Innocent : her fancy and his fact. Marie Corelli

de Jocelin,

       Knight of France,

       Who here seekynge Forgetfulness did here fynde Peace."

      Every night of her life since she could read Innocent had stood in front of these armorial bearings in her little white night-gown and had conned over these words. She had taken the memory and tradition of Amadis to her heart and soul. He was HER ancestor,—hers, she had always said;—she had almost learned her letters from the inscriptions he had carved, and through these she could read old English and a considerable amount of old French besides. When she was about twelve years old she and Robin Clifford, playing about together in this room, happened to knock against one panel that gave forth a hollow reverberant sound, and moved by curiosity they tried whether they could open it. After some abortive efforts Robin's fingers closed by chance on a hidden spring, which being thus pressed caused the panel to fly open, disclosing a narrow secret stair. Full of burning excitement the two children ran up it, and to their delight found themselves in a small square musty chamber in which were two enormous old dower-chests, locked. Their locks were no bar to the agility of Robin, who, fetching a hammer, forced the old hasps asunder and threw back the lids. The coffers were full of books and manuscripts written on vellum, a veritable sixteenth-century treasure-trove. They hastened to report the find to Farmer Jocelyn, who, though never greatly taken with books or anything concerning them, was sufficiently interested to go with the eager children and look at the discovery they had made. But as he could make nothing of either books or manuscripts himself, he gave over the whole collection to Innocent, saying that as they were found in her part of the house she might keep them. No one—not even Robin—knew how much she had loved and studied these old books, or how patiently she had spelt out the manuscripts; and no one could have guessed what a wide knowledge of literature she had gained or what fine taste she had developed from her silent communications with the parted spirit of the Sieur Amadis and his poetical remains. She had even arranged her room as she thought he might have liked it, in severe yet perfect taste. It was now her study as it had been his,—the heavy oak table had a great pewter inkstand upon it and a few loose sheets of paper with two or three quill pens ready to hand,—some quaint old vellum-bound volumes and a brown earthenware bowl full of "Glory" roses were set just where they could catch the morning sunshine through the lattice window. One side of the room was lined with loaded bookshelves, and at its furthest end a wide arch of roughly hewn oak disclosed a smaller apartment where she slept. Here there was a quaint little four-poster bedstead, hung with quite priceless Jacobean tapestry, and a still more rare and beautiful work of art—an early Italian mirror, full length and framed in silver, a curio worth many hundreds of pounds. In this mirror Innocent had surveyed herself with more or less disfavour since her infancy. It was a mirror that had always been there—a mirror in which the wife of the Sieur Amadis must have often gazed upon her own reflection, and in which, after her, all the wives and daughters of the succeeding Jocelyns had seen their charms presented to their own admiration. The two old dower-chests which had been found in the upper chamber were placed on either side of the mirror, and held all the simple home-made garments which were Innocent's only wear. A special joy of hers lay in the fact that she knew the management of the secret sliding panel, and that she could at her own pleasure slip up the mysterious stairway with a book and be thus removed from all the household in a solitude which to her was ideal. To-night as she wandered up and down her room like a little distraught ghost, all the happy and romantic associations of the home she had loved and cherished for so many years seemed cut down like a sheaf of fair blossoms by a careless reaper,—a sordid and miserable taint was on her life, and she shuddered with mingled fear and grief as she realised that she had not even the simple privilege of ordinary baptism. She was a nameless waif, dependent on the charity of Farmer Jocelyn. True, the old man had grown to love her and she had loved him—ah!—let the many tender prayers offered up for him in this very room bear witness before the throne of God to her devotion to her "father" as she had thought him! And now—if what the doctors said was true—if he was soon to die—what would become of her? She wrung her little hands in unconscious agony.

      "What shall I do?" she murmured, sobbingly—"I have no claim on him, or on anyone in the world! Dear God, what shall I do?"

      Her restless walk up and down took her into her sleeping-chamber, and there she lit a candle and looked at herself in the old Italian mirror. A little woe-begone creature gazed sorrowfully back at her from its shining surface, with brimming eyes and quivering lips, and hair all tossed loosely away from a small sad face as pale as a watery moon, and she drew back from her own reflection with a gesture of repugnance.

      "I am no use to anybody in any way," she said, despairingly—"I am not even good-looking. And Robin—poor foolish Robin!—called me 'lovely' this afternoon! He has no eyes!"

      Then a sudden thought flew across her brain of Ned Landon. The tall powerful-looking brute loved her, she knew. Every look of his told her that his very soul pursued her with a reckless and relentless passion. She hated him,—she trembled even now as she pictured his dark face and burning eyes;—he had annoyed and worried her in a thousand ways—ways that were not sufficiently open in their offence to be openly complained of, though had Farmer Jocelyn's state of health given her less cause for anxiety she might have said something to him which would perhaps have opened his eyes to the situation. But not now,—not now could she appeal to anyone for protection from amorous insult. For who was she—what was she that she should resent it? She was nothing!—a mere stray child whose parents nobody knew,—without any lawful guardian to uphold her rights or assert her position. No wonder old Jocelyn had called her "wilding"—she was indeed a "wilding" or weed,—growing up unwanted in the garden of the world, destined to be pulled out of the soil where she had nourished and thrown contemptuously aside. A wretched sense of utter helplessness stole over her,—of incapacity, weakness and loneliness. She tried to think,—to see her way through the strange fog of untoward circumstance that had so suddenly enshrouded her. What would happen when Farmer Jocelyn died? For one thing she would have to quit Briar Farm. She could not stay in it when Robin Clifford was its master. He would marry, of course; he would be sure to marry; and there would be no place for her in his home. She would have to earn her bread; and the only way to do that would be to go out to service. She had a good store of useful domestic knowledge,—she could bake and brew, and wash and scour; she knew how to rear poultry and keep bees; she could spin and knit and embroider; indeed her list of household accomplishments would have startled any girl fresh out of a modern Government school, where things that are useful in life are frequently forgotten, and things that are not by any means necessary are taught as though they were imperative. One other accomplishment she had,—one that she hardly whispered to herself—she could write,—write what she herself called "nonsense." Scores of little poems and essays and stories were locked away in a small old bureau in a corner of the room,—confessions and expressions of pent-up feeling which, but for this outlet, would have troubled her brain and hindered her rest. They were mostly, as she frankly admitted to her own conscience, in the "style" of the Sieur Amadis, and were inspired by his poetic suggestions. She had no fond or exaggerated idea of their merit,—they were the result of solitary hours and long silences in which she had felt she must speak to someone,—exchange thoughts with someone,—or suffer an almost intolerable restraint. That "someone" was for her the long dead knight who had come to England in the train of the Duc d'Anjou. To him she spoke,—to him she told all her troubles—but to no one else did she ever breathe her thoughts, or disclose a line of what she had written. She had often wondered whether, if she sent these struggling literary efforts to a magazine or newspaper, they would be accepted and printed. But she never made the trial, for the reason that such newspaper literature as found its way into Briar Farm filled her with amazement, repulsion and disgust. There was nothing in any modern magazine that at all resembled the delicate, pointed and picturesque phraseology of the Sieur Amadis! Strange, coarse slang-words were used,—and the news of the day was slung together in loose ungrammatical sentences and chopped-up paragraphs of clumsy construction, lacking all pith and eloquence. So, repelled by the horror of twentieth-century "style," she had hidden her manuscripts deeper than ever in the old bureau, under little silk sachets of dried rose-leaves and lavender, as though they were love-letters or old lace. And when sometimes she shut herself up and read them over she felt like one of Hamlet's "guilty creatures sitting at a play." Her literary attempts seemed to reproach her for