Innocent : $b a tale of modern lifeOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
Innocent : $b a tale of modern life
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Fiction
feel when the man whose company they themselves prefer to everything
shows himself capable of going away from them, and preferring some kind
of pleasure separate from them to that which can be had in their
society. “If he was glad to find me, if he came so far for me, why could
not he have stayed with me?” Innocent was not sufficiently advanced
either in intellectual or emotional life to put such a question into
words, but it was vaguely in her mind, filling her in her childish
inexperience with a pain almost as great as the new pleasure which had
come with her new friend. The morning masses were all over; there was no
service going on, no candles lighted upon the altar, which glimmered
with all its tall white tapers through the gloom. Everything was silent;
now and then a half seen figure stealing in, dropping down to say a
prayer or two, and with mysterious genuflexion gliding away again. A few
people, like Innocent, sat in different corners quite still, with their
eyes towards the altar; they were chiefly old people, worn old women and
benumbed old men, doing nothing, perhaps thinking nothing, glad only,
like the forlorn child, of the peacefulness, the stillness, the
religiousness about. Here and there was one who, with clasped hands and
rapt face, gazed up at some dark picture on the wall, and “wrestled”
like Jacob; but the most part showed little emotion of any kind; they
found a shelter perhaps for their confused thoughts, perhaps only for
the torpor of their worn-out faculties. But anyhow, they were the better
for being there, and so was Innocent. She sat quite still for a long
time, rather the subject of her thoughts than exercising any control
over them, and then she turned her chair round again and knelt and said
the Lord’s Prayer, and went away.
She went to Mrs. Drainham’s with her cousin as mechanically as she had
said her prayers. Her appearance was strange enough on that strange
evening, which she passed as in a dream. With an idea that ornament was
necessary, and perhaps not without some pleasure in the novelty of
having the little morocco box full of trinkets, which her father had
always kept in his own hands, handed over to her keeping, she had put on
a trinket which took her fancy, and which was attached to a little
chain. It was a very brilliant ornament indeed, set with emeralds and
rubies, in a quaint design, the background of which was formed by small
diamonds. The effect of this upon her very simple black frock may be
conceived. Mrs. Drainham was scandalized, yet impressed. Impossible not
to look upon a girl possessed of such a jewel with some additional
respect--and yet the impropriety, the unappropriateness of wearing it at
such a time was almost “past speaking of,” Mrs. Drainham felt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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