God's Good Man, Marie Corelli [me reader .txt] 📗

merry month of May came in rejoicing. Again the May-pole glorious with blossoms and ribbons, made its nodding royal progress through the village of St. Rest, escorted by well-nigh a hundred children, who, with laughter and song carried it triumphantly up to Abbot’s Manor, and danced round it in a ring on the broad grassy terrace facing the open windows of Maryllia’s favourite morning room, where Maryllia herself, sweet and fair as a very queen of spring, stood watching them, with John Walden at her side. Again their fresh young voices, gay with the musical hilarity of happiness, carolled the Mayer’s song:—“We have been rambling all this night, And almost all this day; And now returning back again, We bring you in the May! A branch of May we have brought you, And at your door it stands, ‘Tis but a sprout, But ‘tis budded out, By the work of our Lord’s hands. The heavenly gates are open wide, Our paths are beaten plain; And if a man be not too far gone, He may return again!”

“That’s true!” said John, slipping an arm round his beloved, and whispering his words in the little delicate ear half-hidden by the clustering gold-brown curls above it—“If a man be not too far gone as a bachelor, he may perhaps ‘return again’ as a tolerable husband? What do you think, my Maryllia?”

Her eyes sparkled with all their own mirth and mischief.

“I couldn’t possibly say—yet!” she said—“You are quite perfect as an engaged man,—I never heard of anybody quite so attentive—so— well!—so nicely behaved!” and she laughed, “But how you will turn out when you are married, I shouldn’t like to prophesy!”

“If the children weren’t looking at us, I should kiss you,” he observed, with a suggestive glance at her smiling lips.

“I’m sure you would!” she rejoined—“For an ‘old’ bachelor, John, you are quite an adept at that kind of thing!”

Here the little village dancers slackened the speed of their tripping measure and moved slowly round and round, allowing the garlands and ribbons to drop from their hands one by one against the May-pole, as they sang in softer tones—

“The moon shines bright, and the stars give light, A little before it is day, So God bless you all, both great and small, And send you a merrie May!”

Ceasing at this, they all gathered in one group and burst out into an ecstatic roar.

“Hurra! Three cheers for Passon!”

“Hurra! Hurra! Hurra!”

“Three cheers for Miss Vancourt!”

“Hurra!” But here there was a pause. Some one was obstructing the wave of enthusiasm. Signs of mixed scuffling were apparent,—when all suddenly the bold voice of Bob Keeley cried out:

“Not a bit of it! Three cheers for Missis Passon!”

Shouts of laughter followed this irreverent proposal, together with much whooping and cheering as never was. Ipsie Frost, who of course was present, no village revel being considered complete without her, was dancing recklessly all by herself on the grass, chirping in her baby voice a ballad of her own contriving which ran thus:

“Daisies white, violets blue, Cowslips yellow,—and I loves ‘oo! Little bird’s nest Up in a tree, Spring’s comin’,—and ‘Oo loves me!”

And it was after Ipsie that Maryllia ran, to cover her smiles and blushes as the echo of the children’s mirth pealed through the garden,—and with the pretty blue-eyed little creature clinging to her hand, she came back again sedately, with all her own winsome and fairy-like stateliness to thank them for their good wishes.

“They mean it so well, John!” she said afterwards, when the youngsters, still laughing and cheering, had gone away with their crowned symbol of the dawning spring—“and they love you so much! I never knew of any man that was loved so much by so many people in one little place as you are, John! And to be loved by all the children is a great thing;—I think—of course I cannot be quite sure—but I think it is an exceptional thing—for a clergyman!”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

With rose-crowned June, the rose-window in the church of St. Rest was filled in and completed. Maryllia had found all the remaining ancient stained glass that had been needed to give the finishing touch to its beauty, and the loveliest deep gem-like hues shone through the carven apertures like rare jewels in a perfect setting. The rays of light filtering through them were wonderful and mystical,—such as might fall from the pausing wings of some great ministering angel,—and under the blaze of splendid colour, the white sarcophagus with its unknown ‘Saint’ asleep, lay steeped in soft folds of crimson and azure, gold and amethyst, while even the hollow notches in the sculptured word ‘Resurget’ seemed filled with delicate tints like those painted by old-world monks on treasured missals. And presently one morning came,—warm with the breath of summer, sunny and beautiful,—when the window was solemnly re- consecrated by Bishop Brent at ten o’clock,—a consecration followed by the loud and joyous ringing of the bells, and a further sacred ceremony,—the solemnisation of matrimony between John Walden and Maryllia Vancourt. All the village swarmed out like a hive of bees from their honey-cells to see their ‘Passon’ married. Hundreds of honest and affectionate eyes looked love on the bride, as clad in the simplest of simple white gowns, with a plain white veil draping her from head to foot, she came walking to the church across the warm clover-scented fields, like any village maid, straight from the Manor, escorted only by Cicely, her one bridesmaid. At the churchyard gate, she was met by all the youngest girls of the school, arrayed in white, who, carrying rush baskets full of wild flowers, scattered them before her as she moved,—and when she arrived at the church porch, she was followed by the little child Ipsie, whose round fair cherub-like face reflected one broad smile of delight, and who carried between her two tiny hands a basket full to overflowing of old French damask roses, red as the wine-glow of a summer sunset. The church was crowded,—not only by villagers but by county folks,—for everyone from near or far that could be present at what they judged to be a ‘strange’ wedding—namely a wedding for love and love alone—had mustered in force for the occasion. One or two had stayed away from a certain sense of discrepancy in themselves, to which it is needless to refer. Sir Morton Pippitt was among these. He felt,—but what he felt is quite immaterial. And so far as his daughter was concerned, she, as Bainton expressed it, had ‘gone a’ visitin’.’ The Ittlethwaites, of Ittlethwaite Park, in all the glory of their Magnum Chartus forebears were present, as were the Mandeville-Porehams—while to Julian Adderley was given the honour of being Walden’s ‘best man.’ He, as the music of the wedding voluntary poured from the organ, through the flower-scented air, wondered doubtfully whether poetic inspiration would ever assist him in such wise as to enable him to express in language the exquisite sweetness of Maryllia’s face, as, standing beside the man whose tender and loyal love she was surer of than any other possession in this world she repeated in soft accents the vow: “to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey till death do us part!”

And when Bishop Brent placed her little hand in that of his old college friend, and pressed them tenderly together, he felt, looking at the heavenly light that beamed from her sweet eyes, that not even death itself could part her fond soul from that of the man whom she loved, and who loved her so purely and faithfully in God’s sight. Thus, when pronouncing the words—“Those whom God hath joined together, let no man. put asunder!” he was deeply conscious that for once at least in the troublous and uncertain ways of the modern world, the holy bond of wedlock was approved of in such wise as to be final and eternal.

Away in London, on this same marriage day, Lady Roxmouth, formerly Mrs. Fred Vancourt, sat at luncheon in her sumptuously furnished house in Park Lane, and looked across the table at her husband, while he lazily sipped a glass of wine.

“That ridiculous girl Maryllia has married her parson by this time I suppose,”—she said—“Of course it’s perfectly scandalous. Lady Beaulyon was quite disgusted when she heard of it—such an alliance for a Vancourt! And Mr. and Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay tell me that the man Walden is quite an objectionable person—positively boorish! It’s dreadful really! But who could ever have imagined she would recover from that hunting spill? Wentworth Glynn said she was crippled for life. He told me so himself.”

“Well, he was wrong evidently,”—said Roxmouth, curtly. “English surgeons are very clever, but they are not always infallible. This time an Italian has beaten them.”

“Perhaps she was not so seriously injured as the local man at St. Rest made her out to be,”—pursued her ladyship reflectively.

Roxmouth said nothing. She studied his face with amused scrutiny.

“Perhaps it was another little ruse to get rid of you and your wooing,”—she went on—“Dear me! What an extraordinary contempt Maryllia always had for you to be sure!”

He moved restlessly, and she smiled—a hard little smile.

“I guess you’re hankering after her still!” she hinted.

“Your remarks are in rather bad taste,”—he rejoined, coldly, helping himself to another glass of wine.

She rose from her chair, and came round the table to where he sat, laying a heavily jewelled hand on his shoulder.

“Well, you’ve got ME!” she said—“And all I’m worth! And you ‘love’ me, don’t you?”

She laughed a little.

He looked full at her,—at her worn, hard, artificially got-up face, her fashionable frock, and her cold, expressionless eyes.

“Oh yes!” he answered, drily—“I ‘love’ you! You know I do. We understand each other!”

“I guess we do!” she thought to herself as she left him—“And when I’m tired of being called ‘My lady’ or ‘Your Grace’ I’ll divorce him! And I’ll take care he isn’t a penny the richer! There’s always that game to play, and you bet the Smart Set know how to play it!”

But of the ways, doings or saying of the Smart Set the village of St. Rest knows little and cares less. It dozes peacefully with the sun in its eyes, year in and year out, under the shadow of the eastern hills, with its beloved ‘Passon’ and now its equally beloved ‘Passon’s wife,’ as king and queen of its tiny governmental concerns, drawing health and peace,