Chapter XXXVIII: Into Further Deeps

When Mrs. Eastwood came back she found that Innocent had gone to bed with a headache, and Frederick, with an agitated face, sat silent, brooding over the fire by himself. He had no book nor paper to occupy him, and his face was clouded, as it had been in the days of excitement before his marriage, or those of unhappiness which followed after. He said little while Nelly was in the room, but suggested crossly that she should go and look after Innocent. “If you will take the trouble,” he said. His tone was full of irritation, as it had been in the old times, but seldom in the new. Mrs. Eastwood made Nelly a sign to obey. She saw at once what had happened. She went and stood by her son’s side as Nelly went up-stairs.

“What does this mean, mother?” he said, turning moody eyes, which looked red and feverish, upon her. “What does it mean? Innocent has been raving about something I don’t understand. Surely anything which concerns me so much might have been told me. For God’s sake! what does it mean?”

“A delusion,” said Mrs. Eastwood quietly, laying her hand upon his shoulder.

“A delusion! It is too serious, too terrible, to be a delusion. She must be mad. The shock must have turned her brain.”

“It is mere delusion,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with tears. “I went down to Sterborne, as you know, and inquired into everything. You remember that terrible morning, Frederick? You thought I went out of regard for your wife and her father. I went for Innocent’s sake;--now I can tell you. I inquired into everything. It is a mere delusion; there is no foundation for it, nothing to rest upon. But I cannot chase it from the poor child’s mind, and I knew she would tell you some day. I would not have had you know for much; but now that you do know, you must help me with Innocent. She must be convinced.”

“Tell me the whole,” said Frederick; and she sat down by him by the fireside, and told him everything, omitting only by instinct to mention the presence of the housemaid when poor Innocent made her first confession. He drew from her by degrees every particular of the poor girl’s arrival at home, her consistent story, from which she had never departed, and the little phial which had been clasped in her hand. This she showed him, taking it out of a desk in which she had locked it up. It had still a few drops of the opiate in it, and was labelled with the name of Mrs. Frederick Eastwood, and the date. The sight of this strange piece of evidence made Frederick shiver. It made him feel strangely for a moment, as if Amanda still lived, and could have still such drugs administered to her. “It would be better to destroy this,” he said, taking it out of his mother’s hand. She took it back from him anxiously, and put it in the desk again.

“Why should we destroy it?” she said.

“It is the sort of evidence that would tell,” he said, with once more a nervous shiver.

“Oh, Frederick!” cried his mother, “you don’t mean to tell me that you think--it may be true?”

“I don’t know what to think,” he said gloomily. “Mother, I am very unhappy. I care more for Innocent than I ever thought I did. God help us--it sounds very real. Why should she have taken such a thought into her simple mind?”

“God knows!” said his mother, and, moved in her turn, she began to cry, all her doubts and fears returning at the mere thought that some one else thought it possible, thought it true. They sat together over the dying fire, and talked it over in detail, entering into every particular, every recollection. They drew close together in mutual confidence; but they gave each other no comfort. Broken words that had seemed to have no connexion with anything actual came floating back to their memories. Frederick even remembered, with the feeling as of an arrow which had suddenly struck and stung him, the words he himself had heard as he entered his wife’s room on that eventful night, “Can judges get people off?” and both of them were well aware how freely, how simply Innocent had announced her dislike to Frederick’s wife. I do not believe that Frederick had ever been so deeply affected in his life; but even at that moment there came into his mind a certain sombre consciousness of satisfied vanity which made things look still more black for Innocent. “Her known affection for me will supply the motive at once,” he said; his very vanity made him believe the whole strange tale. His mother wavered between wondering doubts how if it were quite untrue such an idea could have come into Innocent’s mind, taking possession of it so strongly--and a sense that it was impossible, that nothing so hideous and terrible could be. But Frederick, by mere stress of conviction that Innocent loved and had always loved him, found possibility, reality in the story at once. He did not even believe her own dreary assertion that she had not meant it. With the certainty of intuition he felt that, being alone with her rival, some irresistible impulse which she perhaps scarcely understood had come over her, some impulse which, being but momentary, had faded perhaps from her recollection. He was very miserable. If ever self-complacency brought its own punishment, this did. His unhappiness was intense in proportion to his conviction, which allowed of no doubt. “What shall we do with her?” he said.

“Oh, Frederick!” said Mrs. Eastwood, “you take everything for proved; and nothing is proved, not even the very first step. Neither you nor any one at Sterborne had the slightest suspicion. Nobody thought of Innocent as implicated. The death arose from natural causes, which had been foreseen, understood. The doctor himself----”

“Ah, the doctor,” said Frederick, “perhaps I ought to see the doctor. But it might excite suspicion. The doctor was going away--he had got an appointment somewhere abroad.”

“But I saw him,” said Mrs. Eastwood, “he was most distinct in what he said to me--more medical than I could understand--but very clear. He said he had expected it for years, that Mr. Batty knew--that you even had been told----”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Frederick, “that was all very well. Her heart was affected; and very fortunate it is for us that such an idea existed. But, mother, Amanda, poor girl, has been in a much greater passion with me than she ever could have been with Innocent, and did not die. Why did she die just then, with no one else present, and with this business about the opiate? I wish you would throw that little bottle into the fire. It is the sort of thing which would affect a stupid juryman more than evidence.”

“Oh, Frederick!” said Mrs. Eastwood, trembling and crying; “for God’s sake, don’t talk as if it could ever come to that.”

“Why shouldn’t it come to that? If Batty once gets hold of the story, he will not let it rest, I promise you. He knows I hate him, and have always done so, and he would believe it. Unfortunately, poor Amanda was aware of Innocent’s feeling for me.”

“Frederick,” said Mrs. Eastwood, “Innocent, I am sure, had no feeling for you that an innocent girl might not have for her first friend, her protector, her relation----”

Mrs. Eastwood was not so sure of this as she professed to be, and the want of certainty showed itself in her voice. And Frederick was convinced to the contrary, and felt that he was right, whatever any one might say.

“You did not always think so, mother,” he said. “I wish with all my heart it had not been so--but you must see that this feeling on Innocent’s part changes at once the whole character of the story. It gives it a motive, it makes it possible. A girl would not do such a thing for nothing; but the moment you supply the motive----”

“Frederick, for heaven’s sake! you speak not only as if she had done it, but as if she had meant to do it----”

“I speak as Batty would think, and as his lawyer would put it,” said Frederick, with sombre certainty. “The best thing we could do, mother, would be to send her away. If she were taken to some out-of-the-way place--in Italy, perhaps, as she knows Italy----”

“I cannot give up my poor child’s cause like this,” cried his mother. “Send her away as if she were guilty--banish her from her home----”

“It will be easier, you may take my word for it, to prevent an inquiry than to defend her if once accused,” said Frederick. “To have her accused would be ruin and misery to us all. I might be brought in. Don’t you see that mere acquittal would do little for us? The scandal is the terrible thing; and everybody would believe it, whether it was proved or not.”

Such was the consultation going on down-stairs while Innocent, strangely moved and agitated, lay in her little white bed looking at Nelly. The girl was not as she had been before; new thoughts were in her mind, new troubles in her heart. But she could not confide these to her cousin. She said simply, “I have told Frederick,” as Nelly kissed her and asked after her headache. No such pretences as headaches were possible to her simple soul.

“You have told Frederick?--Oh, Innocent!--of this delusion, this fancy----”

“Of what happened,” said Innocent, “and he was very kind to me; he was not angry. Nelly, tell me--will he always live here----”

“I suppose so,” said Nelly, “but never mind Frederick. Innocent, you promised not to think of this--not to talk of it. It is a dream, a delusion. Mamma told you so. You promised to think of it no more----”

Innocent shook her head with a faint smile. “I cannot help it,” she said. “But you are sure Frederick will stay here always, Nelly?”

“Oh, what has Frederick to do with it?” said Nelly impatiently; and she kissed her little cousin again and bade her go to sleep. When she had got to the door, however, her heart smote her that she had been unkind. She came back with tears in her eyes.

“What have you done, you poor child,” she said, “that you should be tormented like this? Oh, Innocent, say your prayers and ask God to put it away out of your mind.”

“I will try,” said Innocent.

Nelly went to her own room and wept--out of grief, out of pity, out of impatience and impotence. Everything was out of joint, and nothing poor Nelly could do would set it right. When her mother came up some time after and told her the scope of her conversation with Frederick, and his suggestion to send Innocent away, Nelly blazed into generous momentary passion. “Give her up altogether!” she cried. “Send the poor child away whom God has trusted to us----”

“That is what I feel, dear,” said Mrs. Eastwood, “but Frederick says----”

“Oh, I don’t want to know what Frederick says! I am sick of Frederick--and all men,” said poor Nelly. “Mamma, let us all go away somewhere and hide ourselves from this horrible world----”

“Nelly, Nelly,” said her mother with a smile, “which of us would tire soonest of that? You have other bonds which you forget in your haste--and I have the boys.”

When Nelly was told of these other bonds she held her peace, with a flush upon her face. Yes, she had other bonds, and of all the four unhappy people who lay down under the kindly old roof of The Elms on that agitating night, she perhaps was the most unhappy. A heart running over with love, pity, generous impulses, but obstructed wherever her feet turned, unable to leaven her little world with her own generous thoughts, unable to convince it of what seemed so clear to her, bound down by meannesses, by selfishness at which her soul revolted. The others were free more or less to follow their own instincts, but for her she was in bonds--a spirit imprisoned, writhing under the cords that tied her, struggling with her fate.

“Oh, Nelly,” said Mrs. Eastwood before she went to bed, “what can have become of John Vane? He is the one man in the world I could talk to about it all, and who could tell us what was best.”

Nelly made no reply. Her thoughts, too, had travelled perhaps the same way, but even while they did so it made her heart sore and bitter to think that it was John Vane, and not another, who was “the one man in the world” to help them in their terrible strait.

Innocent slept little that night. Something new was working in the girl’s mind. All the household almost without exception believed that she had been “in love” with Frederick from the time he brought her home; and Frederick himself believed it most completely of all, as has been shown. But Innocent herself had never thought of love, had known nothing of it, nor what it was. She had learned it for the first time that night. The discovery she made was not of anything in herself. She, in her simplicity, in her preoccupation, was as quietly still and affectionate in her emotions as she had ever and always been. But Frederick’s looks, his words, his touch, had startled her in her unbroken virginal calm. He had told her he loved her. Perhaps under other circumstances Innocent would have received this with childlike gratitude, and have said to herself simply that he was “kind”--how kind he was! But there was something in this interview which made so gentle an interpretation of the words impossible. Innocent felt without knowing that there was a difference, and the difference alarmed her, she could not tell why. It did not occur to her to think that the outburst was momentary, nor could she have believed that Frederick himself at that very moment was plotting her banishment. The impression made on her mind was not complex but single. He loved her not as the others loved, with a love which Innocent vaguely knew led to other ties and other consequences. This thought did not move her, as does the first suggestion of love which is destined to be happy; it filled her with fright and pain. She felt by instinct that between her and Frederick there was a gulf which could never be passed--a ghost, which kept them apart from each other; yet they were here, under the same roof, compelled to meet daily--and he loved her! The more she thought of it the more alarmed and sick at heart Innocent grew. How could she avoid him, resist him, put away from her all the old habits which had grown into her life? She who had been used to put her hand in his, to take his arm, to talk to him more freely than to any one else--all this would be impossible if he loved her. She would shrink from the warmer incomprehensible sentiment, but how could she shrink from Frederick? What would they all say? What would they think if she, who had so clung to him, were to turn from him? she could not do it. With an imagination newly awakened, which had sprung up suddenly in self-defence, she saw herself constrained to do as Frederick pleased: led with him where he chose to lead her, drawn into new circumstances which she did not understand, yet shrank from. To put these vague sentiments of fright, repulsion, and alarm into words is to do them wrong, and to give to them a distinctness which they did not possess, but words are the only medium I have for conveying to the reader any idea of the state of confusion, shame, pain, and terror which vaguely filled the mind of Innocent. This terror of Frederick’s love was, perhaps, quite undue and unnecessary, since Frederick had already realized the necessity for quenching anything like love for Innocent, and thought himself quite strong enough to do so. But perhaps it was some subtle consequence of the mistaken notion he had so long entertained of her love for him, which produced this mistaken notion on her part of his love for her, and became the motive of the most decided act of her life. She did not sleep. The long, long winter night, which felt as if it would never end, spun out its lingering hours of darkness, while all these things passed darkly through her mind--but as she waked and dreamed there suddenly occurred to her a way of escape--a prospect of help. She had made a promise of which no one knew--a promise which had never before recurred to her mind from the moment she made it; this promise suddenly returned to her memory in her moment of deepest darkness. She had promised if she needed help, if she wanted change--a thing impossible at that moment, impossible a few hours ago, but now so real and so necessary--to seek it from one man; not the friend for whom Mrs. Eastwood sighed, whom Nelly bitterly and against her will involved in her thoughts; a saviour, whose name occurred to poor Innocent now as a sudden and only refuge in her trouble. When she thought of him, and remembered her promise to him, Innocent fell asleep. She had some one in whose hands she could place her difficulty, and at once her own labouring mind, unused to any such burdens, was eased.

She said nothing to any one of her purpose. She felt instinctively that had she spoken of it she would have been prevented from carrying out her intention. She did nothing, and said nothing, even to Alice, until next afternoon, when Mrs. Eastwood and Nelly went out on some necessary business. They thought it too cold for Innocent, and placed her in an easy chair by the fire, with the storybook which Frederick had been reading to her on the previous night. If anything had been wanting to confirm her resolution, this book would have done it. As soon as they were gone she went to her room and dressed herself carefully. She took care to make no appeal to Alice, who would have stopped her, she knew, and dressed herself without aid, taking out her best dress, the new mourning which became her pale and dreamy beauty. No one observed her as she went out, and very swift and straight, looking neither to the right hand nor the left, she pursued her way. She had gone with Mrs. Eastwood and Nelly more than once to the house where Sir Alexis Longueville had so often something to show his friends--now a new picture, now a rare flower, now some costly and elaborate piece of furniture. He was fond of everything that was rare and costly, and his bachelor house was one of the sights which connoisseurs delighted to be admitted to. It was not very far from The Elms, a detached house surrounded by a garden, which, in its way, was a sight too, notwithstanding the near neighbourhood of London smoke. Sir Alexis lived by himself in this dainty dwelling-place. It was like a child to him; he was constantly making alterations, projecting this and that, improving upon the unimprovable; and the house was a show-house. Nevertheless, when Innocent, young and alone, made her way to the door, and asked for Sir Alexis, the man who opened it to her was startled. Sir Alexis had not always been the irreproachable middle-aged gentleman he was now, and his old servant, as well as his old friends, recollected passages in his life which were not such as to make the visit of a young girl alone a natural occurrence. The servant stared at Innocent, and told her that his master was engaged, and made various excuses. But Innocent was imperious to all such hesitations. She would not tell what her business was, she would not be put off. “Tell him I want him,” she said, walking in, in her simplicity. Such a girl, absolutely pre-occupied, unconscious of any evil, pursuing her object without _arrière pensée_, without fear or thought of harm, is, I believe, safe to go over the world without let or hindrance. She hesitated only when the man asked her her name. “Say it is Innocent,” she answered at last, with a look of perfect gravity which checked the smile which began to form about his lips.

“A young lady?” said Sir Alexis, when the message was delivered to him. “Alone? it must be some mistake.”

“No mistake, Sir Alexis,” said the man, suffering the incipient grin to show itself, but with a cautious watchfulness lest it should be out of place. “When I asked if there was any name, she gave me a queer name. I don’t know if she’s all right _here_. She bid me to tell you, Sir Alexis, as how it was Innocent----”

“Innocent!” said Longueville, starting up. “You idiot, why did not you tell me? Where have you put her?” and with a haste and anxiety which put all thought of a grin out of his attendant’s head, Sir Alexis rushed out, thrusting away the man, whose mind changed on the subject in the twinkling of an eye.