Innocent nodded again, and a little smile made two fascinating dimples in her soft cheeks.
"Yes! But he said good-bye to love first!"
He looked at her in visible annoyance.
"How can you tell?--what do you know about it?" he demanded.
She lifted her eyes to the glimpses of blue sky that showed in deep clear purity between the over-arching boughs,--a shaft of sunlight struck on her fair hair and illumined its pale brown to gold, so that for a moment she looked like the picture of a young rapt saint, lost in heavenly musing.
Then a smile, wonderfully sweet and provocative, parted her lips, and she beckoned him to a gra.s.sy slope beneath one of the oldest trees, where little tufts of wild thyme grew thickly, filling the air with fragrance.
"Come and sit beside me here," she said--"We have the day to ourselves--Dad said so,--and we can talk as long as we like. You ask me what I know?--not much indeed! But I"ll tell you what the Sieur Amadis has told me!--if you care to hear it!"
"I"m not sure that I do," he answered, dubiously.
She laughed.
"Oh, Robin!--how ungrateful you are! You ought to be so pleased! If you really loved me as much as you say, the mere sound of my voice ought to fill you with ecstasy! Yes, really! Come, be good!" And she sat down on the gra.s.s, glancing up at him invitingly. He flung himself beside her, and she extended her little white hand to him with a pretty condescension.
"There!--you may hold it!" she said, as he eagerly clasped it--"Yes, you may! Now, if the Sieur Amadis had been allowed to hold the hand of the lady he loved he would have gone mad with joy!"
"Much good he"d have done by going mad!" growled Robin, with an affectation of ill-humour--"I"d rather be sane,--sane and normal."
She bent her smiling eyes upon him.
"Would you? Poor Robin! Well, you will be--when you settle down--"
"Settle down?" he echoed--"How? What do you mean?"
"Why, when you settle down with a wife, and--shall we say six children?" she queried, merrily--"Yes, I think it must be six! Like the Sieur Amadis! And when you forget that you ever sat with me under the trees, holding my hand--so!"
The lovely, half-laughing compa.s.sion of her look nearly upset his self-possession. He drew closer to her side.
"Innocent!" he exclaimed, pa.s.sionately--"if you would only listen to reason--"
She shook her head.
"I never could!" she declared, with an odd little air of penitent self-depreciation--"People who ask you to listen to reason are always so desperately dull! Even Priscilla!--when she asks you to "listen to reason," she"s in the worst of tempers! Besides, Robin, dear, we shall have plenty of chances to "listen to reason" when we grow older,--we"re both young just now, and a little folly won"t hurt us. Have patience with me!--I want to tell you some quite unreasonable--quite abnormal things about love! May I?"
"Yes--if _I_ may too!" he answered, kissing the hand he held, with lingering tenderness.
The soft colour flew over her cheeks,--she smiled.
"Poor Robin!" she said--"You deserve to be happy and you will be!--not with me, but with some one much better, and ever so much prettier! I can see you as the master of Briar Farm--such a sweet home for you and your wife, and all your little children running about in the fields among the b.u.t.tercups and daisies--a pretty sight, Robin!--I shall think of it often when--when I am far away!"
He was about to utter a protest,--she stopped him by a gesture.
"Hush!" she said.
And there was a moment"s silence.
CHAPTER VI
"When I think about love," she began presently, in a soft dreamy voice--"I"m quite sure that very few people ever really feel it or understand it. It must be the rarest thing in all the world! This poor Sieur Amadis, asleep so long in his grave, was a true lover,--and I will tell you how I know he had said good-bye to love when he married.
All those books we found in the old dower-chest, that day when we were playing about together as children, belonged to him--some are his own compositions, written by his own hand,--the others, as you know, are printed books which must have been difficult to get in his day, and are now, I suppose, quite out of date and almost unknown. I have read them all!--my head is a little library full of odd volumes! But there is one--a ma.n.u.script book--which I never tire of reading,--it is a sort of journal in which the Sieur Amadis wrote down many of his own feelings--sometimes in prose, sometimes in verse--and by following them carefully and piecing them together, it is quite easy to find out his sadness and secret--how he loved once and never loved again--"
"You can"t tell that," interrupted Robin--"men often say they can only love once--but they love ever so many times--"
She smiled--and her eyes showed him what a stupid blunder he had made.
"Do they?" she queried, softly--"I am so glad, Robin! For you will find it easy then to love somebody else instead of me!"
He flushed, vexedly.
"I didn"t mean that--" he began.
"No? I think you did!--but of course if you had thought twice you wouldn"t have said it! It was uttered quite truly and naturally, Robin!--don"t regret it! Only I want to explain to you that the Sieur Amadis was not like that--he loved just once--and the lady he loved must have been a very beautiful woman who had plenty of admirers and did not care for him at all. All he writes proves that. He is always grieved to the heart about it. Still he loved her--and he seems glad to have loved her, though it was all no use. And he kept a little chronicle of his dreams and fancies--all that he felt and thought about,--it is beautifully and tenderly written all in quaint old French. I had some trouble to make it out--but I did at last--every word--and when he made up his mind to marry, he finished the little book and never wrote another word in it. Shall I tell you what were the last lines he wrote?"
"It wouldn"t be any use," he answered, kissing again the hand he held--"I don"t understand French. I"ve never even tried to learn it."
She laughed.
"I know you haven"t! But you"ve missed a great deal, Robin!--you have really! When I made up my mind to find out all the Sieur Amadis had written, I got Priscilla to buy me a French dictionary and grammar and some other French lesson-books besides--then I spelt all the words carefully and looked them all up in the dictionary, and learned the p.r.o.nunciation from one of the lesson-books--and by-and-bye it got quite easy. For two years at least it was dreadfully hard work--but now--well!--I think I could almost speak French if I had the chance!"
"I"m sure you could!" said Robin, looking at her, admiringly--"You"re a clever little girl and could do anything you wanted to."
Her brows contracted a little,--the easy lightness of his compliment had that air of masculine indifference which is more provoking to an intelligent woman than downright contradiction. The smile lingered in her eyes, however,--a smile of mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and compa.s.sion.
"Well, I wanted to understand the writing of the Sieur Amadis," she went on, quietly--"and when I could understand them I translated them.
So I can tell you the last words he wrote in his journal--just before he married,--in fact on the very eve of his marriage-day--" She paused abruptly, and looked for a moment at the worn and battered tomb of the old knight, green with moss and made picturesque by a trailing branch of wild roses that had thrown itself across the stone effigy in an attempt to reach some of its neighbours on the opposite side. Robin followed her gaze with his own, and for a moment was more than usually impressed by the calm, almost stern dignity of the rec.u.mbent figure.
"Go on," he said--"What were the words?"
"These"--and Innocent spoke them in a hushed voice, with sweet reverence and feeling--""Tonight I pull down and put away for ever the golden banner of my life"s ideal. It has been held aloft too long in the sunshine of a dream, and the lily broidered on its web is but a withered flower. My life is no longer of use to myself, but as a man and faithful knight I will make it serve another"s pleasure and another"s good. And because this good and simple girl doth truly love me, though her love was none of my seeking, I will give her her heart"s desire, though mine own heart"s desire shall never be accomplished,--I will make her my wife, and will be to her a true and loyal husband, so that she may receive from me all she craves of happiness and peace. For though I fain would die rather than wed, I know that life is not given to a man to live selfishly, nor is G.o.d satisfied to have it wasted by any one who hath sworn to be His knight and servant. Therefore even so let it be!--I give all my unvalued existence to her who doth consider it valuable, and with all my soul I pray that I may make so gentle and trustful a creature happy. But to Love--oh, to Love a long farewell!--farewell my dreams!--farewell ambition!--farewell the glory of the vision unattainable!--farewell bright splendour of an earthly Paradise!--for now I enter that prison which shall hold me fast till death release me! Close, doors!--fasten, locks!--be patient in thy silent solitude, my Soul!""
Innocent"s voice faltered here--then she said--"That is the end. He signed it "Amadis.""
Robin was very quiet for a minute or two.
"It"s pretty--very pretty and touching--and all that sort of thing," he said at last--"but it"s like some old sonnet or mediaeval bit of romance. No one would go on like that nowadays."
Innocent lifted her eyebrows, quizzically.
"Go on like what?"
He moved impatiently.