"The Church is still supposed to hold it," said Walden steadily, "And her ministers also. Otherwise, religion is a farce, and its professors much less honest than the trusted servant who steals his master"s money!"
Marius Longford smiled, and stroked one feline whisker thoughtfully.
"So you actually believe what you preach!" he murmured--"Strange!
You are more of an antiquity than the consecrated dust enclosed in that alabaster! Believe me!"
"Much more,--much, more!" exclaimed the fantastic Adderley; "To believe in anything at all is so remote!--so very remote!--and yet so new--so fresh!"
Walden made no reply. He never argued on religious matters; moreover, with persons minded in the manner of those before him, it seemed useless to even offer an opinion. They exchanged meaning glances with each other, and followed Sir Morton, who was now moving down the central aisle of the church towards the door of exit, holding the Duke of Lumpton familiarly by the arm, and accompanied by Lord Mawdenham. Walden walked silently with them, till, pa.s.sing out of the church, they all stood in a group on the broad gravelled pathway which led to the open road, where the Pippitt equipage, a large waggonette and pair, stood waiting, together with a bicycle, the property of the Reverend Mr. Leveson.
"Thank you, Mr. Walden!" then said Sir Morton Pippitt with a grandiose air, as of one who graciously confers a benefit on the silence by breaking it; "Thank you for--er--for--er--the pleasure of your company this--er--this morning! My friend, the Duke,--and Lord Mawdenham--and--er--our rising poet, Mr. Adderley--and--er--Mr.
Longford, have been delighted. Yes--er--delighted! Of course you know MY opinion! Ha-ha-ha! You know MY opinion! It is the same as it ever was--I never change! When _I_ have once made up my mind, it is a fixture! I have said already and I say it again, that the church was quite good enough for such people as live here, in its original condition, and that you have really spent a great deal of cash on a very needless work! I mustn"t be rude, no, no, no!--but you know the old adage: "Fools and their money!" Ha-ha-ha! But we shan"t quarrel.
Oh, dear no! It has cost ME nothing, I am glad to say! Ha-ha! Nor anybody else! Now, if Miss Vancourt of Abbot"s Manor had been here when you began this restoration business of yours, SHE might have had something to say--ha-ha-ha! She always has something to say!"
"You think she would have objected?" queried Walden, coldly.
"Oh, I won"t go so far as that--no!--eh, your Grace--we won"t go so far as that!"
The Duke of Lumpton, thus suddenly adjured, looked round, and smiled vacantly.
"Won"t go so far as what?" he asked; "Didn"t catch it!"
"I was talking of Maryllia Vancourt," said Sir Morton with a kind of fatuous leer; "YOU know her, of course!--everyone knows her more or less. Charming girl!--charming! Maryllia Van!--ha-ha!"
And Sir Morton laughed and leered again till certain veins, moved by cerebral emotion, protruded largely on his forehead. His Grace laughed also, but shortly and indifferently.
"Oh, ya-as--ya-as! She"s the one who"s just had a rumpus with her rich American aunt. I believe they don"t speak, After years of devotion, eh? So like women, ain"t it!"
The Reverend "Putty" Leveson, who had been stooping over his bicycle to set something right that was invariably going wrong with that particular machine, and who was redder than ever in the face with his efforts, now looked up.
"Miss Vancourt is coming back to the Manor to reside there, so I hear," he said. "Very dull for a woman accustomed to London and Paris. I expect she"ll stay about ten days."
"One never knows--one cannot tell!" sighed Julian Adderley.
"Sometimes to the satiated female mind, overwrought with social dissipation, there comes a strange longing for peace!--for the scent of roses!--for the yellow shine of cowslips!--for the song of the mating birds!--for the breath of cows!"
Mr. Marius Longford smiled, and picked a tall b.u.t.tercup nodding in the gra.s.s at his feet.
"Such aspirations in the fair s.e.x are absolutely harmless," he said; "Let us hope the lady"s wishes may find their limit in a soothing pastoral!" "Ha-ha-ha!" laughed Sir Morton. "You are deep, my dear sir, you are very deep! G.o.d bless my soul! Deep as a well! No wonder people are afraid of you! Clever, clever! I"m afraid of you myself!
Come along, come along! Can I a.s.sist your Grace?" Here he pushed aside with a smothered "d.a.m.n!" the footman, who stood holding open the door of the waggonette, and officiously gave the Duke of Lumpton a hand to help him into the carriage. "Now, Lord Mawdenham, please!
You next, Mr. Longford! Come, come, Mr. Adderley! Think of Lady Elizabeth! She will be arriving at the Hall before we are there to receive her! Terrible, terrible! Come along! We"re all ready!"
Julian Adderley had turned to Walden.
"Permit me to call and see you alone!" he said. "I cannot just now appreciate the poetry of your work in the church as I should do--as I ought to do--as I must do! The present company is discordant!--one requires the music of Nature,-the thoughts,--the dreams! But no more at present! I should like to talk with you on many matters some wild sweet morning,--if you have no objection?"
Walden was amused. At the same time he was not very eager to respond to this overture of closer acquaintanceship with one who, by his dress, manner and method of speech, proclaimed himself a "decadent"
of the modern school of ethics; but he was nothing if not courteous.
So he replied briefly:
"I shall be pleased to see you, of course, Mr. Adderley, but I must warn you that I am a very busy man--I should not be able to give you much time--"
"No explanations--I understand!" And Adderley pressed his hand with enthusiasm. "The very fact that you are busy in a village like this adds to the peculiar charm of your personality! It is so strange!-- so new--so fresh!"
He smiled, and again pressed hands.
"Good-bye! The mood will send me to you at the fitting moment!"
He clapped his hat more firmly on his redundant red locks and clambered into the waiting waggonette. Sir Morton followed him, and the footman shut to the door of the vehicle with a bang as unnecessary as his master"s previous "d.a.m.n!"
"Good-morning, Mr. Walden!" then shouted the knight of bone-melting prowess; "Much obliged to you, I"m sure!"
Walden raised his hat with brief ceremoniousness, and then as the carriage rolled away addressed the Reverend Mr. Leveson, who was throwing himself with hippopotamus-like agility across his bicycle.
"You follow, I suppose?"
"Yes. I"m lunching at Badsworth Hall. The Duke wants to consult me about his family records. You know I"m a bit of an authority on such points!"
Walden smiled.
"I believe you are! But mind you calendar the ducal deeds carefully," he said. "A slip in the lineal descent of the Lumptons might affect the whole prestige of the British Empire!"
A light shone in his clear blue eyes,--a flashing spark of battle.
Leveson stayed his bicycle a moment, wobbling on it uneasily.
"Lumpton goes back a good way," he said airily; "I shall take him up when I have gone through the history of the Vancourts. I"m on that scent now. I shall make a good bit of business directly Miss Vancourt returns; she"ll pay for anything that will help her to stiffen her back and put more side on."
"Really!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Walden, coldly. "I should have thought her forebears would have saved her from sn.o.bbery."
"Not a bit of it!" declared Leveson, beginning to start the muscles of his grand-pianoforte legs with energy; "Rapid as a firework, and vain as a peac.o.c.k! Ta!"
And fixing a small cap firmly on the back of his very large head, he worked his wheel with treadmill regularity and was soon out of sight.
Walden stood alone in the churchyard, lost for a brief s.p.a.ce in meditation. The solemn strains of the organ which the schoolmistress was still playing, floated softly out from the church to the perfumed air, and the grave melodious murmur made an undercurrent of harmony to the clear bright warbling of a skylark, which, beating its wings against the sunbeams, rose ever higher and higher above him.
"What petty souls we are!" he murmured; "Here am I feeling actually indignant because this fellow Leveson, who has less education and knowledge than my dog Nebbie, a.s.sumes to have some acquaintance with Miss Vancourt! What does it matter? What business is it of mine? If she cares to accept information from an ignoramus, what is it to do with me? Nothing! Yet,--what a blatant a.s.s the fellow is! Upon my word, it does me good to say it--a blatant a.s.s! And Sir Morton Pippitt is another!"
He laughed, and lifting his hat from his forehead, let the soft wind breathe refreshing coolness on his uncovered hair.
"There are decided limits to Christian love!" he said, the laughter still dancing in his eyes. "I defy--I positively defy anyone to love Leveson! "The columns and capitals are all wrong" are they?" And he gave a glance back at the beautiful little church in its exquisite design and completed perfection.""Out of keeping with early Norman walls!" Wise Leveson! He ignores all periods of transition as if they had never existed--as if they had no meaning for the thinker as well as the architect--as if the movement upward from the Norman, to the Early Pointed style showed no indication of progress! And whereas a church should always be a veritable "sermon in stone"
expressive of the various generations that have wrought their best on it, he limits himself to the beginning of things! I wonder what Leveson was in the beginning of things? Possibly an embryo Megatherium!"
Broadly smiling, he walked to the gate communicating with his own garden, opened it, and pa.s.sed through. Nebbie was waiting for him on the lawn, and greeted him with the usual effusiveness. He returned to his desk, and to the composition of his sermon, but his thoughts were inclined to wander. Sir Morton Pippitt, the Duke of Lumpton, and Lord Mawdenham hovered before him like three dull puppets in a cheap show; and he was inclined to look up the name of Marius Longford in one of the handy guides to contemporary biography, in order to see if that flaccid and fish-like personage had really done anything In the world to merit his position as a shining luminary of the "Savage and Savile." Accustomed as he was to watch the ebb and flow of modern literature, he had not yet sighted either the Longford straw or the Adderley cork, among the flotsam and jetsam of that murky tide. And ever and again Sir Morton Pippitt"s coa.r.s.e chuckle, combined with the covert smiles of Sir Morton"s "distinguished" friends, echoed through his mind in connection with the approaching dreaded invasion of Miss Vancourt into the happy quietude of the village of St. Rest, till he experienced a sense of pain and aversion almost amounting to anger. Why, he asked himself, seeing she had stayed so long away from her childhood"s home, could she not have stayed away altogether? The swift and brilliant life of London was surely far more suited to one who, according to "Putty"
Leveson, was "rapid as a firework, and vain as a peac.o.c.k." But was "Putty" Leveson always celebrated for accuracy in his statements?
No! Certainly not--yet--"
Then something seemed to fire him with a sudden resolution, for he erased the first lines of the sermon he had begun, and altered his text, which had been: "Glory, honour and peace to every man that worketh good." And in its place he chose, as a more enticing subject of discourse:
"The ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of G.o.d, of great price."