Chapter XI: At Home and Not at Home

All the events of that evening passed like a dream over the mind of Innocent. The warm, curtained, cushioned, luxurious room, with its soft carpets, its soft chairs, its draperies, its fulness and crowd of unfamiliar details, the unknown faces and sounds, the many pictures on the walls, the conversation, quick and familiar, carried on in a language which to be sure she knew perfectly, but was not accustomed to hear about her--all bewildered and confused her. She sat and looked at them with an infantile stare of half-stupefied dull wonder, not altogether understanding what they said, and not at all taking in the meaning even when she understood the words. She made scarcely any response to their many questions. She said “Yes” when they asked if she were tired, but nothing at all in reply to her aunt’s warm and tearful welcome. She felt disposed to wonder why they kissed her, why they unfastened her wraps and put a footstool for her feet before the fire, and made so much fuss about her. Why did they do it? Nothing of the kind would have occurred to Innocent had they gone to her. She did not understand their kindness. It seemed to her to require some explanation, some clearing-up of the mystery. She sat with her lips shut close, with her eyes opened more widely than usual, turning to each one who spoke. She had felt no curiosity about them before she arrived, and she did not feel any curiosity now. They were new, and strange, and wonderful, not to be accounted for by any principles within her knowledge. They placed her by the fire, they took off her hat and cloak, they established her there to thaw, and be comforted.

“Dinner will be ready directly--but will you have a cup of tea first?” said Mrs. Eastwood, stroking her lank hair.

“No,” said Innocent, “I am not ill.” She thought, as was natural with her Italian training, that tea was a medicine.

“Would you like to go up to your room before dinner, or are you too tired, dear?” said Nelly.

“I will stay here,” said the girl. This was how she answered them, always gazing at the one who spoke to her, and ever turning to give a wistful look at Frederick, who, for his part, felt himself somehow responsible for the new guest, and annoyed by the wondering looks of his mother and sister.

“Let her alone,” he said, with some impatience. “Don’t you see she is frightened and tired, and scarcely understands you? We have been travelling day and night since Tuesday. Innocent, are you very much tired? Should you like to go to bed? or are you able to sit up to dinner? Don’t be afraid.”

She looked up at him instantly responsive. She put out her hand to him, and grasped his, though this was a formula which he could have dispensed with. “Are you to sit up to dinner?” she asked. “Then I will too.”

“I am the only one she knows,” he said, turning to the others, half pleased, half ashamed; perhaps more than half ashamed, the young man being English, and in deadly terror of being laughed at. “I hope I am old enough to sit up to dinner,” he said, carrying off a little confusion in a laugh; “but I confess after all this travelling I am tired too.”

“Let me look at you, Frederick,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “I see you are better; you are not so pale as when you went away. Your illness, on the whole, must have agreed with you. Why didn’t you write, you unkind boy? Nelly and I would have gone over to nurse you----”

Heaven forbid! Frederick said to himself; the bare suggestion gave him a livelier idea of the dangers he had escaped than anything else had done. “No, no,” he said, “a journey at this time of the year is no joke. That was the very reason I did not write; and then, of course, I was anxious to get on as quickly as I could to poor Innocent, who was being made a victim of by all the ladies, the doctress and the clergywoman, and all the rest----”

“Was she made a victim of?” said Nelly, looking at the new comer in her easy-chair, with doubtful wonder.

Innocent divined rather than understood that they were talking of her, and once more raised her eyes to Frederick with a soft smile which seemed to consent to everything he said. She seemed to the ladies to be giving confirmation to his words, whereas, in reality, it was but like the holding out of her hand--another way of showing her confidence and dependence on him.

“I took her out of their hands,” said Frederick, with a delightful indifference to facts; “they would have sent her to you with a Pisan outfit, peasant costume for anything I can tell. I was very glad to get there in time. I found the poor child living in the house all alone, not even with a maid, and a dark ghostly dismal sort of house, which you would have thought would have frightened her to death.”

“Poor child!” said Mrs. Eastwood, “alone without even a maid? Oh, that is dreadful! Were you frightened, my poor darling?”

“No,” said Innocent, glancing at her questioner quickly, and then returning to her habitual gaze upon Frederick. This was not encouraging, but of course Frederick had been her first acquaintance, and she had come to know him. His mother dismissed him summarily to wash his hands before dinner. “Don’t think of dressing,” she said; and Innocent was left alone with them. She sat quite passive, as she had done with Mrs. Drainham, turning her eyes from one to the other with a wistful sort of fear, which half amused, half angered them. To be sure, in her fatigued state, there was every excuse to be made.

“You must not be afraid of us, my dear,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “Nelly and I will love you very much if you will let us. It will be a great change for you, and everything is very different here from what it is in Italy. I have lived in Italy myself when your poor dear mamma was a young girl like you. Do you remember your mamma, Innocent?”

“No.”

“I think you must remember her a little. You are not like her. You must be like the Vanes, I suppose. Have you ever seen any of the Vanes, your father’s relations?”

“No,” said Innocent, again getting bewildered, and feeling that this time she ought to say yes. Nelly came to the other side of the chair and took her hand, looking kindly at her. Why would these people say so much--do so much? Why did not they leave her alone?

“Mamma, she is stupefied with cold and fatigue,” said Nelly. “To-morrow she will be quite different. Lean back in the chair, and never mind us. We will not talk to you any more.”

But she did not lean back in her chair; she had not been accustomed to chairs that you could lean back in. She sat bolt upright, and looked at them with her eyes wide open, and looked at everything, taking in the picture before her with the quick eyes of a savage, though she was confused about what they said. How close and warm everything was, how shut in, no space to walk about or to see round the crowded furniture! The room, in English eyes, though very well filled, was not at all crowded with furniture; but Innocent compared it with the Palazzo Scaramucci, where every chair and table stood distinct in its own perspective. How different was the aspect of everything! the very tables were clothed, the windows draped to their feet, the room crammed with pictures, books, things, and people. Innocent seemed to want space; the walls closed and crowded upon her as they do upon people who have just recovered their sight. Mrs. Drainham’s drawing-room had been made very comfortable, but it was not like this. The want of height and size struck her more than the wealth and comfort. She was not used to comfort--never having had it--and did not feel the want of it. Even the fire, after the first few minutes of revived animation produced by its warmth, felt stifling to her, as to all Italians. The ladies by her side thought she was admiring everything, which disposed them amiably towards her, but this was very far from the feeling in Innocent’s mind.

And after dinner, when they took her to her room, this effect increased. She was led through Mrs. Eastwood’s room and Nelly’s to that little snug, bright chamber, with its bright fire blazing, the candles burning on the toilette-table, the pretty chintz surrounding her with garlands, and the pictures on the walls which had been chosen for her pleasure. With what wonder and partial dismay she looked upon it all! It was not much larger than the great carved chest which stood in a corner of her chamber at the Palazzo Scaramucci, and yet how much had been put into it! The girl was like a savage sighing for her wigwam, and to be shut up here was terrible to her. Mrs. Eastwood and Nelly both led her to this room, explaining, poor simple souls, how they had placed her in the very heart of the house, as it were, that she might not feel lonely. “Both of us, you see, are within call, my dear,” said Mrs. Eastwood, “but the room is very small.”

“Yes,” said Innocent. They had, no doubt, expected her to say in answer to this that the room was delightful, and to show her sense of their kindness by some word of pleasure or admiration. But nothing of the kind followed. She looked vacantly round, with a scared, half-stupefied expression. She had no desire to be put into the heart of the house. And there can be no doubt that this absolute want of all effusion, all response even on her part, chilled the warm hearts of her relations. “She is tired,” they said to each other, excusing her; but that was an imperfect kind of satisfaction. Nelly herself had meant to stay with her to help her to undress. “But perhaps you would rather be alone?” said Nelly.

“Yes,” was Innocent’s answer; and you may imagine how discomfited poor Nelly felt, who was used to the gregarious way of girls, and did not understand what this could mean.

“I will leave you, then,” she said, so completely taken aback that her self-possession failed her. She turned to go away, blushing and disturbed, feeling herself an unwelcome intruder in the room which she had spent so much care upon. Nelly did not know what to make of it. She had never encountered anything like it in her life, and it puzzled her beyond expression.

“I am here, Miss Ellinor,” said the voice of old Alice behind her, which startled Nelly once more; for Alice had disapproved of all the fuss about Innocent’s arrival, and had done everything she could to discourage it. “I’ll put her to her bed,” said Alice. “It’s me that am the proper person. Go to your mamma, my dear, and I’ll come and tell you when she’s comfortable. She canna be expected to be pleasant to-night, for she’s tired, and all’s new to her. I’ve done the same for her mother many a day. Leave her to me.”

Innocent took no part in the discussion. She stood in the centre of the little room, longing to be alone. Oh, if they would only go away and leave her to herself! “I never have a maid,” she exerted herself to say, when she saw that the tall old woman remained in the room; “I do not want anything. Please go away.”

“Maybe it’s me that wants something,” said Alice, authoritatively, and began her ministrations at once, paying very little attention to the girl’s reluctance. “Hair clipped short, like a boy’s--that’s her outlandish breeding,” said Alice to herself. “A wild look, like a bit sauvage out of the woods--that’s loneliness; and two great glowering een. But no like her mother--no like her mother, the Lord be thanked!”

Then this homely old woman said two or three words, somewhat stiffly and foreignly, in Italian, which made Innocent stare, and roused her up at once. She had no enthusiasm for the country in which she had lived all her life; but still, she had lived there, and the sound of the familiar tongue woke her up out of her stupor. “Are you not English,” she said, “like all the rest?”

“God be thanked, no, I’m no English,” said Alice, “but I’m Scotch, and it’s no likely that you would ken the difference. I used to be with your mother when she was young like you. I was in Pisa with the family, where you’ve come from. I have never forgotten it. Do you mind your mother? Turn your head round, like a good bairn, that I may untie this ribbon about your neck.”

“Why do you all ask me about my mother?” said Innocent, in a pettish tone. “No, I never knew her; why should I? The lady down-stairs asked me too.”

“Because she was your mother’s sister, and I was your mother’s woman,” said Alice. “I’m much feared, my honey, that you’ve no heart. Neither had your mother before you. Do you mean aye to call my mistress ‘the lady down-stairs’?”

“I don’t know,” said Innocent, in dull stupor. She felt disposed to cry, but could not tell why she had this inclination. “What should I call her? No one ever told me her name,” she added, after a moment’s pause.

“This will be a bonnie handful,” said Alice to herself, reflectively. “Did Mr. Frederick never tell you she was your aunt? But maybe you do not ken what that means? She’s your nearest kin now you’ve lost that ill man, your father. She’s the one that will take care of you and help you, if you’re good to her--or whether or no,” Alice added, under her breath.

“Take care of me? _He_ promised to take care of me,” said Innocent, with her eyes lightening up; “I do not want any one else.”

“‘He,’ meaning your cousin?” said Alice grimly.

“Frederick. I like his name. I cannot remember the other names. I never have been used to see so many people,” said Innocent, at length bursting into speech after her long silence. She could speak to this woman, who was a servant, but she did not understand the ladies in their pretty dresses, who oppressed her with their kindness. “Shall I have to see them every day?” she continued, with a dismal tone in her voice. The corners of her mouth drooped. At this thought she was ready to cry again.

“Go to your bed,” said Alice authoritatively. “If I thought you knew what you were saying, my bonnie woman, I would like to put you to the door. The creature’s no a changeling, for it says its prayers,” she added to herself, when she had extinguished the candles, and left the stranger in her chamber; “but here’s a bonnie handful for the mistress,” Alice went on, talking to herself while she arranged Mrs. Eastwood’s room for the night, “and plenty of mischief begun already. She’s no like her mother, which is a comfort: but there’s ane that is.”

Nobody heard these oracular mutterings, however, and nobody in the house knew as much as Alice did, who had no thought in the world but the Eastwoods, and kept her mental life up by diligently putting one thing to another, and keeping watch and ward over the children she had nursed. It was common in the Elms to say that Alice was “a character;” but I do not think any of them had the least idea how distinct and marked her character was, or how deeply aware she was of the various currents which were shaping unconsciously the life of the “family.” She was nearly ten years older than Mrs. Eastwood, and had brought her up as well as her daughter, commencing life as a nursery-maid in the house of her present mistress’s father, when Mrs. Eastwood was six or seven years old, and her young attendant sixteen. She knew everything, and more than everything, that had taken place in the family since; more than everything, for Alice in her private musings had thought out the mingled story, and divined everybody’s motives, as, perhaps, they scarcely divined them themselves. She had married, when she was thirty, the gardener who took charge of a shooting-box in Scotland, which belonged to Admiral Forbes, the Eastwoods’ grandfather, but had been absent from them only about two years, returning at her husband’s death to accompany them to Italy, and to settle down afterwards into the personal attendant and superintendent of her young lady’s married life. She knew all about them; she knew how it was that the old Admiral had made his second marriage, and how his second daughter, Isabel, had developed by the side of her more innocent and simple sister. She recollected a great deal more about Innocent’s father and mother than Mrs. Eastwood herself did--more than it was at all expedient or profitable to recollect. And it was not only the past that occupied her mind; she understood the present, and studied it with a ceaseless interest, which the subjects of her study were scarcely aware of; though they had all long ago consented to the fact that Alice knew everything. Mrs. Eastwood thought it right to inform Alice of all the greater events that affected the family, but generally ended such confidences abruptly, with a half-amused, half-angry consciousness that Alice already knew all about them, and more of them than she herself did. Alice was the only one in all the house who had divined the real character of Frederick. As for the others, she said to herself, with affectionate contempt, that they were “Just nothing, just nothing--honest lads and lasses, with no harm in them.” She loved them, but dismissed them summarily from her mind as persons not likely to supply her life with any striking interest; but here was something very different. Life quickened for the observant old woman, and a certain thrill of excitement came into her mind as she put out Mrs. Eastwood’s comfortable dressing-gown and arranged all her “things.” Mrs. Eastwood herself had furnished but little mental excitement to Alice, but something worth looking into seemed now about to come.

Down-stairs, the two ladies looked at each other doubtfully when Nelly went back to the drawing-room. They did not know what to say. Dick was shut up in his own room at work, or pretending to be at work, and Frederick had gone out into the garden to smoke his cigar, though the night was dark and cold. “Well, Nelly?” said Mrs. Eastwood to Nelly; and “Well, mamma?” Nelly replied.

“I do not understand the girl,” was Mrs. Eastwood’s next speech.

“How could we expect to understand her, just come off a long journey, and stupefied by coming into a strange place? Remember, she never saw any of us before. Don’t let us be unreasonable, mamma,” cried Nelly; and then she added, in a more subdued tone, “She must be affectionate, for she seemed to cling so to Frederick.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a long-drawn breath. “My dear,” she added, after a pause, “I don’t want to anticipate difficulties which may never come; but on the whole it might have been better to send some one else than Frederick. A young man, you know; it is always a risk. I wish I had made up my mind at once to spare Alice----”

“Nonsense, mamma!”

“It is all very well to say nonsense, Nelly, but when you have lived as long as I have----” Mrs. Eastwood said slowly: “However, it cannot be helped now. Do you think she is pretty, Nelly? It’s rather a remarkable face.”

“I don’t know,” said Nelly, puzzled. “It would be beautiful in a picture. Wait till she wakes up and comes to life, and then we shall know. Here is Frederick, all perfumed with his cigar. We were talking her over----”

“Yes, I knew you must be pulling the poor child to pieces,” said Frederick, seating himself by the fire. “What have you got to say against her? She is not cut in the common fashion, like all the other girls whom one sees about--and is sick of.”

“I should think the other girls cared very little whether you were sick of them or not,” retorted Nelly, affronted.

Mr. Frederick Eastwood was one of the young men who entertain a contempt for women, founded on the incontestable consciousness of their own superiority; and it was one of his theories that all women were jealous of each other. Even his mother, he felt, would “pull” the new comer “to pieces,” out of pure feminine spite.

“Hush, children,” said Mrs. Eastwood; “we have nothing to do with other girls for the moment. This one is very unresponsive, I am afraid. You have seen more of her than we have, Frederick. Had she any friends out yonder? Did she seem to you affectionate?”

Frederick laughed. “I have no reason to complain of any want of affectionateness,” he said, pulling his peaked beard with that supreme satisfaction of gratified vanity which no woman can tolerate. Mrs. Eastwood and Nelly looked at each other with a common wrath, but the mother put up a finger to suppress the impatience of her child.

“Yes, she seemed to turn to you,” she said, with as much indifference in her voice as was practicable. “Ring for tea now, Nelly. Frederick will like to get up-stairs early after his journey. I saw Mr. Bellingham at the office after I got your letter, Frederick. He made rather a joke of your illness, poor boy. I hope you will not wish to go away for some time again. I am told that, though promotion is by seniority, those young men who are most to be depended on are the ones who get secretaryships, and so forth--and you know your income, my dear boy, is but small----”

“Those who get secretaryships, and so forth, are those who have private influence,” said Frederick loftily, “which is not my case, mother. Whoever told you so told you stuff and nonsense. Men in office take their own sons and nephews, or their friends’ sons and nephews, for their private secretaries--and fellows like me have no chance.”

“But Mr. Bellingham, I am sure, had no private influence,” urged Mrs. Eastwood; “it must have been merit in his case----”

“There was some political reason, I suppose,” said Frederick. “Merit is humbug, you may take my word for that. By-the-bye, I think I will just step out to the club for half an hour to see what is going on. It is rather a fine night----”

“But after your illness, Frederick----”

“Oh, I am all right,” he said, going out of the room. If I am obliged to tell the truth, I must say that I do not think his departure was any great loss to his mother and sister. Mrs. Eastwood sighed, half because it was the first night of his return, and she felt the slight of his speedy withdrawal, and half because of an old prejudice in her mind that it was best for young men when not engaged to spend their evenings at home. But Frederick never made himself at all delightful at home, after an absence like this, for reasons of which she was altogether unconscious. Nelly did not sigh at all, and if she felt her brother’s departure, did so more in anger than in sorrow.

“Are all young men coxcombs like that, I wonder?” she said.

“Hush, Nelly, you are always hard upon Frederick. Most of them are disposed that way, I am afraid; and not much wonder either when girls flatter their vanity. We must teach Innocent not to be so demonstrative,” said Mrs. Eastwood. She sighed again, remembering her friend’s warning. “Perhaps Jane Everard was not so much in the wrong, Nelly, after all.”

“I suppose people who take the worst view of everything and everybody must be in the right sometimes,” said Nelly indignantly--a saying in which there was more truth than she thought.