frederick seized her
hand and drew it through his arm.
“This is folly,” he cried. “What you, Innocent! you be such a little
traitor and resist me and get me into trouble? No, no, come along. This
is out of the question now.”
Next moment he had knocked at his father-in-law’s door.
The Villa looked very much as it had done the day that Frederick first
made his appearance there. The sun was still shining by intervals, but
glimmers of firelight came from the window, and the garden behind was
spare of flowers. Mr. Batty met them as they came in, and stared hard at
the girl whom Frederick led by the hand into the narrow light passage
which traversed the house from the street to the garden door. “This is
my cousin, sir, Miss Innocent Vane,” said Frederick. “I have brought her
to see Amanda. She is on a visit at the High Lodge, as you may have
heard.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard,” said Batty, “and I think it’s time she should
turn up, the only one of your family as has ever come near my girl.
You’re welcome, my dear, better late than never; though I think,
considering how kind the Eastwoods have been to you, that you might have
come a little sooner to show Mrs. Frederick some respect.”
Innocent listened, wondering, to this address, gazing at the man whom
she had a confused recollection of having seen before. All that she
comprehended now was, more or less, that he was scolding her, though
about what she could not tell. He was a kind of man totally unknown to
Innocent--his thick figure, his coarse air, his loud voice and red
hands, surprised, without so much revolting her as they might have done,
had her organization been more perfect. She was frightened, but made an
effort of politeness to conceal it.
“Is she better?” she asked, not knowing what to say.
“You’ll see what she’ll say to you when she sees you,” said Batty to
Frederick with a chuckle, “and I don’t blame her, poor girl. If this is
what you call visiting your wife when she’s poorly, things have changed
since my day. It’s close on five, and nearly time for dinner, and you’ve
been out since the moment you swallowed your lunch.”
“I have been with my little cousin here, and Miss Vane of the High
Lodge, who is coming to call on Amanda on Monday,” said Frederick. “In
the meantime I took the liberty of inviting my cousin to stay with my
wife for a couple of nights. I hope it is practicable----”
“Oh, practicable enough,” said Batty, with a laugh. “I’m not one of
those as leaves themselves without a room to give to a friend. Plenty of
accommodation here for as many as you like to bring--and the more the
merrier, if they’re the right sort. Glad to see you, Miss Innocent.
Training up for your trade, eh?--at that old nunnery out there. Lord, to
see that old Lady Abbess in my house will be a sight! ’Manda will tackle
her, I’ll be bound. Walk up, walk up-stairs, Eastwood will show you the
way; and he’s sure of a warm welcome, he is. Ha, ha, ha, ha!”
Batty stood in the passage holding his sides, while Frederick, with
disgust on every line of his fine features, strode up-stairs. Innocent
followed her cousin wondering. What the man meant, whether he was merry,
or angry, or simply the most disagreeable strange man she had ever seen,
she could not make out. She remembered vaguely what Frederick had told
her so lately--what she had heard repeated on all sides at The
Elms--that Frederick’s wife was of “another class.” And the stairs were
narrow, the passage contracted, the maid who had opened the door not
like the maids at The Elms; and Batty’s dress, and appearance, and
manner of speech very different from anything Innocent had ever known
before. This was what it meant, then, to be of “another class.” Thus she
followed with some new speculations rising in her passive brain, into
the presence of Frederick’s wife.