Innocent went out of her husband’s house, poor child, she knew not how,—with that strange, helpless repetition of what she had done before, which seems to be natural to the undeveloped mind when stung with sudden pain. It was the only resource she had. What he had said to her was not an offence to her,—to use such simple words; it was as if he had cut her down suddenly, without mercy or warning,—cut her to the very heart. It did not seem possible to her that she could live and go on after it; it brought back to her all the misery of the past,—all her own conviction of guilt,—all the bewildered, wretched sensation with which she had fled from the house in Sterborne, in which Amanda lay dead. Had she tried to do the same again? Her brain reeled when she attempted to ask herself that question;—certainly that had not happened again what had happened then. The glass had fallen out of her hand and broken. Sir Alexis was living. He had not died. But what had put those terrible words into his mouth? Had she tried to do it again? She wandered forth in her horror and trouble, stricken to the heart,—ill in body,—torn by sufferings she did not understand,—and still more ill in soul, wondering was there not something that she, too, could take, and die? When she fled from Sterborne, her way was clear to go home,—but where could she go now? Not to The Elms, to bring more trouble upon them,—to some hole or cover, anywhere, where she could lie down—only lie down and die.
She wandered about through one narrow lane and another,—she did not know nor care where she went;—and every moment it became more difficult to keep erect—not to fall down and perish altogether. She would have done so, and died probably in a dreary little suburban street, no one knowing who she was, had not old Alice come out of one of the humble houses where dwelt a sewing-woman to whom she had just taken work, as the forlorn creature wandered by. Alice, divining evil with the instinct which never fails a woman who knew so much of life as she had done, rushed to the girl’s side, and clutched at her, as blind and sick with pain she tottered by. “Miss Innocent! where are you going?—oh, what ails you, what ails you?” cried Alice.
“Take me somewhere,” gasped poor Innocent, clasping her arms with a sudden cry of anguish, round the old friend who came to her like an angel out of heaven,—“take me somewhere, or I shall die——”
The poor needlewoman stood wondering at her door; and into her poor little room Lady Longueville was taken,—half conscious only of all that was happening to her. What a strange, sudden, miserable nightmare it seemed, after the quiet and peace of the morning!—pain of body, pain of heart, anguish which made her cry aloud, and a sick despair, which quenched and silenced every hope and wish in her. There was no time to ask questions, or to send for those who should have been by her in her suffering. Alice was the only support, the only help she had in heaven and earth. She clung to her, refusing to leave her hold.
“I want no one—no one but Alice,” she said, when they spoke to her of her husband and of her friends. And in this poor little house it was that the last hope of the Longuevilles perished and came to nothing—that which had given Innocent new importance in the family, and was to afford her a new beginning, as everybody hoped both in the family and the world.
Meanwhile Sir Alexis’ servants went wandering far and near, seeking for her. They went to The Elms first of all, and roused that peaceful house into anxiety and wonder.
“This time my lady has gone clean off her head altogether, as I always expected,” the messenger said to the servants of the house, who shook their heads as he drank his beer, and agreed with him that they too had always expected it. I cannot describe the tumult, the vain searching, the runnings to and fro which ensued. It was late at night before any one remarked that Alice had not come home, a discovery which, mysterious as it was, gave a little comfort to the Eastwoods, at least. Nelly and her mother consulted together, and set out immediately on foot to the needlewoman’s whom Alice had gone to visit, hoping to hear some news of her, some indications which they could follow out; and there they lighted quite simply, unawares upon Innocent, lying like one dead, speechless, colourless, the ghost of herself, with eyes which never brightened at sight of them, which seemed as if they could make any interchange of kindness ever more with other tender human eyes.
This new catastrophe fell upon them all like lightning from a cloudless sky—like the storm which bursts without warning or sign of evil. Sir Alexis, it is true, who lay at home in a state indescribable, took the blame entirely on himself, and accused himself of cruelty and barbarous folly, such as his attendants would have laughed to hear of, had they not been so much frightened by the condition into which remorse and excitement drove him, calling back his half-departed malady with a hundred cruel aggravations. He moaned over his poor Innocent in all the paroxysms of his disorder in a way that was pitiful to hear.
“Bring her back to me, and I will be better to her than I have ever been. Bring her back, and all shall be well; if I live—if I live!” he said, with a wail that was sometimes shrill with hope, and sometimes bitter with despair.
This, however, was not to be. Innocent, paler than ever, blank and passive as she had been years ago, was brought back to him as soon as she could be removed, but only in time to see her husband in his last lucid moments, to receive his blessing, and to bid him farewell.