THE MOMENT OF FATE.
Frederick led Innocent to the door of a bedroom which opened from a
little gallery up-stairs. He paused there before he opened it.
“If we find Amanda in an excitable state, you must not mind it,” he
said; “you must not be frightened. Forgive her because she is ill. It is
her way----”
With these words of warning he opened the door. It was a pretty room
enough--meant to be luxurious--in a somewhat tawdry style of decoration,
yet tolerable, in so far that its rose-coloured hangings and heavy
fringes were fresh at least, and in good order. Amanda was in bed, with
a blue dressing-gown over her shoulders, and her elaborately-dressed
hair adorned with a small lace cap. Nothing could be gayer than the
composition of colour, her own rose-cheeks and golden hair, the bright
blue garment in which she was clothed, and the blue ribbon in her little
cap, all relieved against the rose-coloured hangings. A perfect Watteau,
some one had told her, this composition made, and, though she did not
know what a Watteau was, she felt it must be something fine, and kept up
the successful combination. Her cheeks were not pale, but flushed with
anger, impatience, and excitement. She burst forth almost before
Frederick had come into the room.
“This is how you visit your wife, is it, Mr. Frederick Eastwood?--Three
mortal hours have I been left alone without a creature to speak to but
aunty. How dare you face me after that? how dare you? I have a hundred
minds never to speak to you again----”
“That would be to punish yourself more than me, my dear,” said
Frederick, with the conventional speech of the injured husband.
She looked at his careless smile, and her fury increased.
“I should like to throw something at you,” she cried. “You cold, wicked,
careless, unprincipled wretch! Was it for this you married me, and
pretended to be fond of me? Was it for this you took me from my father,
who was always so kind? Was it for this----”
“Of course it was for all that,” said Frederick, advancing to the
bedside. “We have gone through the list before. Amanda, try to keep your
temper; it will be the best thing for you. Here is Innocent, whom I
found in the Minster, and who has come to pay you a visit. Miss Vane is
coming on Monday to fetch her; and if you play your cards well----”
Amanda interrupted him by a shrill laugh.
“Oh, so here is Innocent! and the old nun is coming?--a great deal I
care! This is how you try to hoodwink me. Innocent, come here! How long
has he been walking about with you, talking, and holding your hand, and
turning your head, you little fool? You think he cares? He cares as much
for you as he does for me; he cares for no one but himself. Oh, go away,
or I shall throw something at you! Go away, or----”
She had put out her hand to clutch at a glass which stood by her on a
little table.
“Go! Go!” cried some one from behind the curtain.
Frederick made a rapid step to the door, but before he had reached it
his wife’s mood had changed.
“Oh, _you_ tell him to go, do you?” she cried. “Then I tell him to stay.
Come here, Innocent; you shall stay and nurse me; I know you’ll like it;
and, Fred, turn that woman out--turn her off, turn her out of doors. She
has been my plague ever since I can recollect. Oh, you thought you would
keep me all to yourself, did you, and get the better of me? but I
haven’t got a husband for nothing. Fred, turn her out of doors.”
Frederick opened the door with servile haste. He dragged the poor aunty,
the _souffre-douleur_ of the household, out by the sleeve, escaping
himself along with her. Amanda leant back upon her pillow, laying her
hand upon her breast.
“How hot it is,” she said, panting. “Open the window--take this fan and
fan me; can’t you make yourself useful? Oh, you are well named; you are
a true Innocent! If you will tell me all that he was saying to you, I
will forgive you. Tell me what he said.”
“He told me that I was to come and see you; that I was not to be
frightened,” said the girl, who was trembling, yet not confused by
mental dread, as she had sometimes felt on less occasion.
“And are you frightened?”
“N--no.” She spoke with a little hesitation, but still succeeded in
making this answer. She did not shrink from Amanda’s blazing red-hazel
eyes. The excited creature somehow did not alarm her. She had done all
that Amanda had told her with the happy habit of instant obedience,
which she had learned at the High Lodge, and kept fanning her, according
to her orders, as she spoke.
“You are very odd,” said Amanda, whose passion was over. “But you know
how to fan one; not like that woman who saws the air like a windmill.
You may take off your hat and sit down by me. I have a hasty temper. I
sometimes say things and do things I am sorry for; but I’m very
good-hearted. There, sit down and let us have a talk. Weren’t you glad
to get off? Don’t you hate that old cat, with her sermons and her
prayers? So she is coming to call?--what an honour, to be sure, for me!
But I think the Eastwoods can hold up their heads as high as the Vanes
any day--and she’s nothing but an interloper. Why, John Vane’s father
bought that house,” said Amanda; “it is no more an old family place than
this is. I am glad you are going to stay. If you are a good girl, I will
try what I can do for you, and make a friend of you. I never could make
a friend of that little stuck-up Nelly. What airs she does give herself
to be sure! and not so much to be proud of. Why, that wretched little
Molyneux, that she thinks such great things, is no better than a
shopkeeper’s grandson. I know the judge’s father was a jeweller in Brook
Street, and there is nothing so very grand in having a judge in the
family, unless you were going to be tried for your life, and wanted him
to get you off----”
“Can judges get people off?” said Innocent. Heaven knows why she asked
such a question! It was an echo rather of her companion’s last words
than said by any free-will of her own. But Frederick heard it as he came
in, and so did poor aunty, who stood outside, trembling at the door.
“Of course they can, you little stupid. It is all they are good for,”
said Amanda, benignantly. “Oh, you may come in. I am such a soft-hearted
ninny, I always forgive people when my passion is over. And none of you
ought to cross me; you know you oughtn’t. Some of these days, if you
don’t mind, just to punish you I shall die----”
She laughed and laid her head back upon the pillow, with her blue
ribbons and blue gown thrown sharply out by the rose-coloured bed. She
was amused by her own threat. But passion and self-indulgence had made
great havoc in the undisciplined creature, and to a serious looker-on
that menace would have seemed not so unlikely as Amanda thought, to come
to reality. Her breath came quick and with difficulty, heaving her
breast at every respiration. A high hectic colour was on her cheek, and
the cheekbones themselves which bore these dangerous roses were
sharpened by the wasting processes of continual excitement. Innocent
stood all this time by the bed, fanning her slowly and steadily. She was
getting tired, but did not think of stopping till she was told. Her
visionary looks, and the mechanical occupation which was so much more
natural to her than anything of a visionary character, contrasted
strangely, as she stood thus docile, always passive, by that bed. I
suppose she would literally have gone on for ever, like an Eastern
slave, had no one interposed.
This steady service pleased Amanda hugely. She took full advantage of
it, keeping the girl employed until her very arm was drooping with the
fatigue of the monotonous motion; and she was so generous as to allow
Frederick to sit down and tell her “the news.” Frederick had brought
down, as in duty bound, a few scandalous anecdotes from the
fountain-head of gossip--anecdotes circumstantialized by date and name,
but probably as false as was the taste that desired them. He made,
indeed, a few demurs at repeating these wonderful pieces of history
before Innocent, which were speedily silenced by his wife.
“Innocent is paying no attention. She never listens to what any one
says,” cried Amanda, “and, besides, no one thinks of that sort of
old-fashioned nonsense nowadays. Go on----”
In this edifying way the time was spent till dinner. Amanda declared
that she never felt better, that she would certainly get up next day.
“And I’ll go to church at the Minster if there is a good anthem,” she
said, “and you shall give me your arm, Fred, and everybody will think us
a model couple.” This last outburst of amiability was called forth by a
delightful piece of scandal about what the newspapers called a very
elevated personage, and which Frederick vouched for as authentic. Mrs.
Frederick, whose “set” were of those who called the heir to the throne
by the name of his principality _tout court_, was altogether conciliated
by this delightful communication. Innocent, as Amanda said, paid very
little attention. She listened yet did not listen, half pleased that
Frederick seemed pleased, half wondering, by an instinct which was more
penetrating than reason, that he should be satisfied, and should take so
much trouble to keep Amanda in good temper. Innocent was not observant,
she was not conscious of any faculty of criticism in her own undeveloped
mind; she made no voluntary contrast between Frederick in this fretful
sick chamber trying to please, and Frederick at home, contemptuously
indifferent to what any one did or said. Only a little vague wonder at
him rose in her mind; her sense of Mrs. Frederick’s imperfections was
not more distinct than the mere feeling of personal dislike--dislike
which was not softened by this sight of her, or by the exacting and
selfish demands she made upon everybody. Innocent was born to obey. She
did what Miss Vane had told her with the most docile unquestioning
readiness, and with the consent of her whole being; and she did also
whatever Mrs. Frederick told, but with how different a feeling. That she
could have explained the difference to herself, or that she even fully
defined and recognized it, I am far from asserting; but the fact that
she was conscious of this difference was at least a proof of the
expanding of her mental powers.
Mrs. Frederick consented that her husband and Innocent should leave her
to go to dinner, with reluctance, but she did consent. Before the meal
was over, however, they heard loud and repeated knockings on the floor
above, signals of her impatience. Frederick was in a state of unusual
exhilaration, perhaps excited by finding the weary evening pass less
disagreeably than he thought--for Innocent, passive as she was, was yet
a shield between him and his coarse father-in-law; and even Amanda’s
knocking, as he was out of her reach, did not disturb him.
“Come round the garden with me while I smoke my cigar,” he said, “and
then you can go to her.”
The evening was soft and warm and mellow, with a large full October moon
less white than usual, throwing broad beams of the palest gold over the
dark garden. Batty watched them go out with doubtful eyes, unable quite
to keep himself from vulgar interpretations of Innocent’s submission to
her cousin, yet confident in the power of “my girl” to retain her
husband’s devotion, and caring very little about the other. Besides he
was flattered in spite of himself that Innocent should be there under
his roof. Two great families, the one more “stuck up” than the other,
seemed thus to be holding out an olive branch to him, and already Batty
felt himself mounting the steps of social grandeur. He sat over his
port, meditating on the moment when he could change that drink for more
natural brandy and water--when another vehement assault upon the floor
overhead roused him.
“She’ll make herself worse than ever,” Batty said to himself; and going
to the stairs he shouted in his great voice, “Steady there, steady,
’Manda. She’s a coming; she’s a coming.” Then he went out into the
garden to seek the other two. The grass was wet with dew, the leaves,
which had begun to change colour, showed like flowers in the moonlight.
He followed the soft sound of sauntering steps along two or three
windings of the path. Then he came in sight of the pair he sought;
Frederick was walking along indifferently enough, smoking his cigar,
with one hand thrust into his pocket! Innocent by his side held his arm
so cavalierly and carelessly bent with her hand. She went along by him
like his shadow; she looked up at him with a half smile upon her face,
to which the moonlight lent an aspect of deeper and more impassioned
self-devotion than Innocent knew. Frederick, in low tones, and with now
and then a demonstrative gesture of the disengaged hand with which he
sometimes took his cigar from his lips, was laying down the law about
something. Probably he was inculcating that first duty of woman, to
“consider me, not yourself,” or some other equally plain and fundamental
principle. The sight struck Batty with a certain jealousy by reflection.
So intimate a conversation could scarcely be without somehow infringing
upon the rights of “his girl.” Had it been Frederick’s sister, probably
he would have had the same feeling; but in that case he would have been
less at liberty to interfere.
“Hollo!” he said, “don’t you know Mrs. Frederick is all alone, while you
two are gallivanting and philandering here? Come along, Miss; you’re
safer with my ’Manda than with that young spark. _I_ know him better
than you do. Come along, come along, or she’ll bring down the house; and
not much wonder either if she saw as much as I see--but I’ll tell no
tales,” he said, with a coarse laugh.
Innocent stood bewildered with the sudden shock--for at the moment that
Batty’s voice became audible, Frederick, with an instinctive movement,
cast her off from his arm. To her who knew no wrong, who thought no
evil, this movement was simply incomprehensible. He was angry, that
could be the only reason; but why, or with whom? She stood turning her
wandering looks towards Batty, towards the house, with its lighted
windows, the moonbeams pouring over her, lighting up her raised face,
with its wistful gaze. Frederick, as an expression of his feeling,
tossed away the end of his cigar.
“We were coming in,” he said. “Innocent, perhaps you had better go
first, and let me know if I’m wanted. I am tired. Tell Amanda I have got
some letters to write, office work which I was obliged to bring with me.
Batty, suppose you order some coffee, and let me get to work,” he added,
carelessly leading the way into the house. He left Innocent to follow as
she might, and to deal with Batty as she might. He had put up with him
long enough; he saw no reason for exerting himself further now.
“Confound his impudence!” said Batty. “Now, Miss, come along. You’d best
stay with ’Manda, if you’ll take my advice, while you are here.”
“If you please,” said Innocent, with a sigh.
“Oh, if _I_ please--you’d rather be with _him_, eh? Pleasanter ain’t
it?” said Batty, with a grin of airy raillery.
“Yes,” said simple Innocent. “I know Frederick, and I don’t know you.” A
courteous instinct which she could not have explained kept her from
adding that she did not like Mrs. Frederick, which was her usually
unconcealed sentiment. She added quite gravely, altogether unaware that
his laugh had anything to do with her, “if I am to go to Frederick’s
wife, will you show me the way?”
Batty led the way without another word--he was curiously impressed by
her gravity, by a certain solemn simplicity about the pale creature, who
stood there facing him in the moonlight impervious to his gibes. He took
her to his daughter’s room, and looked in, giving Amanda a word of
warning. “Keep your temper, ’Manda,” he said; I do not know that he
could have explained why.
This was what Amanda was little inclined to do. She assailed Innocent
with a storm of questions; what had she been doing? where had she been?
“I have been in the garden with Frederick,” said the girl, with that
serious and quiet calm, which already had so much impressed Mrs.
Frederick’s father.
“In the garden with Frederick! and you tell me so with that bold face!
What was he doing? what was he saying? oh, I know him, and his false
ways,” said the excited wife; “making you think all sorts of things, you
little fool--and then sending you to me with your innocent face.
Innocent, indeed! Oh, no; I didn’t call--I don’t want you. Innocent, to
be sure! You are a pretty Innocent for the nunnery; just the sort of
creature to go there if all tales be true--to learn to deceive--as if
you wanted teaching! You never thought of me lying up here, while you
went wandering about the garden with Frederick--nor he didn’t, neither.
Who cares for me? I was everything that was sweet before I married, but
now much he cares. Oh, if I just had him here to tell him what I think
of him! Call him to tell him what I think of him--both him and you!”
Innocent had never been thrown upon her own resources before. She was
not prepared for the emergency, and had those who loved her best
foreseen the possibility of such a trial for her she never would have
been allowed to risk it; but in the meantime it did her good. A certain
curious practical faculty had been developed in her by the life of rule
and order at the High Lodge. She went forward to the bedside with her
visionary look, but the most serious matter-of-fact meaning, ignoring
the passion as completely as if it did not exist; which, indeed, to her
it did not, being a thing beyond her range of perception.
“You make yourself ill when you are angry,” she said, seriously, looking
down upon Amanda’s worn and flushed countenance; “it makes you very ill;
it would be far better not to be angry. When you scold me I am sorry;
but it does not make me ill. It hurts you most. You should stop yourself
when you feel it coming on; because, perhaps, when you are scolding you
might die--and it would be better to live and not to scold. I have
thought about it, and that is what I think.”
Amanda was aghast at this speech--it subdued her as if a baby had
suddenly opened its mouth, and uttered words of wisdom. She gave a gasp,
half of wonder, half of terror, and felt herself checked and subdued as
she had never been in her life before. The effect was so strange that
she did not know what to make of it. She tried to laugh, and failed;
finally, she said, “What an odd girl you are!” and settled down among
her pillows, calmed in spite of herself. “Read to me,” she said, after a
little pause, thrusting a book into Innocent’s hand. The calm was as
sudden as the storm. The moment that she was told to do something
definite Innocent resumed her usual obedient frame of mind, after this
the longest speech she had ever made, and the most completely
independent mental action she had ever been conscious of. She sat down
and read, opening the book where she was told, pursuing without a
question the course of a foolish story. She never thought of asking who
or what were the personages she suddenly began to read about; she took
the book as she had taken the fan, and used it in a similar way. And
then there followed a curious little interval of calm. Amanda had
prepared herself for the night while the others were at dinner; she had
taken off her blue dressing-gown and her pretty ribbons; she was all
white now, ready to go to sleep when the moment came. The room had been
partially darkened for the same reason. Behind the curtain at the head
of the bed was a lamp shaded from the eyes, but the other lights had
been taken away, and the profound quiet grew slumbrous as Innocent’s
soft voice rose through it, reading steadily and gently with a certain
sweet monotony. I cannot tell how long Innocent continued reading. The
calm grew more and more profound; no one came near the room; Amanda’s
retirement was not invaded. Innocent herself grew drowsy as she listened
to her own voice; it rose and fell with a gentle, but incessant,
repetition; sometimes she would almost fall asleep, stumbling over the
words--and then, as Mrs. Frederick, who was drowsy too, stirred and
murmured at the cessation of the voice which acted upon her like a
lullaby, the girl would resume her reading, startled into wakefulness.
Once or twice poor aunty, who had been banished from the room, put in
her head noiselessly at the door, and withdrew it as gently, seeing that
all was still. Batty himself once did the same; but the household was
too glad of the unusual stillness to do anything to disturb it. At
length the soft girlish voice, after repeated breaks and faltering
recommencements, dropped altogether, and Innocent fell fast asleep, with
her head leaning upon the back of her chair, and the book in her clasped
hands. She and the lamp by which she had been reading and the little
table covered with medicine phials, were separated from the sleeper in
the bed by the dropped curtain, which threw a rose-coloured reflection
over Amanda in her sleep; this lasted for an hour or two, during which
the patient and the young attendant who was so little used to watch,
slept peacefully with but the veil of this curtain between them. Then
Amanda began to stir. Her sleep was always broken and uncertain; the
poor aunty to whom she was so cruel had accustomed her to constant and
unfailing attendance--and when she woke and called and saw no one,
sudden wrath flamed up in Amanda’s bosom. Gradually the circumstances
came back upon her mind, and plucking back the curtain she saw poor
Innocent quietly sleeping, her hair falling in the old childish way
about her shoulders, and her dark eyelashes resting on her cheek, which
looked so pale under them. Amanda did not care for the weary grace and
_abandon_ of the girl’s attitude, nor was she at all touched by the
thought that Innocent had been occupied in her own service to her last
moment of consciousness. Mrs. Frederick, on the contrary, was furious to
find herself “left alone” with no obsequious nurse ready to attend to
her wants. She shrieked at Innocent to rouse her, and stretching out of
bed shook the girl, who started violently, and sprang up trembling and
nervous. Amanda’s eyes were blazing, her figure trembling with sudden
irritation.
“How dare you fall asleep?” she cried, “am I to be left with no one to
take care of me? oh, you all want to kill me. Give me my drops, you
cruel, wicked, sleepy, lazy, wicked girl! You don’t know how?--oh, you
know well enough how to walk about with my husband--how to make love to
him. My drops! can’t you understand?--there, in that bottle; you can
read, I suppose, though you are a fool. Oh, to leave me to this horrid
girl! Oh, to have no one to take care of me! My drops? can’t you hear?
I’ll make it heard all over the house. My drops! Oh, you little idiot,
can’t you do that much? I always said you was a fool; walk about with
another woman’s husband--torment a man with clinging to him--but as for
being of use. My drops! Put them in the glass, idiot! Can’t you see I
want to go to sleep?”
Innocent trembling, chilled, ignorant, incapable, only half awake, took
the bottle that was pointed out to her, and endeavoured, as she had seen
people do, to drop the liquid into a glass; she failed twice over in her
fright and tremor. Then she kneeled down by the table to try for the
third time, propping herself up against the chair. I don’t know what
thoughts might be passing unconscious through her mind. I don’t think
she was conscious of anything, except the miserable feeling of sudden
waking--the cold, the sense of being beaten down with angry words--and
the frightened attempt to do what she could not do, in obedience to the
fiercest order she had ever received in her life. Where she knelt,
painfully endeavouring to count the drops of the opiate, she was within
reach of Amanda’s arm, who by this time had worked herself into a wild,
shrieking passion. Once more she dashed aside the curtain, and plucked
at Innocent, calling to her with words which had become unintelligible
to the ears of the frightened girl. “Give it me, you fool--give it me,
you fool!” she said, then snatched the glass out of Innocent’s hand, and
lifted it to her lips. Between the fright of the one and the passion of
the other the bottle had been half emptied into the glass. Amanda held
it for a moment in one hand, grasping Innocent with the other, and
trying to recover breath. She was past thinking of any consequences, as
Innocent was past knowing what was happening under her eyes. With a
sudden long effort to regain her breath she put the glass to her panting
lips, and drank it. How much she swallowed no one ever knew; the glass
dropped out of her hand, spilling some dark drops upon the white
coverlid, and Amanda dropped back heavily upon the pillows. Then there
followed such a stillness as seemed to make the whole house, the very
walls, shiver. Innocent, with the little phial clutched in one hand,
with Amanda’s fingers slowly relaxing from the other, stood stupefied,
listening to the horrible stillness. Oh, God, what did it mean?