For a moment they looked at each other. The smile on Roxmouth's face
widened.
"Come, come, Maryllia!" he said, easily--"Don't be foolish! The airs
of a tragedy queen do not suit you. I assure you I haven't the least
objection to your amusing yourself with a parson, if you like! The
conversation in the picture-gallery just now was quite idyllic--all
about a cigarette and Psyche! Really it was most absurd!--and the
little sermon of the enamoured clergyman to his pretty penitent was
as unique as it was priggish. I'm sure you must have been vastly
entertained! And the final allusion he made to his age--THAT was a
masterstroke of pathos!--or bathos? Which? Du sublime au ridicule il
n'y'a qu'un pas, Madame!"
Her eyes were fixed unswervingly upon him.
"So you listened!" she said.
"Naturally! One always listens to a comedy if it is played well.
I've been listening all the evening. I've listened to your waif and
stray, Cicely Bourne, and am perfectly willing to admit that she is
worth the training you are giving her. It's the first time I've
heard her sing to advantage. I've listened to Eva Beaulyon's
involved explanation of a perfectly unworkable scheme for the
education of country yokels (who never do anything with education
when they get it), on which she is going to extract twenty thousand
pounds for herself from the pockets of her newest millionaire-
victim. I've listened to the Bludlip Courtenay woman's enthusiastic
description of a new specific for the eradication of wrinkles and
crowsfeet. I've listened to that old bore Sir Morton Pippitt, and to
the afflicting county gossip of the lady in green,--Miss
Ittlethwaite is her name, I believe. And, getting tired of these
things, I strolled towards the picture-gallery, and hearing your
delightful voice, listened there. I confess I heard more than I
expected!"
Without a word in response, she turned from him and began to move
away. He stretched out a hand and caught her sleeve.
"Maryllia, wait! I must speak to you--and I may as well say what I
have to say now and get it over."
She paused. Lifting her eyes she glanced at him with a look of utter
scorn and contempt. He laughed.
"Come out into the moonlight!"--he said--"Come and walk with me in
this romantic old courtyard. It suits you, and you suit it. You are
very pretty, Maryllia! May I--notwithstanding the parson--smoke?"
She said nothing. Drawing a leather case from his pocket, he took a
cigar out and lit it.
"Silence gives consent,"--he went on--"Besides I'm sure you don't
mind. You know plenty of men who can never talk comfortably without
puffing smoke in between whiles. I'm one of that sort. Don't look at
me like Cleopatra deprived of Marc Antony. Be reasonable! I only
want to say a few plain matter-of-fact words to you---"
"Say them then as quickly as possible, please,"--she replied--"I am
NOT a good listener!"
"No? Now I should have thought you were, judging by the patience
with which you endured the parson's general discursiveness. What a
superb night!" He stepped from the portal out on the old flagstones
of the courtyard. "Take just one turn with me, Maryllia!"
Quietly, and with an air of cold composure she came to him, and
walked slowly at his side. He looked at her covertly, yet
critically.
"I won't make love to you,"--he said presently, with a smile--
"because you tell me you don't like it. I will merely put a case
before you and ask for your opinion! Have I your permission?"
She bent her head slightly. Her throat was dry,--her heart was
beating painfully,--she knew Roxmouth's crafty and treacherous
nature, and her whole soul sickened as she realised that now he
could, if he chose, drag the name of John Walden through a mire of
social mud, and hold it up to ridicule among his own particular
'set,' who would certainly lose no time in blackening it with their
ever-ready tar-brush. And it was all through her--all through her!
How would she ever forgive herself if his austere and honourable
reputation were touched in ever so slight a degree by a breath of
scandal? Unconsciously, she clasped her little hands and wrung them
hard--Roxmouth saw the action, and quickly fathomed the inward
suffering it indicated.
"You know my dearest ambition,"--he went on,--"and I need not
emphasise it. It is to call you my wife. If you consent to marry me,
you take at once a high position in the society to which you
naturally belong. But you tell me I am detestable to you--and that
you would rather die than accept me as a husband. I confess I do not
understand your attitude,--and, if you will allow me to say so, I
hardly think you understand it yourself. You are in a state of
uncertainty--most women live always in that state;--and your
vacillating soul like a bewildered butterfly--you see I am copying
the clerical example by dropping into poetry!--and a butterfly, NOT
a cigarette, is I believe the correct emblem of Psyche,--" here he
took a whiff at his cigar, and smiled pleasantly--"your soul, I
repeat, like a bewildered butterfly, has lighted by chance on a
full-flowering parson. The flight--the pause on that maturely-grown
blossom of piety, is pardonable,--but I cannot contemplate with
pleasure the idea of your compromising your name with that of this
sentimental middle-aged individual who, though he may be an
excellent Churchman, would make rather a grotesque lover!"
She remained silent. Glancing sideways at her, he wondered whether
it was the moonlight that made her look so set and pale.
"But I said I would put a case before you,"--he continued, "and I
will. Here are you,--of an age to be married. Here am I,--anxious to
marry you. We are neither of us growing younger--and delay seems
foolish. I offer you all I am worth in the world--myself, my name
and my position. You have refused me a score of times, and I am not
discouraged--you refuse me still, and I am not baffled. But I ask
why? I am not deformed or idiotic. I would try to make you happy. A
woman is best when she has entirely her own way,--I would let you
have yours. You would be free to follow your own whims and caprices.
Provided you gave me lawful heirs, I should ask no more of you. No
reasonable man ought to ask more of any reasonable woman. Life could
be made very enjoyable to us both, with a little tact and sense on
either side. I should amuse myself in the world, and so I hope,
would you. We understand modern life and appreciate its
conveniences. The freedom of the matrimonial state is one of those
conveniences, of which I am sure we should equally take advantage."
He puffed at his cigar for a few minutes complacently.
"You profess to hate me,"--he went on--"Again I ask, why? You tell
your aunt that you want to be 'loved.' You consider love the only
lasting good of life. Well, you have your desire. _I_ love you!"
She raised her eyes,--and then suddenly laughed.
"You!" she said--"You 'love' me? It must be a very piecemeal sort of
love, then, for I know at least five women to whom you have said the
same thing!"
He was in nowise disconcerted.
"Only five!" he murmured lazily--"Why not ten--or twenty? The more
the merrier! Women delight in bragging of conquests they have never
made, as why should they not? Lying comes so naturally to them! But
I do not profess to be a saint,--I daresay I have said 'I love you'
to a hundred women in a certain fashion,--but not as I say it to
you. When I say it to you, I mean it."
"Mean what?" she asked.
"Love."
She stopped in her walk and faced him.
"When a man loves a woman--really loves her,"--she said, "Does he
persecute her? Does he compromise her in society? Does he try to
scandalise her among her friends? Does he whisper her name away on a
false rumour, and accuse her of running after him for his title,
while all the time he knows it is he himself that is running after
her money? Does he make her life a misery to her, and leave her no
peace anywhere, not even in her own house? Does he spy upon her, and
set others to do the same?--does he listen at doors and interrogate
servants as to her movements--and does he altogether play the
dastardly traitor to prove his 'love'?"
Her voice shook--her eyes were ablaze with indignation. Roxmouth
flicked a little ash off his cigar.
"Why, of course not!" he replied--"But who does these dreadful
things? Are they done at all except in your imagination?"
"YOU do them!" said Maryllia, passionately--"And you have always
done them! When I tell you once and for all that I have given up
every chance I ever had of being my aunt's heiress--that I shall
never be a rich woman,--and that I would far rather die a beggar
than be your wife, will you not understand me?--will you not leave
me alone?"
He looked at her with quizzical amusement.
"Do you really want to be left alone?" he asked--"Or in a 'solitude
a deux'--with the parson?"
She was silent, though her silence cost her an effort. But she knew
that the least word she might say concerning Walden would be
wilfully misconstrued. She knew that Roxmouth was waiting for her to
burst out with some indignant denial of his suggestions--something
that he might twist and turn in his own fashion and repeat
afterwards to all his and her acquaintances. She cared nothing for
herself, but she was full of dread lest Walden's name should be
bandied up and down on the scurrilous tongues of that 'upper class'
throng, who, because they spend their lives in nothing nobler than
political intrigue and sensual indulgence, are politely set aside as
froth and scum by the saner, cleaner world, and classified as the
'Smart Set.' Roxmouth watched her furtively. His clear-cut face,
white skin and sandy hair shone all together with an oily lustre in
the moonlight;--there was a hard cold gleam in his eyes.
"It would be a pretty little story for the society press," he said,
after a pause--"How the bewitching Maryllia Vancourt resigned the
brilliancy of her social life for a dream of love with an elderly
country clergyman! By Heaven! No one would believe it! But,"--and he
waited a minute, then continued--"It's a story that shall never be
told so far as I am concerned--if--" He broke off, and looked
meditatively at the end of his cigar. "There is always an 'if'--
unfortunately!"
Maryllia smiled coldly.
"That is a threat,"--she said--"But it does not affect me! Nothing
that you can do or say will make me consent to marry you. You have
slandered me already--you can slander me again for all I care. But I
will never be your wife."
"You have said so before,"--he observed, placidly--"And I have put
the question many times--why?"
She looked at him steadily.
"Shall I tell you?"
"Do! I shall appreciate the favour!"
For a moment she hesitated. A great pain and sorrow clouded her
eyes.
"No woman marries a leper by choice!"--she said at last, slowly.
He glanced at her,--then shrugged his shoulders.
"You talk in parables. Pardon me if I am too dull to understand
you!"
"You understand me well enough,"--she answered--"But if you wish it,
I will speak more plainly. I dream of love---"
"Most women do!" he interrupted her, smilingly--"And I am sure you
dream charmingly. But is a middle-aged parson part of the romantic
vision?"
She paid no heed to this sarcasm. She had moved a pace or two away
from him, and now stood, her head slightly uplifted, her eyes turned
wistfully towards the picturesque gables of the Manor outlined
clearly in the moon against the dense night sky.
"I dream of love!"--she repeated softly,--while he, smoking
tranquilly, and looking the very image of a tailor's model in his
faultlessly cut dress suit, spotless shirt front, and aggressively
neat white tie, studied her face, her figure and her attitude with
amused interest--"But my dream is not what the world offers me as
the dream's realisation! The love that I mean--the love that I seek-
-the love that I want--the love that I will have,"--and she raised
her hand involuntarily with a slight gesture which almost implied a
command--"or else go loveless all my days--is an honest love,--
loyal, true and pure!--and strong enough to last through this life
and all the lives to come!"
"If there are any!"--interpolated Roxmouth, blandly.
She looked at him,--and a vague expression of something like
physical repulsion flitted across her face.
"It is no use talking to you,"--she said--"For you believe in
nothing--not even in God! You are a man of your own making--you are
not a man in the true sense of manhood. How can you know anything of
love? You will not find it in the low haunts of Paris where you are
so well known,--where your name is a byword as that of an English
'milord' who degrades his Order!"
"What do YOU know of the low haunts of Paris?" he queried with a
cold laugh--"Is Louis Gigue your informant?'
"I daresay Louis Gigue knows as much of you as most men do,"--she
replied, quietly--"But I never speak of you to him. Indeed, I never
speak of you at all unless you are spoken of, and not always then.
You do not interest me sufficiently!"
She moved towards the house. He followed her.
"Your remarks have been somewhat rambling and disjointed,"--he said-
-"But essentially feminine, after all. And they merely tend to one
thing--that you are still an untamed shrew!"
She looked back at him over her shoulder. Her eyes gleamed in the
moonlight,--a faint smile curved her pretty mouth.
"If I am, it will need someone braver than you are to tame me!" she
said--"A trickster is always a coward!"
With an angry exclamation he flung away the end of his cigar,--it
fell into a harmless bed of mignonette and seared the sweet blossom,
burning redly in the green like a wicked eye. And then he caught her
hand firmly and held it grasped as in a vice.
"You insult me!" he said, thickly--"And I shall not forget it! You
talk as a child talks--though you are no child! You are a woman of
the world--you have travelled--you have had experience--and you know
men. You are perfectly aware that the sentimental 'love' you speak
of exists nowhere except in poems and story-books--you know that no
sane man alive would tie himself to one woman save for the law's
demand that his heirs shall be lawfully born. You are no shrinking
maid in her teens, that you should start and recoil or blush, at the
truth of the position, and it is the merest affectation on your part
to talk about 'love lasting forever,' for you are perfectly aware
that it cannot last very long over the honeymoon. The natural state
of man is polygamous. Englishmen are the same as Turks or Hottentots
in this respect, except for the saving grace of hypocrisy, which is
the chief prop of European civilisation. If it were not for
hypocrisy, we should all be savages as utterly and completely as in
primaeval days! You know all this as well as I do--and yet you feign
to desire the impossible, while all the time you play the fool with
a country parson! But I'll make you pay for it--by Heaven, I will!
You scorn me and my name--you call me a social leper---"
"You are one!" she said, wrenching her hand from his clasp--"And
what is more, you know it, and you glory in it! Who are your
associates? Men who are physically or morally degenerate--women who,
so long as their appetites are satisfied, seek nothing more! You
play the patron to a certain literary 'set' who produce books unfit
to be read by any decent human being,--you work your way, by means
of your title and position, through society, contaminating
everything you touch! You contaminate ME by associating my name with
yours!--and my aunt helps you in the wicked scheme! I came here to
my own home--to the house where my father died--thinking that
perhaps here at least I should find peace,"--and her voice shook as
with tears--"that here, at least, the old walls might give me
shelter and protection!--but even here you followed me with your
paid spy, Marius Longford--and I have found myself surrounded by
your base tools almost despite myself! But even if you try to hound
me into my grave, I will never marry you! I would rather die a
hundred times over than be your wife!"
His face flushed a dark red, and he suddenly made an though he would
seize her in his arms. She retreated swiftly.
"Do not touch me!" she said, in a low, strained voice--"It will be
the worse for you if you do!"
"The worse for me--or for YOU?" he muttered fiercely,--then
regaining his composure, he burst into an angry laugh. "Bah! You are
nothing but a woman! You fling aside what you have, and pine for
what you have not! The old, old story! The eternal feminine!"
She made no reply, but moved on towards the house. "Quel
ravissement de la lune!" exclaimed a deep guttural voice at this
juncture, and Louis Gigue came out from the dark embrasure of the
Manor's oaken portal into the full splendour of the moonlight--"Et
la belle Mademoiselle Vancourt is ze adorable fantome of ze night!
Et milord Roxmouth ze what-you-call?--ze gnome!--ze shadow of ze
lumiere! Ha-ha! C'est joli, zat little chanson of ze little rose-
tree! Ze music, c'est une inspiration de Cicely--and ze words are
not so melancolique as ze love-songs made ordinairement en
Angleterre! Oui--oui!--c'est joli!"
He turned his shrewd old face up to the sky, and blinked at the dim
stars,--there was a smile under his grizzled moustache. He had
interrupted the conversation between his hostess and her
objectionable wooer precisely at the right moment, and he knew it.
Roxmouth's pale face grew a shade paler, but he made a very good
assumption of perfect composure, and taking out his case of cigars
offered one to Gigue, who cheerfully accepted it. Then he lit one
for himself with a hand that trembled slightly. Maryllia, pausing on
the step of the porch as she was about to enter, turned her head
back towards him for a moment.
"Are you staying long at Badsworth Hall?" she asked.
"About a fortnight or three weeks,"--he answered carelessly, "Mr.
Longford is doing some literary work and needs the quiet of the
country--and Sir Morton Pippitt is good enough to wish us to extend
our visit."
He smiled as he spoke. She said nothing further, but slowly passed
into the house. Gigue at once began to walk up and down the
courtyard, smoking vigorously, and talking volubly concerning the
future of his pupil Cicely Bourne, and the triumph she would make
some two years hence as a 'prima donna assoluta,' far greater than
Patti ever was in her palmiest days,--and Roxmouth was perforce
compelled, out of civility, as well as immediate diplomacy, to
listen to him with some show of interest.
"Do you think an artistic career a good thing for a woman?" he
asked, with a slight touch of satire in his voice as he put the
question.
Gigue glanced up at him quickly and comprehendingly.
"Ah, bah! Pour une femme il n'y'a qu'une chose--l'Amour!" he
replied--"Mais--au meme temps--l'Art c'est mieux qu'un mariage de
convenance!"
Roxmouth shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly, smiled tolerantly,
and changed the subject.
That same evening, when everyone had retired to bed, and when Mrs.
Bludlip Courtenay was carefully taking off her artistically woven
'real hair' eyebrows and putting them by in a box for the night,
Lady Beaulyon, arrayed in a marvellous 'deshabille' of lace and pale
blue satin, which would have been called by the up-to-date modiste
'a dream of cerulean sweetness,' came into her room with dejection
visibly written on her photographically valuable features.
"It's all over, Pipkin!" she said, with a sigh,--Pipkin was the
poetic pet-name by which the 'beauty' of the press-paragraphist
addressed her Ever-Youthful friend,--"We shall never get a penny out
of Mrs. Fred Vancourt. Maryllia is a mule! She has told me as
plainly as politeness will allow her to do that she does not intend
to know either you or me any more after we have left here--and you
know we're off to-morrow. So to-morrow ends the acquaintance. That
girl's 'cheek' is beyond words! One would think she was an empress,
instead of being a little bounder with only an old Manor-house and
certainly not more than two thousand a year in her own right!"
'Pipkin' stared. That she was destitute of eyebrows, save for a few
iron-grey bristles where eyebrows should have been, and that her
beautiful Titian hair was lying dishevelled on her dressing table,
were facts entirely lost sight of in the stupefaction of the moment.
"Maryllia Vancourt does not intend to know US!" she ejaculated,--
"Nonsense, Eva! The girl must be mad!"
"Mad or sane, that's what she says,"--and Eva Beaulyon turned away
from the spectacle of her semi-bald and eyebrow-less confidante with
a species of sudden irritation and repulsion--"She declares we are
in the pay of her aunt and Lord Roxmouth. So we are, more or less!
And what does it matter! Money must be had--and whatever way there
is of getting it should be taken. I laughed at her, and told her
quite frankly that I would do anything for money,--flatter a
millionaire one day and cut him the next, if I could get cheques for
doing both. How in the world should I get on without money?--or you
either! But she is an incorrigible little idiot--talks about honour
and principle exactly like some mediaeval story-book. She declares
she will never speak to either of us again after we've gone away to-
morrow. Of course we can easily reverse the position and turn the
tables upon her by saying we will not speak to her again. That will
be easy enough--for I believe she's after the parson."
Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay's eyes lightened with malignity.
"What, that man who objected to our smoke?"
Lady Beaulyon nodded.
"And I think Roxmouth sees it!"--she added.
'Pipkin' looked weirdly meditative and curiously wizened for a
moment. Then she suddenly laughed and clapped her hands.
"That will do!" she exclaimed--"That's quite good enough for US!
Mrs. Fred will pay for THAT information! Don't you see?"
Lady Beaulyon shook her head.
"Don't you? Well, wait till we get back to town!"--and 'Pipkin' took
up her false hair and shook it gently, as she spoke--"We can do
wonders--wonders, I tell you, Eva! And till we go, we'll be as nice
to the girl as we can,--go off good friends and all that sort of
thing--tell her how much we've enjoyed ourselves--thank her
profusely,--and then once away we'll tell Mrs. Fred all about John
Walden, and leave her to do as she likes with the story. That will
be quite enough! If Maryllia has any sneaking liking for the man,
she'll do anything to save HIS name if she doesn't care about saving
her own!"
"Oh, I see now!" and Lady Beaulyon's eyes sparkled up with a gleam
of malice--"Yes--I quite understand!"
'Pipkin' danced about the room in ecstasy,--she was half undressed
for the night, and showed a pair of exceedingly thin old legs under
an exceedingly short young petticoat.
"Maryllia Vancourt and a country parson!" she exclaimed, "The whole
thing is TOO delicious! Go to bed, Eva! Get your beauty sleep or
you'll have ever so many more wrinkles than you need! Good-night,
dearest! If Maryllia declines to know US, we shall soon find
excellent reasons for not knowing HER! Good-night!"
With a shrill little laugh, the lady kissed her dear friend
affectionately--and if the caress was not returned with very great
fervour, it may be presumed that this coldness was due more to the
unlovely impression created by the night 'toilette' of the Ever-
Youthful one, than anything else. Anyway the two social schemers
parted on the most cordial terms, and retired to their several
couches with an edifying sense of virtue pervading them both morally
and physically.
And while they and others in the Manor were sleeping, Maryllia lay
broad awake, watching the moonbeams creeping about her room like
thin silver threads, interlacing every object in a network of pale
luminance,--and listening to the slow tick-tock of the rusty
timepiece in the courtyard which said, 'Give all--take nothing--
give--all--take--no--thing!'--with such steady and monotonous
persistence. She was sad yet happy,--perplexed, yet peaceful;--she
had decided on her own course of action, and though that course
involved some immediate vexation and inconvenience to herself, she
was satisfied that it was the only one possible to adopt under the
irritating circumstances by which she was hemmed in and surrounded.
"It will be best for everyone concerned,"--she said, with a sigh--
"Of course it upsets all my plans and spoils my whole summer,--but
it is the only thing to do--the wisest and safest, both for--for Mr.
Walden--and for me. I should be a very poor friend if I could not
sacrifice myself and my own pleasure to save him from possible
annoyance,--and though it is a little hard--yes!--it IS hard!--it
can't be helped, and I must go through with it. 'Home, Home, sweet
Home!' Yes--dear old Home!--you shall not be darkened by a shadow of
deceit or treachery if _I_ can prevent it!--and for the present, my
way is the only way!"
One or two tears glittered on her long lashes when she at last fell
into a light slumber, and the old pendulum's rusty voice croaking
out: 'Give all--take no--thing' echoed hoarsely through her dreams
like a harsh command which it was more or less difficult to obey.
But life, as we all know, is not made up of great events so much as
of irritating trifles,--poor, wretched, apparently insignificant
trifles, which, nevertheless do so act upon our destinies sometimes
as to put everything out of gear, and make havoc and confusion where
there should be nothing but peace. It was the merest trifle that Sir
Morton Pippitt should have brought his 'distinguished guests,'
including Marius Longford, to see John Walden's church--and also
have taken him to visit Maryllia in her own home;--it was equally
trifling that Longford, improving on the knightly Bone-Melter's
acquaintance, should have chosen to import Lord Roxmouth into the
neighbourhood through the convenient precincts of Badsworth Hall;--
it was a trifle that Maryllia should have actually believed in the
good faith of two women who had formerly entertained her at their
own houses and whose hospitality she was anxious to return;--and it
was a trifle that John Walden should, so to speak, have made a
conventionally social 'slip' in his protest against smoking women;--
but there the trifles stopped. Maryllia knew well enough that only
the very strongest feeling, the very deepest and most intense
emotion could have made the quiet, self-contained 'man o' God' as
Mrs. Spruce called him, speak to her as he had done,--and she also
knew that only the most bitter malice and cruel under-intent to do
mischief could have roused Roxmouth, usually so coldly self-centred,
to the white heat of wrath which had blazed out of him that evening.
Between these two men she stood--a quite worthless object of regard,
so she assured herself,--through her, one of them was like to have
his name torn to shreds in the foul mouths of up-to-date salacious
slanderers,--and likewise through her, the other was prepared and
ready to commit himself to any kind of lie, any sort of treachery,
in order to gain his own interested ends. Small wonder that tears
rose to her eyes even in sleep--and that in an uneasy and confused
dream she saw John Walden standing in his garden near the lilac-tree
from which he had once given her a spray,--and that he turned upon
her a sad white face, furrowed with pain and grief, while he said in
weary accents--"Why have you troubled my peace? I was so happy till
you came!" And she cried out--"Oh, let me go away! No one wants me!
I have never been loved much in all my life--but I am loving enough
not to wish to give pain to my friends--let me go away from my dear
old home and never come back again, rather than make you wretched!"
And then with a cry she awoke, shivering and half-sobbing, to feel
herself the loneliest of little mortals--to long impotently for her
father's touch, her father's kiss,--to pray to that dimly-radiant
phantom of her mother's loveliness which was pictured on her brain,
and anon to stretch out her pretty rounded arms with a soft cry of
mingled tenderness and pain--"Oh, I am so sorry!--so sorry for HIM!
I know he is unhappy!--and it's all my fault! I wish--I wish---"
But what she wished she could not express, even to herself. Her
sensitive nature was keenly alive to every slight impression of
kindness or of coldness;--and the intense longing for love, which
had been the pulse of her inmost being since her earliest infancy,
and which had filled her with such passionate devotion to her father
that her grief at his loss had been almost abnormally profound and
despairing, made her feel poignantly every little incident which
emphasised, or seemed to emphasise, her own utter loneliness in the
world; and she was just now strung up to such a nervous tension,
that she would almost have consented to wed Lord Roxmouth if by so
doing she could have saved any possible mischief occurring to John
Walden through Roxmouth's malignancy. But the shuddering physical
repulsion she felt at the bare contemplation of such a marriage was
too strong for her.
"Anything but that!"--she said to herself, with something of a
prayer--"O dear God!--anything but that!"
Sometimes God hears these little petitions which are not of the
orthodox Church. Sometimes, as it seems, by a strange chance, the
cry of a helpless and innocent soul does reach that vast Profound
where all the secrets of life and destiny lie hidden in mysterious
embryo. And thus it happens that across the din and bustle of our
petty striving and restless disquietudes there is struck a sudden
great silence, by way of answer,--sometimes it is the silence of
Death which ends all sorrow,--sometimes it is the sweeter silence of
Love which turns sorrow into joy.
Next day all the guests at the Manor had departed with the exception
of three--Louis Gigue, and the 'Sisters Gemini,' namely, Lady
Wicketts and Miss Fosby. With much gush and gratitude for a
'charming stay--a delightful time!' Lady Beaulyon and Mrs. Bludlip
Courtenay took leave of their 'dear Maryllia,' who received their
farewells and embraces with an irresponsively civil coldness. Lord
Charlemont and Mr. Bludlip Courtenay 'motored' to London,
undertaking with each other to keep up a speed of fifty miles an
hour, provided there were not too many hills and not too much
'slowing down' for the benefit of unexpected policemen round
corners. And at sunset, a pleasant peace and stillness settled on
the Manor grounds, erstwhile disturbed by groups of restless persons
walking aimlessly to and fro,--persons who picked flowers merely to
throw them away again, and played tennis and croquet only to become
quarrelsome and declare that the weather was much too hot for games.
Everybody that was anybody had gone their ways,--and within her own
domicile Mrs. Spruce breathed capaciously and freely, and said in
confidence to the cook and to Primmins:
"Thank the Lord an' His mercies, that's all over! An' from what I
hears, Miss Maryllia won't be wantin' no more London folks for a
goodish bit o' time, an' we'll all 'ave peace to turn round an' look
at ourselves an' find out whether we're sane or silly, for the two
old leddies what is stayin' on give no trouble at all, an' that Mr.
Gigg don't care what he gets, so long as he can bang away on the
pianner an' make Miss Cicely sing, an' I will own she do sing lovely
like the angels in a 'evenly 'ost, but there!--_I_ don't want no
more company, for what with French maids an' valets, all talkin' the
wickedest stuff I ever heard about the ways an' doins o' their
masters an' missises in London, I'm downright glad to be rid o' the
whole lot! For do what we will, there is limits to patience, an' a
peaceful life is what suits me best not knowin' for the past three
weeks whether my 'ead or my 'eels is uppermost with the orderin' an'
messin' about, though I will say Miss Maryllia knows what's what,
an' ain't never in a fuss nor muddle, keepin' all wages an' bills
paid reg'lar like a hoffice clerk, mebbe better, for one never knows
whether clerks pays out what they're told or keeps some by in their
own pockets, honesty not bein' always policy with the likes o' they.
Anyway 'ere we are all alive an' none the worse for the bustle,
which is a mercy, an' now mebbe we'll have time to think a bit as we
go, an' stop worrittin' over plates an' dishes an' glass an' silver,
which, say what we like, do sit on one like a burden when there's a
many to serve. A bit o' quiet 'ull do us all good!"
The 'quiet' she thus eulogised was to be longer and lonelier than
she imagined, but of this she knew nothing. The whole house was
delightfully tranquil after the departure of the visitors, and the
spirit of a grateful repose seemed to have imparted itself to its
few remaining occupants. Louis Gigue played wonderful improvisations
on the piano that evening, and Cicely sang so brilliantly and
ravishingly that had she then stood on the boards of the Paris Grand
Opera, she would have created a wild 'furore.' Lady Wicketts knitted
placidly; she was making a counterpane, which no doubt someone would
reluctantly decide to sleep under--and Miss Fosby embroidered a
cushion cover for Lady Wicketts, who already possessed many of these
articles wrought by the same hand. Maryllia occupied herself in
writing many letters,--and all was peace. Nothing in any way
betokened a change, or suggested the slightest interruption to the
sun-lighted serenity of the long, lovely summer days.