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

few pints wot the learned gentlemen in London don’t know. Anyway, a little church- goin’ under Passon Walden won’t do you no ‘arm, nor your lady neither, if she’s what I takes her for, which is believin’ her to be all good as wimmin goes. An’ when Passon warms to his work an’ tells ye plain as ‘ow everything’s ordained for the best, an’ as ‘ow every flower’s a miracle of the Lord, an’ every bird’s song a bit o’ the Lord’s own special music, it ‘eartens ye up an’ makes ye more ‘opeful o’ your own poor mis’able self—it do reely now!”

With another friendly pat on the groom’s shoulder, and a cheery smile, Bainton passed out, and left the rest of the company in the ‘Mother Huff’ tap-room solemnly gazing upon one another.

“He speaks straight, he do,” said Farmer Thorpe, “An’ he ain’t no canter,—he’s just plain Tummas, an’ wot he sez he means.”

“Here’s to his ‘elth,—a game old boy!” said Bennett good- humouredly, ordering another glass of ale; “It’s quite a treat to meet a man like him, and I shan’t be above owning that he’s got a deal of right on his side. But what he says ain’t Orthodox Church teaching.”

“Mebbe not,” said Dan Kidley, “but it’s Passon Walden’s teachin’, an’ if you ain’t ‘eard Passon yet, Mister Bennett, I’d advise ye to go next Sunday. An’ if your lady ‘ud make up her mind to go too just for once---”

Bennett gave an expressive gesture.

“She won’t go—you may depend on that!” he said; “She’s had too much of parsons as it is. Why Mrs. Fred—that’s her American aunt—was regular pestered with ‘em coming beggin’ of her for their churches and their windows and their schools and their infants and their poor, lame, blind, sick of all sorts, as well as for theirselves. D’rectly they knew she was a millionaire lady’ they ‘adn’t got but one thought—how to get some of the millions out of her. There was three secretaries kept when we was in London, and they’d hardly time for bite nor sup with all the work they ‘ad, refusin’ scores of churches and religious folks all together. Miss Maryllia’s got a complete scare o’ parsons. Whenever she see a shovel-hat coming she just flew! When she was in Paris it was the Catholics as wanted money—nuns, sisters of the poor, priests as ‘ad been turned out by the Government,—and what not,—and out in America it was the Christian Scientists all the time with such a lot of tickets for lectures and fal-lals as you never saw,—then came the Spiritooalists with their seeances; and altogether the Vancourt family got to look on all sorts of religions merely as so many kinds of beggin’ boxes which if you dropped money into, you went straight to the Holy-holies, and if you didn’t you dropped down into the great big D’s. No!—I don’t think anyone need expect to see my lady at church—it’s the last place she’d ever think of going to!”

This piece of information was received by his hearers with profound gravity. No one spoke, and during the uncomfortable pause Bennett gave a careless ‘Good-night!’—and took his departure.

“Things is come to a pretty pass in this ‘ere country,” then said Mr. Netlips grandiosely, “when the woman who is merely the elevation of the man, exhibits in public a conviction to which her status is unfitted. If the lady who now possesses the Manor were under the submission of a husband, he would naturally assume the control which is govemmentally retaliative and so compel her to include the religious considerations of the minority in her communicative system!”

Farmer Thorpe looked impressed, but slightly puzzled.

“You sez fine, Mr. Netlips,—you sez fine,” he observed respectfully. “Not that I altogether understands ye, but that’s onny my want of book-larnin’ and not spellin’ through the dictionary as I oughter when I was a youngster. Howsomever I makes bold to guess wot you’re drivin’ at and I dessay you may be right. But I’m fair bound to own that if it worn’t for Mr. Walden, I shouldn’t be found in church o’ Sundays neither, but lyin’ flat on my back in a field wi’ my face turned up to the sun, a-thinkin’ of the goodness o’ God, and hopin’ He’d put a hand out to ‘elp make the crops grow as they should do. Onny Passon he be a rare good man, and he do speak to the ‘art of ye so wise-like and quiet, and that’s why I goes to hear him and sez the prayers wot’s writ for me to say and doos as he asks me to do. But if I’d been unfort’nit enough to live in the parish of Badsworth under that old liar Leveson, I’d a put my fist in his jelly face ‘fore I’d a listened to a word he had to say! Them’s my sentiments, mates!—and you can read ‘em how you like, Mr. Netlips. God’s in heaven we know,—but there’s onny churches on earth, an’ we ‘as to make sure whether there’s men or devils inside of ‘em ‘fore we goes kneelin’ and grubbin’ in front of ‘uman idols—Good-night t’ye!”

With these somewhat disjointed remarks Farmer Thorpe strode out of the tap-room, whistling loudly to his dog as he reached the door. The heavy tramp of his departing feet echoed along the outside lane and died away, and Roger Buggins, glancing at the sheep-faced clock in the bar, opined that it was ‘near closin’ hour.’ All the company rose and began to take their leave.

“Church or no church, Miss Vancourt’s a real lady!” declared Dan Bidley emphatically—“She may have her reasons, an’ good ones too, for not attending service, but she ain’t no heathen, I’m sartin’ sure o’ that.”

“You cannot argumentarially be sure of what you do not know,” said Mr. Netlips, with a tight smile, buttoning on his overcoat—“A heathen is a proscription of the law, and cannot enjoy the rights of the commons.”

Dan stared.

“There ain’t no proscription of the law in stayin’ away from church,” he said—“Nobody’s bound to go. Lords nor commons can’t compel us.”

Mr. Netlips shook his head and frowned darkly, with the air of one who could unveil a great mystery if he chose.

“Compulsion is a legal community,” he said—“And while powerless to bring affluence to the Christian conscience, it culminates in the citizenship of the heathen. Miss Vancourt, as her father’s daughter, should be represented by the baptized spirit, and not by the afflatus of the ungenerate! Good-night!”

Still puckering his brow into lines of mysterious suggestiveness, the learned Netlips went his way, Roger Buggins gazing after him admiringly.

“That man’s reg’lar lost down ‘ere,”—he observed—“He oughter ha’ been in Parliament.”

“Ah, so he ought!” agreed Dan Ridley—“Where’s there’s fog he’d a made it foggier, and where’s there’s no understandin’ he’d a made it less understandable. I daresay he’d a bin Prime Minister in no time- he’s just the sort. They likes a good old muddler for that work- someone as has the knack o’ addlin’ the people’s brains an’ makin’ them see a straight line as though’twere crooked. It keeps things quiet an’ yet worrity-like—first up, then down—this way, then that way, an’ never nothin’ certain, but plenty o’ big words rantin’ round. That’s Netlips all over,—it’s in the shape of his ‘ed,—he was born like it. I don’t like his style myself,—but he’d make a grand cab-nit minister!”

“Ay, so he would!” acquiesced Buggins, as he drew the little red curtains across the windows of the tap-room and extinguished the hanging lamp—“Easy rest ye, Dan!”

“Same to you, Mr. Buggins!” responded the tailor cheerfully, as he turned out into the cool sweet dimness of the hawthorn-hedged lane in which the ‘Mother Huff’ stood—“I make bold to say that church or no church, Miss Vancourt’s bein’ at her own ‘ouse ‘ull be a gain an’ a blessing to the village.”

“Mebbe so,” returned Buggins laconically,—and closing his door he barred it across for the night, while Dan Ridley, full of the half- poetic, half philosophic thoughts which the subjects of religion and religious worship frequently excite in a more or less untutored rustic mind, trudged slowly homeward.

During these days, Maryllia herself, unconscious of the remarks passed upon her as the lady of the Manor by her village neighbours, had not been idle, nor had she suffered much from depression of spirits, though, socially speaking, she was having what she privately considered in her own mind ‘rather a dull time.’ To begin with, everybody in the neighbourhood that was anybody in the neighbourhood, had called upon her,—and the antique oaken table in the great hall was littered with a snowy array of variously shaped bits of pasteboard, bearing names small and great,—names of old county families,—names of new mushroom gentry,—names of clergymen and their wives in profusion, and one or two modest cards with the plain ‘Mr.’ of the only young bachelors anywhere near for fifteen miles round. Nearly every man had a wife—“Such a pity!” commented Maryllia, when noting the fact—“One can never ask any of them to dinner without their dragons!”

Most of the callers had paid their ‘duty visits’ at a time of the afternoon when she was always out,—roaming over her own woods and fields, and ‘taking stock’ as she said, of her own possessions,—but on one or two occasions she had been caught ‘in,’ and this was the case when Sir Morton Pippitt, accompanied by his daughter Tabitha, Mr. Julian Adderley, and Mr. Marius Longford were announced just at the apt and fitting hour of ‘five-o’clock tea.’ Rising from the chair where she had negligently thrown herself to read for a quiet half hour, she set aside her book, and received those important personages with the careless ease and amiable indifference which was a ‘manner familiar’ to her, and which invariably succeeded in making less graceful persons than she was, feel wretchedly awkward and unhappy about the management of their hands and feet. With a smiling upward and downward glance, she mastered Sir Morton Pippitt’s ‘striking and jovial personality,’—his stiffly-carried upright form, large lower chest, close-shaven red face, and pleasantly clean white hair,—“The very picture of a Bone-Melter”—she thought—“He looks as if he had been boiled all over himself—quite a nice well- washed old man,”—her observant eyes flashed over the attenuated form of Julian Adderley with a sparkle of humour,—she noticed the careful carelessness of his attire, the artistic ‘set’ of his ruddy locks, the eccentric cut of his trousers, and the, to himself, peculiar knot of his tie.

“The poor thing wants to be something out of the common and can’t quite manage it,” she mentally decided, while she viewed with extreme disfavour the feline elegance affected by Mr. Marius Longford, and the sleek smile, practised by him ‘for women only,’ with which he blandly admitted her existence. To Miss Tabitha Pippit she offered a chair of capacious dimensions, amply provided with large down cushons, inviting her to sit down in it with a gentleness which implied kindly consideration for her years and for the fatigue she might possibly experience as a result of the drive over from Badsworth Hall,—whereat the severe spinster’s chronically red nose reddened more visibly, and between her thin lips she sharply enunciated her preference for ‘a higher seat,—no cushions, thank you!’ Thereupon she selected the ‘higher seat’ for herself, in the shape of an old-fashioned music-stool, without back or arm-rest, and sat stiffly upon it like a draper’s clothed dummy put up in a window for public inspection. Maryllia smiled,—she knew that kind of woman well;—and paying only the most casual attention to her for the rest of the time, returned to her own place by the open windows and began to dispense the tea, while Sir