Walden kept his promise and duly arrived to tea at the Manor that
afternoon. He found his hostess in the library with Cicely and
Julian. She was showing to the latter one or two rare 'first
editions,' and was talking animatedly, but she broke off her
conversation the moment he was announced, and advanced to meet him
with a bright smile.
"At last, Mr. Walden!" she said--"I am glad Cicely has succeeded
where I failed, in persuading you to accept the welcome that has
awaited you here for some time!"
The words were gracefully spoken, with just the faintest trace of
kindly reproach in their intonation. Simple as they were, they
managed to deprive John of all power to frame a suitable reply. He
bowed over the little white hand extended to him, and murmured
something which was inaudible even to himself, while he despised
what he considered his own foolishness, clumsiness and general
ineptitude from the bottom of his heart. Maryllia saw his
embarrassment, and hastened to relieve him of it.
"We have been talking books,"--she said, lightly--"Mr. Adderley has
almost knelt in adoration before my Shakespeare 'first folio.' It is
very precious, being uncalendared in the published lists of ordinary
commentators. I suppose you have seen it?"
"Indeed I have"--replied Walden, as he shook hands with Cicely and
nodded pleasantly to Julian--"I'm afraid, Miss Vancourt, that if you
knew how often I have sat alone in this library, turning over the
precious volumes, you might be very angry with me! But I have saved
one or two from the encroaches of damp, such as the illuminated
vellum 'Petrarch,' and some few rare manuscripts--so you must try to
forgive my trespass. Mrs. Spruce used to let me come in and study
here whenever I liked."
"Will you not do so still?" queried Maryllia, sweetly--"I can
promise you both solitude and silence."
Again a wave of awkwardness overcame him. What could he say in
response to this friendly and gentle graciousness!
"You are very kind,"--he murmured.
"Not at all. The library is very seldom used--so the kindness will
be quite on your side if you can make it of service. I daresay you
know more about the books than I do. My father was very proud of
them."
"He had cause to be,"--said Walden, beginning to recover his
equanimity and ease as the conversation turned into a channel which
was his natural element--"It is one of the finest collections in
England. The manuscripts alone are worth a fortune." Here he moved
to the table where Adderley stood turning over a wondrously painted
'Book of Hours'--"That is perfect twelfth-century work"--he said--
"There is a picture in it which ought to please Miss Cicely," and he
turned the pages over tenderly--"Here it is,--the loveliest of Saint
Cecilias, in the act of singing!"
Cicely smiled with pleasure, and hung over the beautifully
illuminated figure, surrounded with angels in clouds of golden
glory.
"There's one thing about Heaven which everybody seems agreed upon,"-
-she said--"It's a place where we're all expected to sing!"
"Not a doubt of it!" agreed Walden--"You will be quite in your
element!"
"The idea of Heaven is remote--so very remote!" said Adderley--"But
if such a place existed, and I were bound to essay a vocal effort
there, I should transform it at once to Hell! The angels would never
forgive me!"
They laughed.
"Let us go into the garden"--said Maryllia--"It is quite lovely just
now,--there are such cool deep shadows on the lawn."
Cicely at once ran out, beckoning Adderley to follow. Maryllia tied
on her hat with its pink strings and its bunch of pink hyacinths
tumbling against her small shell-like ear, and looked up from under
its brim with an entrancing smile.
"Will you come, Mr. Walden?"
John murmured something politely inarticulate in assent. He was, as
has already been stated, apt to be rather at a loss in the company
of women, unless they were well-seasoned matrons and grandames, with
whom he could converse on the most ordinary and commonplace topics,
such as the curing of hams, the schooling of children, or the best
remedies for rheumatism. A feminine creature who appeared to exist
merely to fascinate the eye and attract the senses, moved him to a
kind of mental confusion, which affected himself chiefly, as no one,
save the most intimate of his friends, would ever have noticed it,
or guessed that he was at any sort of pains to seem at ease. Just
now, as he took his soft shovel-hat, and followed his fair hostess
out on the lawn, his mind was more or less in a state of chaos, and
the thoughts that kept coming and going were as difficult to put
into consecutive order as a Chinese puzzle. One uncomfortable memory
however sat prominently in a corner of his brain like the mocking
phantasm of a mischievous Puck, pointing its jeering finger and
reminding him of the fact, not to be denied, that but a short while
ago, he had made up his mind to dislike, ay, even to detest, that
mysterious composition of white and rose, blue eyes and chestnut-
gold hair, called Maryllia Vancourt,--that he had resolved she would
be an altogether objectionable personage in the village--HIS
village--of St. Rest,--and that he had wished--Ah! what had he
wished? Back, O teazing reminder of the grudging and suspicious
spirit that had so lately animated the soul of a Christian cleric!
Yet it had to be admitted, albeit now reluctantly, that he had
actually wished the rightful mistress of Abbot's Manor had never
returned to it! Smitten with sorest compunction at the recollection
of his former blind prejudice against the woman he had then never
seen, he walked by her side over the warm soft grass, listening with
a somewhat preoccupied air to the remarks she was making concerning
Cicely Bourne, and the great hopes she entertained of the girl's
future brilliant career.
"Really," she declared, "the only useful thing I have ever done in
my life is to rescue Cicely from uncongenial surroundings, and
provide her with all she needs for her musical studies. To help
bring out a great genius gives ME some little sense of importance,
you see! In myself I am such an utter nonentity."
She laughed. Walden looked at her with an earnestness of which he
was scarcely conscious. She coloured a little, and her eyes fell.
Something in the sudden delicate flush of her cheeks and the quick
droop of her eyelashes startled him,--he felt a curious sense of
contrition, as though he had given her some indefinable, altogether
shadowy cause for that brief discomposure. The idea that she seemed,
even for a second, not quite so much at her ease, restored his own
nerve and self-possession, and it was with an almost paternal
gentleness that he said.
"Do you really consider yourself a nonentity, Miss Vancourt? I am
sure the society you have left behind you in London does not think
you so."
She opened her sea-blue eyes full upon him.
"Society? Why do you speak of it? Its opinion of me or of anyone
else, is surely the last thing a sensible man. or woman would care
for, I imagine! One 'season' of it was enough for me. I have
unfortunately had several 'seasons,' and they were all too many."
Again Walden looked at her, but this time she did not seem to be
aware of his scrutiny.
"Do you take me for a member of the 'smart' set, Mr. Walden?" she
queried, gaily--"You are very much mistaken if you do! I have
certainly mixed with it, and know all about it--much to my regret--
but I don't belong to it. Of course I like plenty of life and
amusement, but 'society' as London and Paris and New York express it
in their modes and manners and 'functions,' is to me the dullest
form of entertainment in the world."
Walden was silent. She gave him a quick side-glance of enquiry.
"I suppose you have been told something about me?" she said--
"Something which represents me otherwise than as I represent myself.
Have you?"
At this abrupt question John fairly started out of his semi-
abstraction in good earnest.
"My dear Miss Vancourt!" he exclaimed, warmly--"How can you think of
such a thing! I have never heard a word about you, except from good
old Mrs. Spruce who knew you as a child, and who loves to recall
these days,--and--er--and---"
He broke off, checking himself with a vexed gesture.
"And--er--and--er--who else?" said Maryllia, smiling---"Now don't
play tricks with ME, or I'll play tricks with YOU!"
His eyes caught and reflected her smile.
"Well,--Sir Morton Pippitt spoke of you once in my hearing"--he
said--"And a friend of his whom he brought to see the church, the
Duke of Lumpton. Also a clergyman in this neighbourhood, a Mr.
Leveson--rector at Badsworth--HE mentioned you, and presumed"--here
John paused a moment,--"yes, I think I may say presumed--to know yon
personally."
"Did he really! I never heard of him!" And she laughed merrily. "Mr.
Walden, if I were to tell you the number of people who profess to
know ME whom _I_ do not know and never WILL know, you would be
surprised! I never spoke to Sir Morton Pippitt in my life till the
other day, though he pretends he has met me,-but he hasn't. He may
have seen me perhaps by chance when I was a child in the nursery,
but I don't remember anything about him. My father never visited any
of the people here,--we lived very much to ourselves. As for the
Duke of Lumpton,--well!--nobody knows him that can possibly avoid
it--and I have never even so much as seen him. Aunt Emily may
possibly have spoken of me in these persons' hearing--that's quite
likely,--but they know nothing of me at first hand." She paused a
moment, "Look at Cicely!" she said--"How quickly she makes friends!
She and Mr. Adderley are chattering away like two magpies!"
Walden looked in the direction indicated, and saw the couple at some
distance off, under the great cedar-tree which was the chief
ornament of the lawn,--Cicely seated in a low basket-chair, and
Adderley stretched on the grass at her feet. Both were talking
eagerly, both were gesticulating excitedly, and both looked exactly
what they were, two very eccentric specimens of humanity.
"They seem perfectly happy!" he said, smiling--"Adderley is a
curious fellow, but I think he has a good heart. He puts on a
mannerism, because he has seen the members of a certain literary
'set' in London put it on--but he'll drop that in time,--when he is
a little older and wiser. He has been in to see me once or twice
since he took up his residence here for the summer. He tries to
discuss religion with me--or rather, I should say. irreligion. His
own special 'cult' is the easy paganism of Omar Kayyam."
"Is he clever?"
"I think he is. He has a more or less original turn of mind. He read
me some of his verses the other day."
"Poor you!" laughed Maryllia.
"Well, I was inclined to pity myself when he first began"--said
Walden, laughing also--"But I must confess I was agreeably
surprised. Some of his fancies are quite charming."
They had been walking slowly across the lawn, and were now within a
few steps of the big cedar-tree.
"I must take you into the rose-garden, Mr. Walden!"--and she raised
her eyes to his with that childlike confiding look which was one of
her special charms,--"The roses are just budding out, and I want you
to see them before the summer gets more advanced. Though I daresay
you know every rosebush in the place, don't you?"
"I believe I do!" he admitted--"You see an old fogey like myself is
bound to have hobbies, and my particular hobby is gardening. I love
flowers, and I go everywhere I can, or may, to see them and watch
their growth. So that for years I have visited your rose-garden,
Miss Vancourt! I have been a regular and persistent trespasser,--but
all the same, I have never plucked a rose."
"Well, I wish you had!" said Maryllia, feeling somewhat impatient
with him for calling himself an 'old fogey,'--why did he give
himself away?--she thought,--"I wish you had plucked them all and
handed them round in baskets to the villagers, especially to the old
and sick persons. It would have been much better than to have had
them sold at Riversford through Oliver Leach."
"Did he sell them?" exclaimed John, quickly--"I am not surprised!"
"He sold everything, and put the money in his own pocket"--said
Maryllia,--"But, after all, the loss is quite my own fault. I ought
to have enquired into the management of the property myself. And I
certainly ought not to have stayed away from home so many years. But
it's never too late to mend!" She smiled, and advancing a step or
two called "Cicely!"
Cicely turned, looking up from beneath her spreading canopy of dark
cedar boughs.
"Oh, Maryllia, we're having such fun!" she exclaimed--"Mr. Adderley
is talking words, and I'm talking music! We'll show you how it goes
presently!"
"Do, please!" laughed Maryllia; "It must be delightful! Mr. Walden
and I are going into the rose-garden. We shall be back in a few
minutes!"
She moved along, her white dress floating softly over the green
turf, its delicate flounces and knots of rosy ribbon looking like a
trail of living flowers. Walden, walking at her side, nodded
smilingly as he passed close by Cicely and Julian, his tall athletic
figure contrasting well with Maryllia's fairy-like grace,--and
presently, crossing from the lawn to what was called the 'Cherry-
Tree Walk,' because the path led under an arched trellis work over
which a couple of hundred cherry-trees were trained to form a long
arbour or pergola, they turned down it, and drawing closer together
in conversation, under the shower of white blossoms that shed
fragrance above their heads, they disappeared. Cicely, struck by a
certain picturesqueness, or what she would have called a 'stage
effect' in the manner of their exit, stopped abruptly in the
pianissimo humming of a tune with which she declared she had been
suddenly inspired by some lines Adderley had just recited.
"Isn't she pretty!" she said, indicating with a jerk of her ever
gesticulating hand the last luminous glimmer of Maryllia's vanishing
gown--"She's like Titania,--or Kilmeny in Fairyland. Why don't you
write something about HER, instead of about some girl you 'imagine'
and never see?"
Adderley, lying at his ease on the grass, turned on his arm and
likewise looked after the two figures that had just passed, as it
seemed, into a paradise of snowy flowers.
"The girls I 'imagine' are always so much better than those I see,"-
-he replied, with uncomplimentary candour.
"Thank you!" said Cicely--"You are quite rude, you know! But it
doesn't matter."
He stared up at her in vague astonishment.
"Oh, I didn't mean you!" he explained--"You're not a girl."
"No, really!" ejaculated Cicely--"Then what am I, pray?"
He looked at her critically,--at her thin sallow little face with
the intense eyes burning like flame under her well-marked black
eyebrows,--at her drooping angular arms and unformed figure,
tapering into the scraggy, long black-stockinged legs which ended in
a pair of large buckled shoes that covered feet of a decidedly flat-
iron model,--then he smiled oddly.
"You are a goblin!"--he said--"An elf,--a pixie--a witch! You were
born in a dark cave where the sea dashed in at high tide and made
the rough stones roar with music. There were sea-gulls nesting above
your cradle, and when the wind howled, and you cried, they called to
you wildly in such a plaintive way that you stopped your tears to
listen to them, and to watch their white wings circling round you!
You are not a girl--no!--how can you be? For when you grew a little
older, the invisible people of the air took you away into a great
forest, and taught you to swing yourself on the boughs of the trees,
while the stars twinkled at you through the thick green leaves,--and
you heard the thrushes sing at morning and the nightingales at
evening, till at last you learned the trill and warble and the
little caught sob in the throat which almost breaks the heart of
those who listen to it? And so you have become what you are, and
what I say you always will be--a goblin--a witch!--not a girl, but a
genius!"
He waved his hand with fantastic gesture and raked up his hair.
"That's all very well and very pretty,"--said Cicely, showing her
even white teeth in a flashing 'goblin' grin,--"But of course you
don't mean a word of it! It's merely a way of talking, such as
poets, or men that call themselves poets, affect when the 'fit' is
on them. Just a string of words,--mere babble! You'd better write
them down, though,--you musn't waste them! Publishers pay for so
many words I believe, whether they're sense or nonsense,--please
don't lose any halfpence on my account! Do you know you are smiling
up at the sky as if you were entirely mad? Ordinary people would say
you were,--people to whom dinner is the dearest thing in life would
suggest your being locked up. And me, too, I daresay! You haven't
answered my question,--why don't you write something about
Maryillia?"
"She, too, is not a girl,"--rejoined Adderley--"She is a woman. And
she is absolutely unwritable!"
"Too lovely to find expression even in poetry,"--said Cicely,
complacently.
"No no!--not that! Not that!" And Adderley gave a kind of serpentine
writhe on the grass as he raised himself to a half-sitting posture--
"Gentle Goblin, do not mistake me! When I say that Miss Vancourt is
unwritable, I would fain point out that she is above and beyond the
reach of my Muse. I cannot 'experience' her! Yes--that is so! What a
poet needs most is the flesh model. The flesh model may be Susan, or
Sarah, or Jane of the bar and tap-room,--but she must have lips to
kiss, hair to touch, form to caress---"
"Saint Moses!" cried Cicely, with an excited wriggle of her long
legs--"Must she?"
"She must!" declared Julian, with decision--"Because when you have
kissed the lips, you have experienced a 'sensation,' and you can
write--'Ah, how sweet the lips I love.' You needn't love them, of
course,--you merely try them. She must be amenable and good-natured,
and allow herself to be gazed at for an hour or so, till you decide
the fateful colour of her eyes. If they are blue, you can paraphrase
George Meredith on the 'Blue is the sky, blue is thine eye' system--
if black, you can recall the 'Lovely as the light of a dark eye in
woman,' of Byron. She must allow you to freely encircle her waist
with an arm, so that having felt the emotion you can write--"How
tenderly that yielding form, Thrills to my touch!' And then,--even
as a painter who pays so much per hour for studying from the life,--
you can go away and forget her--or you can exaggerate her charms in
rhyme, or 'imagine' that she is fairer than Endymion's moon-goddess-
-for so long as she serves you thus she is useful,--but once her
uses are exhausted, the poet has done with her, and seeks a fresh
sample. Hence, as I say, your friend Miss Vancourt is above my
clamour for the Beautiful. I must content myself with some humbler
type, and 'imagine' the rest!"
"Well, I should think you must, if that's the way you go to work!"
said Cicely, with eyes brimful of merriment and mischief--"Why you
are worse than the artists of the Quartier Latin! If you must needs
'experience' your models, I wonder that Susan, Sarah and Jane of the
bar and tap-room are good enough for you!"
"Any human female suffices,"--murmured Julian, drowsily, "Provided
she is amenable,--and is not the mother of a large family. At the
spectacle of many olive branches, the Muse shrieks a wild farewell!"
Cicely broke into a peal of laughter.
"You absurd creature!" she said--"You don't mean half the nonsense
you talk--you know you don't!"
"Do I not? But then, what do I mean? Am I justified in assuming that
I mean anything?" And he again ran his fingers through his ruddy
locks abstractedly. "No,--I think not! Therefore, if I now make a
suggestion, pray absolve me from any serious intentions underlying
it--and yet---"
"'And yet'--what?" queried Cicely, looking at him with some
curiosity.
"Ah! 'And yet'! Such little words, 'and yet'!" he murmured--"They
are like the stepping-stones across a brook which divides one sweet
woodland dell from another! 'And yet'!" He sighed profoundly, and
plucking a daisy from the turf, gazed into its golden heart
meditatively. "What I would say, gentle Goblin, is this,--you call
me Moon-calf, therefore there can be no objection to my calling you
Goblin, I think?"
"Not the least in the world!" declared Cicely--"I rather like it!"
"So good of you!--so dear!" he said, softly--"Well!--'and yet'--as I
have observed, the Muse may, like the Delphic oracle, utter words
without apparent signification, which only the skilled proficient at
her altar may be able to unravel. Therefore,--in this precise
manner, my suggestion may be wholly without point,--or it may not."
"Please get on with it, whatever it is,"--urged Cicely, impatiently-
-"You're not going to propose to me, are you? Because, if so, it's
no use. I'm too young, and I only met you this morning!"
He threw the daisy he had just plucked at her laughing face.
"Goblin, you are delicious!" he averred--"But the ghastly spectre of
matrimony does not at present stand in my path, luring me to the
frightful chasms of domesticity, oblivion and despair. What was it
the charming Russian girl Bashkirtseff wrote on this very subject?
'Me marier et'---?"
"I can tell you!" exclaimed Cicely--"It was the one sentence in the
whole book that made all the men mad, because it showed such utter
contempt for them! 'Me marier et avoir des enfants? Mais--chaque
blanchisseuse peut en faire autant! Je veux la gloire!' Oh, how I
agree with her! Moi, aussi, je veux la gloire!"
Her dark eyes flamed into passion,--for a moment she looked almost
beautiful. Adderley stared languidly at her as he would have stared
at the heroine of an exciting scene on the stage, with indolent, yet
critical interest.
"Goblin incroyable!" he sighed--"You are so new!--so fresh!"
"Like salad just gathered," said Cicely, calming down suddenly from
his burst of enthusiasm--"And what of your 'suggestion'?"
"My suggestion," rejoined Adderley--"is one that may seem to you a
strange one. It is even strange to myself! But it has flashed into
my brain suddenly,--and even so inspiration may affect the dullard.
It is this: Suppose the Parson fell in love with the Lady, or the
Lady fell in love with the Parson? Either, neither, or both?"
Cicely sat up straight in her chair as though she had been suddenly
pulled erect by an underground wire.
"What do you mean?" she asked--"Suppose the parson fell in love with
the lady or the lady with the parson! Is it a riddle?"
"It may possibly become one;" he replied, complacently--"But to
speak more plainly--suppose Mr. Walden fell in love with Miss
Vancourt, or Miss Vancourt fell in love with Mr. Walden, what would
you say?"
"Suppose a Moon-calf jumped over the moon!" said Cicely
disdainfully--"Saint Moses! Maryllia is as likely to fall in love as
I am,--and I'm the very last possibility in the way of sentiment.
Why, whatever are you thinking of? Maryllia has heaps of men in,
love with her,--she could marry to-morrow if she liked."
"Ay, no doubt she could marry--that is quite common--but perhaps she
could not love!" And Julian waved one hand expressively. "To love is
so new!--so fresh!"
"But Maryllia would never fall in love with a PARSON!" declared
Cicely, almost resentfully--"A parson!--a country parson too! The
idea is perfectly ridiculous!"
A glimmer of white in the vista of the flowering 'Cherry-Tree Walk'
here suddenly appeared and warned her that Maryllia and the Reverend
John were returning from their inspection of the rose-garden. She
cheeked herself in an outburst of speech and silently watched them
approaching. Adderley watched them too with a kind of lachrymose
interest. They were deep in conversation, and Maryllia carried a
bunch of white and blush roses which she had evidently just
gathered. She looked charmingly animated, and now and then a light
ripple of her laughter floated out on the air as sweet as the songs
of the birds chirming around them.
"The roses are perfectly lovely!" she exclaimed delightedly, as she
came under the shadow of the great cedar-tree; "Mr. Walden says he
has never seen the standards so full of bud." Here she held the
cluster she had gathered under Cicely's nose. "Aren't they
delicious! Oh, by the bye, Mr. Walden, I have promised you one! You
must have it, in return for the spray of lilac you gave me when I
came to see YOUR garden! Now you must take a rose from mine!" And,
laying all the roses on Cicely's lap, she selected one delicate
half-opened, blush-white bloom. "Shall I put it in your coat for
you?"
"If you will so far honour me!" answered Walden;--he was strangely
pale, and a slight tremor passed over him as he looked down at the
small fingers,--pink-tipped as the petals of the flower they so
deftly fastened in his buttonhole; "And how"--he continued, with an
effort, addressing Cicely and Julian--"How have Music and Poetry got
on together?"
"Oh, we're not married yet,"--said Cicely, shaking off the dumb
spell which Adderley's 'suggestion' had for a moment cast upon her
mind--"We ought to be, of course,--for a real good opera. But we're
only just beginning courtship. Mr. Adderley has recited some lines
of his own composition, and I have improvised some music. You shall
hear the result some day."
"Why not now?" queried Maryllia, as she seated herself in another
chair next to Cicely's under the cedar boughs, and signed to Walden
to do the same.
"Why, because I believe that the tea is about to arrive. I saw the
majestic Primmins in the distance, wrestling with a table--didn't
you, Mr. Adderley?"
Adderley rose from his half recumbent position on the grass, and
shading his eyes from the afternoon sunshine, looked towards the
house.
"Yes,--it is even so!" he replied--"Primmins and a subordinate are
on the way hither with various creature comforts. Music and Poetry
must pause awhile. Yet why should there be a pause? It is for this
that I am a follower of Omar Kayyam. He was a materialist as well as
a spiritualist, and his music admits of the aforesaid creature
comforts as much as the exalted and subtle philosophies and ironies
of life."
"Poor Omar!" said Walden,--"The pretty piteousness of him is like
the wailing of a lamb led to the slaughter. Grass is good to graze
on, saith lambkin,--other lambs are fair to frisk with,--but alas!--
neither grass nor lambs can last, and therefore as lambkin cannot
always be lambkin, it bleats its end in Nothingness! But, thank God,
there is something stronger and wiser in the Universe than lambkin!"
"True!" said Adderley, "But even lambkin has a right to complain of
its destiny."
Walden smiled.
"I think not,"--he rejoined--"No created thing has a right to
complain of its destiny. It finds itself Here,--and the fact that it
IS Here is a proof that there is a purpose for its existence. What
that purpose is we do not know yet, but we SHALL know!"
Adderley lifted dubious eyelids.
"You think we shall?"
"Most assuredly! What does Dante Rosetti say?--
'The day is dark and the night
To him that would search their heart;
No lips of cloud that will part
Nor morning song in the light;
Only, gazing alone
To him wild shadows are shown,
Deep under deep unknown,
And height above unknown height
Still we say as we go:
"Strange to think by the way
Whatever there is to know
That shall we know one day."'"
He recited the lines softly, but with eloquent emphasis. "You see,
those of us who take the trouble to consider the working and
progress of events, know well enough that this glorious Creation
around us is not a caprice or a farce. It is designed for a Cause
and moves steadily towards that Cause. There may be--no doubt there
are--many men who elect to view life from a low, material, or even
farcical standpoint--nevertheless, life in itself is serious and
noble."
Cicely's dark face lightened as with an illumination while she
listened to these words. Maryllia, who had taken up the roses she
had laid in Cicely's lap, and was now arranging them afresh, looked
up suddenly.
"Yet there are many searching truths in the philosophy of Omar
Kayyam, Mr. Walden,"--she said--"Many sad facts that even our
religion can scarcely get over, don't you think so?"
He met her eyes with a gentle kindliness in his own.
"I think religion, if true and pure, turns all sad facts to
sweetness, Miss Vancourt,"--he said--"At least, so I have found it."
The clear conviction of his tone was like the sound of a silver bell
calling to prayer. A silence followed, broken only by the singing of
a little bird aloft in the cedar-tree, whose ecstatic pipings aptly
expressed the unspoilt joys of innocence and trust.
"One pretty verse of Omar I remember," then said Cicely, abruptly,
fixing her penetrating eyes on Walden,--"And it really isn't a bit
irreligious. It is this:--
'The Bird of Life is singing on the bough,
His two eternal notes of "I and Thou"--
O hearken well, for soon the song sings through,
And would we hear it, we must hear it Now!'"
A white rose slipped from the cluster Maryllia held, and dropped on
the grass. John stooped for it, and gave it back to her. Their hands
just touched as she smiled her thanks. There was nothing in the
simple exchange of courtesies to move any self-possessed man from
his normal calm, yet a sudden hot thrill and leap of the heart dazed
Walden's brain for a moment and made him almost giddy. A sick fear--
an indefinable horror of himself possessed him,--caught by this
mmameable transport of sudden and singular emotion, he felt he could
have rushed away, away!--anywhere out of reach and observation, and
have never entered the fair and halcyon gardens of Abbot's Manor
again. Why?--in Heaven's name, why? He could not tell,--but--he had
no right to be there!--no right to be there!--he kept on repeating
to himself;--he ought to have remained at home, shut up in his study
with his dog and his books,--alone, alone, always alone! The brief
tempest raged over his soul with soundless wind and fire,--then
passed, leaving no trace on his quiet features and composed manner.
But in that single instant an abyss had been opened in the depths of
his own consciousness,--an abyss into which he looked with amazement
and dread at the strange foolhardiness which had involuntarily led
him to its brink,--and he now drew back from it, nervously
shuddering.
"'And would we hear it, we must hear it Now!'" repeated Adderley,
with opportune bathos at this juncture--"As I have said, and will
always maintain, Omar's verse always fits in with the happy approach
of creature comforts! Behold the illustration and example!--Primmins
with the tea!"
"It is a pretty verse, though, isn't it?" queried Cicely, moving her
chair aside to make more space for the butler and footman as they
nimbly set out the afternoon tea-table in the deepest shade bestowed
by the drooping cedar boughs--"Isn't it?"
And her searching eyes fastened themselves pertinaciously upon
John's face.
"Very pretty!" he answered, steadily--"And--so far-as it goes--very
true!"