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

>“Yes, if you like!” and Charlemont laughed—“I don’t bet much, but I’ll bet anything you choose to name on that. Maryllia Vancourt will never, unless she is bound, gagged and drugged into it, become Duchess of Ormistoune.”

“Shall we say a tenner?” suggested Courtenay, writing the bet down in his notebook.

“Certainly.”

“Good! I take the other side. I know something of Roxmouth,—he’s seldom baffled. Miss Vancourt will be the Duchess before next year!”

“Not a bit of it! Next year Miss Vancourt will still be Miss Vancourt!” said Charlemont. emphatically—“She’s a woman of character, and if she doesn’t intend to marry Roxmouth, nothing will make her. She’s got a mind of her own,—most women’s minds are the minds of their favourite men.”

“He-he-te-he—te-he—he!” giggled the young man who had before spoken,—“I know a girl---”

“Shut up, old chappie! You ‘know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows’—that’s what YOU know!” said Charlemont. “Come and have a look at the motor.”

Whereupon they rose from the table and dispersed.

From that day, however, a certain additional interest was given to the house-party entertainment at Abbot’s Manor. Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay and Lady Beaulyon fell so neatly into the web which Maryllia carefully prepared for them, that she soon found out what a watch they kept upon her, and knew, without further trouble, that she must from henceforth regard them as spies in her aunt and Lord Roxmouth’s service. The men took no part in this detective business, but nevertheless were keenly inquisitive in their own line, more bets being given and taken freely on what was likely to be the upshot of affairs. Meanwhile, Lord Roxmouth and Mr. Longford, sometimes accompanied by Sir Morton Pippitt, and sometimes without him, called often, but Maryllia was always out. She had two watch- dogs besides her canine friend, Plato,—and these were Cicely and Julian Adderley. Cicely had pressed the ‘moon calf’ into her service, and had told him just as much as she thought proper concerning Roxmouth and his persecution of her friend and patroness.

“Go as often as you can to Badsworth Hall,”—she commanded him—“and find out all their movements there. Then tell ME,—and whenever Roxmouth comes here to call, Maryllia will be out! Be vigilant and faithful!”

And she had shaken her finger at him and rolled her dark eyes with such tragic intensity, that he had entered zealously into the spirit of the little social drama, and had become as it were special reporter of the Roxmouth policy to the opposing party.

But this was behind the scenes. The visible action of the piece appeared just now to be entirely with Maryllia and her lordly wooer,—she as heroine, he as hero,—while the ‘supers,’ useful in their way as spies, messengers and general attendants, took their parts in the various scenes with considerable vivacity, wondering how much they might possibly get out of it for themselves. If, while they were guests at Abbot’s Manor, an engagement between Lord Roxmouth and Maryllia Vancourt could be finally settled, they felt they could all claim a share in having urged the matter on, and ‘worked’ it. And it was likely that in such a case, Mrs. Fred Vancourt, with millions at her disposal, would be helpful to them in their turn, should they ever desire it. Altogether, it seemed a game worth playing. None of them felt any regret that Maryllia should be made the pivot round which to work their own schemes of self- aggrandisement. Besides, no worldly wise society man or woman could be expected to feel sorry for assisting a young woman to attain the position of a Duchess. Such an idea would be too manifestly absurd.

“It will soon be over now,”—said Cicely, consolingly, one afternoon in the last week of Maryllia’s entertaining—“And oh, how glad we shall be when everybody has gone!”

“There’s one person who won’t go, I’m afraid!” said Maryllia.

“Roxmouth? Well, even HE can’t stay at Badsworth Hall for ever!”

“No,—but he can stay as long as he likes,—long enough to work mischief. Sir Morton Pippitt won’t send him away,—we may be sure of that!”

“If HE doesn’t go, I suppose WE must?” queried Cicely tentatively.

Maryllia’s eyes grew sad and wistful.

“I’m afraid so—I don’t know—we shall see!”—she replied slowly— “Something will have to be settled one way or another—pleasantly or unpleasantly.”

Cicely’s black brows almost met across her nose in a meditative frown.

“What a shame it is that you can’t be left in peace, Maryllia!”—she exclaimed—“And all because of your aunt’s horrible money! Why doesn’t Roxmouth marry Mrs. Fred?”

“I wish he would!” said Maryllia, heartily, and then she began to laugh. “Then it would be a case of ‘Oh my prophetic soul! mine uncle!’ And I should be able to say: ‘My aunt is a Duchess.’ Imagine the pride and glory of it!”

Cicely joined in her laughter.

“It WOULD be funny!” she said—“But whatever happens, I do hope Roxmouth isn’t going to drive us away from the Manor this summer. You won’t let him, will you?”

Maryllia hesitated a moment.

“It will depend on circumstances,” she said, at last—“If he persists in staying at Badsworth, I must leave the neighbourhood. There’s no help for it. It would only be for a short time, of course—and it seems hard, when I have only just come home, as it were,—but there,—never mind, Cicely! We’ll treat it as a game of hare and hounds,—and we’ll baffle the hounds somehow!”

Cicely gave a comic gesture of resignation to the inevitable.

“Anyhow, if we want a man to help us,”—she said,—“There’s Gigue. Fortunately he’s here now.”

Gigue WAS there—very certainly there, and all there. Louis Gigue, renowned throughout the world for his culture of the human voice divine, had arrived the previous day direct from Paris, and had exploded into the Manor as though he were a human bombshell. He had entered at the hour of afternoon tea, wild-eyed, wild-haired, travel-soiled, untidy and eminently good-natured, and had taken everybody by surprise. He had rushed up to Maryllia, and seizing her hand had kissed it rapturously,—he had caught Cicely in his arms and embraced her enthusiastically with a ‘Mon enfant prodigue!’ and, tossing his grizzled locks from off his broad forehead, he had seated himself, sans ceremonie, amidst the company, as though he had known everyone present all his life.

“Mon Dieu, ze mal der mer!” he had exclaimed—“Ze bouleversement of ze vagues! Ze choses terribles! Ze femmes sick!—zen men of ze coleur blieu! Ah, quel ravissement to be in ze land!”

Gigue’s English was his own particular dialect—he disdained to try and read a single word of it, but from various sources he had picked up words which he fitted into his speech as best it suited him, with a result which was sometimes effective but more often startling. Maryllia was well accustomed to it, and understood what she called ‘Gigue’s vernacular’—but the ladies and gentlemen of her house- party were not so well instructed, and Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay, whose knowledge of the French language was really quite extraordinary, immediately essayed the famous singing-master in his own tongue.

“Esker vous avez un moovais passage, Mo’sieur?” she demanded, with placid self-assurance—“Le mer etait bien mal?”

Gigue laughed, showing a row of very white strong teeth under his grizzled moustache, as he accepted a cup of tea from Cicely’s hand, who gave him a meaning blink of her dark eyes as she demurely waited upon him.

“Ah, Madame! Je parle ze Inglis seulement in ze England! Oui, oui! Je mer etait comme l’huile, mais avec un so-so!” And he swayed his hands to and fro with a rocking movement—“Et le so-so faisaient les dames—ah, ciel!—so-so!”

And he placed his hand delicately to his head, with an inimitable turning aside gesture that caused a ripple of laughter. Maryllia’s eyes sparkled with fun. She saw Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay surveying Gigue through her lorgnon with an air of polite criticism amounting to disdain,—she noted the men hanging back a little in the way that well-born Britishers do hang back from a foreigner who is ‘only’ a teacher of singing, especially if they cannot speak his language,— and she began to enjoy herself. She knew that Gigue would say what he thought or what he wanted to say, reckless of censure, and she felt the refreshment and relief of having one, at least, in the group of persons around her, who was not in her Aunt Emily’s service, and who uttered frankly his opinions regardless of results.

“Et maintenant,”—said Gigue, taking hold of Cicely’s arm and drawing her close up to his knee—“Comment chante le rossignol? Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do! Chantez!”

All the members of the house-party stared,—they had taken scarcely any notice of Cicely Bourne, looking upon her as more or less beneath their notice—as a ‘child picked up in Paris’—a ‘waif and stray’—a ‘fad of Maryllia Vancourt’s’—and now here was this wild grey-haired man of renown bringing her into sudden prominent notice.

“Chantez!” reiterated Gigue, furrowing his brows into a commanding frown—“Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do!”

Cicely’s dark eyes flashed—and her lips parted.

“Do—re—mi—sol---”

Round and full and clear rang the notes, pure as a crystal bell,— and the listeners held their breath, as she made such music of the common scale as only a divinely-gifted singer can.

“Bien!—tres-bien!” said Gigue, approvingly, with a smile round at the company—“Mademoiselle Cicely commence a chanter! Ze petite sera une grande cantatrice! N’est-ce-pas?”

A stiffly civil wonderment seemed frozen on the faces of Lady Beaulyon and the others present. Wholly lacking in enthusiasm for any art, they almost resented the manner in which Cicely was thus brought forward as a kind of genius, a being superior to them all. Gigue sniffed the air, as though he inhaled offence in it. Then he shook his finger with a kind of defiance.

“Mais—pas en Angleterre!” he said—“Ze petite va commencer a Milan- St. Petersburg-Vienna! Zen, ze Inglis vill say—‘Ha ha! Zis prima donna chante pour les Francais, les Italiens, les Russes!—il faut qu’elle chante pour nous!’ Zen—zey vill pay ze guinea—ces commes des moutons! Zey follow les autres pays—zey know nosing of ze art demselves!”

Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay coughed delicately.

“Music is so very much overdone in England”—she said, languidly— “One gets so tired of it! Concerts are quite endless during the season, and singers are always pestering you to take tickets. It’s quite too much for anyone who is not a millionaire.”

Gigue did not catch this flow of speech—but Cicely heard it,

“Well, I shall never ask anyone to ‘take tickets’ to hear me!” she said, laughing. “A famous prima donna never does that kind of thing!”

“How do you know you will be famous?” asked Lady Beaulyon, amused.

“Instinct!” replied Cicely, gaily—“Just as the bird knows, it will be able to make a nest, so do I know I shall be famous! Don’t let us talk any more about singing! Come and see the garden, Gigue!—I’ll take you round it—and I want a chat with you.”

The two went off together, much to the relief of the rest of the party.

“What an extraordinary-looking creature!” said Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay—“Is he quite a gentleman, Maryllia?”

Maryllia smiled.

“He is a gentleman according to my standard,” she said. “He is honest, true to his friends, and faithful to his work. I ask nothing more of any man.”

She changed the subject of conversation,—and Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay, in the privacy of her own apartment, confided to her husband that she really thought Maryllia Vancourt was a little ‘off her head’—just a little.

“Because, really,”—said Mrs. Courtenay—“when it comes to harbouring geniuses in one’s own house, it is quite beyond all reason. I sympathise so much with poor Mrs. Fred!