Chapter XXXVI: At Home

That was a day never to be forgotten at The Elms. Innocent had been partially soothed during the long Sunday by the constant presence of her aunt and Nelly, and the careful tendance of old Alice. They never left her all day long. She was brought back at her own piteous request from the room she had chosen for herself to the little room within Nelly’s, which had been first prepared for her, and there lay all day long, holding the hand of one or the other, in a state of prostration which it was painful to witness. So long as they were with her she was calm; but if left a moment alone, began to cry out about the eyes that were looking at her, the clutch on her arm. Sometimes she would doze and begin counting over and over again, counting “ten, eleven, fifteen,” and would wake and start with looks of horror, gazing wildly around her, not knowing where she was. Mrs. Eastwood’s expedition to Sterborne had been decided upon by the mother and daughter as they sat together whispering over the fire, when Innocent at last fell asleep. Only one of the two could go, and Mrs. Eastwood decided at once that hers must be the mission. “We must know what is hanging over us--we must ascertain what we have to expect,” she had said. Oh, in what labyrinths of woe and horror did their innocent simple life seem about to lose itself! For neither of them doubted Innocent’s story. They felt that nothing which she had imagined could have produced such an effect upon her, and besides, what could have suggested such a strange idea? Her imagination was not impressionable. The only explanation was that it must be true. Mrs. Eastwood accordingly, after her vigil, set off in the early morning with a heart overweighted with horrible anxiety, not knowing what might have happened before she returned, or what tumult she might meet when she got there. She was prepared to defend the unfortunate girl to the last gasp; but if this dreadful story were true, what could be done? To carry Innocent away at once out of the country, without an hour’s delay, was a thought which had occurred both to Nelly and herself, but this might make doubt into certainty, and precipitate the very danger they feared. Thus she went away, trembling with anxious fears, with traces in her face of the agitation she could not conceal; yet, at the same time, horribly on her guard, watching everybody and everything, to draw the secret if possible from others, and to conceal her own possession of it. The two whom she left behind to guard Innocent were almost more to be pitied than she was. They felt themselves the garrison of the room, to defend it against possible invasion. They locked the door of Nelly’s chamber, through which any visitor must come, and then unlocked it again, fearing to awake suspicion. At every noise they started, and clung to each other, fearing nothing less than the horrible approach of justice to carry a prisoner away; and how many noises there were in the house that day! Carriages drove mysteriously to the door and drove away again, from the very moment about daybreak when Mrs. Eastwood left them, until the dreary afternoon which felt as if it would never be over. In that afternoon all the people left in London, everybody the Eastwoods knew, came to call, and had to be sent away with messages curiously worded to baffle suspicion, if any suspicion existed. The morning’s post had brought a short note from Frederick announcing his wife’s death, and the telegram of inquiry about Innocent which he had sent off on Monday morning closely followed the letter; therefore Nelly felt justified in drawing down all the blinds, and announcing that the death of her sister-in-law made it impossible for her to receive visitors. The maid who had heard Innocent’s confession was the one who waited on them, who came with hard knocks at the door to tell of every new caller, and kept suspicious watch upon everything that passed. How frightened Nelly was of her! How eager to conciliate and turn her thoughts into other channels! But the woman was not to be moved into friendliness. She said nothing of her superior knowledge, but she betrayed a curiosity, and, at the same time, an amount of information which made the very blood run cold in Nelly’s veins. She had not forgotten what she heard; she did not set it down to delusion; she believed what Innocent had said. To the vulgar intelligence it is always so comprehensible that evil should have been done. No questioning as to motive or likelihood takes place in that region; that all men are most likely to go wrong is the one fundamental principle of their belief; they make no distinction between the kinds of crime, that this is more probable than the other. All they know is that guilt is always the most probable hypothesis, and that probably every accused person did what he was accused of, or worse, however unlikely the accusation might be.

And Innocent herself was restless and wretched; less stupefied, more living than on the previous day. She could not bear Nelly to leave her. She talked incessantly--she, whose habit it was never to talk at all, and her talk was all about the event which had made so tremendous an impression on her.

“Shall I always see her eyes?” she cried, holding Nelly fast. “She looked at me, and would not stop looking. Her eyes were terrible. She looked at me, yet she was dead. Oh, think! She was dead--and it was I who made her die----”

“Even if you did, oh, Innocent,” cried Nelly, worn out with excitement; “you did not mean it--it was an accident. She did it herself--it was an accident--it was not you.”

“But I wished her to die,” said Innocent, lifting her pale face with something of its old steadfastness of expression from her pillow. “I wished her to die.”

“But not like this--Innocent, you would not hurt any one, I know. I am sure you did not mean it. Oh, you must know you could not have meant it!” cried Nelly, and wept, leaning her head upon the bed. How she felt her loneliness in that terrible emergency! Her mother had left her, and there was no one else to stand by her; to none in the world dared she tell this tale. Oh, if Ernest had but been as he once was, as she had thought him to be; if she but dared to send for him as a girl might send for her affianced husband, and relieve herself of the burden which was too heavy for her to carry alone! How blessed, how happy must the women be who could do this, who could trust entirely in the love and faith of the men whom they had pledged their own faith to! But on the contrary, even while she realized so fully the happiness, the comfort of such confidence, Nelly’s prayer was that Ernest might be kept away from her--that he might not come to see her wretched suspense, or to spy into the terrible secret of the house. He did not love the house, though he had said he loved Nelly. The honour, the good name of the family, could never be trusted in his hands.

And so the lingering wretched day went on. I think Nelly was far more unhappy than Innocent was, though the girl’s whole being was shaken, for Innocent had Nelly to transfer her trouble to; and Nelly, poor Nelly, had no one. She had to bear up alone, and to bear up her cousin too; and with sickening fear she looked forward to the moment when her mother should return, and either relieve or intensify the strange suffering into which they had been suddenly plunged. It was about seven o’clock when Mrs. Eastwood came back, their usual dinner-hour--and Nelly had not ventured to neglect the dinner or to seem careless about it, lest the servants should suspect. Happily they were alone in the house, for Jenny had gone to his college, and Dick had accompanied the young freshman to Oxford, to see him off, according to his own phraseology, on his University career. “Thank God, the boys are away!” had been Mrs. Eastwood’s first exclamation; and Nelly had echoed it a hundred times during that terrible day. Thank God, they were out of the way altogether! Nelly ran down-stairs to meet her mother with an anxiety which was speechless and almost indescribable--feeling as if her own future, her own life, hung in the balance with Innocent’s. Mrs. Eastwood was giddy, and worn out with fatigue. She stumbled out of the cab into her daughter’s arms. There were lights in the little hall, and the housemaid stood about waiting to receive Mrs. Eastwood’s bag--the housemaid who had received Innocent--the one person in the house who shared their knowledge. Mrs. Eastwood was very pale, but the aspect of her countenance had changed.

“Oh, Nelly, let us thank God!” she said.

“Then it was all fancy--all delusion--it is not true!”

Nelly sank down upon a chair, feeling her limbs unable to sustain her. She had kept up till then--though for her too (she felt) it would have been death as well as Innocent. Now her head swam, her strength failed; she could scarcely see with her dim eyes her mother’s exhausted face.

“It is simple delusion,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “I cannot find even any foundation that she could have built such a fancy on--except that she was alone with--with poor Amanda, when the last paroxysm came on. Nelly, my darling, how pale you are! it has been too much for you----”

“You are pale too, mamma----”

“Yes, with fatigue--and relief--and thankfulness. Oh, Nelly, it seems wicked to be thankful when I think of that poor man who has lost his child.”

“Mr. Batty?” said Nelly, with a perceptible failure of interest. The introduction of a stranger into the conversation brought her back to ordinary life.

“My dear, she was his child,” said her mother, with gentle reproach.

“But you have made quite sure, perfectly sure?”

“I have seen everybody. Her nurse, her doctor, her father, even the maids--there is nothing in it--nothing. It must have been fright, imagination, nothing more.”

“Thank God!”

This conversation was quite spontaneous and natural; but it would not, I think, have taken place in the hall but for Jane’s presence, whom it was necessary to convince as well as themselves. But for this the mother and daughter would have concealed both their anxiety and their consolatory news till they were alone. And Jane, can it be doubted, knew this, and felt in the superiority of her unconscious cynicism and disbelief in human nature that the whole scene was got up for her benefit, and was a piece of acting. “As if I was to be taken in so easy,” she said to herself; “as if they could come over me like that!”

Innocent lay with her eyes fixed upon the door, longing and waiting for her kind nurses. It was old Alice who sat by her in the interval, holding her head, smoothing the wild locks from her forehead. “My poor lamb!” said Alice. The old woman’s heart was wrung with pity. I do not think she had ever believed Innocent’s story fully. Neither did she believe fully the vindication which Mrs. Eastwood was bringing. She held the poor child’s hand, and looked at her with soft pitying eyes. “My poor lamb!” To Alice, Innocent had always been a creature astray in the world; she did not wonder, like the rest, at this fatal complication in which her heedless feet had been caught. “I aye felt there was something coming,” Alice had said, and her calm had been a support to them all in their excitement. Now she stood aside, and gave up her place to her mistress with far less anxiety than Nelly had shown; but kept behind, listening and watching the one person in the world whom all three could rely upon for life or death. Mrs. Eastwood, weeping and smiling together, came forward, and threw herself on her knees by Innocent’s bed. She kissed her again and again with many sobs. “Put it all away out of your mind,” she cried, “my poor darling, my dear child! Put it all out of your mind. You are as innocent as your name; you had nothing, nothing to do with it. Do you understand me, Innocent? You had nothing to do with it. All you did was to be kind to her, good to her--not to bring her harm.”

“Then she is not dead?” asked Innocent, with a cry of joy.

“She is dead; but you are not to blame. Oh, Innocent, try to understand, try to believe me; you are not to blame. She died of a disease she has had all her life, not of anything that she took.”

“Ah! I gave it to her,” said Innocent, dropping back upon her pillows with sad conviction. “I was there, I know; you and the others could not see how it was. I gave it to her, and I know.”

“But, Innocent! listen to me. I have seen every one--the doctor, who must know best. And he told me exactly how it was, and what it was. He told me that he had looked for it for years--that he had always warned Mr. Batty how it must be. Innocent, you are not listening, you are paying no attention to what I say.”

“For I was there,” said Innocent. “Oh, do not be angry. I tried to count right; twice I threw it away because there was too much; the third time--oh, how can any one know but me? There was nobody else there--she in the bed, and I standing looking at her. And then all at once she was still--still like marble, and opened her eyes wide, and looked at me. She knew I did it, and I know. Except us two, who can tell in all the world? Oh, if you would be kind and kill me too!”

“Innocent! Innocent! It is her reason that has gone,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with tears. She stood before the unreasoning creature in all the impotence of fact against conviction. Nothing she could say or do would change the girl’s certainty; and yet she knew that this to which everybody bore witness, and not poor Innocent’s fatal fancy, must be the truth.

“Leave her to me, mem,” said old Alice. “She’ll be quiet now, and maybe sleep. She believes it; but the first effect is wearing off. Go and get your mamma some food and some wine, Miss Nelly, and make her lie down and rest. Leave this poor lamb to me, the first effect is wearing off.”

“But, Alice, there is no truth in it, not a word of truth----”

“I wouldna take it in that way,” said Alice; “there’s aye some truth. Poor lamb, there has been something for her mind to fix upon. I’m no the one to say what it was--an evil thought, or maybe just a shaking of the hand, two or three drops too much, as she says, of the sleeping draught. But there’s been something for her mind to fix on. It’s no for nothing that the creature is shaken and laid low like this.”

“It is a delusion,” said Mrs. Eastwood.

But old Alice shook her head.

Alice’s suspicion was very hard upon the ladies in their first burst of relief. It disturbed their conviction, their certainty.

“What Alice says is mere nonsense,” Mrs. Eastwood said, as she went down-stairs. “It is as clear as daylight that poor dear Innocent has been frightened out of her senses. There is nothing at all mysterious about the death. It is delusion, nothing more; you think so, Nelly, too?”

“Of course I think so, mamma,” said Nelly, with fervour. “I was always certain it must turn out so.” But, nevertheless, there was a piteous quaver in both their voices which had not been there when they went joyous and confident to Innocent’s room to set her mind at rest with their good news.

After they had eaten, for the first time almost since Sunday morning--a hurried cup of tea having been their chief support and sustenance in the interval--they sat together for half an hour over the fire with a hidden sense of misery in their hearts, though Mrs. Eastwood’s detailed narrative of all that had befallen her, and Nelly’s many comments and questions, the mutual support of two hearts which were as one, was not without its consolation. Before, however, this long and digressive talk was over Ernest Molyneux’s well-known knock was heard at the door. He had a habit of coming in thus late after his evening engagements. Mrs. Eastwood started up suddenly.

“I am not equal to seeing any one to-night,” she said. “You can tell Ernest I am tired; and Nelly--I don’t bind you, dear, if it will be a comfort to you; but say no more than you can help----”

Thus the mother hurried away, leaving Nelly alone to meet her lover. After all the weariness and horrible suspense of the day, here was a reward for her--a moment of consolation, do you say, gentle reader? Molyneux came in from a dinner-party in evening dress, and with the air of society about him. He had looked in at his club, he had heard the news, he was full of the atmosphere of that conventional and limited sphere which is called the world; and he found Nelly in her morning gown, rising with a nervous shiver from the fire, her face pale, her eyes anxious, a creature trembling with the fulness of a life much different from that of clubs and dinner parties.

“Hallo, Nelly!” he said, looking at her with surprise and tacit disapproval. This sort of carelessness (he would have said) was inexcusable. It shocked his best feelings--a dowdy already before her marriage, idling over the fire in a morning dress; it might be a dressing gown next time, and in married life what would be expected from one who made such a beginning? All these commentaries were in the look he gave her, and the involuntary comparison he conveyed by a glance at himself in the mirror,--himself all gorgeously arranged in purple and fine linen, and with a flower in his coat.

“I have not dressed, it is true,” she said hurriedly. “Innocent is ill, and I have been with her all day. You have not heard of our----trouble. Mamma has been at Sterborne since early this morning----”

“At Sterborne! I thought Innocent was there; and yet you tell me you have been with her all day----”

“Ernest,” said Nelly, breaking in suddenly, “Frederick’s wife is dead----”

“Frederick’s wife!”

“Yes, it happened late on Saturday. Innocent is somehow mixed up in it. I mean she was there, and saw it happen, and it has--almost--turned her brain.”

“She had not much to turn,” said Ernest carelessly. “But what does all this mean? Mrs. Frederick dead? You don’t mean to tell me, Nelly, that you were so much attached to her as to make a great trouble of that?”

“No, I suppose not,” said Nelly, looking at him wistfully, “but still, when any one dies--it is a--shock.”

She used her mother’s word unconsciously. Words for the moment had become to Nelly symbols, not for the expression, but for the concealment of her meaning; and oh! he surely might have read that there was more than her words said, in her eyes.

“Oh, a shock!” he said contemptuously. “Of course you would not have done anything to bring it about, but when Providence has been so kind as to deliver you from such an unpleasant connexion, you might be grateful at least. By Jove, what a lucky dog he is! he has had his swing, and as soon as the consequences threaten to be unbearable, here comes in some cold or something and carries her off.”

“Do you call that lucky?” said Nelly, somewhat woe-begone. “I suppose he loved her, or thought he did!”

“He has given up thinking anything of the sort for some time back, you may be sure,” said Ernest. “Well, Nelly, I suppose the conventional correct sort of thing is right for women. Granted that you have had a--shock. But Mrs. Frederick’s death cannot have made such a deep impression that you should look ready to cry at every word----”

“I suppose not,” repeated Nelly, with a painful smile. She was indeed “ready to cry,” but not for Mrs. Frederick’s death--for many reasons that he could little divine.

“It is not cheerful for a man to come a long round out of his way to see you and find you like this,” continued Molyneux. “I don’t want to find fault, heaven knows; but when you are of so much importance to me, I ought to be of a little importance to you, don’t you think, Nelly? A dowdy old gown, and your eyes red with gazing in the fire, or something else--and the lamp burning low, and a supper-tray or something on the table. Good heavens, what hugger-mugger ways you women fall into when you are left to yourselves! And what now, crying? Nelly, upon my word I don’t think I deserve this----”

“I am in trouble, Ernest,” said the poor girl, “and you are not. You can’t enter into my feelings. I do not want to annoy you with things that you have nothing to do with, as you once upbraided me for doing. Next time perhaps I shall be in better spirits. It is very foolish certainly to cry.”

Molyneux walked up and down the room in great impatience. He felt it was time to read a moral lesson to his future wife.

“I wish you would remember, dear,” he said, “that neither your life nor mine is to be limited by the walls of this house. You ought to think of something else beyond what’s going on here. And really I cannot see that the death of Frederick’s wife is much of an occasion for tears----”

“But Innocent was mixed up with it,” said Nelly timidly, with a feeling that he must know some time, that it would be better if he knew at once. “Innocent is--very ill--almost out of her mind----”

“Pshaw, Innocent!” he said; “if you open upon that chapter I shall go. I must warn you, Nelly, that I think you all make a great deal of unnecessary fuss over that girl.”

This was the result of poor Nelly’s faltering attempt to take her lover into her confidence. He went away shortly after, chafing at the folly of women; and she, poor girl, had a cry by herself in the dreary drawing-room before she went to share her mother’s vigil up-stairs.