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

smoking became a daily necessity with, them than were ever known before. I don’t believe in any human being who turns his brain into a chimney. And.—pardon me!—when YOU deliberately put that cigarette in your mouth---”

“Well!” and a mischievous dimple appeared on each soft cheek as she looked up—“What did you think of me? Now be perfectly frank!”

“I will!” he said, slowly, with an earnest gravity darkening in his eyes—“I should not be your true friend if I were otherwise! But if I tell you what I thought—and what I may say I know from long experience all honest Englishmen think when they see a woman smoking—you must exonerate me in your mind and understand that my thoughts were only momentary. I knew that your better, sweeter self would soon reassert its sway!”

Her head drooped a little—she was quite silent.

“I thought,”—he went on, “when I saw you actually smoking, that something strange and unnatural had happened to you! That you had become, in some pitiful way, a different woman to the one that walked with me, not so long ago, and showed me her old French damask roses blossoming in the border!”—he paused an instant, his voice faltering a little,—then he resumed, quietly and firmly—“and that you had, against all nature’s best intentions for you, descended to the level of Lady Beaulyon---”

She interrupted him by a quick gesture---

“Eva Beaulyon is my friend, Mr. Walden!”

“No—not your friend!”—he said steadily—“Forgive me! You asked me to speak frankly. She is a friend to none except those of her own particular class and type---”

“To which I also belong,”—said Maryllia, with a sudden flash of returning rebellion—“You know I do!”

“I know you do NOT!” replied Walden, with some heat—“And I thank God for it! I know you are no more of her class and type than the wood lily is like the rank and poisonous marsh weed! Oh, child!—why do you wrong yourself! If I am too blunt and plain in what I say to you, let me cease speaking—but if you ask ME as your friend—as your minister!”—and he emphasised the word—“to tell you honestly my opinion, have patience with my roughness!”

“You are not rough,” she murmured,—and a little contraction in her throat warned her of the possible rising of tears—“But you are scarcely tolerant!”

“I cannot be tolerant of the demoralisation of womanhood!”—he said, passionately—“I cannot look on with an easy smile when I see the sex that SHOULD be the saving purity of the world, deliberately sinking itself by its own free will and choice into the mire of the vulgarest social vice, and parting with every redeeming grace, modesty and virtue that once made it sacred and beautiful! I am quite aware that there are many men who not only look on, but even encourage this world-wide debasement of women in order to bring them down on a par with themselves—but I am not one of these. I know that when women cease to be womanly, then the sorrows of the world, already heavy, will be doubled and trebled! When men come to be ashamed of their mothers—as many of them are to-day—there will be but little hope of good for future generations! And the fact that there are many women of title and position like your guest, Lady Beaulyon, who deliberately drag their husband’s honour through the dust and publicly glory in their own disgrace, does not make their crime the less, but rather the more criminal. You know this as well as I do! You are not of Lady Beaulyon’s class or type—if you were, I should not waste one moment of my time in your presence!”

She gazed at him speechlessly. And now from the drawing room came the sound of Cicely’s voice, clear, powerful, and as sweet as legends tell us the voices of the angels are—

“Luna fedel, tu chiama Col raggio ed io col suon, La fulgida mia dama Sul gotico veron!”

“You know,” he went on impetuously—“You know I told you before that I am not a society man. I said that if I came to dinner to meet your London friends, I should be very much in the way. You have found me so. A man of my age and of my settled habits and convictions ought to avoid society altogether. It is not possible for him to accommodate himself to it. For instance,—see how old-fashioned and strait-laced I am!—I wish I had been miles away from St. Rest before I had ever seen you smoking! It is a trifle, perhaps,—but it is one of those trifles which stick in the memory and embitter the mind!”

Around them the air seemed to break and divide into pulsations of melody as Cicely sang:

“Diro che sei d’argente D’opale, d’ambra e d’or, Diro che incanti il vento, E che innamori i fior!”

“You have seemed to me such an ideal of English womanhood!”—he went on dreamily, hardly aware how far his words were carrying him—“The sweet and fitting mistress of this dear old house, richly endowed as it is with noblest memories of the noble dead! Their proud and tender spirit has looked out of your eyes—or so I have fancied;— and you are naturally so kind and gentle—you have been so good to the people in the village,—they all love you—they all wish to think well of you;—for you have proved yourself practically as well as emotionally sympathetic to them. And, above all things, you have appeared so pre-eminently delicate and dainty in your tastes—so maidenly!—I should as soon have expected to see the Greek Psyche smoking as you!”

She took a swift step towards him, and laid her hand on his arm.

“Can’t you forget it?” she said.

He looked at her. Her eyes were humid, and her lips trembled a little.

“Forget what?” he asked gently.

“That I smoked!”

He hesitated a second.

“I will try!”

“You see!”—went on Maryllia, coaxingly—“we shall have to live in the same parish, and we shall be compelled to meet each other often- -and it would never do for you to be always thinking of that cigarette! Now would it?”

He was silent. The little hand on his arm gave an insistent pressure.

“Of course when you conjure up such an awful picture as Psyche smoking, I know just how you feel about it!” And her eyes sparkled up at him with an arch look which, fortunately for his peace of mind, his own eyes did not meet,—“And naturally you must hold very strong opinions on the subject,—dreadfully strong! But then—nobody has ever thought me at all like Psyche before—so you so—you see!— ” She paused, and John began to feel his heart beating uncomfortably fast. “It’s very nice to be compared to Psyche anyhow!—and of course she would look impossible and awful with a cigarette in her mouth! I quite understand! She couldn’t smoke,—she wouldn’t!—and— and—_I_ won’t! I won’t really! You won’t believe me, I expect,—but I assure you, I never smoke! I only did it this evening, because,— because,—well!—because I thought I ought to defend my own sex against your censure—and also perhaps—perhaps out of a little bit of bravado! But, I’m sorry! There! Will you forgive me?”

Nearly, very nearly, John lost his head. Maryllia had used the strongest weapon in all woman’s armoury,—humility,—and he went down before it, completely overwhelmed and conquered. A swirl of emotion swept over him,—his brain grew dizzy, and for a moment he saw nothing in earth or heaven but the sweet upturned face, the soft caressing eyes, the graceful yielding form clad in its diaphanous draperies of jewelled gossamer,—then pulling himself together with a strong effort which made him well-nigh tremble, he took the small hand that lay in white confidence on his arm, and raised it to his lips with a grave, courtly, almost cold reverence.

“It is you to forgive ME, Miss Vancourt!”—he said, unsteadily. “For I am quite aware that I committed a breach of social etiquette at your table,—and—and—I know I have taken considerable liberty in speaking my mind to you as I have done. Even as your minister I fear I have overstepped my privileges---”

“Oh, please don’t apologise!” said Maryllia, quickly—“It’s all over, you know! You’ve said your say, and I’ve said mine—and I’m sure we both feel better for it. Don’t we?”

John smiled, but his face was very pale, and his eyes were troubled. He was absorbed in the problem of his own struggling emotions—how to master them—how to keep them back from breaking into passionate speech,—and her bewitching, childlike air, half penitent, half mischievous, was making sad havoc of his self-possession.

“We are friends again now,”—she went on—“And really,—really we MUST try and keep so!”

This, with a quaint little nod of emphatic decision.

“Do you think it will be difficult?” he asked, looking at her more earnestly and tenderly than he himself was aware of.

She laughed, and blushed a little.

“I don’t know!—it may be!” she said—“You see you’ve twice ruffled me up the wrong way! I was very angry—oh, very angry indeed, when you coolly stopped the service because we all came in late that Sunday,—and to-night I was very angry again---”

“But I was NOT angry!” said John, simply—“And it takes two to make a quarrel!”

She peeped at him from under her long lashes and again the fleeting blush swept over her fair face.

“I must go now!”—she said—“Won’t you come into the drawing-room?— just to hear Cicely sing at her very best?”

“Not to-night,”—he answered quickly—“If you will excuse me---”

“Of course I will excuse you!” and she smiled—“I know you don’t like company.”

“I very much DISLIKE it!” he said, emphatically—“But then I’m quite an unsociable person. You see I’ve lived alone here for ten years---

”

“And you want to go on living alone for another ten years—I see!” said Maryllia—“Well! So you shall! I promise I won’t interfere!”

He looked at her half appealingly.

“I don’t think you understand,”—he said,—then paused.

“Oh yes, I understand perfectly!” And she smiled radiantly. “You like to be left quite to yourself, with your books and flowers, and the bits of glass for the rose-window in the church. By the bye, I must help you with that rose-window! I will get you some genuine old pieces—and if I find any very rare specimens of medieval blue or crimson you’ll be so pleased that you’ll forget all about that cigarette—you know you will!”

“Miss Vancourt,”—he began earnestly—“if you will only believe that it is because I think so highly of you—because you have seemed to me so much above the mere society woman that I---I---”

“I know!” she said, very softly—“I quite see your point of view!”

“You are not of the modern world,”—he went on, slowly—“Not in your heart—not in your real tastes and sentiments;—not yet, though you may possibly be forced to become one with it after your marriage---”

“And when will that be?” she interrupted him smiling.

His clear, calm blue eyes rested upon her gravely and searchingly.

“Soon surely,—if report be true!”

“Really? Well, you ought to know whether the date has been fixed yet,”—she said, very demurely—“Because, of course YOU’LL have to marry me!”

Something swayed and rocked in John’s brain, making the ground he stood upon swerve and seem unsteady. A wave of colour flushed his bronzed face up to the very roots of his grey-brown hair. Maryllia watched him with prettily critical interest, much as a kitten