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

duly arrived to tea at the Manor that afternoon. He found his hostess in the library with Cicely and Julian. She was showing to the latter one or two rare ‘first editions,’ and was talking animatedly, but she broke off her conversation the moment he was announced, and advanced to meet him with a bright smile.

“At last, Mr. Walden!” she said—“I am glad Cicely has succeeded where I failed, in persuading you to accept the welcome that has awaited you here for some time!”

The words were gracefully spoken, with just the faintest trace of kindly reproach in their intonation. Simple as they were, they managed to deprive John of all power to frame a suitable reply. He bowed over the little white hand extended to him, and murmured something which was inaudible even to himself, while he despised what he considered his own foolishness, clumsiness and general ineptitude from the bottom of his heart. Maryllia saw his embarrassment, and hastened to relieve him of it.

“We have been talking books,”—she said, lightly—“Mr. Adderley has almost knelt in adoration before my Shakespeare ‘first folio.’ It is very precious, being uncalendared in the published lists of ordinary commentators. I suppose you have seen it?”

“Indeed I have”—replied Walden, as he shook hands with Cicely and nodded pleasantly to Julian—“I’m afraid, Miss Vancourt, that if you knew how often I have sat alone in this library, turning over the precious volumes, you might be very angry with me! But I have saved one or two from the encroaches of damp, such as the illuminated vellum ‘Petrarch,’ and some few rare manuscripts—so you must try to forgive my trespass. Mrs. Spruce used to let me come in and study here whenever I liked.”

“Will you not do so still?” queried Maryllia, sweetly—“I can promise you both solitude and silence.”

Again a wave of awkwardness overcame him. What could he say in response to this friendly and gentle graciousness!

“You are very kind,”—he murmured.

“Not at all. The library is very seldom used—so the kindness will be quite on your side if you can make it of service. I daresay you know more about the books than I do. My father was very proud of them.”

“He had cause to be,”—said Walden, beginning to recover his equanimity and ease as the conversation turned into a channel which was his natural element—“It is one of the finest collections in England. The manuscripts alone are worth a fortune.” Here he moved to the table where Adderley stood turning over a wondrously painted ‘Book of Hours’—“That is perfect twelfth-century work”—he said— “There is a picture in it which ought to please Miss Cicely,” and he turned the pages over tenderly—“Here it is,—the loveliest of Saint Cecilias, in the act of singing!”

Cicely smiled with pleasure, and hung over the beautifully illuminated figure, surrounded with angels in clouds of golden glory.

“There’s one thing about Heaven which everybody seems agreed upon,”- she said-“It’s a place where we’re all expected to sing!”

“Not a doubt of it!” agreed Walden—“You will be quite in your element!”

“The idea of Heaven is remote—so very remote!” said Adderley—“But if such a place existed, and I were bound to essay a vocal effort there, I should transform it at once to Hell! The angels would never forgive me!”

They laughed.

“Let us go into the garden”—said Maryllia—“It is quite lovely just now,—there are such cool deep shadows on the lawn.”

Cicely at once ran out, beckoning Adderley to follow. Maryllia tied on her hat with its pink strings and its bunch of pink hyacinths tumbling against her small shell-like ear, and looked up from under its brim with an entrancing smile.

“Will you come, Mr. Walden?”

John murmured something politely inarticulate in assent. He was, as has already been stated, apt to be rather at a loss in the company of women, unless they were well-seasoned matrons and grandames, with whom he could converse on the most ordinary and commonplace topics, such as the curing of hams, the schooling of children, or the best remedies for rheumatism. A feminine creature who appeared to exist merely to fascinate the eye and attract the senses, moved him to a kind of mental confusion, which affected himself chiefly, as no one, save the most intimate of his friends, would ever have noticed it, or guessed that he was at any sort of pains to seem at ease. Just now, as he took his soft shovel-hat, and followed his fair hostess out on the lawn, his mind was more or less in a state of chaos, and the thoughts that kept coming and going were as difficult to put into consecutive order as a Chinese puzzle. One uncomfortable memory however sat prominently in a corner of his brain like the mocking phantasm of a mischievous Puck, pointing its jeering finger and reminding him of the fact, not to be denied, that but a short while ago, he had made up his mind to dislike, ay, even to detest, that mysterious composition of white and rose, blue eyes and chestnut- gold hair, called Maryllia Vancourt,—that he had resolved she would be an altogether objectionable personage in the village—HIS village—of St. Rest,—and that he had wished—Ah! what had he wished? Back, O teazing reminder of the grudging and suspicious spirit that had so lately animated the soul of a Christian cleric! Yet it had to be admitted, albeit now reluctantly, that he had actually wished the rightful mistress of Abbot’s Manor had never returned to it! Smitten with sorest compunction at the recollection of his former blind prejudice against the woman he had then never seen, he walked by her side over the warm soft grass, listening with a somewhat preoccupied air to the remarks she was making concerning Cicely Bourne, and the great hopes she entertained of the girl’s future brilliant career.

“Really,” she declared, “the only useful thing I have ever done in my life is to rescue Cicely from uncongenial surroundings, and provide her with all she needs for her musical studies. To help bring out a great genius gives ME some little sense of importance, you see! In myself I am such an utter nonentity.”

She laughed. Walden looked at her with an earnestness of which he was scarcely conscious. She coloured a little, and her eyes fell. Something in the sudden delicate flush of her cheeks and the quick droop of her eyelashes startled him,—he felt a curious sense of contrition, as though he had given her some indefinable, altogether shadowy cause for that brief discomposure. The idea that she seemed, even for a second, not quite so much at her ease, restored his own nerve and self-possession, and it was with an almost paternal gentleness that he said.

“Do you really consider yourself a nonentity, Miss Vancourt? I am sure the society you have left behind you in London does not think you so.”

She opened her sea-blue eyes full upon him.

“Society? Why do you speak of it? Its opinion of me or of anyone else, is surely the last thing a sensible man. or woman would care for, I imagine! One ‘season’ of it was enough for me. I have unfortunately had several ‘seasons,’ and they were all too many.”

Again Walden looked at her, but this time she did not seem to be aware of his scrutiny.

“Do you take me for a member of the ‘smart’ set, Mr. Walden?” she queried, gaily—“You are very much mistaken if you do! I have certainly mixed with it, and know all about it—much to my regret— but I don’t belong to it. Of course I like plenty of life and amusement, but ‘society’ as London and Paris and New York express it in their modes and manners and ‘functions,’ is to me the dullest form of entertainment in the world.”

Walden was silent. She gave him a quick side-glance of enquiry.

“I suppose you have been told something about me?” she said— “Something which represents me otherwise than as I represent myself. Have you?”

At this abrupt question John fairly started out of his semi- abstraction in good earnest.

“My dear Miss Vancourt!” he exclaimed, warmly—“How can you think of such a thing! I have never heard a word about you, except from good old Mrs. Spruce who knew you as a child, and who loves to recall these days,—and—er—and---”

He broke off, checking himself with a vexed gesture.

“And—er—and—er—who else?” said Maryllia, smiling---“Now don’t play tricks with ME, or I’ll play tricks with YOU!”

His eyes caught and reflected her smile.

“Well,—Sir Morton Pippitt spoke of you once in my hearing”—he said—“And a friend of his whom he brought to see the church, the Duke of Lumpton. Also a clergyman in this neighbourhood, a Mr. Leveson—rector at Badsworth—HE mentioned you, and presumed”—here John paused a moment,—“yes, I think I may say presumed—to know yon personally.”

“Did he really! I never heard of him!” And she laughed merrily. “Mr. Walden, if I were to tell you the number of people who profess to know ME whom I do not know and never WILL know, you would be surprised! I never spoke to Sir Morton Pippitt in my life till the other day, though he pretends he has met me,but he hasn’t. He may have seen me perhaps by chance when I was a child in the nursery, but I don’t remember anything about him. My father never visited any of the people here,-we lived very much to ourselves. As for the Duke of Lumpton,—well!—nobody knows him that can possibly avoid it—and I have never even so much as seen him. Aunt Emily may possibly have spoken of me in these persons’ hearing—that’s quite likely,—but they know nothing of me at first hand.” She paused a moment, “Look at Cicely!” she said—“How quickly she makes friends! She and Mr. Adderley are chattering away like two magpies!”

Walden looked in the direction indicated, and saw the couple at some distance off, under the great cedar-tree which was the chief ornament of the lawn,—Cicely seated in a low basket-chair, and Adderley stretched on the grass at her feet. Both were talking eagerly, both were gesticulating excitedly, and both looked exactly what they were, two very eccentric specimens of humanity.

“They seem perfectly happy!” he said, smiling—“Adderley is a curious fellow, but I think he has a good heart. He puts on a mannerism, because he has seen the members of a certain literary ‘set’ in London put it on—but he’ll drop that in time,—when he is a little older and wiser. He has been in to see me once or twice since he took up his residence here for the summer. He tries to discuss religion with me—or rather, I should say. irreligion. His own special ‘cult’ is the easy paganism of Omar Kayyam.”

“Is he clever?”

“I think he is. He has a more or less original turn of mind. He read me some of his verses the other day.”

“Poor you!” laughed Maryllia.

“Well, I was inclined to pity myself when he first began”—said Walden, laughing also—“But I must confess I was agreeably surprised. Some of his fancies are quite charming.”

They had been walking slowly across the lawn, and were now within a few steps of the big cedar-tree.

“I must take you into the rose-garden, Mr. Walden!”—and she raised her eyes to his with that childlike confiding look which was one of her special charms,—“The roses are just budding out, and I want you to see them before the summer gets more advanced. Though I daresay you know every rosebush in the place, don’t you?”

“I believe I do!” he admitted—“You see an old fogey like myself is bound to have hobbies,