"Oh, about being patient in solitude with one"s soul, and saying farewell to love." He gave a short laugh. "Innocent dear, I wish you would see the world as it really is!--not through the old-style spectacles of the Sieur Amadis! In his day people were altogether different from what they are now."
"I"m sure they were!" she answered, quietly--"But love is the same to-day as it was then."
He considered a moment, then smiled.
"No, dear, I"m not sure that it is," he said. "Those knights and poets and curious people of that kind lived in a sort of imaginary ecstasy--they exaggerated their emotions and lived at the top-height of their fancies. We in our time are much more sane and level-headed. And it"s much better for us in the long run."
She made no reply. Only very gently she withdrew her hand from his.
"I"m not a knight of old," he went on, turning his handsome, sun-browned face towards her,--"but I"m sure I love you as much as ever the Sieur Amadis could have loved his unknown lady. So much indeed do I love you that I couldn"t write about it to save my life!--though I did write verses at Oxford once--very bad ones!" He laughed. "But I can do one thing the Sieur Amadis didn"t do--I can keep faithful to my Vision of the glory unattainable"--and if I don"t marry you I"ll marry no-body--so there!"
She looked at him curiously and wistfully.
"You will not be so foolish," she said--"You will not put me into the position of the Sieur Amadis, who married some one who loved him, merely out of pity!"
He sprang up from the gra.s.s beside her.
"No, no! I won"t do that, Innocent! I"m not a coward! If you can"t love me, you shall not marry me, just because you are sorry for me! That would be intolerable! I wouldn"t have you for a wife at all under such circ.u.mstances. I shall be perfectly happy as a bachelor--perhaps happier than if I married."
"And what about Briar Farm?" she asked.
"Briar Farm can get on as best it may!" he replied, cheerily--"I"ll work on it as long as I live and hand it down to some one worthy of it, never fear! So there, Innocent!--be happy, and don"t worry yourself!
Keep to your old knight and your strange fancies about him--you may be right in your ideas of love, or you may be wrong; but the great point with me is that you should be happy--and if you cannot be happy in my way, why you must just be happy in your own!"
She looked at him with a new interest, as he stood upright, facing her in all the vigour and beauty of his young manhood. A little smile crept round the corners of her mouth.
"You are really a very handsome boy!" she said--"Quite a picture in your way! Some girl will be very proud of you!"
He gave a movement of impatience.
"I must go back to the orchard," he said--"There"s plenty to do. And after all, work"s the finest thing in the world--quite as fine as love--perhaps finer!"
A faint sense of compunction moved her at his words--she was conscious of a lurking admiration for his cool, strong, healthy att.i.tude towards life and the things of life. And yet she was resentful that he should be capable of considering anything in the world "finer" than love.
Work? What work? Pruning trees and gathering apples? Surely there were greater ambitions than these? She watched him thoughtfully under the fringe of her long eyelashes, as he moved off.
"Going to the orchard?" she asked.
"Yes."
She smiled a little.
"That"s right!"
He glanced back at her. Had she known how bravely he restrained himself she might have made as much a hero of him as of the knight Amadis. For he was wounded to the heart--his brightest hopes were frustrated, and at the very instant he walked away from her he would have given his life to have held her for a moment in his arms,--to have kissed her lips, and whispered to her the pretty, caressing love-nonsense which to warm and tender hearts is the sweetest language in the world. And with all his restrained pa.s.sion he was irritated with what, from a man"s point of view, he considered folly on her part,--he felt that she despised his love and himself for no other reason than a mere romantic idea, bred of loneliness and too much reading of a literature alien to the customs and manners of the immediate time, and an uncomfortable premonition of fear for her future troubled his mind.
"Poor little girl!" he thought--"She does not know the world!--and when she DOES come to know it--ah, my poor Innocent!--I would rather she never knew!"
Meanwhile she, left to herself, was not without a certain feeling of regret. She was not sure of her own mind--and she had no control over her own fancies. Every now and then a wave of conviction came over her that after all tender-hearted old Priscilla might be right--that it would be best to marry Robin and help him to hold and keep Briar Farm as it had ever been kept and held since the days of the Sieur Amadis.
Perhaps, had she never heard the story of her actual condition, as told her by Farmer Jocelyn on the previous night, she might have consented to what seemed so easy and pleasant a lot in life; but now it seemed to her more than impossible. She no longer had any link with the far-away ancestor who had served her so long as a sort of ideal--she was a mere foundling without any name save the unbaptised appellation of Innocent.
And she regarded herself as a sort of castaway.
She went into the house soon after Robin had left her, and busied herself with sorting the linen and looking over what had to be mended.
"For when I go," she said to herself, "they must find everything in order." She dined alone with Priscilla--Robin sent word that he was too busy to come in. She was a little piqued at this--and almost cross when he sent the same message at tea-time,--but she was proud in her way and would not go out to see if she could persuade him to leave his work for half-an-hour. The sun was slowly declining when she suddenly put down her sewing, struck by a thought which had not previously occurred to her--and ran fleetly across the garden to the orchard, where she found Robin lying on his back under the trees with closed eyes. He opened them, hearing the light movement of her feet and the soft flutter of her gown--but he did not rise. She stopped--looking at him.
"Were you asleep?"
He stretched his arms above his head, lazily.
"I believe I was!" he answered, smiling.
"And you wouldn"t come in to tea!" This with a touch of annoyance.
"Oh yes, I would, if I had wanted tea," he replied--"but I didn"t want it."
"Nor my company, I suppose," she added, with a little shrug of her shoulders. His eyes flashed mischievously.
"Oh, I daresay that had something to do with it!" he agreed.
A curious vexation fretted her. She wished he would not look so handsome--and--yes!--so indifferent. An impression of loneliness and desertion came over her--he, Robin, was not the same to her now--so she fancied--no doubt he had been thinking hard all the day while doing his work, and at last had come to the conclusion that it was wisest after all to let her go and cease to care for her as he had done. A little throbbing pulse struggled in her throat--a threat of rising tears,--but she conquered the emotion and spoke in a voice which, though it trembled, was sweet and gentle.
"Robin," she said--"don"t you think--wouldn"t it be better--perhaps--"
He looked up at her wonderingly--she seemed nervous or frightened.
"What is it?" he asked--"Anything you want me to do?"
"Yes"--and her eyes drooped--"but I hardly like to say it. You see, Dad made up his mind this morning that we were to settle things together--and he"ll be angry and disappointed--"
Robin half-raised himself on one arm.
"He"ll be angry and disappointed if we don"t settle it, you mean," he said--"and we certainly haven"t settled it. Well?"
A faint colour flushed her face.
"Couldn"t we pretend it"s all right for the moment?" she suggested--"Just to give him a little peace of mind?"
He looked at her steadily.
"You mean, couldn"t we deceive him?"
"Yes!--for his good! He has deceived ME all my life,--I suppose for MY good--though it has turned out badly--"
"Has it? Why?"
"It has left me nameless," she answered,--"and friendless."
A sudden rush of tears blinded her eyes--she put her hands over them.
He sprang up and, taking hold of her slender wrists, tried to draw those hands down. He succeeded at last, and looked wistfully into her face, quivering with restrained grief.