Her letter to Robin was longer and full of restrained feeling:
"I know you are very unhappy, you kind, loving boy," it ran. "You have lost me altogether—yes, that is true—but do not mind, it is better so, and you will love some other girl much more than me some day. I should have been a mistake in your life had I stayed with you. You will see me again—and you will then understand why I left Briar Farm. I could not wrong the memory of the Sieur Amadis, and if I married you I should be doing a wicked thing to bring myself, who am base-born, into his lineage. Surely you do understand how I feel? I am quite safe—in a good home, with a lady who takes care of me—and as soon as I can I will let you know exactly where I am—then if you ever come to London I will see you. But your work is on Briar Farm—that dear and beloved home!—and you will keep up its old tradition and make everybody happy around you. Will you not? Yes! I am sure you will! You MUST, if ever you loved me. "INNOCENT."
With this letter his last hope died within him. She would never be his—never, never! Some dim future beckoned her in which he had no part—and he confronted the fact as a brave soldier fronts the guns, with grim endurance, aware, yet not afraid of death.
"If ever I loved her!" he thought. "If ever I cease to love her then I shall be as stone-cold a man as her fetish of a French knight, the Sieur Amadis! Ah, my little Innocent, in time to come you may understand what love is—perhaps to your sorrow!—you may need a strong defender—and I shall be ready! Sooner or later—now or years hence—if you call me, I shall answer. I would find strength to rise from my death-bed and go to you if you wanted me! For I love you, my little love! I love you, and nothing can change me. Only once in a life-time can a man love any woman as I love you!"
And with a deep vow of fidelity sworn to his secret soul he sat alone, watching the shadows of evening steal over the landscape—falling, falling slowly, like a gradually descending curtain upon all visible things, till Briar Farm stood spectral in the gloom like the ghost of its own departed days, and lights twinkled in the lattice windows like little eyes glittering in the dark. Then silently bidding farewell to all his former dreams of happiness, he set himself to face "the burden and heat of the day"—that long, long day of life so difficult to live, when deprived of love!
BOOK TWO: HIS FACT
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER I
In London, the greatest metropolis of the world, the smallest affairs are often discussed with more keenness than things of national importance,—and it is by no means uncommon to find society more interested in the doings of some particular man or woman than in the latest and most money-milking scheme of Government finance. In this way it happened that about a year after Innocent had, like a small boat in a storm, broken loose from her moorings and drifted out to the wide sea, everybody who was anybody became suddenly thrilled with curiosity concerning the unknown personality of an Author. There are so many Authors nowadays that it is difficult to get up even a show of interest in one of them,—everybody "writes"—from Miladi in Belgravia, who considers the story of her social experiences, expressed in questionable grammar, quite equal to the finest literature, down to the stable-boy who essays a "prize" shocker for a penny dreadful. But this latest aspirant to literary fame had two magnetic qualities which seldom fail to arouse the jaded spirit of the reading public,—novelty and mystery, united to that scarce and seldom recognised power called genius. He or she had produced a Book. Not an ephemeral piece of fiction,—not a "Wells" effort of imagination under hydraulic pressure—not an hysterical outburst of sensual desire and disappointment such as moves the souls of demimondaines and dressmakers,—not even a "detective" sensation—but just a Book—a real Book, likely to live as long as literature itself. It was something in the nature of a marvel, said those who knew what they were talking about, that such a book should have been written at all in these modern days. The "style" of it was exquisite and scholarly—quaint, expressive, and all-sufficing in its artistic simplicity,—thoughts true for all time were presented afresh with an admirable point and delicacy that made them seem new and singularly imperative,—and the story which, like a silken thread, held all the choice jewels of language together in even and brilliant order, was pure and idyllic,—warm with a penetrating romance, yet most sincerely human. When this extraordinary piece of work was published, it slipped from the press in quite a modest way without much preliminary announcement, and for two or three weeks after its appearance nobody knew anything about it. The publishers themselves were evidently in doubt as to its reception, and signified their caution by economy in the way of advertisement—it was not placarded in the newspaper columns as "A Book of the Century" or "A New Literary Event." It simply glided into the crowd of books without noise or the notice of reviewers—just one of a pushing, scrambling, shouting multitude,—and quite suddenly found itself the centre of the throng with all eyes upon it, and all tongues questioning the how, when and where of its author. No one could say how it first began to be thus busily talked about,—the critics had bestowed upon it nothing of either their praise or blame,—yet somehow the ball had been set rolling, and it gathered size and force as it rolled, till at last the publishers woke up to the fact that they had, by merest chance, hit upon a "paying concern." They at once assisted in the general chorus of delight and admiration, taking wider space in the advertisement columns of the press for the "work of genius" which had inadvertently fallen into their hands—but when it came to answering the questions put to them respecting its writer they had very little to say, being themselves more or less in the dark.
"The manuscript was sent to us in the usual way," the head of the firm explained to John Harrington, one of the soundest and most influential of journalists, "just on chance,—it was neither introduced nor recommended. One of our readers was immensely taken with it and advised us to accept it. The author gave no name, and merely requested all communications to be made through his secretary, a Miss Armitage, as he wished for the time being to remain anonymous. We drew up an Agreement on these lines which was signed for the author by Miss Armitage,—she also corrected and passed the proofs—"