“Why should they laugh?” asked the girl.
“Because it is absurd,” he said, frowning. “I cannot allow you to make me a laughing-stock. Of course, as I tell you, I don’t mind so much when we are alone.”
And he stroked her hair with a caressing kindness which was at that time about the best sentiment in the young man’s mind. He was often embarrassed by her, and sometimes had asked himself the question, What on earth was it to come to? for he too, like his mother, believed that Innocent was in love with him; and the love of such a girl, so manifested, was more absurd than gratifying. But yet he was always kind to her. Evil impulses enough of one kind and another were in his mind, and he could have made of this girl anything he pleased, his slave, the servant of his will in any way. But he never treated her otherwise than as his little sister, and was kind, and put up with her demonstrative affection, and did his best to advise her “for her good.”
“You must not shrink so from my mother and Nelly,” he said. “They want to be kind to you. If you could only take to them, it would be much better for you than taking to a fellow like me——”
“I don’t like women,” said Innocent. “My father always said so. I cannot help being one myself, but I hate them. And nobody is like you.”
“That is very pleasant for me,” said Frederick, “but you must not keep up that notion about women. Your father was a capital judge, I have no doubt, but he might have taught you something more useful. Depend upon it, you will never be happy till you make friends with your own sex. They may be dangerous to men, though men are not generally of your opinion,” continued the moralist, “but for you, Innocent, mark my words, it is far your best policy to make the women your friends.”
“What is policy?” she asked, stealing her hand into his, much as a dog puts his nose into his master’s hand.
“Pshaw!” said Frederick. His mother had come into the room and had seen this pantomime. “You ought to be put to school and learn English,” he added, somewhat roughly. “I don’t believe she understands half of what we say.”
“Indeed, I should not be sorry to think so,” said Mrs. Eastwood, not without severity in her tone. But the severity was lost upon Innocent. She understood, as she did always by some strange magic understand Frederick, that she was now to withdraw from him and do her best to appear indifferent. It was a Sunday afternoon, rainy and miserable—and a rainy Sunday afternoon, when English domestic virtue shuts up all its ordinary occupations, is, it must be allowed, a dreary moment. I do not at all agree in the ordinary conventional notion of the dreariness of English Sundays generally, but I allow that a Sunday afternoon, when all the good people are at home, when the children are forbidden to play, and the women’s work is carefully put away, as if innocent embroidery were sin, and the men do not know what to do with themselves, is trying. If you are musical to the extent of Handel you may be happy, but the only thing to be done otherwise in a good orthodox respectable family, bound by all the excellent English traditions, is to pick a quarrel with some one. About five o’clock or so, with the rain pouring steadily down into the garden, the flower-beds becoming puddles before your eyes, the trees looking in upon you like pitiful ghosts—if you have not dared the elements and gone to afternoon church, you must quarrel or you must die.
Mrs. Eastwood felt the necessity. She called Frederick close to her, and she addressed him in an undertone. Innocent had gone away, and placed herself in a chair close by the window. She had not even “taken a book”—the impossibility of making her ever “take a book” was one of the miseries of the house. She was gazing blankly out upon the rain, upon the trees that shivered and seemed to ask for shelter, and the beds, where a draggled line of closed-up crocuses were leaning their bosoms upon the mud. Her beautiful profile was outlined distinctly against the pale gray dreary light. It was a beautiful profile always, more beautiful than the full face, which wanted life. Blank as the day itself was her countenance, with that motiveless gaze which was, indeed, almost mystic in its absolute want of animation. Her hands were crossed upon her lap, her whole limp girlish figure seemed to sympathize with the dreariness outside. Mrs. Eastwood looked with a mixture of pity, sympathy, and disapproval at this apathetic, immovable being, so self-absorbed, and yet so childish and pitiful in her self-absorption. She drew Frederick to her and laid her hand upon his arm.