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

solemn pine, leading into deeper and deeper gloom, but cheery and picturesque clumps of elm and beech and oak, at constant intervals with hazel-copse, hawthorn and eglantine,—true English woods, suggestive of delicate romance and poesy, and made magical by the songs of birds, whose silver-throated melodies are never heard to sweeter advantage than under the leafy boughs of such unspoilt green lanes and dells as yet remain to make the charm and glamour of rural England. Primroses peeped out in smiling clusters from every mossy nook, and the pale purple of a myriad violets spread a wave of soft colour among the last year’s fallen leaves, which had served good purpose in keeping the tender buds warm till Spring should lift them from their earth-cradles into full-grown blossom. Maryllia’s bright eyes, glancing here and there, saw and noted a thousand beauties at every turn,—the chains of social convention and ordinance had fallen from her soul, and a joyous pulse of freedom quickened her blood and sent it dancing through her veins in currents of new exhilaration and vitality. With her multi- millionaire aunt, she had lived a life of artificial constraint, against which, despite its worldly brilliancy, her inmost and best instincts had always more or less rebelled;—now,—finding herself alone, as it were, with Mother Nature, she sprang like a child to that great maternal bosom, and nestled there with a sense of glad refreshment and peace.

“What dear wildflowers!” she murmured now, as restraining Cleopatra’s coquettish gambols, she rode more slowly along, and spied the bluebells standing up among tangles of green, making exquisite contrast with the golden glow of aconites and the fragile white of wood-anemones,—“They are ever so much prettier than the hot-house things one gets any day in Paris and London! Big forced roses,—great lolling, sickly-scented lilies, and orchids—oh dear! how tired I am of orchids! Every evening a bouquet of orchids for five weeks—Sundays NOT excepted,—shall I ever forget the detestable ‘rare specimens’!”

A little frown puckered her brow, and for a moment the lines of her pretty mouth drooped and pouted with a quaintly petulant expression, like that of a child going to cry.

“It was complete persecution!” she went on, crooning her complaints to herself and patting Cleopatra’s arched neck by way of accompaniment to her thoughts—“Absolute dodging and spying round corners after the style of a police detective. I just hate a lover who makes his love, if it is love, into a kind of whip to flog your poor soul with! Roxmouth here, Roxmouth there, Roxmouth everywhere!- -he was just like the water in the Ancient Mariner ‘and not a drop to drink.’ At the play, at the Opera, in the picture-galleries, at the races, at the flower-shows, at all the ‘crushes’ and big functions,—in London, in Paris, in New York, in St. Petersburg, in Vienna,—always ‘ce cher Roxmouth’—as Aunt Emily said;—money no consideration, distance no object,—always ‘ce cher Roxmouth,’ stiff as a poker, clean as fresh paint, and apparently as virtuous as an old maid,—with all his aristocratic family looming behind him, and a long ancestry of ghosts in the shadow of time, extending away back to some Saxon ‘nobles,’ who no doubt were coarse barbarians that ate more raw meat than was good for them, and had to be carried to bed dead drunk on mead! It IS so absurd to boast of one’s ancestry! If we could only just see the dreadful men who began all the great families, we should be perfectly ashamed of them! Most of them tore up their food with their fingers. Now we Vancourts are supposed to be descended from a warrior bold, named Robert Priaulx de Vaignecourt, who fought in the Crusades. Poor Uncle Fred used to be so proud of that! He was always talking about it, especially when we were in America. He liked to try and make the Pilgrim-Father- families jealous. Just as he used to boast that if he had only been born three minutes before my father, instead of three minutes after, he would have been the owner of Abbot’s Manor. That three minutes’ delay and consideration he took about coming into the world made him the youngest twin, and cut off his chances. And he told me that Robert the Crusader had a brother named Osmond, who was believed to have founded a monastery somewhere in this neighbourhood, and who died, so the story goes, during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, though there’s no authentic trace left of either Osmond or Robert anywhere. They might, of course, have been very decent and agreeable men,—but it’s rather doubtful. If Osmond went on a pilgrimage he would never have washed himself, to begin with,—it would have destroyed his sanctity. And as for Robert the warrior bold, he would have been dreadfully fierce and hairy,—and I’m quite sure I could not possibly have asked him to dinner!”

She laughed at her own fancies, and guided her mare under a drooping canopy of early-flowering wild acacia, just for the sheer pleasure of springing lightly up in her saddle to pull off a tuft of scented white blossom.

“The fact is,” she continued half aloud, “there’s nobody I can ask to dinner even now as it is. Not down here. The local descriptions of Sir Morton Pippitt do not tempt me to make his acquaintance, and as for the parson I met just now,why he would be impossible!- simply impossible!” she repeated with emphasis—” I can see exactly what he’s like at a glance. One of those cold, quiet, clever men who ‘quiz’ women and never admire them,—I know the kind of horrid University creature! A sort of superior, touch-me-not-person who can barely tolerate a woman’s presence in the room, and in his heart of hearts relegates the female sex generally to the lowest class of the animal creation. I can read it all in his face. He’s rather good- looking—not very,—his hair curls quite nicely, but it’s getting grey, and so is his moustache,—he must be at least fifty, I should think. He has a good figure—for a clergyman;—and his eyes—no, I’m not sure that I like his eyes—I believe they’re deceitful. I must look at them again before I make up my mind. But I know he’s just as conceited and disagreeable as most parsons—he probably thinks that he helps to turn this world and the next round on his little finger,—and I daresay he tells the poor village folk here that if they don’t obey him, they’ll go to hell, and if they do, they’ll fly straight to heaven and put on golden crowns at once. Dear me! What a ridiculous state of things! Fancy the dear old man in the smock who came to see me last night, with a pair of wings and a crown!”

Laughing again, she flicked Cleopatra’s neck with the reins, and started off at an easy swinging gallop, turning out of the woods into the carriage drive, and never checking her pace till she reached the house.

All that day she gave marked evidence that her reign as mistress of Abbot’s Manor had begun in earnest. Changing her riding dress for a sober little tailor-made frock of home-spun, she flitted busily over the old house of her ancestors, visiting it in every part, peering into shadowy corners, opening antique presses and cupboards, finding out the secret of sliding panels in the Jacobean oak that covered the walls, and leaving no room unsearched. The apartment in which her father’s body had lain in its coffin was solemnly unlocked and disclosed to her view under the title of ‘the Ghost Room,’—whereat she was sorrowfully indignant,—so much so indeed that Mrs. Spruce shivered in her shoes, pricked by the sting of a guilty conscience, for, if the truth be told, it was to Mrs. Spruce’s own too-talkative tongue that this offending name owed its origin. Quietly entering the peaceful chamber with its harmless and almost holy air of beautiful, darkened calm, Maryllia drew up the blinds, threw back the curtains, and opened the latticed windows wide, admitting a flood of sunshine and sweet air.

“It must never be called ‘the Ghost Room’ again,”—she said, with a reproachful gravity, which greatly disconcerted and overawed Mrs. Spruce—“otherwise it will have an evil reputation which it does not deserve. There is nothing ghostly or terrifying about it. It is a sacred room,—sacred to the memory of one of the dearest and best of men! It is wrong to let such a room be considered as haunted,—I shall sleep in it myself sometimes,—and I shall make it bright and pretty for visitors when they come. I would put a little child to sleep in it,—for my father was a good man, and nothing evil can ever be associated with him. Death is only dreadful to the ignorant and the wicked.”

Mrs. Spruce wisely held her peace, and dutifully followed her new mistress to the morning-room, where she had to undergo what might be called quite a stiff examination regarding all the household and housekeeping matters. Armed with a fascinating little velvet-bound notebook and pencil, Maryllia put down all the names of the different servants, both indoor and outdoor (making a small private mark of her own against those who had served her father in any capacity, and those who were just new to the place), together with the amount of wages due every month to each,—she counted over all the fine house linen, much of which had been purchased for her mother’s home-coming and had never been used;—she examined with all a connoisseur’s admiration the almost priceless old china with which the Manor shelves, dressers and cupboards were crowded,—and finally after luncheon and an hour’s deep cogitation by herself in the library, she wrote out in a round clerkly hand certain ‘rules and regulations,’ for the daily routine of her household, and handed the document to Mrs. Spruce,—much to that estimable dame’s perturbation and astonishment.

“These are my hours, Spruce,” she said—“And it will of course be your business to see that the work is done punctually and with proper method. There must be no waste or extravagance,—and you will bring me all the accounts every week, as I won’t have bills running up longer than that period. I shall leave all the ordering in of provisions to you,—if it ever happens that you send something to table which I don’t like, I will tell you, and the mistake need not occur again. Now is there anything else?”—and she paused meditatively, finger on lip, knitting her brows—“You see I’ve never done any housekeeping, but I’ve always had notions as to how I should do it if I ever got the chance to try, and I’m just beginning. I believe in method,—and I like everything that HAS a place to be in IN its place, and everything that HAS a time, to come up to its time. It saves ever so much worry and trouble! Now let me think!—oh yes!—I knew there was another matter. Please let the gardeners and outdoor men generally know that if they want to speak to me, they can always see me from ten to half-past every morning. And, by the way, Spruce, tell the maids to go about their work quietly,—there is nothing more objectionable than a noise and fuss in the house just because a room is being swept and turned out. I simply hate it! In the event of any quarrels or complaints, please refer them to me—and—and—” Here she paused again with a smile— “Yes! I think that’s all—for the present! I haven’t yet gone through the library or the picture-gallery;—however those rooms have nothing to do with the ordinary daily housekeeping,—if I find anything wanting to be done there, I’ll send for you again. But that’s about all now!”

Poor Mrs. Spruce curtseyed deferentially and tremulously. She was not going to have it