Chapter XLV: The First Deserter

The next morning after this event, Ernest Molyneux, with a newspaper in his hand, jumped out of a hansom at the door of The Elms and rushed into the house. The door was open; a certain air of agitation and excitement was about the place, some trunks stood in the hall, corded and labelled as for a journey. He told Brownlow, who came out of the dining-room at the sound of his arrival, to send Miss Eastwood to him directly, and made his way into the drawing-room, which was empty. Empty, arranged with all its usual peaceful order and grace, full of sunshine, sweet with the flowers which looked in brightly through the round window-door of the conservatory, with novels from Mudie’s on the table, Mrs. Eastwood’s work-basket, and Nelly’s knitting. Nothing can excuse untidiness in an English house--the housemaid must do her duty whether we live or die, or even if things happen to us which are worse than life or death. Molyneux was confounded by the tranquil comfort, the brightness and calm of this shrine of domestic life. It checked him in his eagerness and heat. The horrible news in the paper seemed to lose all appearance, all possibility of truth. He calmed down. He asked himself what he would have to say to Nelly after demanding her presence in such hot haste if this rumour was not true. A little shame, a little compunction came into his mind. He had not come here to console, but to reproach. He had to wait for some time before she came, and in the meantime the absolute stillness of the house, the tranquillizing warmth and brightness of the sunshine, worked upon him with the most curious effect. He became more and more ashamed of himself, and I do not know what moral result might have been produced in the end had Nelly delayed her coming much longer, or had her own demeanour carried out the effect of this scene. But Nelly came in with red eyes and pale cheeks, in the simplest of travelling dresses, with this look of mingled excitement and exhaustion which more than anything else betrays “something wrong” in the history of a family. She came in eagerly, almost running to him, with that instinctive and unconscious appeal which is conveyed by visible expectation, and which it is so difficult to disappoint, her hands outstretched, her eyes ready to fill with tears. The sight of her emotion, however, had an effect upon Molyneux which totally counteracted the calm of the house. It restored him to his position of criticism and superiority. He took her hands, it is true, and even kissed her cheek, though with something of that indifference which comes with habit. But he made no demonstration of sympathy. He said hastily, “Nelly, I am come to you for information. Have you seen what is in the papers? Surely, surely, it cannot be true!”

The check and sudden revulsion which comes to all who expect too much came to Nelly. She withdrew her hands from him. Her tears, which were ready to fall, went back somehow. She retreated a little from his side; but her pride supported her. At that moment and for ever Nelly closed the doors of her heart against her lover. It is true indeed, as the reader will perceive, that she threw them open again once, and once only, not knowing that her decision had been made, and believing there was still a place of repentance; but certainly, though she was not aware of it, those doors closed now with a crash of sound which rang in her ears and made her deaf to everything else. She thought for the moment, however, that the ringing in her ears meant only weariness and pain, and sat down, to keep herself from fainting, in her mother’s chair.

“If you mean is it true that Innocent, poor Innocent, has done what they say,” said Nelly, low and trembling, “but all the rest is true enough. They have put her in---- Oh me! Oh me! how can I say it? It is those dreadful people, whom Frederick bound himself to for a curse to us all.”

“But,” said Molyneux--he was more bewildered than I can say to find himself uncontradicted, to know that anything so incredible was really true--“but those dreadful people, as you call them, could not do this without some cause, something to build upon. For God’s sake, tell me! How do they dare? Is there any foundation?”

“Mamma went down to inquire the very day,” said Nelly dreamily, repeating the old story; “she lost no time. She came back saying it was sheer delusion, nothing more. There was no foundation. Every one was quite satisfied that Mrs. Frederick died of heart-disease. Nobody, except Innocent herself, ever dreamt of anything of the kind.”

“But Innocent herself--what was it that she dreamt of? What was the delusion?”

“She had to give a sleeping draught, and she gave--too much,” said Nelly simply. “She was frightened to death. She left the house instantly, and came home. Oh, how well I recollect that dreadful morning. She came in accusing herself, and Jane heard what she said. Ernest, could such evidence harm her? Is it possible? Her own wild idea, nothing more.”

“I am bewildered by all this,” said Molyneux. “You have known it ever since Mrs. Frederick’s death, and I have been allowed to---- You have never breathed a syllable to me.”

“Oh, how could I?” cried Nelly. “Think, to put it into words was like giving some sanction to it; and you were not fond of her as we were. It was on my lips a hundred times. But, Ernest, you were not fond of her.”

“No, thank Heaven!” he said, walking up and down the room. The chief feeling in his mind was anger, mingled with a certain satisfaction in the sense that he had a right to be angry. “I hope, at least, Longueville knew,” he added, after a pause. “I hope you think he, being fond of Innocent, had the right----”

“Ernest,” said Nelly piteously, moved by one of those last relentings of love which cannot, for very pity, consent to its own extinction, “surely you have some feeling for us in our great trouble. It was because poor Innocent told him, appealed to him, that they ever married at all. He was very, very kind, very good--to us all.”

“Apparently, then, everybody has been considered worthy of your confidence but myself,” said Molyneux; but, notwithstanding, the knowledge that Sir Alexis knew made him think better of the business. Longueville, he thought, was not such a fool as to have married a girl against whom there was real evidence of such a tremendous character. “It is a very good thing that you have Longueville to depend upon,” he said, after a pause. “Of course, it is chiefly his business; of course, he has been making his arrangements to meet the danger; he will get the best counsel--the best----”

“Ernest,” said Nelly, rising from her seat. She put her hands together unconsciously as she went up to him--“Ernest! We have often talked of what might be, if something really worth your while should offer; not mere troublesome law-business, but something that would really exercise your mind--something worthy of you. And, Ernest, would it not be all the more great, the more noble, if it was to save an innocent creature from destruction? You know her almost as well as we do,” cried the girl, the big tears running down her pale cheeks. “You have seen her grow from almost a child. You know how simple she is, how innocent, like her name. Perhaps she was slow at first to see that we loved her. Perhaps we did not go the right way. But you have seen it all, Ernest; you have known her from the first--from a child. She never was anything but a child. And you are eloquent--you could bring any one through whose cause you took up. Oh, what a power it is--and when you can use it to save the innocent, Ernest! I do not say for my sake----”

She stood before him more eloquent in her tears than he, with all his cleverness, could ever have been, with one soft appealing hand on his arm, and the other raised in passionate entreaty. Her eyes were fixed upon him with a prayer as passionate--all Nelly’s heart, all her soul, was in this appeal. It was for Innocent--to save her; it was for Ernest--to save him; it was for herself, poor Nelly, to change her despairing into life and hope. Never was face more full of emotion than the glowing, moving, tearful face, every line quivering, every feature inspired, which she turned upon him. Her very look was a prayer intense and passionate. But opposite to this entreating face was one which lowered like the skies when everything is black with storm. Ernest shut himself as heaven itself seems to close sometimes upon the prayers of the despairing. He stood obdurate, unmoving, unmoved, looking at her with blank brows, answering with a hard abstinence from all emotion the imploring look, the impassioned words. Nelly saw how it was before she had ceased speaking; but she repulsed the chill of certainty from her heart, and prayed on with eyes and gestures, even when she felt herself to be praying against hope.

At last he threw off, not roughly, but crossly, her hand from his arm, and, as he himself would have said, “put a stop to it.”

“Nelly,” he said, “are you mad? What do you mean? Longueville, you may be sure, has secured counsel already; I suppose he has not been taken by surprise as I have been? And supposing I could do it, would you have me begin my career under such unfavourable circumstances, on the spur of the moment, for the sake of mere family connexion? I have often heard that women carried their feeling for their own family a very long way; but to prefer this girl and her folly to the interests of your future husband--to ask _me_ to commit myself---- Are you mad, Nelly? Why, my interests are yours--my character is yours. You should beg me rather to keep out of it--you should keep out of it yourself, for my sake. What is Innocent to us?--a silly, creature, half idiot, an ungrateful little minx, fond of nobody but Frederick, and, I daresay, capable of striking a bold stroke for him, as she seems to say she has done. Don’t look at me as if you would eat me. I don’t say she has done it. I know nothing but what you have told me.”

Nelly shrank away from him to her mother’s chair. A burning blush covered her face; her tears dried up as if by scorching heat. Her eyes flashed and shone; her whole aspect, her very figure seemed to change.

“I may ask at least one thing of you,” she said; “and that is to forget what I told you. I was very foolish to say so much. Women are prone to that, I suppose, as you say; but I may trust to your honour to forget it? not to repeat it to any one? I shall be very thankful if you will promise that.”

“Why, Nelly!” he cried, “_I_ repeat what you have said to me! You don’t take me for a scoundrel, I hope, because I don’t act upon everything you say----”

She smiled faintly, and bowed her head, accepting the assurance; and then between these two, who had loved each other, who were betrothed and bound to each other, there ensued a pause. She said nothing, she did not even look at him; and he looking at her, feeling somehow that greater things had happened even than those which appeared, cast about in his mind how to speak, and did not know what to say.

“Nelly,” he said, at last, clearing his throat, “I see you are angry with me; and, though I think you are rather unreasonable, I am very sorry to vex you. I would do as much as most men for the girl I love; but I should be compromising your prospects, as well as my own, were I to plunge into this business without reflection, as you tell me. I am sure, when you are cool and able to think, you will see the justice of what I say.”

Still Nelly made no answer. She could not trust herself to speak; her heart beat too loudly, her breath came too fast. But to him it seemed obduracy, determined and conscious resistance, like his own.

“If this is how you take it, of course I can’t help myself,” he said; “but you are very unjust--and unreasonable. A woman may stretch her demands too far. There is much that I would be glad to do for your sake; but, even for your sake, it is best that I should employ my own judgment; and I cannot do what that judgment condemns----”

“No,” said Nelly, “No--I did not say for my sake; but if I did it would not have mattered. No, you must use your own judgment. But will you excuse me now,” she added, after a momentary pause, “if I say good-bye? We are going--to Sterrington directly, and I have still some things to do.”

“To Sterrington! To mix yourself up with Innocent, and trumpet your connexion with her to all the world!”

“To stand by one of mamma’s children in her trouble,” said Nelly, looking at him with tears shining in her eyes, and with a smile which increased his exasperation a hundredfold. “I am sorry you do not understand. Mamma’s place is with Innocent, and mine with mamma.”

“This is folly, Nelly,” he cried, “absolute folly. She has her husband to look after her. Have I no claims? and for my sake you ought not to go.”

She rose, holding out her hand to him, still with that pale smile upon her face. “Let us part friends,” she said. “This is not a time to discuss any one’s claims. What you cannot do for my sake I will not do for yours. Good-bye.”

“Is this final?” he cried, in rage and dismay.

“It would be best so,” said Nelly gently.

But she did not know how he went away. She kept her composure, and appeared, so far as he could make out, as resolute as she was calm; but there was a dimness in Nelly’s eyes and a ringing in her ears. The room seemed to swim about her, and his face, which flamed into sudden rage, then went out, as it were, like an extinguished light. Gradually the darkness that closed over everything lightened again, and she found he had gone. She had not fainted nor lost consciousness, but a mist had overspread her soul and her thoughts, and all that was done and said. She sat still where he left her, quite silent, coming to herself. She forgot that she had things to do, and that it would soon be time for the train. She sat still, realizing what had happened, looking, as it were, at what she had done. She was not sorry but stunned, wondering how she came to do it--not grieved that she had done it. I don’t know how long she sat thus; it seemed to her hours, but that of course was a mere impression. What roused her at last was the entrance of another man, as much excited, as anxious, and curious as Ernest had been. He came to offer his services, to ask if he should go at once and put himself at the disposal of Sir Alexis; and in the second place--only in the second place--to ask what it meant. Nelly sat and listened to his eager questions, and then burst into sudden tears. She gave him no reason for them--why should she? There were reasons enough and to spare, without diving into her personal history, for any outburst of sorrow. John Vane put no questions, but he had met Ernest rushing in the opposite direction, and I think he divined that some reflection of a personal misery was in Nelly’s paleness and agitation. But he asked her no questions, and he tried not to ask himself any, which was harder still.

When Mrs. Eastwood came into the room, which she did very soon after in her bonnet and cloak ready for the journey, Vane went up to her, holding out his hand.

“Forgive me,” he said humbly, “for having done you a temporary wrong in my thoughts.”

“How so, Mr. Vane?” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a faint smile, the first that had relieved the tension of her pale face since the terrible news came.

“I can understand now all about Innocent’s marriage,” he said. “God forgive me for doubting her best friends. I thought you were like other women--thinking of a good match above everything.”

“Are you so sure that other women think of a good match above everything?” said Mrs. Eastwood, once more with a smile, and then as she had spared a moment from Innocent, compunction seized her. “What are we to do,” she cried, “oh, what are we to do for my poor child?”

“I am going with you,” said Vane, to whose own eyes (though he was a man not given to emotion) the moisture rose. Mrs. Eastwood sent Nelly away to put on her bonnet, knowing nothing of the interview which Nelly had gone through in the meantime--and entered into all the dismal story which Nelly had briefly unfolded to him. He made no reproaches as Ernest had done--that he had not been told at the time. He understood without explanations how unwilling they must have been to confide such a story to any one, even to Innocent’s relation; and he listened with the deepest attention to Mrs. Eastwood’s account of her own cursory visit to Sterborne, and the total absence of all suspicion at the time of Amanda’s death. John Vane, an idle man, had read for the bar in a wrong way in his youth, not pursuing the study, but yet retaining some fragments of knowledge--and it seemed to him that this was very important. He discussed the whole matter closely, giving, his companion thought, his whole attention to it; but yet--will the reader think less well of John Vane for it?--within a corner of his mind or heart, if you like the word better, he was following Nelly, wondering why she took so long to put on her bonnet--whether she was crying, poor soul, over some lost illusion, some disappointed hope of her own, as well as over her cousin? He was almost glad to think that he alone was, as it were, in her confidence--that even her mother did not know that Molyneux had been there and had disappointed Nelly. He must have disappointed her (this train of thought went on like an undercurrent while he discussed, and that with an anxiety beyond words, the fate of Innocent)--he must have disappointed her, for he had left her. No true lover--no man worthy to be Nelly’s husband--would have left her at such a moment. Had she been wise enough to see this? Would she be strong enough to perceive it hereafter? Mrs. Eastwood did not know--she made not the slightest allusion to Ernest. When Nelly had come down-stairs, and the cab had driven up to the door which was to take them to the railway, she left detailed instructions with Brownlow as to the messages to be given to callers. “You can tell Mrs. Everard and Mr. Brotherton, if they call, that they will hear from me very soon,” she said; “and the same to Mr. Molyneux; though, indeed, Nelly, it is negligent not to have let Ernest know sooner.”

“I have let him know,” said Nelly softly; and Vane thought she gave him a piteous appealing look, as if to beg him not to say anything--a look which almost made him glad, though she was in trouble, and they were all in trouble. There are things that make one’s heart rise even in the midst of lamentation and woe.

“That is well--that is always something spared,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a sigh; “and be careful of the young gentlemen, Brownlow. Ask Mr. Eastwood if he would like any change made in the dinner-hour while I am away, and see that Mr. Richard is called regularly at seven, and that he has his coffee. My poor Dick must go on working, whatever happens,” she said, taking her place in the cab with a sigh.

And thus Innocent’s friends, all who loved her, gathered round in her direst need. There was but one deserter, and he no friend of hers.