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

mustn’t cry! Run away and sing like the little nightingale you are—don’t fret---”

“But you’ll go to Maryllia, won’t you?” she urged, anxiously.

“Yes. I’ll go!”

She lifted her dark eyes, and he saw how true and full of soul they were, despite their witch-like wildness and passion. Just then a stormy passage of music, played on the piano, and tumbling out, as it seemed, on the air through the open windows of the Manor drawing- room, reminded her that she was being waited for by her impetuous and impatient maestro.

“That’s the signal for me!” she said—“I must run! But oh do, do make it up with Maryllia and be friends!”

She rushed away. He waited till she had disappeared, then turning back through the courtyard, slowly re-entered the house.

XXIII

The lights were burning low and dimly in the picture-gallery when he entered it and saw Maryllia there, pacing restlessly up and down, the folds of her dress with the ‘diamants’ sparkling around her as she moved, like a million little drops of frost on gossamer, while her small head, lifted proudly on its slim arched throat, seemed to his heated fancy, as though crowned with fresh coronals of gold woven from the summer sun. Turning, she confronted him and paused irresolute,—then, with a sudden impulsive gesture, came forward swiftly,—her cheeks flaming crimson,—her lips trembling, and her bosom heaving with its quickened breath like that of a fluttered bird.

“How dare you!” she said, in a low, strained voice—“How dare you!”

He met her eyes,—and in that moment individual and personal considerations were swept aside, and only the Right and the Wrong presented themselves to his mental vision, like witnesses from a higher world, invisible but omnipotent, waiting for the result of the first clash of combat between two human souls. Yielding to his own over-mastering emotion, and reckless of consequences, he caught her two hands lightly in his own.

“And how dare YOU!” he said earnestly,—“Little girl, how dare YOU so hurt yourself!”

They gazed upon one another,—each one secretly amazed at the other’s outbreak of feeling,—she grown white and speechless,—he with a swift strong sense of his own power and authority as a mere man, nerving him to the utterance of truth for her sake—for her sake!—regardless of all forms and ceremonies. Then he dropped her hands as quickly as he had grasped them.

“Forgive me!” he said, very softly,—and paused, till recovering more of his self-possession, he continued quietly—“You should not have sent for me, Miss Vancourt! Knowing that I had offended you, I was leaving your house, never intending to enter it again. Why did you summon me back? To reproach me? It would be kinder to spare me this, and let me go my own way!”

He waited for her to speak. But she was silent. Anger, humiliation and wounded pride, mingled with a certain struggling respect and admiration for his boldness, held her mute. She little knew how provocatively lovely she looked as she stood haughtily immovable, her eyes alone flashing eloquent rebellion;—she little guessed that John committed the picture of her fairness to the innermost recording cells of his brain, there to be stored up preciously, and never forgotten.

“I am sorry,”—he resumed—“that I spoke as I did just now at your table—because you are angry with me. But I cannot say that I am sorry for any other reason—”

At this Maryllia found her voice suddenly.

“You have insulted my guests---”

“Ah, no!” said John, almost with a smile—“Women who are habitual smokers are not easily insulted! They are past that, believe me! The fine susceptibilities which one might otherwise attribute to them have been long ago blunted. They do not command respect, and naturally, they can scarcely expect to receive it.”

“I do not agree with you!” retorted Maryllia, with rising warmth, as she regained her self-control, and with it her deep sense of irritation—“You were rude,—and rudeness is unpardonable! You said as much as to imply that none of the women present were ladies---”

“None of those who smoked were!”—said John, coolly.

“Mr. Walden! I myself, smoked!”

“You did,”—and he moved a step or two nearer to her, his whole face lighting up with keen emotion—“And why did you? The motive was intended to be courteous—but the principle was wrong!”

“Wrong!” she echoed, angrily—“Wrong?”

“Yes—wrong! Have you never been told that you can do one thing wrong among so many that you do right, Miss Vancourt?” he asked, with great gentleness—“You had it in your power to show your true womanliness by refusing to smoke,—you could, in your position as hostess, have saved your women friends from making fools of themselves—yes—the word is out, and I don’t apologise for it!”— here a sudden smile kindled in his fine eyes—“And you could also have given them all an example of obedience.”

“Obedience!” exclaimed Maryllia, astonished,—“What do you mean? Obedience to whom?”

“To me!” replied John, with perfect composure.

She gazed at him, scarcely believing she had heard aright.

“To you?” she repeated—“To you?”

“Why certainly!” said John, wondering even as he spoke at his own ease and self-assurance—“As minister of the parish I am the only person here that is set in authority over you—and the first thing you do is to defy me!”

His manner was whimsical and kindly,—his tone of voice playfully tender, as though he were speaking to some naughty child whom, notwithstanding its temper, he loved too well to scold,—and Maryllia was completely taken aback by this unexpected method of treating her combative humour. Her pretty mouth opened like a rosebud,—she seemed as though she would speak, but only an inarticulate murmur came from her parted lips; while the very faintest lurking suspicion of a smile crept dimpling over her face, to be lost again in the hostile expression of her eyes.

“You say I was rude,”—he went on,—“If I was, need you have been rude too?”

She found utterance quickly.

“I was not rude---” she began.

“Pardon me,—you were! Rude to me—and still more rude to yourself! The last was the worst affront, in my opinion!”

“I do not understand you,” she said, impatiently—“Your ideas of women are not those of the present day---”

“Thank God, they are not!” he replied—“I am glad to be in that respect, old-fashioned! You say you do not understand me. Now that is not true! You do understand! You know very well that if I was rude in my UNpremeditated speech, you were much more rude in your premeditated act!—that of deliberately spoiling your womanly self by doing what you know in your own heart was—will you forgive me the word?—unwomanly!”

Maryllia flushed red.

“There is no harm in smoking,” she said, coldly;—“it is quite the usual thing nowadays for ladies to enjoy their cigarettes. Why should they not? It is nothing new. Spanish women have always smoked—Austrian and Italian women smoke freely without any adverse comment—in fact, the custom is almost universal. English women have been the last, certainly, to adopt it—but then, England is always behind every country in everything!”

She spoke with a hard flippancy,—and she knew it. Walden’s eyes darkened into a deeper gravity.

“Miss Vancourt, this England of ours was once upon a time not behind, but BEFORE every nation in the whole world for the sweetness, purity and modesty of its women! That it has become one with less enlightened races in the deliberate unsexing and degradation of womanhood does not now, and will not in the future, redound to its credit. But I am prolonging a discussion uselessly,— ” He waited a moment. “I shall trouble you no more with my opinions, believe me,—nor shall I ever again intrude my presence upon yourself or your guests,”—he continued, slowly,—“As I have already said, I am sorry to have offended YOU,—but I am not sorry to have spoken my mind! I do not care a jot what your friends from London think of me or say of me,—their criticism, good or bad, is to me a matter of absolute indifference—but I had thought—I had hoped---”

He paused,—his voice for the moment failing him. Maryllia looked at his pale, earnest face, and a sudden sense of shamed compunction smote her heart. Her anger was fast cooling down,—and with the swift change of mood which made her so variable and bewitching, she said, more gently:

“Well, Mr. Walden? You thought—you hoped?”

“That we might be friends,”—he answered, quietly—“But I see plainly that is impossible!”

She was silent. He stood very still,—his eyes wandering involuntarily to the painted beauty of ‘Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt,’ which he had admired and studied so often for many lonely years, and back again along the dimly lit gallery to that unveiled portrait of the young bride who never came home, the mother of the little proud creature who confronted him with such fairy-like stateliness and pretty assertion of her small self in combat against him, and upon whom his glance finally rested with a lingering sadness and pain. Then he said in a low tone:

“Good-night, Miss Vancourt—good-bye!”

At this a cloud of distress swept across her mobile features. “There now!” she said to herself—“He’s going away and he’ll never come to the Manor any more! I intended to make him quite ashamed of himself- and he isn’t a bit! So like a man! He’d rather die than own himself in the wrong-besides he ISN’T wrong,—oh dear!—he mustn’t go away in a huff!”

And with a sudden yielding sweetness and grace of action of which she was quite unconscious, she extended her hands to him—

“Oh, no, Mr. Walden!” she said, earnestly—“I am not so angry as all that! Not good-bye!” Hardly knowing what he did, he took her offered hands and held them tenderly in his own.

“Not good-bye!” she said, trembling a little, and flushing rose-red with a certain embarrassment—“I don’t really want to quarrel—I don’t indeed! We—we were getting on so nicely together—and it is so seldom one CAN get on with a clergyman!”—here she began to laugh—“But you know it was dreadful of you, wasn’t it?—at any rate it sounded dreadful—when you said that English ladies never smoked-

—”

“Neither they do,”—declared John resolutely, yet smilingly, “Except by way of defiance!”

She glanced up at him,—and the mirthful sparkle in his eyes was reflected in her own.

“You are very obstinate!” she said, as she drew her hands away from his—“But I suppose you really do think smoking is wrong for women?”

His heart was beating, his pulses thrilling under the influence of her touch, her appealing look and sudden change of manner,—but he was not to be moved from his convictions, though all the world should swim round him in a glamour of blue eyes and gold hair.

“I think so, most certainly!”

“But why?”

He hesitated.

“Well, the act of smoking in itself is not wrong—but the associations of the habit are unfit for womanhood. I know very well that it has become usual in England for ladies to smoke,—most unfortunately—but there are many habits and customs in this country as well as in others, which, because they are habitual, are not the less, but rather the more, pernicious. I confess to a strong prejudice against smoking women.”

“But men smoke—why should not women smoke also?” persisted Maryllia.

Walden heard this plea with smiling patience.

“Men,—a very large majority of them too—habitually get drunk. Do you think it justifiable for women to get drunk by way of following the men’s example?”

“Why no, of course not!”—she answered quickly—“But drunkenness is a vice---”

“So is smoking! And it is quite as unhealthy as all vices are. There have been more addle-pated statesmen and politicians in England since