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

Cicely choked back her tears, and smiled bravely.

“No, darling, no! You are better,—but—but you will be a long time ill!”

Maryllia looked at her searchingly, and sighed a little.

“What have they done with Cleo?” she murmured.

“Cleo is all right,”—said Cicely—“She was badly hurt, but Bennett knows how you love her, and he is doing all he can for her. She will never hunt again, I’m afraid!”

“Nor shall I!” and Maryllia sighed again, and closed her eyes to hide the tears that welled up in them.

There was a dark presentiment in her mind,—a heavy foreboding to which she would not give utterance before Cicely, lest it should grieve her. But the next day, when Dr. Forsyth paid her his usual visit, and said in his usual cheery way that all was ‘going on well’—she startled him by requesting to speak to him alone, without anyone else in the room, not even the attendant nurse.

“It is only a little question I want to ask!” she said with the faint reflex of her old bright smile on her face—“And I’m sure you’ll answer it!”

‘Jimmy’ Forsyth hesitated. He felt desperately uncomfortable. He instinctively knew what her question would be,—a question to which there was only one miserable answer. But her grave pleading glance was not to be resisted,—so, making the best of a bad business, he cleared the room, shut the door, and remained in earnest conversation with his patient for half-an-hour. And at the end of that time, he went out, with tears in his keen eyes, and a suspicious cough catching his throat, as he strode away from the Manor through the leafless avenues, and heard the branches of the trees rattling like prison chains in an angry winter’s wind.

The worst was said,—and when it was once said, it was soon known. Maryllia was not to die—not yet. Fate had willed it otherwise. But she was to be a cripple for life. That was her doom. Never again would her little feet go tripping through the rose gardens and walks of her beloved home,—never would her dainty form be borne, a weightless burden, by ‘Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt’ through the flowering woods of spring,—from henceforth she would have to be carried by others up and down, to and fro, a maimed and helpless creature, with all the physical and healthful joys of living cut away from her at one cruel blow! And yet—it was very strange!—she herself was not stricken with any particular horror or despair at her destiny. When, after the doctor had left, Cicely came in, trembling and afraid,—Maryllia smiled at her with quite a sweet placidity.

“I know all about myself now,”—she said, quietly—“I’m sorry in a way,—because I shall be so useless. But—I have escaped Roxmouth for good this time!”

“Oh my darling!” wept Cicely—“Oh my dear, beautiful Maryllia! If it were only me instead of you!”

Maryllia drew the dark head down on the pillow beside her.

“Nonsense! Why should it have been you!” she said, cheerfully—“You will be a delight to the world with your voice, Cicely,—whereas I am nothing, and never have been anything. I shall not be missed---”

Her voice faltered a moment, as the thought of John Walden suddenly crossed her mind. He would perhaps—only perhaps—miss her! Anon, a braver and purely unselfish emotion moved her soul, and she began to be almost glad that she was, as she said to herself, ‘laid aside.’

“For now,”—she mused—“they can say nothing at all about him at MY expense. Even Roxmouth’s tongue must stop calumniating me,—for though many people are very heartless, they do draw the line at slandering a crippled woman! It’s all for the best,—I’m sure it’s all for the best!”

And a serene contentment took possession of her,—a marvellous peace that brought healing in its train, for with the earliest days of February, when the first snowdrops were beginning to make their white way through the dark earth, she was able to be moved from her bed, and carried down to the morning room, where, lying on her couch, near a sparkling fire, with a bunch of early flowering aconites opening their golden eyes in a vase beside her, she looked almost as if she were getting well enough soon to rise and walk again. She was bright and calm, and quickly managed to impart her own brightness and calmness to others. She summoned all the servants of the household to her in turn, and spoke to them so kindly, and thanked them so sweetly for the trouble and care they had taken and were taking on her behalf that they could scarcely hide their tears. As for poor Mrs. Spruce, who had nervously hesitated to approach her for fear of breaking down in her presence, she no sooner made her appearance than Maryllia stretched out her arms like a child, with a smile on her face.

“Come and kiss me, Spruce!” she said, almost playfully—“and don’t cry! I’m not crying for myself, you see, and I don’t want anyone else to cry for me. You’ll help to make the cripple-time pleasant, won’t you?—yes, of course you will!—and I can do the housekeeping just the same as ever—nothing need alter that. Only instead of running about all over the place, and getting in the way, I shall have to keep still,—and you will always know where to find me. That’s something of an advantage, Spruce! And you’ll talk to me!—oh yes!—trust you for talking, you dear thing!—and I shall know just as much about everybody as I want to,—there Spruce!—you WILL cry!- so run away just now, and come back presently when you feel better -and braver!” Whereat Mrs. Spruce had kissed her on the cheek at her own request, and had caught her little hand and kissed that, and had then hurried out of the room before her rising sobs could break out, as they did, into rebellious blubbering.

“Which the Lord Almighty’s ways are ‘ard to bear!” she wailed. “An’ that they’re past findin’ out, no sensible person will contradict, for why Miss Maryllia should be laid on ‘er back an’ me left to stan’ upright is a mystery Gospel itself can’t clear! An’ if I could onny see Passon Walden, I’d ask ‘im what it all means, for if anybody knows it he will,—but he won’t see no one, an’ Dr. Forsyth says best not trouble ‘im, so there I am all at sea without a life- belt, which Spruce bein’ ‘arder of ‘earin’ than ever, don’t understand nohow nor never will. But if there’s no way out of all this trouble, the Lord Himself ain’t as wise as I took ‘im for, for didn’t He say to a man what ‘ad crutches in the Testymen ‘Arise an’ walk’?—an’ why shouldn’t He say ‘Arise an’ walk’ to Miss Maryllia? I do ‘ope I’m not sinful, but I’m fair mazed when I see the Lord ‘oldin’ off ‘is hand as ‘twere, an’ not doin’ the right thing as ‘e should do!”

Thus Mrs. Spruce argued, and it is to be feared that ‘not doing the right thing’ was rather generally attributed to ‘the Lord,’ by the good folk of St. Rest at that immediate period. Most of them were thirsting to try a little ‘right’ on their own account as concerned Oliver Leach. For the whole story was now known,—though had Maryllia not told it quite involuntarily in a state of semi- consciousness, she would never have betrayed the identity of her cowardly assailant. But finding that she had, unknowingly to herself, related the incident as it happened, there was nothing to be done on her part, except to entreat that Leach might be allowed to go unpunished. This, however, was a form of ultra-Christianity which did not in any way commend itself to the villagers of St. Rest. They were on the watch for him day and night,—scouts traversed the high road to Riversford from east to west, from north to south in the hope of meeting him driving along to the town as usual on his estate agency business, but not a sign of him had been seen since the evening of the fox-hunt, when Maryllia’s body had been found in Farmer’s Thorpe’s field. Then, one of Adam Frost’s eldest boys had noticed him talking to the Reverend Putwood Leveson at the entrance of the park surrounding Badsworth Hall, but since that time he had not shown himself, and enquiries at his cottage failed to elicit other information than that he was ‘not at home.’ The people generally suspected him of being ‘in hiding,’ and they were not far wrong.

One day, soon after her first move from her bedroom to the morning room, and when she had grown in part accustomed to being carried up and down, Maryllia suddenly expressed a wish to hear the village choir.

“I should like the children to come and sing to me,”—she said to Cicely—“You remember the hymn they sang on that one Sunday I went to church last summer—‘The Lord is my Shepherd’? You sang it with them, Cicely,—and it was so very sweet! Couldn’t they come up here to the Manor and sing it to me again?”

“Of course they could if you wish it, darling!” said Cicely, blinking away the tears that were only too ready to fall at every gentle request proffered by her friend—“And I’m sure they will! I’ll go now and tell Miss Eden you want them.”

“Yes, do!” said Maryllia, eagerly—“And, Cicely,—wait a minute! Have you seen Mr. Walden at all since I’ve been ill?”

“No,”—replied Cicely, quietly—“He has not been very well himself, so Dr. Forsyth says,—and he has not been about much except to perform service on Sundays, and to visit his sick parishioners---”

“Well, I am a sick parishioner!” said Maryllia—“Why should he leave me out?”

Cicely looked at her very tenderly.

“I don’t think he has left you out, darling! I fancy he has thought of you a great deal. He has sent to enquire after you every day.”

Maryllia was silent for a minute. Then, with her own quaint little air of authority and decision, she said—

“Well!—I want to see him now. In fact, I must see him,—not only as a friend, but as a clergyman. Because you know I may not live very long---”

“Maryllia!” cried Cicely, passionately—“Don’t say that!”

“I won’t, if you don’t like it!” and Maryllia smiled up at her from her pillows—“But I think I should like to speak to Mr. Walden. So, as you will be passing the rectory on your way to fetch Miss Eden and the children, will you go in and ask him if he will come up and see me this afternoon?”

“I will!” And Cicely ran out of the room with a sense of sudden, inexplicable excitement which she could scarcely conceal. Quickly putting on her hat and cloak, she almost flew down the Manor avenue, regardless of the fact that it was raining dismally, and only noticing that there was a scent of violets in the air, and one or two glimmerings of yellow crocus peeping like golden spears through the wet mould. Arriving at the rectory, she forgot that she had not seen Walden at all since Maryllia’s accident, and scarcely waiting for the maid Hester to announce her, she hastened into his study with startling suddenness. Springing from his chair, he confronted her with wild imploring eyes, and a face from which ever vestige of colour had fled.

“What is it?” he muttered faintly—“My God spare me!—she—she is not dead?”

“No, no!” cried Cicely, smitten to the heart with self-reproach at her own unthinking impetuosity—“No—no—NO! Oh what an utter idiot I am! Oh, Mr. Walden, I didn’t think—I didn’t know—oh, dear Mr.