Chapter XXXIX: An Appeal

“Innocent! you here, and alone--where are the others?” cried Sir Alexis, taking both her hands.

“I have come--because I promised,” said Innocent--“no one knows. You were to help me if I wanted help; I have come--for that. If I ever wanted to go away--to have some one to help me--that was what you said.--Surely you recollect?”

“Recollect! yes, I recollect,” he said, in agitation and dismay, and led her to a seat. He looked at her with a wonder which words could not express, and with a troubled sense of his accountability for having made such a promise which had never occurred to him at the moment it was made. To have her here in his house, all alone, was an indecorum which struck the old man of the world as it never would have struck Innocent. “My dear child, tell me what it is--I will walk home with you,” he said in his confusion, not knowing what other suggestion to make.

“But I do not want to go home,” said Innocent. “I came to you to help me. I have a great deal to tell you; but if they see me they will take me back, they will not understand. Oh, keep me here!--help me as you said----”

“Innocent! you bewilder me. What has happened--what can I do? But, whatever I can do, my dear child, it will be better for you to be at home.”

“I do not think so,” she said; “and I have been thinking a great deal--I have been very unhappy--there is a great deal, a very great deal to tell you. But for thinking of you, I do not know what I should have done. It was because you said so yourself that I have come----”

“Yes, I did say so,” he murmured in his confusion. He was confused, but she was perfectly calm; her eyes met his with their childish look of appeal; no consciousness, no embarrassment, nothing in them that was not simple as her soul. The man’s heart was touched beyond expression. “Yes, my dear,” he said, “I did say so--and this house is yours, and everything in it. You shall stay if you will--you shall do with it as you please. I am grieved--grieved to the heart that you should be unhappy. Have confidence in me--I will do everything for you that I could do for--my own child.”

“Thanks,” she said gently, “you were always kind;” and then seemed to fall into a half-reverie--a dreamy, self-absorbed pause. “I have so much to tell you,” she resumed, “I don’t know where to begin----”

“Tell me first why you have left home?” he asked.

A faint colour came upon her cheek--“That comes last of all,” she said, “and till you hear the first you will not understand. Frederick has come home. He lives with us again as he used to do; and last night--we talked--and he said he loved me. He must not love me, it is terrible so much as to think of it, after what has happened. And how could I live there and see him every day when that is what he is thinking? So I remembered you, and came to you to help me. Now, please, I want to go away--to stay there no longer--Take me, as you said you would--Take me away.”

“Innocent, do you understand what you are saying?” he asked, once more taking both her hands in his. Her words roused him out of all secondary feelings. There was no passion left in his steady, middle-aged soul for any woman; but this strange creature had charmed him by her strangeness, her rarity, the pathos of her beauty. She had refused him as few men are refused, and now had she come to offer herself to him? Middle-aged as he was, he could not refuse to be moved by a quickening thrill of excitement; nothing could have made him an impassioned lover, but he was glad to have her, and his heart grew fond and tender as he held her hands. “Innocent!” he repeated, “do you mean this? Think! Do not encourage me and then disappoint me. There is but one way that I can take you anywhere. You must marry me first; do you know?”

She shrank a little instinctively, looking at him all the time with serious eyes, which shrank not, and then said slowly, “Yes--I know.”

He was so startled by this assent, so taken by surprise, and, at the same time, so put upon his guard by all the decorums and punctilios of which she knew nothing, that he made no such response as a lover might have made. He uttered some broken exclamations in his bewilderment. The surprise was a joyful one; but yet it was a surprise, and brought as much wonder with it as pleasure. Then Sir Alexis remembered suddenly, in the midst of his confusion, what was owing to the self-respect of a woman who had thus rashly risked herself and her womanly credit. He kissed the small, slender, girlish hands one after another with reverential fervour. “Thanks, a thousand times, for your generous confidence,” he said. “I hope I am worthy of the trust. It is settled between us, then, of your free will, Innocent--of your free will? you will be my wife?”

“Yes,” she said once more, grave as if she were uttering the sentence of her own fate. He bent over her, and kissed her forehead; then rising hastily rang the bell.

“Go to my sister,” he said, giving his orders at the door of the room, orders which Innocent neither heard nor comprehended; “and ask her to come to me at once. She will do me a great service if she will be here in half an hour.” Then he came back, and sat down by his future bride.

“Innocent, my darling, now that this is settled between us you can speak to me with confidence. What is it? Frederick would not, could not, have been rude to you? He is a gentleman at least. It is well for me, however, that this happened; but tell me, dear, what it was,” he said, drawing her close to him. It seemed incredible to see her there in his house, bestowing herself upon him, she who only the other day had been so startled by his advances. He was flattered, touched, startled, full of wonder, not knowing what to do or to say.

“Yes,” said Innocent, with a sigh, “but there is a great deal to say first. Perhaps when I have told you, you will cease to care, you will be angry, you will not want me. You say No; but you don’t know what I have to say.”

“Nothing you can say will affect me, my dear,” he said, with almost fatherly fondness, and an incredulous, admiring smile.

“Ah, but you do not know!” cried Innocent; and then her voice fell into a low strain of narrative--gentle yet penetrating and clear as a bell. “I was sent down to the High Lodge----”

“Has it something to do with that?” said the new bridegroom, gradually glowing into elevation of feeling more fitted to the occasion. “Then let us put off talking of it. You have been ill, my poor child. Your pretty cheek is pale. You are looking worn and thin. You shall go to Italy, to Pisa, Innocent----”

“Ah!” she said, with a deep sigh, long drawn out, and tremulous; “but first you must hear.”

“Not first, my darling--after, when we have spoken of things more important. We will go to Longueville first, and then to Italy. You shall take me to your old house, and we will find your old Niccolo----”

“Ah!” she said again, this time with a slight nervous shiver; “but you must hear--first you must hear. When I tell you, perhaps it will change everything. I was sent to the High Lodge; but it is not about that--Frederick saw me in the church, and took me to see his wife.”

“Is it about Frederick and his wife? I am tired of Frederick. You are trembling, Innocent. Leave this story for another time. It cannot make any difference to me.”

“To see his wife,” said Innocent, going on in a low, steady tone, as if, once started, she had no longer power to stop. “She was ill. She used to have fits of being angry. She would raise her voice and scold every one, it did not matter whom, even Frederick. He was very kind to me--he always was very kind.”

“Enough about Frederick,” said Sir Alexis, with some impatience. “Innocent, you cannot think that your cousin is particularly interesting to me.”

“Do not be angry,” she said, with an appealing look. “He took me to his wife. I stayed with her a long time. She made me read. Sometimes she was angry, sometimes she was kind. I read and read; and then I fell asleep----”

“Selfish cur!” cried Sir Alexis, “to put the nursing of that terrible wife of his upon you.”

“I woke up to hear her scolding. Oh, how red she was! how her eyes blazed! She shook me and called to me, and cried that she would strike me. I was not half awake; I was trembling----”

“Poor Innocent, you are trembling now. My darling, what does all this matter? Another time will do----”

“I had to drop the drops,” said Innocent, sinking her voice lower; “I had never done it before. My hand shook and she scolded, and I could not. At last--oh, do not be angry--she seized it out of my hand, and drank it. Listen! she drank it--and then she died. Do you know what that means? I killed Frederick’s wife!”

“Good God! Innocent!”

“I was afraid--I was afraid!--I knew you would be angry!” she cried.

Sir Alexis withdrew the arm he had put round her. He was speechless with wonder and horror. “Good God!” he repeated, when he had found his voice; “what did you do?”

“What did I do?” she asked vaguely, looking at him with wonder and incomprehension.

“Yes; you alarmed the people, of course? You told them what had happened?--you had everything done that could be done? How strange that I should have heard nothing of all this!” he said, rising to his feet.

Innocent’s heart sank within her. She looked up at him with anxious eyes, into which the tears were coming. No one had been angry before. They had all wept over her, comforted her. But now, at last, he was angry in whom she had placed her last hope. Sobs began to rise in her throat; she deserved that he should be angry, she knew--yet she looked up at him with a pitiful appeal against his wrath. She was guilty of killing Frederick’s wife; but of all this that came after--this which she ought to have done, and did not--no one had ever told her. She made him no reply save by her look, by the big tears that rose into her eyes.

He had risen from her side rather in excitement and dismay than with any intention of deserting the poor child who had thus thrown herself upon him. When his eyes returned to her, and he met her piteous look, his heart melted. He came back and sat down by her again. “Poor Innocent,” he said, “poor little bewildered child! What did you do?”

“I came home,” she said, shivering. “When they told me she was dead, I could not stay any longer. It was dark night--very late. I never was out so late before. I came home----”

“And you never told them? you did not say what you had done?”

“Do not be angry!” said poor Innocent, bursting into sobs that were piteous to hear.

He took her into his arms, and did what he could to comfort her. Poor child! poor man, who had bound himself unawares to her foolish fate! He never doubted her story for a moment, nor supposed that she had told him anything less or more than the simple facts; and while he soothed her, and tried to subdue her sobs, his mind set to work seriously, thinking how a way was to be made for her out of this coil which she had woven about her own feet. He was not less sorry for her than the others had been, but his mind was cooler and more ready to act in this emergency. To suppose that she had killed Frederick’s wife, as she thought, was absolute folly, of course, he said to himself; but her flight, her silence as to what she had done, her hurried return home, howsoever effected, would be terribly against her. He set his whole faculties to work to find a way out of it. “I am not angry,” he said to her, “my poor child! how could I be angry? Innocent, Innocent, you must compose yourself. You must stop crying, and let me think what it is best to do.”

Just then the door opened hastily, and Mrs. Barclay bustled in smiling and rustling, and gay, with her ample silken skirts and cheerful countenance.

“What is all this, Alexis?” she said; “what do you want me for in such a hurry? What do you mean by having young ladies here? Ah, Innocent, my sweet! I had it borne in upon me that it must be you.”

Sir Alexis stumbled up to his feet, and Innocent checked her sobs as by magic, and turned wondering to the new comer. “My dear sister, you have judged rightly,” he said. “Innocent has come to me about a difficulty she is in. I will go now to your aunt and see about it, my darling, and my sister will take care of you. Lucilla, this is Lady Longueville that is to be. You are the first to know it; you will take care of my poor little darling? She is ill and nervous! give her some wine, or tea, or something, and make her lie down and rest.”

“That I will,” said kind Mrs. Barclay, “I’ll take care of her--the little puss! I knew this was coming. I said it all along from the very first day you saw her, Alexis; and I hope she’ll be a sweet little wife to you, as good as she’s pretty. I could not say more than that. My dear brother, how I wish you joy!”

And she kissed him heartily, and kissed Innocent, and laughed and cried in honest pleasure, the strangest contrast to the grave emotion, the piteous self-abandonment upon which she came like the very angel of commonplace life, good-humour, and kindly feeling. She went with her brother to the door, shaking hands with him in her satisfaction. “Do you mean to say there has been some quarrel with the Eastwoods?” she said in an undertone.

“No quarrel, but something, I don’t quite know what. Make her rest, Lucilla, and don’t allow her to talk. Let me find her well when I return--for then we must decide what to do.”

“Trust me, I’ll take care of her,” said the cheerful woman, and in another moment Innocent found herself all alone with this stranger, in a new world, deserted by everybody, everything strange around her, except the kind words which she was used to hear, though not from this voice. Her head swam, and there was a ringing as of bells in her ears. But amid the desolation and pain she felt, there was also a sense of calm pervading her whole soul. This time she had put off the burden bodily, and some one else had taken it up. She had a trust in Sir Alexis, which was produced perhaps by the different way in which he had treated her confession. He had gone away to do something, to deliver her somehow. To bring back Amanda to life, perhaps, and make the dream come to an end; the dream of death or the dream of life, it did not seem to matter much to Innocent which was brought to an end. For what was she herself from her first chapter till now but a dream--a very dream?

Sir Alexis, too, felt very much like a man in a dream as he took his hat and buttoned his coat with habitual composure, though his whole being was shaken by the extraordinary position in which he found himself, and the extraordinary revelation just made to him. He walked along the suburban road towards The Elms with his mind full of strange and painful deliberations. His pretty Innocent, the rare and strange creature whom he had coveted as the very crown and flower of all his rarities and costly possessions, was it possible that the first sign of his acquisition of her was this plunge into terrible realities affecting life and death? He took a different view of the matter from that which had occurred to the Eastwoods. He never doubted that things were as she had said, and that Amanda’s death had really been caused by the excessive opiate. Such things had happened ere now, a painful and haunting recollection, no doubt, to those unhappily involved in them, but not coming within any possible range of crime, or calling for the penalties of justice. To any creature in her senses the situation, though most painful, would have been simple enough. Had Innocent alarmed the house at once, had she called for instant help, and informed the attendants what had happened, she might indeed have regretted and grieved all her life, but she would have been delivered from all blame. But--God help the poor child!--she had done everything, on the contrary, to draw suspicion upon her, to give an air of real guilt to her wild proceedings. Sir Alexis could not even make out how it was that up to this time no notice had been taken of such an extraordinary incident. Had the family concluded to hush it up? had they managed to bribe or intimidate the doctor to hush all reports? That seemed almost incredible too. As he went quickly along he planned out and resolved upon a totally different style of proceeding. To have the matter investigated at once, and have Innocent’s real share in it fully ascertained, seemed the only expedient possible. Without that what horrors might hang over her; what accusations ready to be brought up in after days if she made any enemies, or if he made any enemies, which was more likely! Thus he went on with a very anxious face to The Elms, where Innocent’s absence had just been discovered with consternation. Nelly had been searching for her through the garden, and came in breathless through the conservatory, as Sir Alexis entered by the drawing-room door.

“She is not in the garden,” he heard Nelly say, in a tone of fright and anxiety. The ladies were both pale, and looked at each other with miserable embarrassment when he came in. Here was one of those domestic agonies which women have to suffer so often--a terrible emergency demanding all their thoughts, and an indifferent visitor suddenly thrust into it, to whom they must say nothing, betray nothing. Sir Alexis relieved them however at once of their pain.

“You are anxious about Innocent?” he said. “I have come at once to relieve you. She is with me--that is, with my sister--she is quite safe----”

“With you, Sir Alexis? Where did you find her? She must have gone out--for a walk--” said Mrs. Eastwood, struggling to show neither her great surprise nor her still greater relief.

“We are old friends,” cried Sir Alexis, taking Mrs. Eastwood’s hand. “We have known a great deal about each other for years. Do not let it vex you that I know this. Innocent has told me everything; she has put herself in my hands.”

“Innocent--has put herself in your hands?--Are we dreaming, Nelly?” cried Mrs. Eastwood, struck by the apparent slight, the apparent abandonment, and looking at her visitor with mingled offence, mortification, and wonder. “Do you mean that she has gone to you--from us---- Sir Alexis, this cannot be the child’s doing. It is an unpardonable interference--an--intrusion----”

“Hear me first,” he said. “I am guiltless in the matter. It _is_ the child’s own doing. Something frightened her--about Frederick--I cannot tell you what. I had told her that I was at her service if ever she wanted me. You know how one says such words. She came to me this morning. She has consented to be my wife--” he went on gravely, after a pause--“of her own will--and she has told me all her story. Naturally I have come to you at once----”

There was a pause--they looked at each other, each uncertain what was the next step to be taken--the next word to be said.

“She has--consented----” Mrs. Eastwood repeated in dismay. “Sir Alexis, I am her nearest relation, her only guardian;--I cannot let you suffer for the sake of honour. When you spoke to her first there was no such cloud upon her, poor child. I cannot let you take our burden upon yourself.”

“I do not object to the burden,” he said gravely--“with her I accept it, such as it is. I do not ask for your sanction, because you gave it formally--you authorized my addresses to her. The question is now what can we best do to set this painful business at rest--to prove that it was mere accident--a chance that might happen to any one----”

“It is a delusion!” cried Mrs. Eastwood. “A mere delusion! there is nothing in it. Oh, Sir Alexis, believe me, though my children doubt. I hastened down to Sterborne as soon as Innocent came back; I got there on Monday morning--I saw all Mrs. Frederick’s family, every one concerned; the doctor assured me positively that she died of heart disease, as he had expected for years she would. Nobody had the slightest thought of Innocent as any way involved. There is not a suspicion--not an idea--in any mind but her own.”

Sir Alexis had risen as she began this statement, and gradually went forward to her, holding out his hands. Mrs. Eastwood rose, too, half sobbing, as she concluded, and gave him hers.

“Is this true?” he cried, with the water in his eyes, the unspeakable sense of relief proving to him, for the first time, what a horrible weight had been lying on his heart.

“Absolutely true!” she said, through her tears--feeling as she said it convinced by his faith, and by the intensity of her own words. What could be more sure? Every word she said to him was fact, as distinct and clear as it could be expressed--and yet----

Sir Alexis’ relief was so great that he rose into instant exhilaration and happiness. He dismissed the subject for the moment, and unfolded to Innocent’s guardian all he meant and wished to do. No end could be served, he said, by delay. He wished to marry her as soon as possible, to take her to Longueville, to Italy, to restore the freshness of her mind by new scenes. And the others, glad of the relief, entered into this lighter talk, and became almost merry over Innocent’s prospects. Yet Sir Alexis left The Elms almost with as grave a countenance as he had entered it. When the conversation returned to the subject of poor Innocent’s “delusion,” the further information they gave him brought back painful uncertainty to his mind. Was it simple delusion after all--or was there something true at the bottom--something which might still produce grief and sorrow to her, unhappy, and to all concerned?