Innocent : her fancy and his fact Part 15

"Last night?--Well?"

"Well--Ned Landon was in hiding in the bushes under your window--and he must have been there all the time we were talking together. How or why he came there I cannot imagine. But he heard a good deal--and when you shut your window he was waiting for me. Directly I got down he pounced on me like a tramp-thief, and--now there!--don't look so frightened!--he said something that I couldn't stand, so we had a jolly good fight. He got the worst of it, I can tell you! He's stiff and unfit to work to-day--that's why Uncle Hugo has taken him to the town.

I told the whole story to Uncle Hugo this morning--and he says I did quite right. But it's a bore to have to go on 'bossing' Landon--he bears me a grudge, of course--and I foresee it will be difficult to manage him. He can hardly be dismissed--the other hands would want to know why; no man has ever been dismissed from Briar Farm without good and fully explained reasons. This time no reasons could be given, because your name might come in, and I won't have that--"

"Oh, Robin, it's all my fault!" she exclaimed. "If you would only let me go away! Help me--do help me to go away!"

He stared at her, amazed.

"Go away!" he echoed--"You! Why, Innocent, how can you think of such a thing! You are the very life and soul of the place--how can you talk of going away! No, no!--not unless"--here he drew nearer and looked at her steadily and tenderly in the eyes--"not unless you will let me take you away!--just for a little while!--as a bridegroom takes a bride--on a honeymoon of love and suns.h.i.+ne and roses--"

He stopped, deterred by her look of sadness.

"Dear Robin," she said, very gently--"would you marry a girl who cannot love you as a wife should love? Won't you understand that if I could and did love you I should be happier than I am?--though now, even if I loved you with all my heart, I would not marry you. How could I? I am nothing--I have no name--no family--and can you think that I would bring shame upon you? No, Robin!--never! I know what your Uncle Hugo wishes--and oh!--if I could only make him happy I would do it!--but I cannot--it would be wrong of me--and you would regret it--"

"I should never regret it," he interrupted her, quickly. "If you would be my wife, Innocent, I should be the proudest, gladdest man alive! Ah, dear!--do put all your fancies aside and try to realise what good you would be doing to the old man if he felt quite certain that you would be the little mistress of the old farm he loves so much--I will not speak of myself--you do not care for me!--but for him--"

She looked up at him with a sudden light in her eyes.

"Could we not pretend?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Why, pretend that we're engaged--just to satisfy him. Couldn't you make things easy for me that way?"

"I don't quite understand," he said, with a puzzled air--"How would it make things easy?"

"Why, don't you see?" and she spoke with hurried eagerness--"When he comes home to-night let him think it's all right--and then--then I'll run away by myself--and it will be my fault--"

"Innocent! What are you talking about?"--and he flushed with vexation.

"My dear girl, if you dislike me so much that you would rather run away than marry me, I won't say another word about it. I'll manage to smooth things over with my uncle for the present--just to prevent his fretting himself--and you shall not be worried--"

"You must not be worried either," she said. "You will not understand, and you do not think!--but just suppose it possible that, after all, my own parents did remember me at last and came to look after me--and that they were perhaps dreadful wicked people--"

Robin smiled.

"The man who brought you here was a gentleman," he said--"Uncle Hugo told me so this morning, and said he was the finest-looking man he had ever seen."

Innocent was silent a moment.

"You think he was a 'gentleman' to desert his own child?" she asked.

Robin hesitated.

"Dear, you don't know the world," he said--"There may have been all sorts of dangers and difficulties--anyhow, _I_ don't bear him any grudge! He gave you to Briar Farm!"

She sighed, and made no response. Inadvertently they had walked beyond the orchard and were now on the very edge of the little thicket where the tomb of the Sieur Amadis de Jocelin glimmered pallidly through the shadow of the leaves. Innocent quickened her steps.

"Come!" she said.

He followed her reluctantly. Almost he hated the old stone knight which served her as a subject for so many fancies and feelings, and when she beckoned him to the spot where she stood beside the rec.u.mbent effigy, he showed a certain irritation of manner which did not escape her.

"You are cross with him!" she said, reproachfully. "You must not be so.

He is the founder of your family--"

"And the finish of it, I suppose!" he answered, abruptly. "He stands between us two, Innocent!--a cold stone creature with no heart--and you prefer him to me! Oh, the folly of it all! How can you be so cruel!"

She looked at him wistfully--almost her resolution failed her. He saw her momentary hesitation and came close up to her.

"You do not know what love is!" he said, catching her hand in his own--"Innocent, you do not know! If you did!--if I might teach you--!"

She drew her hand away very quickly and decidedly.

"Love does not want teaching," she said--"it comes--when it will, and where it will! It has not come to me, and you cannot force it, Robin!

If I were your wife--your wife without any wife's love for you--I should grow to hate Briar Farm!--yes, I should!--I should pine and die in the very place where I have been so happy!--and I should feel that HE"--here she pointed to the sculptured Sieur Amadis--"would almost rise from this tomb and curse me!"

She spoke with sudden, almost dramatic vehemence, and he gazed at her in mute amazement. Her eyes flashed, and her face was lit up by a glow of inspiration and resolve.

"You take me just for the ordinary sort of girl," she went on--"A girl to caress and fondle and marry and make the mother of your children,--now for that you might choose among the girls about here, any of whom would be glad to have you for a husband. But, Robin, do you think I am really fit for that sort of life always?--can't you believe in anything else but marriage for a woman?"

As she thus spoke, she unconsciously created a new impression on his mind,--a veil seemed to be suddenly lifted, and he saw her as he had never before seen her--a creature removed, isolated and unattainable through the force of some inceptive intellectual quality which he had not previously suspected. He answered her, very gently--

"Dear, I cannot believe in anything else but love for a woman," he said--"She was created and intended for love, and without love she must surely be unhappy."

"Love!--ah yes!" she responded, quickly--"But marriage is not love!"

His brows contracted.

"You must not speak in that way, Innocent," he said, seriously--"It is wrong--people would misunderstand you--"

Her eyes lightened, and she smiled.

"Yes!--I'm sure 'people' would!" she answered--"But 'people' don't matter--to ME. It is truth that matters,--truth,--and love!"

He looked at her, perplexed.

"Why should you think marriage is not love?" he asked--"It is the one thing all lovers wish for--to be married and to live together always--"

"Oh, they wish for it, yes, poor things!" she said, with a little uplifting of her brows--"And when their wishes are gratified, they often wish they had not wished!" She laughed. "Robin, this talk of ours is making me feel quite merry! I am amused!"

"I am not!" he replied, irritably--"You are much too young a girl to think these things--"

She nodded, gravely.

"I know! And I ought to get married while young, before I learn too many of 'these things,'" she said--"Isn't that so? Don't frown, Robin!

Look at the Sieur Amadis! How peacefully he sleeps! He knew all about love!"

"Of course he did!" retorted Robin--"He was a perfectly sensible man--he married and had six children."