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

whose hand she recognised in the matter as having so earnestly begged her to go to Badsworth Hall that afternoon,—she despised Sir Morton Pippitt for lending himself to the scheme,—and with all her heart she loathed Mr. Marius Longford whom she at once saw was Roxmouth’s paid tool. The furious rate at which Lord Charlemont drove his car was a positive joy to her—and as he was much too busy with his steering gear to speak, she gave herself up to the smouldering indignation that burned in her soul while she was, so to speak, carried through space as on a panting whirlwind.</p> <p>“Why can they not leave me alone!” she thought passionately—“How dare they follow me to my own home!—my own lands!—and spy upon me in everything I do! It is a positive persecution and more than that,—it is a wicked design on Aunt Emily’s part to compromise me with Roxmouth. She wants to set people talking down here in the country just as she set them talking in town, and to make everyone think I am engaged to him, or <span class=" caps_="" class="calibre4"/>OUGHT to be engaged to him. It is cruel!—I suppose I shall be driven away from here just as I have been driven from London,—is there NO way in which I can escape from this man whom I hate!—NO place in the world where he cannot find me and follow me!”

The brown hue of thatched roofs through the trees here caused Lord Charlemont to turn round and address her.

“Just there!” he said, briefly—“Six minutes exactly!”

“Good!” said Maryllia, nodding approvingly—“But go slowly through the village, won’t you? There are so many dear little children always playing about.”

He slackened speed at once, and with a weird toot-tootling of his horn guided the car on at quite a respectable ambling-donkey pace.

“You said the church?”

“Yes, please!”

Another minute, and she had alighted.

“Thanks so much!” she said, smiling up into his goggle-guarded eyes. “Will you rush back for the others, please? And—and—may I ask you a favour?”

“A thousand!” he answered, thinking what a pretty little woman she was, as he spoke.

“Well—don’t—even if they want you to do so,—don’t bring Lord Roxmouth or Mr. Marius Longford back to the Manor. They are Sir Morton Pippitt’s friends and guests—they are not mine!”

A faint flicker of surprise passed over the aristocratic motor- driver’s features, but he made no observation. He merely said:

“All right! I’m game!”

Which brief sentence meant, for Lord Charlemont, that he was loyal to the death. He was not romantic in the style of expressing himself,—he would not have understood how to swear fealty on a drawn sword—but when he said—‘I’m game,’it came to the same thing. Reversing his car, he sped away, whizzing up the road like a boomerang, back to Badsworth Hall. Maryllia watched him till he was out of sight,-then with a sigh of relief, she turned and look wistfully at the church. Its beautiful architecture had the appearance of worn ivory in the mellow radiance of the late afternoon, and the sculptured figures of the Twelve Apostles in their delicately carved niches, six on either side of the portal, seemed almost life-like, as the rays of the warm and brilliant sunshine, tempered by a touch of approaching evening, struck them aslant as with a luminance from heaven. She lifted the latch of the churchyard gate,—and walking slowly with bent head between the rows of little hillocks where, under every soft green quilt of grass lay someone sleeping, she entered the sacred building. It was quite empty. There was a scent of myrtle and lilies in the air,—it came from two clusters of blossoms which were set at either side of the gold cross on the altar. Stepping softly, and with reverence, Maryllia went up to the Communion rails, and looked long and earnestly at the white alabaster sarcophagus which, in its unknown origin and antiquity, was the one unsolved mystery of St. Rest. A vague sensation of awe stole upon her,—and she sank involuntarily on her knees.

“If I could pray now,”—she thought—“What should I pray for?”

And then it seemed that something wild and appealing rose in her heart and clamoured for an utterance which her tongue refused to give,—her bosom heaved,—her lips trembled,—and suddenly a rush of tears blinded her eyes.

“Oh, if I were only LOVED!” she murmured under her breath—“If only someone could find me worth caring for! I would endure any suffering, any loss, to win this one priceless gift,—love!”

A little smothered sob broke from her lips.

“Father! Mother!” she whispered, instinctively stretching out her hands—“I am so lonely!—so very, very lonely!”

Only silence answered her, and the dumb perfume of the altar flowers. She rose,—and stood a moment trying to control herself,—a pretty little pitiful figure in her dainty, garden-party frock, a soft white chiffon hat tied on under her rounded chin with a knot of pale blue ribbon, and a tiny cobweb of a lace kerchief in her hand with which she dried her wet eyes.

“Oh dear!” she sighed—“It’s no use crying! It only shows what a weak little idiot I am! I’m lonely, of course,—I can’t expect anything else; I shall always be lonely—Roxmouth and Aunt Emily will take care of that. The lies they will tell about me will keep off every man but the one mean and slanderous fortune-hunter, to whom lies are second nature. And as I won’t marry HIM, I shall be left to myself—I shall be an old maid. Though that doesn’t matter— old maids are often the happiest women. Anyhow, I’d rather be an old maid than Duchess of Ormistoune.”

She dabbed her eyes with the little handkerchief again, and went slowly out of the church. And as she stepped from the shadow of its portal into the sunshiny open air, she came face to face with John Walden. He started back at the sudden sight of her,—then recollecting himself, raised his hat, looking at her with questioning eyes.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Walden!” she said, affecting a sprightly air— “Are you quite well?”

He smiled.

“Quite. And you? You look---”

“As if I had been crying, I suppose?”—she suggested. “So I have. Women often cry.”

“They do,—but---”

“But why should they?—you would say, being a man,”—and Maryllia forced a laugh.—“And that’s a question difficult to answer! Are you going into the church?”

“Not for a service, or on any urgent matter,”—replied John—“I left a book in the vestry which I want to refer to,—that’s all.”

“Fetch it,” said Maryllia—“I’ll wait for you here.”

He glanced at her—and saw that her lips trembled, and that she was still on the verge of tears. He hurried off at once, realising that she wanted a minute or two to recover herself. His heart beat foolishly fast and uncomfortably,—he wondered what had grieved or annoyed her.

“Poor little soul!” he murmured, reflecting on a conversation with which Julian Adderley had regaled him the previous day, concerning some of the guests at Abbot’s Manor—“Poor, weary, sweet little soul!”

While Maryllia, during his brief absence was thinking—“I won’t cry, or he’ll take me for a worse fool than I am. He looks so terribly intellectual—so wise and cool and calm!—and yet I think—I THINK he was rather pleased to see me!”

She smoothed her face into a smile,—gave one or two more reproving taps to her eyelids with her morsel of a kerchief, and was quite self-possessed when he returned, with a worn copy of the Iliad under his arm.

“Is that the book you wanted?” she asked.

“Yes—” and he showed it to her—“I admit it had no business to be left in the church.”

She peeped between the covers.

“Oh, it’s all Greek!”—she said—“Do you read Greek?”

“It is one of the happiest accomplishments I learned at college,”— he replied. “I have eased many a heartache by reading Homer in the original.”

She looked meditative.

“Now that’s very strange!” she murmured—“I should never have thought that to read Homer in the original Greek would ease a heartache! How does it do it? Will you teach me?”

She raised her eyes—how beautiful and blue they were he thought!— more beautiful for the mist of weeping that still lingered about their soft radiance.

“I will teach you Greek, if you like, with pleasure!”—he said, smiling a little, though his lips trembled—“But whether it would cure any heartache of yours I could not promise!”

“Still, if it cures YOUR heartaches?” she persisted.

“Mine are of a different character, I think!”—and the smile in his eyes deepened, as he looked down at her wistfully upturned face,—“I am getting old,—you are still young. That makes all the difference. My aches can be soothed by philosophy,—yours could only be charmed away by—”

He broke off abruptly. The hot blood rose to his temples, and retreated again, leaving him very pale.

She looked at him earnestly.

“Well!—by what?”

“I imagine you know, Miss Vancourt! There is only one thing that can ease the burden of life for a woman, and that is—love!”

She nodded her fair head sagaciously.

“Of course! But that is just what I shall never have,—so it’s no use wanting it. I had better learn to read Greek at once, without delay! When shall I come for my first lesson?”

She laughed unforcedly now, as she looked up at him. They were walking side by side out of the churchyard.

“You are much too busy to learn Greek,” he said, laughing with her. “Your London friends claim all your time,—much to the regret of our little village.”

“Ah!—but they won’t be with me very long now,”—she rejoined— “They’ll all go after the dinner next week, except Louis Gigue. Gigue is coming for a day or two and he will perhaps stay on a bit to give lessons to Cicely. But he’s not a society man. Oh, dear no! Quite the contrary—he’s a perfect savage!—and says the most awful things! Poor old Gigue!”

She laughed again, and looked happier and brighter than she had done for days.

“You have rather spoilt the villagers,” went on Walden, as he opened the churchyard gate for her to pass out, and closed it again behind them both. “They’ve got accustomed to seeing you look in upon them at all hours,—and, of course, they miss you. Little Ipsie Frost especially frets after you.”

“I’ll go and see her very, very soon,” said Maryllia, impulsively; “Dear little thing! When you see her next, tell her I’m coming, won’t you?”

“I will,” he rejoined,—then paused, looking at her earnestly. “Your friends must find St. Rest a very old-fashioned, world-forgotten sort of place,”—he continued—“And you must, equally, find it difficult to amuse them?”

“Well, perhaps, just a little,” she admitted—“The fact is—but tell it not in Gath—I was happier without them! They bore me to death! All the same they really mean to be very nice,—they don’t care, of course, for the things I care about,—trees and flowers and books and music,—but then I am always such an impossible person!”

“Are you?” His eyes were full of gentleness as he put this question- -“I should not have thought that!”

She coloured a little—then changed the subject.

“You have seen Lady Beaulyon, haven’t you?” He bent his head in the affirmative—“Isn’t she lovely?”

“Not to me,” he replied, quietly—“But then I’m no judge.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“She is considered the most beautiful woman in England!”

“By whom?”, he enquired;—“By the society paragraphists who are paid for their compliments?”

Maryllia laughed.

“Oh, I don’t know anything about that!” she said—“I never met a paragraphist in my life that I know of. But Eva