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

be all alone—”

The thought struck her as quaint and strange. Nobody coming to dinner! How very odd! At Aunt Emily’s there was always someone, or several someones, to dinner. To-night she would dine all alone. Well! It would be a novel experience!

“Are there any nice people living about here?” she asked Nancy, as that anxious young woman carefully divested her of her elegant dressing-gown; “People I should like to know?”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Miss,” replied Nancy, quite frankly, watching in wonder the dexterity and grace with which her mistress swept up all her hair into one rich twist and knotted it with two big tortoiseshell hairpins at the back of her head. “There’s Sir Morton Pippitt at Badsworth Hall, three miles from here—”

Maryllia laughed gaily.

“Sir Morton Pippitt! What a funny name! Who is he?”

“Well, Miss, they do say he makes his money at bone-melting; but he’s awful proud for all that—awful proud he is—”

“Well, I should think so!” said Maryllia, with much solemnity; “Bone-melting is a great business! Does he melt human bones, Nancy?”

“Oh, lor’, Miss, no!” And Nancy laughed, despite herself; “Not that I’ve ever heard on—it’s bones of animals he melts and turns into buttons and such-like.”

“Man is an animal, Nancy,” said Maryllia, sententiously, giving one or two little artistic touches to the loose waves of hair on her forehead; “Why should not HIS bones be turned into buttons? Why should HE not be made useful? You may depend upon it, Nancy, human bones go into Sir Morton What’s-his-name’s stock-pot. I shouldn’t wonder if he had left his own bones to his business in his will!

“‘Imperial Caesar dead and turned to clay, May stop a hole to keep the wind away!’

That’s so, Nancy! And is the gentleman who boils bones the only man about here one could ask to dinner?”

Nancy reflected.

“There’s the Passon—” she began.

“Oh, dear me!” exclaimed Maryllia, with a little shrug of impatience; “Worse than the bone-boiler!—a thousand times worse! There! That will do, Nancy! I’ll stroll about till dinner’s ready.”

She left the room and descended the stairs, followed by the faithful Plato, and was soon to be seen by various retainers of the curious and excited household, walking slowly up and down on the grass terrace in her flowing white draperies, the afterglow of the sinking sun shining on her gold-brown hair, and touching up little reddish ripples in it,—such ripples as were painted by the artist of Charles the Second’s day when he brushed into colour and canvas the portrait of Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt. Primmins, late butler to the irascible Sir Morton Pippitt, was so taken with the sight of her that he then and there resolved his ‘temp’ry service’ should be life-long, if he could manage to please her; and little Kitty Spruce being permitted by her mother to peep at the ‘new lady’ through the staircase window, could only draw a long breath and ejaculate: “Oh! Ain’t she lovely!” while she followed with eagerly admiring eyes the gossamer trail of Maryllia’s white gown on the soft turf, and strained her ears to catch the sound of the sweet voice which suddenly broke out in a careless chansonette:

“Tu m’aimes, cherie? Dites-moi! Seulement un petit ‘oui,’ Je demande a toi! Le bonheur supreme Vient quand on aime, N’est-ce-pas cherie? ‘Oui’!”

“She’s singin’ to herself!” said the breathless Kitty, whispering to her mother; “Ain’t she jest smilin’ and beautiful?”

“Well, I will own,” replied Mrs. Spruce, “she’s as different to the lady I expected as cheese from chalk, which they generally says chalk from cheese, howsomever, that don’t matter. But if I don’t mistake, she’s got a will of ‘er own, for all that she’s so smilin’ and beautiful as you says, Kitty; and now don’t YOU go runnin’ away with notions that you can dress like ‘er or look like ‘er,—for when once a gel of YOUR make thinks she can imitate the fashions and the ways of a great lady, she’s done for, body and soul! YOU ain’t goin’ to wear white gowns and trail ‘em up an’ down on the grass, nor ‘ave big dogs a-follerin’ up an’ down while you sings in a furrin langwidge to yerself; no, not if you was to read all the trashy story-books in the world—so you needn’t think it. For there ain’t no millionaires comin’ arter you, as they doos in penny novels,—nor nothink else what’s dished up in newspapers; so jes’ wear your cotton frocks in peace, an’ don’t worry me with wantin’ to look like Miss Maryllia, for you never won’t look like ‘er if ye tried till ye was dead! Remember that, now! The Lord makes a many women,—but now and again He turns out a few chice samples which won’t bear copyin.’. Miss Maryllia’s one of them samples, and we must take ‘er with prayer and thanksgivin’ as sich!”

IX

Maryllia’s first solitary dinner in the home of her ancestors passed off with tolerable success. She found something not altogether unpleasant in being alone after all. Plato was always an intelligent, well-behaved and dignified companion in his canine way, and the meal was elegantly served by Primmins, who waited on his new mistress with as much respect and zeal as if she had been a queen. A sense of authority and importance began to impress itself upon her as she sat at the head of her own table in her own dining-hall, with all the Vandykes and Holbeins and Gainsboroughs gazing placidly down upon her from their gilded frames, and the flicker of many wax candles in old silver sconces glancing upon the shields, helmets, rusty pikes and crossed swords that decorated the panelling of the walls between and above the pictures.

“Fancy! No gas and no electric light! It is simply charming!” she thought, “And so becoming to one’s dress and complexion! Only there’s nobody to see the becomingness. But I can soon remedy that. Lots of people will come down and stay here if I only ask them. There’s one thing quite certain about society folk—they will always come where they can be lodged and boarded free! They call it country visiting, but it really means shutting up their houses, dismissing their servants, and generally economising on their housekeeping bills. I’ve seen SUCH a lot of it!”

She heaved a little sigh over these social reminiscences, and finished her repast in meditative silence. She had not been accustomed to much thinking, and to indulge in it at all for any length of time was actually a novelty. Her aunt had told her never to think, as it made the face serious, and developed lines on the forehead. And she had, under this kind of tutelage, became one of a brilliant, fashionable, dress-loving crowd of women, who spend most of their lives in caring for their complexions and counting their lovers. Yet every now and again, a wave of repugnance to such a useless sort of existence arose in her and made a stormy rebellion. Surely there was something nobler in life—something higher— something more useful and intelligent than the ways and manners of a physically and morally degenerate society?

It was a still, calm evening, and the warmth of the sun all day had drawn such odours from the hearts of the flowers that the air was weighted with perfume when she wandered out again into her garden after dinner, and looked up wistfully at the gables of the Manor set clear against a background of dark blue sky patterned with stars. A certain gravity oppressed her. There was, after all, something just a little eerie in the on-coming of night in this secluded woodland place where she had voluntarily chosen to dwell all alone and unprotected, rather than lend herself to her aunt’s match-making schemes.

“Of course,” she argued with herself, “I need not stay here if I don’t like it. I can get a paid companion and go travelling,—but, oh dear, I’ve had so much travelling!—or I can own myself in the wrong to Aunt Emily, and marry that wretch Roxmouth,—Oh, no! I COULD not! I WILL not!”

She gave an impatient little stamp with her foot, and anon surveyed the old house with affectionate eyes.

“You shall be my rescue!” she said, kissing her hand playfully to the latticed windows,—“You shall turn me into an old-fashioned lady, fond of making jams and pickles, and preserves and herbal waters! I’ll put away all the idiotic intrigues and silly fooling of modern society in one of your quaint oaken cupboards, and lock them all up with little bags of lavender to disinfect them! And I will wait for someone to come and find me out and love me; and if no one ever comes—” Here she paused, then went on,—“If no one ever comes, why then—” and she laughed—“some man will have lost a good chance of marrying as true a girl as ever lived!—a girl who could love— ah!” And she stretched out her pretty rounded arms to the scented air. “HOW she could love if she were loved!”

The young moon here put in a shy appearance by showing a fleck of silver above the highest gable of the Manor.

“A little diamond peak, No bigger than an unobserved star, Or tiny point of fairy scimitar; Bright signal that she only stooped to tie Her silver sandals ere deliciously She bowed unto the heavens her timid head, Slowly she rose as though she would have fled.”

“There’s no doubt,” said Maryllia, “that this place is romantic! And romance is what I’ve been searching for all my life, and have never found except in books. Not so much in modern books as in the books that were written by really poetical and imaginative people sixty or seventy years ago. Nowadays, the authors that are most praised go in for what they call ‘realism’—and their realism is very UNreal, and very nasty. For instance, this garden,—these lovely trees,—this dear old house—all these are real—but much too romantic for a modern writer. He would rather describe a dusthole and enumerate every potato paring in it! And here am I—I’m real enough—but I’m not a bad woman—I haven’t got what is euphoniously called ‘a past,’ and I don’t belong to the right-down vicious company of ‘Souls.’ So I should never do for a heroine of latter-day fiction. I’m afraid I’m abnormal. It’s dreadful to be abnormal! One becomes a ‘neurotic,’ like Lombroso, and all the geniuses. But suppose the world were full of merely normal people,—people who did nothing but eat and sleep in the most perfectly healthy and regular manner,—oh, what a bore it would be! There would be no pictures, no sculpture, no poetry, no music, no anything worth living for. One MUST have a few ideas beyond food and clothing!”

The moon, rose higher and shed a shower of silver over the grass, lighting up in strong relief the fair face upturned to it.

“Now the ‘Souls’ pretend to have ideas,” continued Maryllia, still apostrophising the bland stillness; “But their ideas are low,— decidedly low,—and decidedly queer. And that Cabinet Ministers are in their set doesn’t make them any the better. I could have