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

“Dor’t you go to church?” he asked—“I didn’t know it!”

Here was a surprise for the lady of the Manor. The clergyman of her own parish,—a man, who by all accepted rule and precedent ought to have been after her at once, asking for subscriptions to this fund and that fund, toadying her for her position, and begging for her name and support, had not even noticed her absence from divine service on Sundays! She did not know whether to be relieved or dissatisfied. Such indifference to her actions piqued her feminine pride, and yet, his tone was very kind and courteous. Noting the colour coming and going on her face, he spoke again---

“I never interfere personally with my parishioners, Miss Vancourt”— he said—“To attend church or stay away from church is a matter of conscience with each individual, and must be left to individual choice. I should be the last person in the world to entertain a bad opinion of anyone simply because he or she never went to church. That would be foolish indeed! Some of the noblest and best men in Christendom to-day never go to church,—but they are none the less noble and good! They have their reasons of conscience for non- committing themselves to accepted forms of faith, and it often turns out that they are more truly Christian and more purely religious than the most constant church-goer that ever lived.”

Maryllia gave a little sigh of sudden relief.

“Ah, you are a broad-minded Churchman!” she said. “I am glad! Very glad! Because you have no doubt followed the trend of modern thought,—and you must have read all the discussions in the magazines and in the books that are written on such subjects,—and you can understand how difficult it is to a person like myself to decide what is right when so many of the wisest and most educated men agree to differ.”

Walden stopped abruptly in his walk.

“Please do not mistake me, Miss Vancourt,” he said gravely, and with emphasis—“I should be sorry if you gathered a wrong opinion of me at the outset of our acquaintance. As your minister I feel that I ought to make my position clear to you. You say that I have probably followed the trend of modern thought—and I presume that you mean the trend of modern thought in religious matters. Now I have not ‘followed’ it, but I have patiently studied it, and find it in all respects deplorable and disastrous. At the same time I would not force the high truths of religion on any person, nor would I step out of my way to ask anyone to attend church if he or she did not feel inclined to do so. And why? Because I fully admit the laxity and coldness of the Church in the present day—and I know that there are many ministers of the Gospel who do not attract so much as they repel. I am not so self-opinionated as to dream that I, a mere country parson, can succeed in drawing souls to Christ when so many men of my order, more gifted than I, have failed, and continue to fail. But I wish you quite frankly to understand that the trend of modern thought does not affect the vows I took at my ordination,— that I do not preach one thing, and think another,—and that whatever my faults and shortcomings may be, I most earnestly endeavour to impress the minds of all those men and women who are committed to my care with the beauty, truth and saving grace of the Christian Faith.”

Maryllia was silent. She appeared to be looking at the daisies in the grass.

“I hope,” he continued quietly, “you will forgive this rather serious talk of mine. But when you spoke of ‘the trend of modern thought,’ it seemed necessary to me to let you know at once and straightly that I am not with it,—that I do not belong to the modern school. Professing to be a Christian minister, I try to be one,—very poorly and unsuccessfully I know,—but still, I try!”

Maryllia raised her eyes. There was a glisten on her long lashes as of tears.

“Please forgive ME!” she said simply—“And thank you for speaking as you have done! I shall always remember it, and honour you for it. I hope we shall be friends?”

She put the words as a query, and half timidly held out her little ungloved hand. He took it at once and pressed it cordially.

“Indeed, I am sure we shall!” he said heartily, and the smile that made his face more than ordinarily handsome lit up his eyes and showed a depth of sincerity and kindly feeling reflected straight from his honest soul. A sudden blush swept over Maryllia’s cheeks, and she gently withdrew her hand from his clasp. A silence fell between them, and when they broke the spell it was by a casual comment respecting the wealth of apple-blossoms that were making the trees around them white with their floral snow.

“St. Rest is a veritable orchard, when the season favours it,” said Walden—“It is one of the best fruit-growing corners in England. At Abbot’s Manor, for instance, the cherry crop is finer than can be gathered on the same acreage of ground in Kent. Did you know that?”

Maryllia laughed.

“No! I know absolutely nothing about my own home, Mr. Walden,—and I am perfectly aware that I ought to be ashamed of my ignorance. I AM ashamed of it! I’m going to try and amend the error of my ways as fast as I can. When Cicely Bourne comes to stay with me, she will help me. She’s ever so much more sensible than I am. She’s a genius.”

“Geniuses do not always get the credit of being sensible, do they?” queried John, smiling—“Are they not supposed to be creatures of impulse, dwellers in the air, and wholly irresponsible?”

“Exactly so,”—she replied—“That is the commonplace opinion commonplace people entertain of them. Yet the commonplace people owe everything they enjoy in art, literature and science to the conceptions of genius, and of genius alone. As for Cicely, she is the most practical little person possible. She began to earn her living at the age of eleven, and has ‘roughed’ it in the world more severely than many a man. But she keeps her dreams,”

“And those who wish her well will pray that she may always keep them,”—said Walden—“For to lose one’s illusions is to lose the world.”

“The world itself may be an illusion!” said Maryllia, drawing near the garden gate and leaning upon it for a moment, as she glanced up at him with a vague sadness in her eyes,—“We never know. I have often felt that it is only a pretty little pageant, with a very dark background behind it!”

He was silent, looking at her. For the first time he caught himself noticing her dress. It was of simple pale blue linen, relieved with white embroidered lawn, and in its cool, fresh, clean appearance was in keeping with the clear bright day. A plain straw garden hat tied across the crown and under the chin with a strip of soft blue ribbon to match the linen gown, was the finish to this ‘fashionable’ young woman’s toilette,—and though it was infinitely becoming to the fair skin, azure eyes, and gold-brown hair of its wearer, it did not suggest undue extravagance, or a Paris ‘mode.’ And while he yet almost unconsciously studied the picture she made, resting one arm lightly across his garden gate, she lifted the latch suddenly and swung it open.

“Good-bye!” and she nodded smilingly—“Thank you so much for letting me see your lovely garden! As soon as Cicely arrives, you must come and see her—you will, won’t you?”

“I shall be most happy---” he murmured.

“She will be so interested to hear how you sent her my telegram,”— continued Maryllia—“And Gigue too—poor old Gigue!—he is sure to come over here some time during the summer. He is such a quaint person! I think you will like him. Good-bye!”

“Good-bye—for the present!” said John with a slight note of appeal in his voice, which was not lost wholly upon the air alone, for Maryllia turned her head back towards him with a laugh.

“Oh, of course!—only for the present! We are really next-door neighbours, and I’m afraid we can’t escape each other unless we each play hermit in separate caves! But I promise not to bore you with my presence very often!”

She waved the spray of white lilac he had given her in farewell, and calling her dog to her side, passed down the village road lightly, like a blue flower drifting with the May breeze, and was soon out of sight.

Walden closed the gate after her with careful slowness, and returned across the lawn to his favourite seat under his favourite apple- tree. Nebbie followed him, disconsolately snuffing the ground in the trail of the departed Plato, who doubtless, to the smaller animal’s mind, represented a sort of canine monarch who ruthlessly disdained the well-meaning attentions of his inferiors. Bainton, having finished his task of training the vines across the walls of the rectory, descended his ladder, making as much noise as he could about it and adding thereto a sudden troublesome cough which would he considered, probably excite his master’s sympathy and instant attention. But Walden paid no heed. He was apparently busy fumbling with his watch-chain. Bainton waited a moment, and then, unable any longer to control his curiosity, seized his ladder and deliberately carried it across the lawn, though he knew that that was not the proper way to the tool-shed where it was kept. Halting close to the seat under the apple-tree, he said:—

“Yon red honeysuckle’s comin’ on fine, Passon,—it be as full o’ bud as a pod o’ peas.”

“Ay indeed!” murmured Walden, absently—“That’s all right!”

Bainton paused expectantly. No further word however was vouchsafed to him, and he knew by experience that such silence implied his master’s wish to be left alone. With an almost magisterial gravity he surveyed the Reverend John’s bent head, and with another scrutinising glance, ascertained the nature of the occupation on which his fingers were engaged, whereupon his face expressed the liveliest amazement. Shouldering his ladder, he went his way,—and once out of earshot gave vent to a long low whistle.

“It do beat me!” he said, slapping one corduroy-trousered leg vehemently—“It do beat me altogether—it do reely now! I ain’t no swearin’ sort, an’ bad langwidge ain’t my failin’, but I feel like takin’ a bet, or sayin’ a swear when I sees a sensible man like, makin’ a fool of hisself! If Passon ain’t gone looney all on a suddint, blest if I knows wot’s come to ‘im. ‘Tain’t Miss Vancourt,- -‘tain’t no one nor nothink wot I knows on, but I’m blowed if he worn’t sittin’ under that tree, like a great gaby, a’ fastenin’ a mis’able threepenny bit to ‘is watch-chain! Did anyone ever ‘ear the like! A threepenny bit with a ‘ole in it! To think of a man like that turnin’ to the sup’stitions o’ maids an’ wearin’ a oley bit o’ silver! It do make me wild!—it do reely now!”

And snorting with ineffable disdain, Bainton almost threw his ladder into the tool-shed, thereby scaring a couple of doves who had found their way within, and who now flew out with a whirr of white wings that glistened like pearl in the sunlight as they spread upwards and away into the sky.

“A threepenny bit with a ‘ole in it!” he repeated, mechanically watching the birds of peace in their flight—“An’ on his watch-chain too, along wi’ the gold cross wot he allus