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

old English sense of the word. Its ancient walls, hallowed by long tradition, formed a peaceful and sweet harbour of rest for a woman’s life,—and the tranquil dignity of her old-world surroundings with all the legends and memories they awakened, soon had a beneficial effect on Maryllia’s impressionable temperament, which, under her aunt’s ‘social’ influence, had been more or less chafed and uneasy. She began to feel at peace with herself and all the world,—while the relief she experienced at having deliberately severed herself by both word and act from the undesired attentions of a too-persistent and detested lover in the person of Lord Roxmouth, future Duke of Ormistonne, was as keen and pleasurable as that of a child who has run away from school. She was almost confident that the fact of her having thrown off her aunt’s protection together with all hope of inheriting her aunt’s wealth, would be sufficient to keep him away from her for the future. “For it is Aunt Emily’s money he wants—not me;” she said to herself—“He doesn’t care a jot about me personally—any woman will do, provided she has the millions. And when he knows I’ve given up the millions, and don’t intend ever to have the millions, he’ll leave me alone. And he’ll go over to America in search of somebody else—some proud daughter of oil or pork or steel!—and what a blessing that will be!”

Meanwhile, such brief excitement as had been caused in St. Rest by the return of ‘th’ owld Squire’s gel’ and by the almost simultaneous dismissal of Oliver Leach, had well-nigh abated. A new agent had been appointed, and though Leach had left the immediate vicinity, having employment on Sir Morton Pippitt’s lands, he had secured a cottage for himself in the small outlying hamlet of Badsworth. He also undertook some work for the Reverend ‘Putty’ Leveson in assisting him to form an entomological collection for the private museum at Badsworth Hall. Mr. Leveson had a singular fellow-feeling for insects,—he studied their habits, and collected specimens of various kinds in bottles, or ‘pinned’ them on cardboard trays,—he was an interested observer of the sprightly manners practised by the harvest-bug, and the sagacious customs of the ruminating spider,—as well as the many surprising and agreeable talents developed by the common flea. Leach’s virulent hatred of Maryllia Vancourt was not lessened by the apparently useful and scientific nature of the employment he had newly taken up under the guidance of his reverend instructor,—and whenever he caught a butterfly and ran his murderous pin through its quivering body at Leveson’s bland command, he thought of her, and wished vindictively that she might perish as swiftly and utterly as the winged lover of the flowers. Every small bright thing in Nature’s garden that he slew and brought home as trophy, inspired him with the same secret fierce desire. The act of killing a beautiful or harmless creature gave him pleasure, and he did not disguise it from himself. The Reverend ‘Putty’ was delighted with his aptitude, and with the many valuable additions he made to the ‘specimen’ cards and bottles, and the two became constant companions in their search for fresh victims among the blossoming hedgerows and fields. St. Rest, as a village, was only too glad to be rid of Leach’s long detested presence to care anything at all as to his further occupations or future career,—and only Bainton kept as he said ‘an eye on him.’

Bainton was a somewhat curious personage,—talkative as he showed himself on most occasions, he was both shrewd and circumspect; no stone was more uncommunicative than he when he chose. In his heart he had set Maryllia Vancourt as second to none save his own master, John Walden,—her beauty and grace, her firm action with regard to the rescue of the ‘Five Sisters,’ and her quick dismissal of Oliver Leach, had all inspired him with the most unbounded admiration and respect, and he felt that he now had a double interest in life,—the ‘Passon’—and the ‘lady of the Manor.’ But he found very little opportunity to talk about his new and cherished theme of Miss Vancourt and Miss Vancourt’s many attractions to Walden,—for John always ‘shut him up’ on the subject with quite a curt and peremptory decision whenever be so much as mentioned her name. Which conduct on the part of one who was generally so willing to hear and patient to listen, somewhat surprised Bainton.

“For,” he argued—“there ain’t much doin’ in the village,—we ain’t always ‘on the go’—an’ when a pretty face comes among us, surely it’s worth looking at an’ pickin’ to pieces as ‘twere. But Passon’s that sharp on me when I sez any little thing wot might be interestin’ about the lady, that I’m thinkin’ he’s got out o’ the habit o’ knowin’ when a face is a male or a female one, which is wot often happens to bacheldors when they gits fixed like old shrubs in one pertikler spot o’ ground. Now I should a’ said he’d a’ bin glad to ‘ear of somethin’ new an’ oncommon as ‘twere,—he likes it in the way o’ flowers, an’ why not in the way o’ wimmin? But Passon ain’t like other folk—he don’t git on with wimmin nohow—an’ the prettier they are the more he seems skeered off them.”

But such opinions as Bainton entertained concerning his master, he kept to himself, and having once grasped the fact that any mention of Miss Vancourt’s ways or Miss Vancourt’s looks appeared to displease rather than to entertain the Reverend John, he avoided the subject altogether. This course of action on his part, if the truth must be told, was equally annoying to Walden, who was in the curious mental condition of wishing to know what he declined to hear.

For the rest, the village generally grew speedily accustomed to the presence of the mistress of the Manor. She had fulfilled her promise of paying a visit to Josey Letherbarrow, and had sat with the old man in his cottage, talking to him for the better part of two hours. Rumour asserted that she had even put the kettle on the fire for him, and had made his tea. Josey himself was reticent,—and beyond the fact that he held up his head with more dignity, and showed a touch of more conscious superiority in his demeanour, he did not give himself away by condescending to narrate any word of the lengthy interview that had taken place between himself and ‘th’ owld Squire’s little gel.’ One remarkable thing was noticed by the villagers and commented upon,—Miss Vancourt had now passed two Sundays in their midst, and had never once attended church. Her servants were always there at morning service, but she herself was absent. This occasioned much whispering and head-shaking in the little community, and one evening the subject was openly discussed in the bar-room of the ‘Mother Huff’ by a group of rustic worthies whose knowledge of matters theological and political was, by themselves, considered profound. Mrs. Buggins had started the conversation, and Mrs. Buggins was well known to be a lady both pious and depressing. She presided over her husband’s ‘public’ with an air of meek resignation, not unmixed with sorrowful protest,—she occasionally tasted the finer cordials in the bar-room, and was often moved to gentle tears at the excellence of their flavour,—she had a chronic ‘stitch in the side,’ and a long smooth pale yellow countenance from which the thin grey hair was combed well back from the temples in the frankly unbecoming fashion affected by the provincial British matron. She begun her remarks by plaintively opining that “it was a very strange thing not to see Miss Vancourt at church, on either of the Sundays that had passed since her return—very strange! Perhaps she was ‘High’? Perhaps she had driven into Riversford to attend the ‘processional’ service of the Reverend Francis Anthony?”

“Perhaps she ain’t done nothing of the sort!”—growled a thick-set burly farmer, who with a capacious mug of ale before him was sucking at his pipe with as much zeal as a baby at its bottle—“Ef you cares for my ‘pinion, which, m’appen you doan’t, she’s neither Low nor ‘Igh. She’s no Seck. If she h’longed to a Seck, she wouldn’t be readin’ on a book under the Five Sisters last Sunday marnin’ when the bells was a-ringin’ for church time. I goes past ‘er, an’ I sez ‘Marnin,’ mum!’ an’ she looks up smilin’like, an’ sez she: ‘Good marnin!’ Nice day, isn’t it?’ ‘Splendid day, mum,’ sez I, an’ she went on readin’, an’ I went on a walkin’. I sez then, and I sez now, she ain’t no Seck!”

“Example,” sighed Mrs. Buggins, “is better than precept. It would be more decent if the lady showed herself in church as a lesson to others,—if she did so more lost sheep might follow!”

“Hor-hor-hor!” chuckled Bainton, from a corner of the room—“Don’t you worrit yourself, Missis Buggins, ‘bout no lost sheep! Sheep allus goes where there’s somethin’ to graze upon,—leastways that’s my ‘speriemce, an’ if there ain’t no grazin’ there ain’t no sheep! An’ them as grazes on Passon Walden, gittin’ out of ‘im all they can to ‘elp ‘em along, wouldn’t go to church, no more than Miss Vancourt do, if they didn’t know wot a man ‘e is to be relied on in times o’ trouble, an’ a reg’lar ‘usband to the parish in sickness an’ in ‘elth, for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, till death do ‘im part. Miss Vancourt don’t want nothin’ out of ‘im as all we doos, an’ she kin show ‘er independence ef she likes to by stayin’ away from church when she fancies, an’ readin’ books instead of ‘earin’ sermons,—there ain’t no harm in that.”

“I’m not so sure that I agree with you, Mr. Bainton,”—said a stout, oily-looking personage, named Netlips, the grocer and ‘general store’ dealer of the village, a man who was renowned in the district for the profundity and point of his observations at electoral meetings, and for the entirely original manner in which he ‘used’ the English language; “Public worship is a necessary evil. It is a factor in vulgar civilisations. Without it, the system of religious politics would fall into cohesion,—absolute cohesion!” And he rapped his fist on the table with a smartness that made his hearers jump. “At the last meeting I addressed in this division, I said we must support the props. The aristocracy must bear them on their shoulders. If your Squire stays away from church, he may be called a heathen with propriety, though a Liberal. And why? Because he makes public exposure of himself as a heathen negative! He is bound to keep up the church factor in the community. Otherwise he runs straight aground on Cohesion.”

This oratorical outburst on the part of Mr. Netlips was listened to with respectful awe and admiration.

“Ay, ay!” said Roger Buggins, who as ‘mine host’ stood in his shirt sleeves at the entrance of his bar, surveying his customers and mentally counting up their reckonings—“Cohesion would never do— cohesion government would send the country to pieces. You’re right, Mr. Netlips,—you’re right! Props must be kep’ up!”

“I don’t see no props in goin’ to church,”—said Dan Ridley, the little working tailor of the village—“I goes because I likes Mr. Walden, but if there was a man in the pulpit I didn’t like, I’d stop away. There’s a deal too many wolves in sheep’s clothing getting ordained in the service o’ the Lord, an’ I don’t blame Miss Vancourt if so be she takes time to find out the sort o’ man Mr. Walden is before settin’ under him as ‘twere. She can say prayers an’ read ‘em too in her own room, an’ study the Bible all right without goin’ to church. Many folks as