God's Good Man - Marie Corelli (i want to read a book .txt) 📗

poor little creature back to life again,—and it’s no use frightening your mother with all this grief for what cannot be helped. Then there’s poor Kitty—SHE ‘hates the quality’;—her little heart is sore and full of bad feelings—all for the sake of you and your dog, Bob! She’s giving her mother no end of trouble up at the Manor, crying and fretting—suppose you go and see her? Talk it over together, like two good children, and try if you can’t comfort each other. What do you say?”

Bob rose from beside the chair where he had flung himself on his knees when Walden had entered his mother’s cottage,—and rubbed his knuckles hard into his eyes with a long and dismal sniff.

“I’ll try, sir!” he said chokingly, and then suddenly seizing ‘Passon’s’ hand, he kissed it with boyish fervour, caught up his cap and ran out. Walden stood for a moment inert,—there was an uncomfortable tightness in his throat.

“Poor lad!” he said to himself,—“He is suffering as much in his way as older people suffer in theirs,—perhaps even more,—because to the young, injustice always seems strange—to the old it has become customary and natural!”

He sighed,—and with a pleasant word or two to Mrs. Keeley, who waited at her door for him to come out, and who thanked him profusely for coming to ‘hearten up the boy,’ he went on his usual round through the village, uncomfortably conscious that perhaps his first impressions respecting Miss Vancourt’s home-coming were correct,—and that it might have been better for the peace and happiness of all the simple inhabitants of St. Rest, if she had never come.

Certainly there was no denying that a change had crept over the little sequestered place,—a change scarcely perceptible, but nevertheless existent. A vague restlessness pervaded the atmosphere,—each inhabitant of each cottage was always on the look- out for a passing glimpse of one of the Abbot’s Manor guests, or one of the Abbot’s Manor servants,—it did not matter which, so long as something or somebody from the Manor came along. Sir Morton Pippitt had, of course, not failed to take full advantage of any slight surface or social knowledge he possessed of Miss Vancourt’s guests,- and had, with his usual bluff pomposity, invited them all over to Badsworth Hall. Some of them accepted his invitation,-others declined it. Lord Charlemont and Mr. Bludlip Courtenay discovered him to be a ‘game old boy’—while Lady Wicketts and Miss Fosby found something congenial in the society of Miss Tabitha Pippitt, who, cherishing as she did, an antique-virgin passion for the Reverend John Walden, whom her father detested, had come to regard herself as a sort of silent martyr to the rough usages of this world, and was therefore not unwilling to listen to the long stories of life’s disillusions which Lady Wicketts unravelled for her benefit, and which Miss Fosby, with occasional references to the photographs and prints of the ‘Madonna’ or the ‘Girl with Lilies’ tearfully confirmed. So the motor-cars continually flashed between Abbot’s Manor and Badsworth Hall, and Lady Beaulyon apparently found so much to amuse her that she stayed on longer than she had at first intended. So did Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay. They had their reasons for prolonging their visit,—reasons more cogent than love of fresh air, or admiration of pastoral scenery. Both of them kept up an active correspondence with Maryllia’s aunt, Mrs. Fred Vancourt, a lady who was their ‘very dear’ friend, owing to her general usefulness in the matter of money. And Mrs. Fred having a fixed plan in her mind concerning the welfare and good establishment of her niece, they were not unwilling to assist her in the furtherance of her views, knowing that whatever trouble they took would be substantially rewarded ‘under the rose.’

So they remained, on one excuse or the other,—while other guests came or went, and took long walks and motor-rides in the neighbourhood and amused themselves pretty much in their own way, Maryllia rightly considering that to be the truest form of hospitality. She herself, however, was living a somewhat restrained life among them,—and she began to realise more than ever the difference between ‘friends’ and ‘acquaintances,’ and the hopeless ennui engendered by the proximity of the latter, without the sympathy of the former. She was learning the lesson that cannot be too soon mastered by everyone who seeks for pure happiness in this world—‘The Kingdom of God is within you.’ In herself she was not content,—yet she knew no way in which to make herself contented. “I want something”—she said to herself—“Yet I do not know what I want.” Her pleasantest time during the inroad of her society friends, was when, after her daily housekeeping consultations with Mrs. Spruce, she could go and have a chat with Cicely in that young person’s small study, which was set apart for her, next to her bedroom nearly at the top of the house, and which commanded a wide view of the Manor park-lands, and the village of St. Rest, with the silvery river winding through it, and the spire of the church rising from the surrounding foliage like a finger pointing to heaven. And she also found relief from the strain of constant entertaining by rising early in the mornings and riding on her favourite ‘Cleopatra’ all over her property, calling on her new agent, Frank Stanways, and his wife, and chatting with the various persons in her employ. She did not however go much into the village, and on this point one morning her agent ventured to observe—

“Old Mr. Letherbarrow has been saying that he has not seen you lately, Miss Vancourt,—not since your friends came down. He seems to miss you very much.”

Maryllia, swaying lightly in her saddle, stooped over her mare’s neck and patted it, to hide sudden tears that sprang, she knew not why, to her eyes.

“Poor Josey!” she said—“I’m sorry! Tell him I’ll come as soon as all my visitors are gone—they will not stay long. The dinner-party next week concludes everything. Then I shall have time to go about the village as usual.”

“That will be delightful!” said Alicia Stanways, a bright little woman, whose introduction and supervision of a ‘model dairy’ on the Abbot’s Manor estate was the pride of her life—“It really makes all the people happy to see you! Little Ipsie Frost was actually crying for you the other day.”

“Was she? Poor little soul! The idea of a child crying for me! It’s quite a novel experience!” And Maryllia laughed—“But I don’t think I’m wanted at all in the village. Mr. Walden does everything.”

“So he does!”—agreed Stanways—“He’s a true ‘minister’ if there ever was one. Still, he has not been quite so much about lately.”

“No?” queried Maryllia—“I expect he’s very busy!”

“I think he has only one wish in the world!” said Mrs. Stanways, smiling.

“What is that?” asked Maryllia, still stroking ‘Cleopatra’s’ glossy neck thoughtfully.

“To fill the big rose-window in the church with stained glass,—real ‘old’ stained glass! He’s always having some bits sent to him, and I believe he passes whole hours piecing it together. It’s his great hobby. He won’t have a morsel that is not properly authenticated. He’s dreadfully particular,—but then all old bachelors are!”

Maryllia smiled, and bidding them good-morning cantered off. She was curiously touched at the notion of old Josey Letherbarrow missing her, and ‘Baby Hippolyta’ crying for her.

“Not one of my society friends would miss me!”—she said to herself- “And certainly I know nobody who would cry for me!” She checked her thoughts-“Except Cicely. SHE would miss me,—SHE would cry for me! But, in plain matter-of-fact terms, there is no one else who cares for me. Only Cicely!”

She looked up as she rode, and saw that she was passing the ‘Five Sisters,’ now in all the glorious panoply of opulent summer leafage. Moved by a sudden impulse, she galloped up the knoll, and drew rein exactly at the spot where she had given Oliver Leach his dismissal, and where she had first met John Walden. The wind rustled softly through the boughs, which bent and swayed before her, as though the grand old trees said: ‘Thanks to you, we live!’ Birds flew from twig to twig,—and the persistent murmur of many bees working amid the wild thyme which spread itself in perfumed purple patches among the moss and grass, sounded like the far-off hum of a human crowd.

“I did something useful when I saved you, you dear old beeches!” she said—“But the worst of it is I’ve done nothing worth doing since!”

She sighed, and her pretty brows puckered into a perplexed line, as she slowly guided ‘Cleopatra’ down the knoll again.

“It’s all so lonely!” she murmured—“I felt just a little dull before Eva Beaulyon and the others came,—but it’s ever so much duller with them than without them!”

That afternoon, in compliance with a particularly pressing request from Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay, she accompanied a party of her guests to Badsworth, driving thither in Lord Charlemont’s motor. Sir Morton Pippitt, red-faced and pompous as usual, met them at the door, in all the resplendency of new grey summer tweeds and prominent white waist-coat, his clean-shaven features shining with recent soap, and his white hair glistening like silver. He was quite in his element, as he handed out the beautiful Lady Beaulyon from the motor-car, and expressed his admiration for her looks in no unmeasured terms,—he felt himself to be almost an actual Badsworth, of Badsworth Hall, as he patted Lord Charlemont familiarly on the shoulder, and called him ‘My dear boy!’ As he greeted Maryllia, he smiled at her knowingly.

“I think I have a friend of yours here to-day, my dear lady!” he said with an expressive chuckle—“Someone who is most anxious to see you!” And escorting her with obtrusive gallantry into the hall, he brought her face to face with a tall, elegant, languid-looking man who bowed profoundly; “I believe you know Lord Roxmouth?”

The blood sprang to her brows,—and for a moment she was so startled and angry that she could scarcely breathe. A swift glance from under her long lashes showed her the situation—how Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay was watching her with ill-concealed amusement, and how all the rest of the party were expectant of a ‘sensation.’ She saw it all in a moment,—she recognised that a trap had been laid for her to fall into unwarily, and realising the position she rose to it at once.

“How do you do!” she said carelessly, nodding ner head without giving her hand—“I thought I should meet you this afternoon!”

“Did you really!” murmured Roxmouth—“Some magnetic current of thought---”

“Yes,—‘by the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes!’—THAT sort of sensation, you know!” and she laughed; then perceiving a man standing in the background whose sleek form and lineaments she instantly recognised, she added—“And how are you, Mr. Longford? Did you bring Lord Roxmouth here, or did he bring you?”

Marius Longford, ‘of the Savage and Savile,’ was taken by surprise, and looked a little uncomfortable. He stroked one pussy whisker.

“We came together,” he explained in his affected falsetto voice— “Sir Morton Pippitt was good enough to invite me to bring any friend,—and so—”

“I see!” and Maryllia lifted her little head with an unconscious gesture, implying pride, or disdain, or both, as she passed with the other guests into the Badsworth Hall drawing-room; “The country is so delightful at this time of year!”

She moved on. Lord Roxmouth stroked down his fair moustache to hide a smile, and quietly followed her. He was a good-looking man, tall and well-built, with a rather pale, clean-cut face, and sandy hair brushed very smooth; form and respectability were expressed in the very outline of his figure and the fastidious