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

the more youthful members of the community, if he, the spiritual director of the parish, were reported to have laughed at the pugnacious conduct of the valiant Kitty Spruce, he controlled himself, and assumed a tolerantly serious air.

“That will do, Bob!—that will do! You must learn not to repeat all you hear, especially such objectionable words as may occasionally be used by a—a--a gentleman of Sir Morton Pippitt’s high standing.”

And here he squared his shoulders and looked severely down an the abashed Keeley. Anon he unbent himself somewhat and his eyes twinkled with kindly humour: “Why didn’t you bring the Maypole here?” he enquired; “I suppose you thought it would not be as good a ‘spec as Badsworth Hall and the London gents—eh?”

Bob Keeley opened his round eyes very wide.

“We be all comin’ ‘ere, sir!” he burst out: “All on us—ever so many on us! But we reckoned to make a round of the village first and see how we took on, and finish up wi’ you, sir! Kitty Spruce she be a- keepin’ her best ribbin for comin’ ‘ere—we be all a-comin’ ‘fore twelve!”

Walden smiled.

“Good! I shall expect you! And mind you don’t all sing out of tune when you do come. If you commit such an offence, I shall—let me see!—I shall make mincemeat of you!—I shall indeed! Positive mincemeat!—and bottle you up in jars for Christmas!” And he nodded with the ferociously bland air of the giant in a fairy tale, whose particular humour is the devouring of small children. “Now you had better get back to Badsworth Hall with my message. Do you remember it? My compliments to Sir Morton Pippitt, and I will write.”

He turned away, and Bob Keeley made as rapid a departure as was consistent with the deep respect he felt for the ‘Passon,’ having extracted a promise from the butcher boy of the village, who was a friend of his, that if he were ‘quick about it,’ he would get a drive up to Badsworth and back again in the butcher’s cart going there for orders, instead of tramping it.

The Reverend John, meanwhile, strolled down one of the many winding garden paths, past clusters of daffodils, narcissi and primroses, into a favourite corner which he called the ‘Wilderness,’ because it was left by his orders in a more or less untrimmed, untrained condition of luxuriantly natural growth. Here the syringa, a name sometimes given by horticultural pedants to the lilac, for no reason at all except to create confusion in the innocent minds of amateur growers, was opening its white ‘mock orange’ blossoms, and a mass of flowering aconites spread out before him like a carpet of woven gold. Here, too, tufts of bluebells peeked forth from behind the moss-grown stems of several ancient oaks and elms, and purple pansies bordered the edge of the grass. A fine old wistaria grown in tree-form, formed a natural arch of entry to this shady retreat, and its flowers were just now in their full beauty, hanging in a magnificent profusion of pale mauve, grapelike bunches from the leafless stems. Many roses, of the climbing or ‘rambling’ kind, were planted here, and John Walden’s quick eye soon perceived where a long green shoot of one of those was loose and waving in the wind to its own possible detriment. He felt in his pockets for a bit of roffia or twine to tie up the straying stem,—he was very seldom without something of the kind for such emergencies, but this time he only groped among the fragments of Sir Morton Pippitt’s note and found nothing useful. Stepping out on the path again, he looked about him and caught a glimpse of a stooping, bulky form in weather- beaten garments, planting something in one of the borders at a little distance.

“Bainton!” he called.

The figure slowly raised itself, and as slowly turned its head.

“Sir!”

“Just come here and tie this rose up, will you?”

The individual addressed approached at a very deliberate pace, dragging out some entangled roffia from his pocket as he came and severing it into lengths with his teeth. Walden partly prepared his task for him by holding up the rose branch in the way it should go, and on his arrival assisted him in the business of securing it to the knotty bough from which it had fallen.

“That looks better!” he remarked approvingly, as he stepped back and surveyed it. “You might do this one at the same time while you are about it, Bainton.”

And he pointed to a network of ‘Crimson rambler’ rose-stems which had blown loose from their moorings and were lying across the grass.

“This place wants a reg’ler clean out,” remarked Bainton then, in accents of deep disdain, as he stooped to gather up the refractory branches: “It beats me altogether, Passon, to know what you wants wi’ a forcin’ bed for weeds an’ stuff in the middle of a decent garden. That old Wistaria Sinyens (Sinensis) is the only thing here that is worth keeping. Ah! Y’are a precious sight, y’are!” he continued, apostrophising the ‘rambler’ branches—“For all yer green buds ye ain’t a-goin’ to do much this year! All sham an’ ‘umbug, y’are!—all leaf an’ shoot an’ no flower,—like a great many people I knows on—ah!—an’ not so far from this village neither! I’d clear it all out if I was you, Passon,—I would reely now!”

Walden laughed.

“Don’t open the old argument, Bainton!” he said good-humouredly; “We have talked of this before. I like a bit of wild Nature sometimes.”

“Wild natur!” echoed Bainton. “Seems to me natur allus wants a bit of a wash an’ brush up ‘fore she sits down to her master’s table;— an’ who’s ‘er master? Man! She’s jest like a child comin’ out of a play in the woods, an’ ‘er ‘air’s all blown, an’ ‘er nails is all dirty. That’s natur! Trim ‘er up an’ curl ‘er ‘air an’ she’s worth looking at. Natur! Lor’, Passon, if ye likes wild natur ye ain’t got no call to keep a gard’ner. But if ye pays me an’ keeps me, ye must ‘spect me to do my duty. Wherefore I sez: why not ‘ave this ‘ere musty-fusty place, a reg’ler breedin’ ‘ole for hinsects, wopses, ‘ornits, snails an’ green caterpillars—ah! an’ I shouldn’t wonder if potato-fly got amongst ‘em, too!—why not, I say, have it cleaned out?”

“I like it as it is,” responded Walden with cheerful imperturbability, and a smile at the thick-set obstinate-looking figure of his ‘head man about the place’ as Bainton loved to be called. “Have you planted out my phloxes?”

“Planted ‘em out every one,” was the reply; “Likewhich the Delphy Inums. An’ I’ve put enough sweet peas in to supply Covint Garden market, bearin’ in mind as ‘ow you sed you couldn’t have enough on ‘em. Sir Morton Pippitt’s Lunnon valet came along while I was a- doin’ of it, an’ ‘e peers over the ‘edge an’ ‘e sez, sez ‘e: ‘Weedin’ corn, are yer?’ ‘No, ye gowk,’ sez I! ‘Ever seen corn at all ‘cept in a bin? Mixed wi’ thistles, mebbe?’ An’ then he used a bit of ‘is master’s or’nary language, which as ye knows, Passon, is chice—partic’ler chice. ‘Evil communications c’rupts good manners’ even in a valet wot ‘as no more to do than wash an’ comb a man like a ‘oss, an’ pocket fifty pun a year for keepin’ of ‘is haristocratic master clean. Lor’!—what a wurrld it is!—what a wurrld!”

He had by this time tied up the ‘Crimson rambler’ in orderly fashion, and the Reverend John, stroking his moustache to hide a smile, proceeded to issue various orders according to his usual daily custom.

“Don’t forget to plant some mignonette in the west border, Bainton. Not the giant kind,—the odour of the large blooms is rough and coarse compared with that of the smaller variety. Put plenty of the ‘common stuff’ in,—such mignonette as our grandmothers grew in their gardens, before you Latin-loving horticultural wise-acres began to try for size rather than sweetness.”

Bainton drew himself up with a quaint assumption of dignity, and by lifting his head a little more, showed his countenance fully,—a countenance which, though weather-worn and deeply furrowed, was a distinctly intelligent one, shrewd and thoughtful, with sundry little curves of humour lighting up its native expression of saturnine sedateness.

“I suppose y’are alludin’ to the F.R.H.‘s, Passon,” he said; “They all loves Latin, as cats loves milk; howsomever, they never knows ‘ow to pronounce it. Likewhich myself not bein’ a F.R.H. nor likely to be, I’m bound to confess I dabbles in it a bit,—though there’s a chap wot I gets cheap shrubs of, his Latin’s worse nor mine, an’ ‘e’s got all the three letters after ‘is name. ‘Ow did ‘e get ‘em? By reason of competition in the Chrysanthum Show. Lor’! Henny fool can grow ye a chrysanthum as big as a cabbage, if that’s yer fancy,- that ain’t scientific gard’nin’! An’ as for the mignonette, I reckon to agree wi’ ye, Passon-the size ain’t the sweetness, likewhich when I married, I married a small lass, for sez I: ‘Little to carry, less to keep!’ An’ that’s true enough, though she’s gained in breadth, Lor’ love ‘er!—wot she never ‘ad in heighth. As I was a-sayin’, the chap wot I gets shrubs of, reels off ‘is Latin like chollops of mud off a garden scraper; but ‘e don’t understand it while ‘e sez it. Jes’ for show, bless ye! It all goes down wi’ Sir Morton Pippitt, though, for ‘e sez, sez ‘e: ‘MY cabbages are the prize vegetable, grown by Mr. Smogorton of Worcester, F.R.H.’ ‘E’s got it in ‘is Catlog! Hor!—hor Passon, a bit o’ Latin do go down wi’ some folks in the gard’nin’ line—it do reely now!”

“Talking of Sir Morton Pippitt,” said Walden, disregarding his gardener’s garrulity, “It seems he has visitors up at the Hall.”

“‘E ‘as so,” returned Bainton; “Reg’ler weedy waifs an’ strays o’ ‘umanity, if one may go by out’ard appearance; not a single firm, well-put-down leg among ‘em. Mos’ly ‘lords’ and ‘sirs.’ Bein’ so jes’ lately knighted for buildin’ a ‘ospital at Riversford, out of the proceeds o’ bone meltin’ into buttons, Sir Morton couldn’t a’ course, be expected to put up wi’ a plain ‘mister’ takin’ food wi’ ‘im.”

“Well, well,—whoever they are, they want to see the church.”

“Seems to me a sight o’ folks wants to see the church since ye spent so much money on it, Passon,” said Bainton somewhat resentfully; “There oughter be a charge made for entry.”

Walden smiled thoughtfully; but there was a small line of vexation on his brow.

“They want to see the church,” he repeated, “Or rather Sir Morton wants them to ‘inspect’ the church;”—and then his smile expanded and became a soft mellow laugh; “What a pompous old fellow it is! One would almost think he had restored the church himself, and not only restored it, but built it altogether and endowed it!” He turned to go, then suddenly bethought himself of other gardening matters,— “Bainton, that bare corner near the house must be filled with clematis. The plants are just ready to bed out. And look to the geraniums in the front border. By the way, do you see that straight line along the wall there,—where I am pointing?”

“Yes, sir!” dutifully rejoined Bainton, shading his eyes from the strong sun with one grimy hand.

“Well, plant nothing but hollyhocks there,—as many as you can cram in. We must have a blaze of colour to contrast with those dark yews. See to the jessamine and passion-flowers by the porch; and there is a ‘Gloire’ rose near the drawing-room window that wants cutting back a