Innocent

Innocent, by Marie Corelli

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Title: Innocent Her Fancy and His Fact
Author: Marie Corelli
Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5165] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on May 27,

2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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INNOCENT
Her Fancy and His Fact
By MARIE CORELLI
Author of "God's Good Man," "The Treasure of Heaven," Etc.

BOOK ONE: HER FANCY

INNOCENT
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER I
The old by-road went rambling down into a dell of deep green shadow.
It was a reprobate of a road,--a vagrant of the land,-- having long ago
wandered out of straight and even courses and taken to meandering

aimlessly into many ruts and furrows under arching trees, which in wet
weather poured their weight of dripping rain upon it and made it little
more than a mud pool. Between straggling bushes of elder and hazel,
blackberry and thorn, it made its solitary shambling way, so sunken
into itself with long disuse that neither to the right nor to the left of it
could anything be seen of the surrounding country. Hidden behind the
intervening foliage on either hand were rich pastures and ploughed
fields, but with these the old road had nothing in common. There were
many things better suited to its nature, such as the melodious notes of
the birds which made their homes year after year amid its bordering
thickets, or the gathering together in springtime of thousands of
primroses, whose pale, small, elfin faces peeped out from every mossy
corner,--or the scent of secret violets in the grass, filling the air with the
delicate sweetness of a breathing made warm by the April sun. Or when
the thrill of summer drew the wild roses running quickly from the earth
skyward, twining their stems together in fantastic arches and tufts of
deep pink and flush-white blossom, and the briony wreaths with their
small bright green stars swung pendent from over-shadowing boughs
like garlands for a sylvan festival. Or the thousands of tiny unassuming
herbs which grew up with the growing speargrass, bringing with them
pungent odours from the soil as from some deep- laid storehouse of
precious spices. These choice delights were the old by-road's peculiar
possession, and through a wild maze of beauty and fragrance it strayed
on with a careless awkwardness, getting more and more involved in
tangles of green,--till at last, recoiling abruptly as it were upon its own
steps, it stopped short at the entrance to a cleared space in front of a
farmyard. With this the old by-road had evidently no sort of business
whatever, and ended altogether, as it were, with a rough shock of
surprise at finding itself in such open quarters. No arching trees or
twining brambles were here,--it was a wide, clean brick-paved place
chiefly possessed by a goodly company of promising fowls, and a huge
cart-horse. The horse was tied to his manger in an open shed, and
munched and munched with all the steadiness and goodwill of the
sailor's wife who offended Macbeth's first witch. Beyond the farmyard
was the farmhouse itself,--a long, low, timbered building with a broad
tiled roof supported by huge oaken rafters and crowned with many
gables,--a building proudly declaring itself as of the days of Elizabeth's

yeomen, and bearing about it the honourable marks of age and long
stress of weather. No such farmhouses are built nowadays, for life has
become with us less than a temporary thing,--a coin to be spent rapidly
as soon as gained, too valueless for any interest upon it to be sought or
desired. In olden times it was apparently not considered such cheap
currency. Men built their homes to last not