Maryllia made no remark. She was standing before her dressing-table, singing softly to herself, while she dexterously fastened a tiny diamond arrow in her hair.
"I suppose you"re going to try and "live good" down here!"--went on Lady Beaulyon, after a pause--"It"s a mistake,--no one born of human flesh and blood can do it. You can"t "live good" and enjoy yourself!"
"No?" said Maryllia, tentatively.
"No, certainly not! For if you never do anything out of the humdrum line, and never compromise yourself in any way, Society will be so furious with your superiority to itself that it will invent a thousand calumnies and hang them all on your name. And you will never know how they arise, and never be able to disprove them."
"Does it matter?"--and Maryllia smiled--"If one"s conscience is clear, need one care what people say?"
"Conscience!" exclaimed Lady Beaulyon--"What an old-fashioned expression! Surely it"s better to do something people can lay hold of and talk about, than have them invent something you have never done! They will give you no credit for virtue or honesty in this world, Maryllia, unless you grow ugly and deformed. Then perhaps they will admit you may be good, and they will add--"She has no temptation to be otherwise.""
"I do not like your code of morality, Eva," said Maryllia, quietly.
"Perhaps not, but it"s the only one that works in OUR day!" replied Eva, with some heat, "Surely you know that?"
"I try to forget it as much as possible,"--and Maryllia"s eyes were full of a sweet wistfulness as she spoke--"Especially here--in my father"s home!"
"Oh well!" said Lady Beaulyon, with a touch of impatience--"You are a strange girl--you always were! You can "live good," or try to, if you like; and stay down here all alone with the doldrums and the humdrums. But you"ll be sick of it in six months. I"m sure you will!
Not a man will come near you,--they hate virtuous women nowadays,-- and scarce a woman will come either, save old and ugly ones! You will kill yourself socially altogether by the effort. Life"s too short to lose all the fun out of it for the sake of an ideal or a theory!"
Here the gong sounded for dinner. Maryllia turned away from her dressing-table, and confronted her friend. Her face was grave and earnest in its expression, and her eyes were very steadfast and clear.
"I don"t want what you call "fun," Eva,"--she said--"I want love!
Love seems to me the only good thing in life. Do you understand? You ask me why I left my aunt--it was to escape a loveless marriage,--a marriage that would be a positive h.e.l.l to me for which neither wealth nor position could atone. As for "living good," I am not trying that way. I only want to understand myself, and find out my own possibilities and limitations. And if I never do win the love I want,--if no one ever cares for me at all, then I shall be perfectly content to live and die unmarried."
"What a fate!" laughed Lady Beaulyon, shrugging her white shoulders.
"A better one than the usual divorce court result of some "society"
marriages,"--said Maryllia, calmly--"Anyhow, I"d rather risk single blessedness than united "cussedness"! Let us go down to dinner, Eva!
On all questions pertaining to "Souls" and modern social ethics, we must agree to differ!"
XX
For the next fortnight St. Rest was a scene of constant and unwonted excitement. There was a continual coming and going, to and from Abbot"s Manor,--some of the guests went away to be replaced by others, and some who had intended to spend only a week-end and then depart, stayed on, moved by unaccountable fascination, not only for their hostess, but for the general pleasantness of the house, and the old-world, tranquil and beautiful surroundings of the whole neighbourhood. Lord Charlemont and Mr. Bludlip Courtenay had brought their newest up-to-date motor-cars with them,--terrible objects to the villagers whenever they dashed, like escaped waggons off an express train, through the little street, with their horns blowing violently as though in a fog at sea. Mrs. Frost was ever on the alert lest any of her smaller children should get in the way of these huge rubber-tyred vehicles tearing along at reckless speed,-- and old Josey Letherbarrow resolutely refused to go outside his garden gate except on Sundays.
"Not but what I ain"t willin" an" cheerful to die whenever the Lord A"mighty sends for me;"--he would say--"But I ain"t got no fancy for bein" gashed and jambled."
"Gashed and jambled," was his own expression,--one that had both novelty and suggestiveness. Unfortunately, it happened that a small pet dog belonging to one of the village schoolboys, no other than Bob Keeley, the admitted sweet-heart of Kitty Spruce, had been run over by Mr. Bludlip Courtenay, as that gentleman, driving his car himself, and staring indifferently through his monocle, had "timed"
his rush through the village to a minute and a half, on a bet with Lord Charlemont,--and "gashed and jambled" was the only description to apply to the innocent little animal as it lay dead in the dust.
Bob Keeley cried for days,--cried so much, in fact, over what he considered "a wicked murder" that his mother sent for "Pa.s.son" to console him. And Walden, with his usual patience, listened to the lad"s sobbing tale:
"Which the little beast wor my friend!" he gasped amid his tears-- "An" he wor Kitty"s friend too! Kitty"s cryin" "erself sick, same as me! I"d "ad "im from a pup--Kitty carried "im in "er ap.r.o.n when "e was a week old,--he loved me--yes "e did!--an" "e slept in my weskit iviry night of "is life!--an" he "adn"t a fault in "im, all lovin"
an" true!--an" now "e"s gone--an"--an"-I HATE the quality up at the Manor--yes I do!--I HATE "em!--an" if Miss Vancourt "adn"t never come "ome, my doggie "ad been livin" now, an" we"d all a" bin "appy!"
Walden patted the boy"s rough towzled head gently, and thought of his faithful "Nebbie." It would have been mere hypocrisy to preach resignation to Bob, when he, the Reverend John, knew perfectly well that if his own canine comrade had been thus cruelly slain, he also would have "hated the quality."
"Look here, Bob," he said at last,--"I know just how you feel! It"s just as bad as bad can be. But try and be a man, won"t you? You can"t bring the 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 "Pa.s.son"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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sist 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 G.o.d 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 gla.s.s,--real "old" stained gla.s.s! He"s always having some bits sent to him, and I believe he pa.s.ses 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sing the "Five Sisters," now in all the glorious panoply of opulent summer leaf.a.ge.
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 gra.s.s, 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.