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

duty, which, as he had declared, moved him ‘in sundry places,’ and for a little while the dove-like spirit of Spring brooded in restful silence over the quiet orchard and garden.

The singing of the May-day children had now grown so faint and far as to be scarcely audible,—and the call of the cuckoo shrilling above the plaintive murmur of the wood pigeons, soon absorbed even the echo of the young human voices passing away. A light breeze stirred the tender green grass, shaking down a shower of pink almond bloom as it swept fan-like through the luminous air,—a skylark half lost in the brilliant blue, began to descend earthwards, flinging out a sparkling fountain of music with every quiver of his jewel- like wings, and away in the sheltered shade of a small hazel copse, the faint fluty notes of a nightingale trembled with a mysterious sweetness suggestive of evening, when the song should be full.

More than an hour elapsed, and no living being entered the seclusion of the parson’s garden save Nebbie, the parson’s rough Aberdeen terrier, who, appearing suddenly at the open study-window, sniffed at the fair prospect for a moment, and then, stepping out with a leisurely air of proprietorship lay down on the grass in the full sunshine. A wise-looking dog was Nebbie,—though few would have thought that his full name was Nebuchadnezzar. Only the Reverend John knew that. Nebbie was perfectly aware that the children had come with the Maypole, and that his master had accompanied them to the big meadow. Nebbie also knew that presently that same master of his would return again to make the circuit of the garden in the company of Bainton, according to custom,—and as he stretched his four hairy paws out comfortably, and blinked his brown eyes at a portly blackbird prodding in the turf for a worm within a stone’s throw of him, he was evidently considering whether it would be worth his while, as an epicurean animal, to escort these two men on their usual round on such a warm pleasant morning. For it was a dog’s real lazy day,—a day when merely to lie on the grass was sufficient satisfaction for the canine mind. And Nebbie, yawning extensively, and stretching himself a little more, closed his eyes in a rapture of peace, and stirred his tail slightly with one, two, three mild taps on the soft grass, when a sudden clear whistle caused him to spring up with every hair bristling on end, fore-paws well forward and eyes wide open.

“Nebbie! Nebbie!”

Nebbie was nothing if not thoroughbred, and the voice of his master was, despite all considerations of sleep and sunshine, to him as the voice of the commanding officer to a subaltern. He was off like a shot at a tearing pace, nose down and tail erect, and in less than a minute had scented Walden in the shrubbery, which led by devious windings down from the orchard to the banks of the river Rest, and there finding him, started frantically gambolling round and round him, as though years had parted man and dog from one another, instead of the brief space of an hour. Walden was smiling to himself, and his countenance was extremely pleasant. Nebbie, with the quaint conceit common to pet animals, imagined that the smile was produced specially for him, and continued his wild jumps and barks till his red tongue hung a couple of inches out of his mouth with excess of heat and enthusiasm.

“Nebbie! Nebbie!” said the Reverend John, mildly; “Don’t make such a noise! Down, lad, down!”

Nebbie subsided, and on reaching the river bank, squatted on his haunches, with his tongue still lolling out, while he watched his master step on a small floating pier attached by iron chains and posts to the land, and bend therefrom over into the clear water, looking anxiously downward to a spot he well knew, where hundreds of rare water-lilies were planted deep in the bed of the stream.

“Nymphea Odorata,”—he murmured, in the yearning tone of a lover addressing his beloved;—“Nymphea Chromatella—now I wonder if I shall see anything of them this year! The Aurora Caroliniana must have been eaten up by water-rats!”

Nebbie uttered a short bark. The faintest whisper of ‘rats’ seriously affected his nerves. He could have told his master many a harrowing story of those mischievous creatures swimming to and fro in the peaceful flood, tearing with their sharp teeth at the lily roots, and making a horrible havoc of all the most perfect buds of promise. The river Rest itself was so clear and bright that it was difficult to associate rats with its silver flowing,—yet rats there were, hiding among the osiers and sedges, frightening the moorhens and reed-warblers out of their little innocent lives. Nebbie caught and killed them whenever he could,—but he had no particular taste for swimming, and he was on rather ‘strained relations’ with a pair of swans who, with a brood of cygnets kept fierce guard on the opposite bank against all unwelcome intrusion.

His careful examination of the lily beds done, John Walden sprang back again from the pier to the land, and there hesitated a moment. His eyes rested longingly on a light punt, which, running half out of a rustic boathouse, swayed suggestively on the gleaming water.

“I wish I had time,—” he said, half aloud, while Nebbie wagging his tail violently, sat waiting and expectant. The river looked deliciously tempting. The young green of the silver birches drooping above its shining surface, the lights and shadows rippling across it with every breath of air,—the skimming of swallows to and fro,—the hum of bees among the cowslips, thyme and violets that were pushing fragrantly through the clipped turf,—were all so many wordless invitations to him to go forth into the fair freedom of Nature.

“The green trees whispered low and mild, It was a sound of joy! They were my playmates when a child, And rocked me in their arms so wild! Still they looked on me and smiled As if I were a boy!”

Such simple lines,—by Longfellow too, the despised of all the Sir Oracles of criticism,—yet coming to Walden’s memory suddenly, they touched a chord of vivid emotion.

“And still they whispered soft and low! Oh, I could not choose but go!”

he hummed half under his breath, and then with a decided movement turned from the winding river towards the house.

“No, Nebbie, it’s no use,” he said aloud, addressing his four-footed comrade, who thereupon got up reluctantly and began to trot pensively beside him—“We mustn’t be selfish. There are a thousand and one things to do. There is dinner to be served to the children at two o’clock—there is Mrs. Keeley to call upon—there are the school accounts to be looked into,—” here he glanced at his watch— ” Good Heavens!—how time flies! It is half-past eleven! I shall have to see Bainton later on.”

He hurried his steps and was just in sight of his study window, when he was met by his parlourmaid, a neat, trim young woman who rejoiced in the euphonious name of Hester Rockett, and who said as she approached him:

“If you please, sir, Mrs. Spruce.”

His genial face fell a little, and he heaved a short sigh.

“Mrs. Spruce? Oh, Lord!—I mean, very well! Show her in, Hester. You are sure she wants to see me? Or is it her girl Kitty she is after?”

“She didn’t mention Kitty, sir,” replied Hester demurely; “She said she wished to see you very particular.”

“All right! Show her into my study, and afterwards just go round to the orchard and tell Bainton I will see him when he’s had his dinner. I know I sha’n’t get off under an hour at least!”

He sighed again, then smiled, and entered the house, Nebbie sedately following. Arrived in his own quiet sanctum, he took off his soft slouched hat and seated himself at his desk with a composed air of patient attention, as the door was opened to admit a matronly- looking lady with a round and florid countenance, clad in a voluminous black gown, and wearing a somewhat aggressive black bonnet, ‘tipped’ well forward, under which her grey hair was plastered so far back as to be scarcely visible. There was a certain aggrieved dignity about her, and a generally superior tone of self- consciousness even in the curtsey which she dropped respectfully, as she returned Walden’s kindly nod and glance.

“Good morning, Mrs. Spruce!”

“Good morning, sir! I trust I see you well, sir?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Spruce, I am very well.”

“Which is a mercy indeed!” said Mrs. Spruce fervently; “For we never knows from one day to another whether we may be sound or crippled, considering the diseases which now flies in the air with the dust in the common road, as the papers tell us,—and dust is a thing we cannot prevent, do what we may, for the dust is there by the will of the Almighty, Who made us all out of it.”

She paused. John Walden smiled and pointed to a chair,

“Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Spruce?”

“Thank you kindly, sir!” and Mrs. Spruce accordingly plumped into the seat indicated with evident relief and satisfaction. “I will confess that it is a goodish step to walk on such a warm morning.”

“You have come straight from the Manor?” enquired Walden, turning over a few papers on his desk, and wondering within himself when the good woman was going to unburden herself of her business.

“Straight from the Manor, sir, yes,—and such a heat and moil I never felt on any May morning, which is most onwholesome, I am sure. A cold May and a warm June is what I prefers myself,—but when you get the cuckoo and the nightingale clicketin’ together in the woods on the First of May, you can look out for quarrelsome weather at Midsummer, leastways so I have heard my mother often say, and she was considered a wise woman in her time, I do assure you!”

Here Mrs. Spruce untied her bonnet-strings and flung them apart,— she likewise loosened the top button of her collar and heaved a deep sigh. Again the Reverend John smiled, and vaguely balanced a penholder on his fore-finger.

“I daresay your mother was quite right, Mrs. Spruce! Indeed, I believe all our mothers were quite right in their day. All the same, I’m glad it’s a fine May morning’, for the children’s sakes. They are all down in the big meadow having a romp together. Your little Kitty is with them, looking as bright as a May blossom herself.”

Mrs. Spruce straightened herself up, patted her ample bosom, with one hand, and threw her bonnet-strings still further back.

“Kitty’s a good lass,” she said, “though a bit mettlesome and wild; but I’m not saying anything again her. The Lord forbid that I should run down my own flesh and blood! An’ she’s better than most gels of her age. I wouldn’t grudge her a bit of fun while she’s got it in her,—Heaven knows it’ll be soon gone out of her when she marries, which nat’rally she will do, sooner or later. Anyhow, she’s all I’ve got,—which is a marvel how the Lord deals with some of us, when you see a little chidester of a woman like Adam Frost’s wife with fifteen, boys and girls, and me with only one nesh maid.”

Walden was silent. He was not disposed to argue on such marvels of the Lord’s way, as resulted in endowing one family with fifteen children, and the other with only a single sprout, such as was accorded to the righteous Jephthah, judge of Israel.

“Howsomever,” continued Mrs. Spruce, “Kitty’s welcome to jump round