“Why cannot you keep still, Innocent?” he said fretfully, “when you know that you ought not to be constantly in motion! What is it now? You disturb more than I can say——”
“It is the hour for your tonic,” she said. She was standing with her face towards him, smiling at him, with the smile he had once thought so strangely beautiful—with a Venice glass in one hand, milky white, and of a graceful shape, the very cup for such a hand to hold. With the other she took a bottle from the table, still looking at him. “You are no wiser than me in this,” she said; “because it is bitter, you would rather forget it; but you must not forget——”
He lay and looked at her strangely. She was to him at that moment as a picture—a picture he had seen somewhere and half-forgotten. He paid little attention as she approached him with the glass, but kept following out the thread of thought this idea suggested. God knows—or rather the devil knows, which is more appropriate—what evil spirit put it into his head. He looked at her fixedly as she came up to the bedside. He made no movement to take the glass when she held it out to him.
“Habit goes a long way,” he said, more to himself than her. “Put it down, Innocent; I don’t want my medicine from you; habit goes a long way—I wonder—will she ever do it again!”
He looked from her to the glass as he said this, and waved it away from him. I do not know by what magic Innocent understood instantly and distinctly what he meant. He would never have permitted himself to say it, had he not been confident in the slow and dim working of her mind, which generally lost all allusions and understood only plain speaking. But this time, for his punishment and for his fate, she saw in a moment what he meant. She gave a low cry. She looked at him with such a pathetic look as no human creature had ever turned on him before—like that dumb mystery of reproach which sometimes comes to us from the eyes of a speechless creature, an injured animal, without words in which to form a complaint. Her hand shook, the little milk-white glass fell and crashed in a hundred fragments; and without saying a word Innocent turned away. With the sense of some spell upon him, which kept him speechless, Sir Alexis watched her go softly, quietly out of the room. He called her name before her dress had disappeared from the door, but she did not come back. What had he done? He lay there for some minutes, confounded, scarcely realizing what had happened, as wonder-stricken as though a marble figure had shown signs of feeling. Then he called loudly to the servant in the next room. “Ask Lady Longueville to come back, I want her—instantly!” he said. A strange impatience flushed over him. “Nonsense, nonsense!” he said to himself, “what can happen? It is not possible that she understood me—and if she did? Pooh! Is it Innocent I am frightened for?” He laughed, all by himself, lying there in silence. How strange that laugh sounded! not as if it came from him, but from some mocking demon. He looked round, alarmed, to see who it was. “Innocent! Innocent!” he cried aloud, in a terror he could not account for. The servant did not come back. It seemed to him an age while he waited, listening, not hearing a sound in the house. “Innocent!” He sprang out of bed, feeble though he was, and clutched at his dressing-gown, and hurried to the door. There he met the servant coming back.
“Lady Longueville! Where is Lady Longueville?” he said.
“I beg your pardon, Sir Alexis, but my lady has just gone out. I might have caught her at the door had I gone there first, but I went up-stairs to call Mrs. Morton; she’s not in her room, Sir Alexis; and John tells me as my lady is gone out.”
“Gone out!” cried Sir Alexis in dismay. “Gone out—alone! Where has she gone? Go and ask which way she went. Go and ask if she said anything. Good God! can’t you make haste! I mean—Lady Longueville, of course, has gone to take the air. Why didn’t you or John, or some one, go with her? a set of idiots! Why on earth is my wife to go out unattended with all of you there?”
“I was here, Sir Alexis,” said the man in an injured tone, “and, besides, my lady——”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Longueville in increasing agitation. “Let John go after her at once, as he saw what direction she took, and tell her to come to me directly. I have something to say—Go! go! go! don’t lose a moment; and send for my sister,” cried Sir Alexis, distracted. His head was throbbing, his limbs failing under him. He could send only his servants after his wife, he could not go himself to bring her back; he had to fling himself down on his bed exhausted, cursing himself and his fate. What had he done? What had he said? What horrible temptation had beguiled him? He said to himself that it could be but for a moment, that she must come back—that his sweet, simple Innocent would soon and surely forgive the evil words he never meant; but God help him! as he fell back on the weary bed from which he could not rise, what a miserable sinking, what a sense of some dreadful unknown calamity was in his heart!