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

your ‘ands, whatever you do!’—Primmins, the butler, was sent to remove the tea-things from the morning-room,—at which command he turned round somewhat indignantly, asking ‘who are you a-orderin’ of; don’t you think I know my business?’—Spruce himself, unhappily coming by chance to the kitchen door to ask if it was really true that Miss Vancourt had arrived, was shrilly told to ‘go along and mind his own business,’— and so it happened that when Bainton appeared, charged with the Reverend John Walden’s message concerning the Five Sisters, he might as well have tried to obtain an unprepared audience with the King, as to see or speak with the lady of the Manor. Miss Vancourt had arrived—oh yes, she had certainly arrived, Mrs. Spruce told him, with much heat and energy; but she was tired and was lying down, and certainly could not be asked to see anyone, no matter what the business was. And to make things more emphatic, at the very time that Bainton was urging his cause, and Mrs. Spruce was firmly rejecting it, Nancy Pyrle came down from attendance on her mistress and said that Miss Vancourt was going to sleep a little, and she did not wish to be disturbed till she rang her bell.

“Oh, and she’s beautiful!” said Nancy, drawing a long breath,—“and so very kind! She showed me how to do all she wanted—and was that patient and gentle! She says I’ll make quite a good maid after a bit!”

“Well, I hope to the Lord you will!” said Mrs. Spruce with a sniffy “For it’s a chance in a ‘undred, comin’ straight out of the village to a first situation with, a lady like Miss Vancourt. And I ‘ope you’ll profit by it! And if you ‘adn’t taken the prize for needlework in the school, you wouldn’t ‘ave ‘ad it, so now you sees what good it does to serve your elders when you’re young.” Here she turned to Bainton, who was standing disconsolately half in and half out of the kitchen doorway. “I’m real sorry, Mr. Bainton, that you can’t see our lady, more ‘specially as you wishes to give a message from Passon Walden himself—but you jest go back and tell ‘im ‘ow it is;—Miss Vancourt is restin’ and can’t be disturbed nohow.”

Bainton twirled his cap nervously in his hand.

“I s’pose no one couldn’t say to her quiet-like as ‘ow the Five Sisters be chalked?—”

Mrs. Spruce raised her fat hands with a gesture of dismay.

“Lor’ bless the man!” she exclaimed; “D’ye think we’re goin’ to worrit Miss Vancourt with the likes o’ that the very first evenin’ she’s set foot in ‘er own ‘ouse? Why, we dussn’t! An’ that there great dog Plato lyin’ on guard outside ‘er door! I’ve ‘ad enough to- day with peacocks’ feathers, let alone the Five Sisters! Besides, Oliver Leach is agent ‘ere, and what he says is sure to be done. She won’t worry ‘erself about it,—and you may be pretty certain he won’t be interfered with. You tell Passon Walden I’m real sorry, but it can’t be ‘elped.”

Reluctantly, Bainton turned away. He was never much disposed for a discussion with Mrs. Spruce,—her mind was too illogical, and her tongue too persistent. Her allusion to peacocks’ feathers was unintelligible to him, and he wondered whether ‘anythink she’s been an’ took’ had gone to her head. Anyway, his errand was foiled for the moment. But he was not altogether disheartened. He determined not to go back to Walden with his message quite undelivered.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way!” he said to himself. “I’ll go and do a bit of shoutin’ to Spruce,—deaf as he is, he’s more reasonable-like than his old ‘ooman!”

With this resolve, he went his way by a short-cut through Abbot’s Manor gardens to a small thatched shelter in the woods, known as ‘the foresters’ hut,’ where Spruce was generally to be found at about sunset, smoking a peaceful pipe, alone and well out of his wife’s way.

Meanwhile, Maryllia Vancourt, lying wide awake on her bed in the long unused room that was to have been her mother’s, experienced various chaotic sensations of mingled pleasure and pain. For the first time in her life of full womanhood she was alone,— independent,—free to come or go as she listed, with no one to gainsay her wishes, or place a check on her caprices. She had deliberately thrown off her aunt’s protection; and with that action, had given up the wealth and luxury with which she had been lavishly surrounded ever since her father’s death. For reasons of her own, which she considered sufficiently cogent, she had also resigned all expectations of being her aunt’s heiress. She had taken her liberty, and was prepared to enjoy it. She had professed herself perfectly contented to live on the comparatively small patrimony secured to her by her father’s will. It was quite enough, she said, for a single woman,—at any rate, she would make it enough.

And here she was, in her own old home,—the home of her childhood, which she was ashamed to think she had well-nigh forgotten. Since her fifteenth year she had travelled nearly all over the world; London, Paris, Vienna, New York, had each in turn been her ‘home’ under the guidance of her wealthy perambulating American relative; and in the brilliant vortex of an over-moneyed society, she had been caught and whirled like a helpless floating straw. Mrs. ‘Fred’ Vancourt, as her aunt was familiarly known to the press paragraphist, had spared no pains to secure for her a grand marriage,—and every possible advantage that could lead to that one culminating point, had been offered to her. She had been taught everything; that could possibly add to her natural gifts of intelligence; she had been dressed exquisitely, taken about everywhere, and ‘shown off’ to all the impecunious noblemen of Europe;—she had been flattered, praised, admired, petted and generally spoilt, and had been proposed to by ‘eligible’ gentlemen with every recurring season,—but all in vain. She had taken a singular notion into her head—an idea which her matter-of-fact aunt told her was supremely ridiculous. She wanted to be loved.

“Any man can ask a girl to marry him, if he has pluck and impudence!” she said; “Especially if the girl has money, or expectations of money, and is not downright deformed, repulsive and ill-bred. But proposals of marriage don’t always mean love. I don’t care a bit about being married,—but I do want to be loved—really loved!—I want to be ‘dear to someone else’ as Tennyson sings it,— not for what I HAVE, but for what I AM.”

It was this curious, old-fashioned notion of wanting to be loved, that had estranged Maryllia from her wealthy American protectress. It had developed from mere fireside argument and occasional dissension, into downright feud, and its present result was self- evident. Maryllia had broken her social fetters, and had returned to her own rightful home in a state which, for her, considered by her past experience, was one of genteel poverty, but which was also one of glorious independence. And as she restfully reclined under the old rose silk hangings which were to have encanopied that perished beauty from which she derived her own fairness, she was conscious of a novel and soothing sense of calm. The rush and hurry and frivolity of society seemed put away and done with; through her open window she could hear the rustling of leaves and the singing of birds;—the room in which she found herself pleased her taste as well as her sentiment,—and though the faintest shadow of vague wonder crossed her mind as to what she would do with her time, now that she had gained her own way and was actually all alone in the heart of the country, she did not permit such a thought to trouble her peace. The grave tranquillity of the old house was already beginning to exert its influence on her always quick and perceptive mind,—the dear remembrance of her father whom she had idolised, and whose sudden death had been the one awful shock of her life, came back to her now with a fresh and tender pathos. Little incidents of her childhood and of its affection, such as she thought she had forgotten, presented themselves one by one in the faithful recording cells of her brain,—and the more or less feverish and hurried life she had been compelled to lead under her aunt’s command and chaperonage, began to efface itself slowly, like a receding coast-line from a departing vessel.

“It is home!” she said; “And I have not been in a home for years! Aunt Emily’s houses were never ‘home.’ And this is MY home—my very own; the home of our family for generations. I ought to be proud of it, and I WILL be proud of it! Even Aunt Emily used to say that Abbot’s Manor was a standing proof of the stuck-up pride of the Vancourts! I’m sure I shall find plenty to do here. I can farm my own lands and live on the profits—if there are any!”

She laughed a little, and rising from the bed went to the window and leaned out. A large white clematis pushed its moonlike blossom up to her face, as though asking to be kissed, and a bright red butterfly danced dreamily up and down in the late sunbeams, now poising on the ivy and anon darting off again into the mild still air.

“It’s perfectly lovely!” said Maryllia, with a little sigh of content; “And it is all my own!”

She drew her head in from the window and turned to her mirror.

“I’m getting old,” she said, surveying herself critically, and with considerable disfavour;—“It’s all the result of society ‘pressure,’ as they call it. There’s a line here—and another there”—indicating the imaginary facial defects with a small tapering forefinger—“And I daresay I have some grey hairs, if I could only find them.” Here she untwisted the coil at the back of her head and let it fall in a soft curling shower round her shoulders—“Oh, yes!—I daresay!” she went on, addressing her image in the glass; “You think it looks very pretty—but that is only an ‘effect,’ you know! It’s like the advertisements the photographers do for the hairdressers; ‘Hair- positively-forced-to-grow-in-six-weeks’ sort of thing. Oh, what a dear old chime!” This, as she heard the ancient clock in the square turret which overlooked the Tudor courtyard give forth a mellow tintinnabulation. “What time is it, I wonder?” She glanced at the tiny trifle of a watch she had taken off and placed on her dressing- table. “Quarter past seven! I must have had a doze, after all. I think I will ring for Nancy Pyrle”—and she suited the action to the word; “I have not the least idea where my clothes are.”

Nancy obeyed the summons with alacrity. She could not help a slight start as she saw her mistress, looking like ‘the picture of an angel’ as she afterwards described it, in her loose white dressing- gown, with all her hair untwisted and floating over her shoulders. She had never seen any human creature quite so lovely.

“Do you know where my dresses are, Nancy?” enquired Maryllia.

“Yes, Miss. Mrs. Spruce unpacked everything herself, and the dresses are all hanging in this wardrobe.” Here Nancy went to the piece of furniture in question. “Which one shall I give you, Miss?”

Maryllia came to her side, and looked scrutinisingly at all the graceful Parisian and Viennese flimsies that hung in an. orderly row within the wardrobe, uncertain which to take. At last she settled on an exceedingly simple white tea-gown, shaped after a Greek model, and wholly untrimmed, save for a small square gold band at the throat.

“This will do!” she decided; “Nobody’s coming to dine; I shall