“Wishin’ ye long days o’ peace an’ plenty,” said Bainton, between his appreciative sips; “But as fur as the trees is consarned, you’ll’scuse me, Miss, for sayin’ it, but the time bein’ short, I don’t see ‘ow it’s goin’ to be ‘elped, Oliver Leach bein’ away, and no post delivered at his ‘ouse till eight o’clock–“
“I will settle all that,” said Maryllia–“You must leave everything to me. In the meantime,”–and she glanced at Spruce,–then appealingly turned to Bainton,–“Will you try and make your friend understand an order I want to give him? Or shall I ask Mrs. Spruce to come and speak to him?”
“Lord love ye, he’ll be sharper to hear me than his wife, Miss, beggin’ yer pardon,” said Bainton, with entire frankness. “He’s too accustomed to her jawin’ an’ wouldn’t get a cleat impression like. Spruce!” And he uplifted his voice in a roar that made the old rafters of the hall ring. “Get ready to take Miss Vancourt’s orders, will ye?”
Spruce was instantly on the alert, and put his hand to his ear.
“Tell him, please,” said Maryllia, still addressing Bainton, “that he is to meet the agent as arranged at the appointed place to-morrow morning; but that he is not to take any ropes or axes or any men with him. He is simply to say that by Miss Vancourt’s orders the trees are not to be touched.”
These words Bainton dutifully bellowed into Spruce’s semi-closed organs of hearing. A look first of astonishment and then of fear came over the simple fellow’s face.
“I’m afraid,” he at last faltered, “that the lady does not know what a hard man Mr. Leach is; he’ll as good as kill me if I go there alone to him!”
“Lord love ye, man, you won’t be alone!” roared Bainton,–“There’s plenty in the village ‘ull take care o’ that!”
“Say to him,” continued Maryllia steadily, noting the forester’s troubled countenance, “he must now remember that I am mistress here, and that my orders, even if given at the last moment, are to be obeyed.”
“That’s it!” chuckled Josey Letherbarrow, knocking his stick on the ground in a kind of ecstasy,–“That’s it! Things ain’t goin’ to be as they ‘as been now the Squire’s little gel is ‘ome! That’s it!” And he nodded emphatically. “Give a reskil rope enough an’ he’ll ‘ang hisself by the neck till he be dead, and the Lord ha’ mercy on his soul!”
Maryllia smiled, watching all her three quaint visitors with a sensation of mingled interest and whimsical amusement.
“D’ye hear? You’re to tell Leach,” shouted Bainton, “that Miss Vancourt is mistress ‘ere, and her orders is to be obeyed at the last moment! Which you might ha’ understood without splittin’ my throat to tell ye, if ye had a little more sense, which, lackin’, ‘owever, can’t be ‘elped. What are ye afeard of, eh?”
“Mr. Leach is a hard man,” continued Spruce, anxiously glancing at Maryllia; “He would lose me my place if he could–:”
Maryllia heard, and privately decided that the person to lose his place would be Leach himself. “It is quite exciting!” she thought; “I was wondering a while ago what I should do to amuse myself in the country, and here I am called upon at once to remedy wrongs and settle village feuds! Nothing could be more novel and delightful!” Aloud, she said,–
“None of the people who were in my father’s service will lose their places with me, unless for some very serious fault. Please”–and she raised her eyes in pretty appeal to Bainton, “Please make everybody understand that! Are you one of the foresters here?”
Bainton shook his head.
“No, Miss,–I’m the Passon’s head man. I does all his gardening and keeps a few flowers growin’ in the churchyard. There’s a rose climbin’ over the cross on the old Squire’s grave what will do ye good to see, come another fortnight of this warm weather. But Passon, he be main worrited about the Five Sisters, and knowin’ as ‘ow I’d worked for the old Squire at ‘arvest an,’ sich-like, he thought I might be able to ‘splain to ye–“
“I see!” said Maryllia, thoughtfully, surveying with renewed interest the old-world figure of Josey Letherbarrow in his clean smock-frock. “Now, how are you going to get Josey home again?” And a smile irradiated her face. “Will you carry him along just as you brought him?”
“Why, yes, Miss–it’ll be all goin’ downhill now, and there’s a moon, and it’ll be easy work. And if so be we’re sure the Five Sisters ‘ull be saved–“
“You may be perfectly certain of it,” said Maryllia interrupting him with a little gesture of decision–“Only you must impress well on Mr. Spruce here, that my orders are to be obeyed.”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Miss–what Spruce is afeard of is that Leach may tell him he’s a liar, and may jest refuse to obey. That’s quite on the cards, Miss–it is reely now!”
“Oh, is it, indeed!” and Maryllia’s eyes flashed with a sudden fire that made them look brighter and deeper than ever and revealed a depth of hidden character not lacking in self-will,–“Well, we shall see! At any rate, I have given my orders, and I expect them to be carried out! You understand!”
“I do, Miss;” and Bainton touched his forelock respectfully; “An’ while we’re joggin’ easy downhill with Josey, I’ll get it well rubbed into Spruce. And, by yer leave, if you hain’t no objection, I’ll tell Passon Walden that sich is your orders, and m’appen he’ll find a way of impressin’ Leach straighter than we can.” Maryllia was not particularly disposed to have the parson brought into her affairs, but she waived the query lightly aside.
“You can do as you like about that,” she said carelessly; “As the parson is your master, you can of course tell him if you think he will be interested. But I really don’t see why he should be asked to interfere. My orders are sufficient.”
A very decided ring of authority in the clear voice warned Bainton that here was a lady who was not to be trifled with, or to be told this or that, or to be put off from her intentions by any influence whatsoever. He could not very well offer a reply, so he merely touched his forelock again and was discreetly silent. Maryllia then turned playfully to Josey Letherbarrow.
“Now are you quite happy?” she asked. “Quite easy in your mind about the trees?”
“Thanks be to the Lord and you, God bless ye!” said Josey, piously; “I’m sartin sure the Five Sisters ‘ull wave their leaves in the blessed wind long arter I’m laid under the turf and the daisies! I’ll sleep easy this night for knowin’ it, and thank ye kindly and all blessin’ be with ye! And if I never sees ye no more–“
“Now, Josey, don’t talk nonsense!” said Maryllia, with a pretty little air of protective remonstrance; “Such a clever old person as you are ought to know better than to be morbid! ‘Never see me no more’ indeed! Why I’m coming to see you soon,–very soon! I shall find out where you live, and I shall pay you a visit! I’m a dreadful talker! You shall tell me all about the village and the people in it, and I’m sure I shall learn more from you in an hour than if I studied the place by myself for a week! Shan’t I?”
Josey was decidedly flattered. The port wine had reddened his nose and had given an extra twinkle to his eyes.
“Well, I ain’t goin’ to deny but what I knows a thing or two–” he began, with a sly glance at her.
“Of course you do! Heaps of things! I shall coax them all out of you! And now, good-night!–No!–don’t get up!” for Josey was making herculean efforts to rise from his chair again. “Just stay where you are, and let them carry you carefully home. Good-night!”
She gave a little salute which included all three of her rustic visitors, and moved away. Passing under the heavily-carved arched beams of oak which divided the hall from the rest of the house, she turned her head backward over her shoulder with a smile.
“Good-night, Ambassador Josey!”
Josey waved his old hat energetically.
“Good-night, my beauty! Good-night to Squire’s gel! Good-night–“
But before he could pile on any more epithets, she was gone, and the butler Primmins stood in her place.
“I’ll help give you a lift down to the gates,” he said, surveying Josey with considerable interest; “You’re a game old chap for your age!”
Josey was still waving his hat to the dark embrasure through which Maryllia’s white figure had vanished.
“Ain’t she a beauty? Ain’t she jest a real Vancourt pride?” he demanded excitedly; “Lord! We won’t know ourselves in a month or two! You marrk my wurrds, boys! See if what I say don’t come true! Leach may cheat the gallus, but he won’t cheat them blue eyes, let him try ever so! They’ll be the Lord’s arrows in his skin! You see if they ain’t!”
Bainton here gave a signal to Spruce, and they hoisted up the improvised carrying-chair between them, Primmins steadying it behind.
“There ain’t goin’ to be no layin’ low of the Five Sisters!” Josey continued with increasing shrillness and excitement as he was borne out into the moonlit courtyard; “And there ain’t goin’ to be no devil’s work round the old Manor no more! Welcome ‘ome to Squire’s gel! Welcome ‘ome!”
“Shut up, Josey!” said Bainton, though kindly enough–“You’ll soon part with all the breath you’ve got in yer body if ye makes a screech owl of yerself like that in the night air! You’s done enough for once in a way,–keep easy an’ quiet while we carries ye back to the village–ye weighs a hundred pound ‘eavier if ye’re noisy,–ye do reely now!”
Thus adjured, Josey subsided into silence, and what with the joy he felt at the success of his embassy, the warm still air, and the soothing influence of the moonlight, he soon fell fast asleep, and did not wake till he arrived at his own home in safety. Having deposited him there, and seen to his comfort, Spruce and Bainton left him to his night’s rest, and held a brief colloquy outside his cottage door.
“I’m awful ‘feard goin’ to-morrow marnin’ up to the Five Sisters with ne’er a tool and ne’er a man,–Leach ‘ull be that wild!” said Spruce, his rubicund face paling at the very thought–“If I could but ‘ave ‘ad written instructions, like!”
“Why didn’t you ask for ’em while you ‘ad the chance?” demanded Bainton testily; “It’s too late now to bother your mind with what ye might ha’ done if ye’d had a bit of gumption. And it’s too late for me to be goin’ and speakin’ to Passon Walden. There’s nothin’ to be done now till the marnin’!”
“Nothin’ to be done till the marnin’,” echoed Spruce with a sigh, catching these words by happy chance; “All the same, she’s a fine young lady, and ‘er orders is to be obeyed. She ain’t a bit like what I expected her to be.”
“Nor she ain’t what I bet she would be,” said Bainton, heedless as to whether his companion heard him or not; “I’ve lost ‘arf a crown to my old ‘ooman, for I sez, sez I, ‘She’s bound to be a ‘igh an’ mighty stuck-up sort o’ miss wot won’t never ‘ave a wurrd for the likes of we,’ an’ my old ‘ooman she sez to me: ‘Go ‘long with ye for a great silly gawk as ye are; I’ll bet ye ‘arf a crown she won’t be!’ So I sez ‘Done,’–an’ done it is. For she’s just as sweet as clover in the spring, an’ seems as gentle as a lamb,–though I reckon she’s got a will of ‘er own and a mind to do what she likes, when and ‘ow she likes. I’ll ‘ave a fine bit o’ talk with Passon ’bout her as soon as iver he gives me the chance.”
“Ay, good-night it is,” observed Spruce, placidly taking all these remarks as evening adieux,–“Yon moon’s got ‘igh, and it’s time for bed if so be we rises early. Easy rest ye!”
Bainton nodded. It was all the response necessary. The two then separated, going their different ways to their different homes, Spruce having to get back to the Manor and a possible curtain- lecture from his wife. All the village was soon asleep,–and eleven o’clock rang from the church-tower over closed cottages in which not a nicker of lamp or candle was to be seen. The moonbeams shed a silver rain upon the outlines of the neatly thatched roofs and barns–illumining with touches of radiance as from heaven, the beautiful ‘God’s House’ which dominated the whole cluster of humble habitations. Everything was very quiet,–the little hive of humanity had ceased buzzing; and the intense stillness was only broken by the occasional murmur of a ripple breaking from the river against the pebbly shore.
Up at the Manor, however, the lights were not yet extinguished. Maryllia, on the departure of ‘Ambassador Josey’ as she had called him, and his two convoys, had sent for Mrs. Spruce and had gone very closely with her into certain matters connected with Mr. Oliver Leach. It had been difficult work,–for Mrs. Spruce’s garrulity, combined with her habit of wandering from the immediate point of discussion, and her anxiety to avoid involving herself or her husband in trouble, had created a chaotic confusion in her mind, which somewhat interfered with the lucidity of her statements. Little by little, however, Maryllia extracted a sufficient number of facts from her hesitating and reluctant evidence to gain considerable information on many points respecting the management of her estate, and she began to feel that her return home was providential and had been in a manner pre-ordained. She learned all that Mrs. Spruce could tell her respecting the famous ‘Five Sisters’; how they were the grandest and most venerable trees in all the country round–and how they stood all together on a grassy eminence about a mile and a half from the Manor house and on the Manor lands just beyond the more low-lying woods that spread between. Whereupon Maryllia decided that she would take an early ride over her property the next day,–and gave orders that her favourite mare, ‘Cleopatra,’ ready saddled and bridled, should be brought round to the door at five o’clock the next morning. This being settled, and Mrs. Spruce having also humbly stated that all the peacock’s feathers she could find had been summarily cast forth from the Manor through the medium of the parcels’ post, Maryllia bade her a kindly good-night.
“To-morrow,” she said, “we will go all over the house together, and you will explain everything to me. But the first thing to be done is to save those old trees.”
“Well, no one wouldn’t ‘ave saved ’em if so be as you ‘adn’t come ‘ome, Miss,” declared Mrs. Spruce. “For Mr. Leach he be a man of his word, and as obs’nate as they makes ’em, which the Lord Almighty knows men is all made as obs’nate as pigs–and he’s been master over the place like–“
“More’s the pity!” said Maryllia; “But he is master here no longer, Spruce; I am now both mistress and master. Remember that, please!”
Mrs. Spruce curtseyed dutifully and withdrew. The close cross- examination she had undergone respecting Leach had convinced her of two things,–firstly, that her new mistress, though such a childlike-looking creature, was no fool,–and secondly, that though she was perfectly gentle, kind, and even affectionate in her manner, she evidently had a will of her own, which it seemed likely she would enforce, if necessary, with considerable vigour and imperativeness. And so the worthy old housekeeper decided that on the whole it would be well to be careful–to mind one’s P’s and Q’s as it were,–to pause before rushing pell-mell into a flood of unpremeditated speech, and to pay the strictest possible attention to her regular duties.
“Then m’appen we’ll stay on in the old place,” she considered; “But if we doos those things which we ought not to have done, as they sez in the prayer-book, we’ll get the sack in no time, for all that she looks so smilin’ and girlie-like.”
And so profound were her cogitations on this point that she actually forgot to give her husband the sound rating she had prepared for him concerning the part he had taken in bringing Josey Letherbarrow up to the Manor. Returning from the village in some trepidation, that harmless man was allowed to go to bed and sleep in peace, with no more than a reminder shrilled into his ears to be ‘up with the dawn, as Miss Maryllia would be about early.’
Maryllia herself, meanwhile, quite unconscious that her small personality had made any marked or tremendous effect upon her domestics, retired to rest in happy mood. She was glad to be in her own home, and still more glad to find herself needed there.
“I’ve been an absolutely useless creature up till now,” she said, shaking down her hair, after the maid Nancy had disrobed her and left her for the night. “The fact is, there never was a more utterly idle and nonsensical creature in the world than I am! I’ve done nothing but dress and curl my hair, and polish my face, and dance, and flirt and frivol the time away. Now, if I only am able to save five historical old trees, I shall have done something useful;– something more than half the women I know would ever take the trouble to do. For, of course, I suppose I shall have a row,–or as Aunt Emily would say ‘words,’–with the agent. All the better! I love a fight,–especially with a man who thinks himself wiser than I am! That is where men are so ridiculous,–they always think themselves wiser than women, even though some of them can’t earn their own living except through a woman’s means. Lots of men will take a woman’s money, and sneer at her while spending it! I know them!” And she nestled into her bed, with a little cosy cuddling movement of her soft white shoulders; “‘Take all and give nothing!’ is the motto of modern manhood;–I don’t admire it,–I don’t endorse it; I never shall! The true motto of love and chivalry should be ‘Give all–take nothing’!”
Midnight chimed from the courtyard turret. She listened to the mellow clang with a sense of pleased comfort and security.
“Many people would think of ghosts and all sorts of uncanny things in an old, old house like this at midnight;” she thought; “But somehow I don’t believe there are any ghosts here. At any rate, not unpleasant ones;–only dear and loving ‘home’ ghosts, who will do me no harm!”
She soon sank into a restful slumber, and the moonlight poured in through the old latticed windows, forming a delicate tracery of silver across the faded rose silken coverlet of the bed, and showing the fair face, half in light, half in shade, that rested against the pillow, with the unbound hair scattered loosely on either side of it, like a white lily between two leaves of gold. And as the hours wore on, and the silence grew more intense, the slow and somewhat rusty pendulum of the clock in the tower could just be heard faintly ticking its way on towards the figures of the dawn. “Give all–take nothing–Give–all–take–no–thing!” it seemed to say;–the motto of love and the code of chivalry, according to Maryllia.
X
A thin silver-grey mist floating delicately above the river Rest and dispersing itself in light wreaths across the flowering banks and fields, announced the breaking of the dawn,–and John Walden, who had passed a restless night, threw open his bedroom window widely, with a sense of relief that at last the time had come again for movement and action. His blood was warm and tingling with suppressed excitement,–he was ready for a fight, and felt disposed to enjoy it. His message to Miss Vancourt had apparently failed,–for on the previous evening Bainton had sent round word to say that he had been unable to see the lady before dinner, but that he was going to try again later on. No result of this second attempt had been forthcoming, so Walden concluded that his gardener had received a possibly curt and complete rebuff from the new ‘Squire-ess,’ and had been too much disheartened by his failure to come and report it.
“Never mind!–we’ll have a tussle for the trees!” said John to himself, as after his cold tubbing he swung his dumb-bells to and fro with the athletic lightness and grace of long practice; “If the villagers are prepared to contest Leach’s right to destroy the Five Sisters, I’ll back them up in it! I will! And I’ll speak my mind to Miss Vancourt too! She is no doubt as apathetic and indifferent to sentiment as all her ‘set,’ but if I can prick her through her pachydermatous society skin, I’ll do it!”
Having got himself into a great heat and glow with this mental resolve and his physical exertions combined, he hastily donned his clothes, took his stoutest walking-stick, and sallied forth into the cool dim air of the as yet undeclared morning, the faithful Nebbie accompanying him. Scarcely, however, had he shut his garden gate behind him when Bainton confronted him.
“Marnin’, Passon!”
“Oh, there you are!” said Walden–“Well, now what’s going to be done?”
“Nothin’s goin’ to be done;” rejoined Bainton stolidly, with his usual inscrutable smile; “Unless m’appen Spruce is ‘avin’ every bone broke in his body ‘fore we gets there. Ye see, he ain’t got no written orders like,–and mebbe Leach ‘ull tell him he’s a liar and that Miss Vancourt’s instructions is all my eye!”
“Miss Vancourt’s instructions?” echoed Walden; “Has she given any?”
“Of coorse she has!” replied Bainton, triumphantly; “Which is that the trees is not to be touched on no account. And she’s told Spruce, through me,–which I bellowed it all into his ear,–to go and meet Leach this marnin’ up by the Five Sisters and give him ‘er message straight from the shoulder!”
Walden’s face cleared and brightened visibly.
“I’m glad–I’m very glad!” he said; “I hardly thought she could sanction such an outrage–but, tell me, how did you manage to give her my message?”
“‘Tworn’t your message at all, Passon, don’t you think it!” said Bainton; “You ain’t got so fur as that. She’s not the sort o’ lady to take a message from no one, whether passon, pope or emp’rur. Not she! It was old Josey Letherbarrow as done it.” And he related the incidents of the past evening in a style peculiar to himself, laying considerable weight on his own remarkable intelligence and foresight in having secured the ‘oldest ‘n’abitant’ of the village to act as representative and ambassador for the majority.
Walden listened with keen interest.
“Yes,–Leach is likely to be quarrelsome,” he said, at its conclusion; “There’s no doubt about that. We mustn’t leave Spruce to bear the brunt of his black rage all alone. Come along, Bainton!–I will enforce Miss Vancourt’s orders myself if necessary.”
This was just what Bainton wanted,–and master and man started off at a swinging pace for the scene of action, Bainton pouring forth as he went a glowing description of the wonderful and unexpected charm of the new mistress of the Manor.
“There ain’t been nothin’ like her in our neighbourhood iver at all, so fur as I can remember,” he declared. “A’ coorse I must ha’ seed her when I worked for th’ owld Squire at whiles, but she was a child then, an’ I ain’t a good hand at rememberin’ like Josey be, besides I never takes much ‘count of childern runnin’ round. But ‘ere was we all a-thinkin’ she’d be a ‘igh an’ mighty fashion-plate, and she ain’t nothin’ of the sort, onny jest like a little sugar figure on, a weddin’-cake wot looks sweet at ye and smiles pleasant,–though she’s got a flash in them eyes of her which minds me of a pony wot ain’t altogether broke in. Josey, he sez them eyes is a-goin’ to finish up Leach,–which mebbe they will and mebbe they won’t;–all the same they’s eyes you won’t see twice in a lifetime! Lord love ye, Passon, ain’t it strange ‘ow the Almighty puts eyes in the ‘eads of women wot ain’t a bit like wot he puts in the ‘eads of men! We gets the sight all right, but somehow we misses the beauty. An’ there’s plenty of women wot has eyes correct in stock and colour, as we sez of the flowers,–but they’re like p’ison berries, shinin’ an’ black an’ false-like,–an’ if ye touch ’em ye’re a dead man. Howsomever when ye sees eyes like them that was smilin’ at old Josey last night, why it’s jest a wonderful thing; and it don’t make me s’prised no more at the Penny Poltry-books wot’s got such a lot about blue eyes in ’em. Blue’s the colour–there’s no doubt about it;–there ain’t no eye to beat a blue one!”
Walden heard all this disjointed talk with a certain impatience. Swinging along at a rapid stride, and glad in a sense that the old trees were to be saved, he was nevertheless conscious of annoyance,- -though by whom, or at what he was annoyed, he could not have told. Plunging into the dewy woods, with all the pungent odours of moss and violets about his feet, he walked swiftly on, Bainton having some difficulty to keep up with him. The wakening birds were beginning to pipe their earliest carols; gorgeously-winged insects, shaken by the passing of human footsteps from their slumbers in the cups of flowers, soared into the air like jewels suddenly loosened from the floating robes of Aurora,–and the gentle stir of rousing life sent a pulsing wave through the long grass. Every now and again Bainton glanced up at the ‘Passon’s’ face and murmured under his breath,–‘Blue’s the colour–there ain’t nowt to beat it!’ possibly inspired thereto by the very decided blue sparkle in the eyes of the ‘man of God’ who was marching steadily along in the ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ style, with his shoulders well back, his head well poised, and his whole bearing expressive of both decision and command.
Out of the woods they passed into an open clearing, where the meadows, tenderly green and wet with dew, sloped upwards into small hillocks, sinking again into deep dingles, adorned with may-trees that were showing their white buds like little pellets of snow among the green, and where numerous clusters of blackthorn spread out lovely lavish tangles of blossom as fine as shreds of bleached wool or thread-lace upon its jet-like stems. Across these fields dotted with opening buttercups and daisies, Walden and his ‘head man about the place’ made quick way, and climbing the highest portion of the rising ground just in front of them, arrived at a wide stretch of peaceful pastoral landscape comprising a fine view of the river in all its devious windings through fields and pastures, overhung at many corners with ancient willows, and clasping the village of St. Rest round about as with a girdle of silver and blue. Here on a slight eminence stood the venerable sentinels of the fair scene,– the glorious old ‘Five Sisters’ beeches which on this very morning had been doomed to bid farewell for ever to the kind sky. Noble creatures were they in their splendid girth and broadly-stretching branches, which were now all alive with the palest and prettiest young green,–and as Walden sprang up the thyme-scented turfy ascent which lifted them proudly above all their compeers, his heart beat with mingled indignation and gladness,–indignation that such grand creations of a bountiful Providence should ever have been so much as threatened with annihilation by a destructive, ill-conditioned human pigmy like Oliver Leach,–and gladness, that at the last moment their safety was assured through the intervention of old Josey Letherbarrow. For, of course Miss Vancourt herself would never have troubled about them. Walden made himself inwardly positive on that score. She could have no particular care or taste for trees, John thought. It was the pathetic pleading of Josey,–his quaint appearance, his extreme age–and his touching feebleness, which taken all together had softened the callous heart of the mistress of the Manor, and had persuaded her to stay the intended outrage.
“If Josey had asked her to spare a gooseberry bush, she would probably have consented,” said Walden to himself; “He is so old and frail,–she could hardly have refused his appeal without seeming to be almost inhuman.”
Here his reflections were abruptly terminated by a clamour of angry voices, and hastening his steps up the knoll, he there confronted a group of rough rustic lads gathered in a defensive half-circle round Spruce who, white and breathless, was bleeding profusely from a deep cut across his forehead. Opposite him stood Oliver Leach, livid with rage, grasping a heavy dog-whip.
“You damned, deaf liar!” he shouted; “Do you think I’m going to take YOUR word? How dare you disobey my orders! I’ll have you kicked off the place, you and your loud-tongued wife and the whole kit of you! What d’ye mean by bringing these louts up from the village to bull- bait me, eh? What d’ye mean by it? I’ll have you all locked up in Riversford jail before the day’s much older! You whining cur!” And he raised his whip threateningly. “I’ve given you one, and I’ll give you another–“
“Noa, ye woan’t!” said a huge, raw-boned lad, standing out from the rest. “You woan’t strike ‘im no more, if ye wants a hull skin! Me an’ my mates ‘ull take care o’ that! You go whoam, Mister Leach!– you go whoam!–you’ve ‘eerd plain as the trees is to be left stannin’–them’s the orders of the new Missis,–and you ain’t no call to be swearin’ yerself black in the face, ‘cos you can’t get yer own way for once. You’re none so prutty lookin’ that we woan’t know ‘ow to make ye a bit pruttier if ye stays ‘ere enny longer!”
And he grinned suggestively, doubling a portentous fist, and beginning to roll up his shirt sleeves slowly with an ominous air of business.
Leach looked at the group of threatening faces, and pulled from his pocket a notebook and pencil.
“I know you all, and I shall take down your names,” he said, with vindictive sharpness, though his lips trembled–“You, Spruce, are under my authority, and you have deliberately disobeyed my orders–“
“And you, Leach, are under Miss Vancourt’s authority and you are deliberately refusing to obey your employer’s orders!” said Walden, suddenly emerging from the shadow east by one of the great trees, “And you have assaulted and wounded Spruce who brought you those orders. Shame on you, man! Riversford jail is more likely to receive YOU as a tenant than any of these lads!” Here he turned to the young men who on seeing their minister had somewhat sheepishly retreated, lifting their caps and trampling backward on each other’s toes; “Go home, boys,” he said peremptorily, yet kindly; “There’s nothing for you to do here. Go home to your breakfasts and your work. The trees won’t be touched–“
“Oh, won’t they!” sneered Leach, now perfectly white with passion; “Who’s going to pay me for the breaking of my contract, I should like to know? The trees are sold–they were sold as they stand a fortnight ago,–and down they come to-day, orders or no orders; I’ll have my own men up here at work in less than an hour!”
Walden turned upon him.
“Very well then, I shall ask Miss Vancourt to set the police to watch her trees and take you into custody;” he said, coolly; “If you have sold the trees standing, to cover your gambling debts, you will have to UNsell them, that’s all! They never were yours to dispose of;–you can no more sell them than you can sell the Manor. You have no permission to make money for yourself out of other people’s property. That kind of thing is common thieving, though it MAY sometimes pass for Estate Agency business!”
Leach sprang forward, his whip uplifted,–but before it could fall, with one unanimous yell, the young rustics rushed upon him and wrested it from his hand. At this moment Bainton, who had been silently binding Spruce’s cut forehead with a red cotton handkerchief, so that the poor man presented the appearance of a melodramatic ‘stage’ warrior, suddenly looked up, uttered an exclamation, and gave a warning signal.
“Better not go on wi’ the hargyment jes’ now, Passon!” he said,– “‘Ere comes the humpire!”
Even as he spoke, the quick gallop of hoofs echoed thuddingly on the velvety turf, and the group of disputants hastily scattered to right and left, as a magnificent mare, wild-eyed and glossy-coated, dashed into their centre and came to a swift halt, drawn up in an instant by the touch of her rider on the rein. All eyes were turned to the slight woman’s figure in the saddle, that sat so easily, that swayed the reins so lightly, and that seemed as it were, throned high above them in queenly superiority–a figure wholly unconventional, clad in a riding-skirt and jacket of a deep soft violet hue, and wearing no hat to shield the bright hair from the fresh wind that waved its fair ripples to and fro caressingly and tossed a shining curl loose from the carelessly twisted braid. Murmurs of ‘The new Missis!’ ‘Th’ owld Squire’s darter!’–ran from mouth to mouth, and John Walden, seized by a sudden embarrassment, withdrew as far as possible into the shadow of the trees in a kind of nervous hope to escape from the young lady’s decidedly haughty glance, which swept like a flash of light, round the assembled group and settled at last with chill scrutiny on the livid and breathless Oliver Leach.
“You are the agent here, I presume?”
Maryllia’s voice rang cold and clear,–there was not a trace of the sweet and coaxing tone in it that had warmed the heart of old Josey Letherbarrow.
Leach looked up, lifting his cap half reluctantly.
“I am!”
“You have had my orders?”
Leach was silent. The young rustics hustled one another forward, moved by strong excitement, all eager to see the feminine ‘Humpire’ who had descended upon them as suddenly as a vision falling from the skies, and all wondering what would happen next.
“You have had my orders?” repeated Maryllia;–then, as no answer was vouchsafed to her, she looked round and perceived Bainton. To him she at once addressed herself.
“Who has struck Spruce?”
Bainton hesitated. It was an exceedingly awkward position. He looked appealingly, as was his wont, up into the air and among the highest branches of the ‘Five Sisters’ for ‘Passon Walden,’ but naturally could not discover him at that elevation.
“Come, come!” said Maryllia, imperatively–“You are not all deaf, I hope! Give me a straight answer, one of you! Who struck Spruce?”
“Mister Leach did!” said the big-boned lad who had constituted himself Spruce’s defender. “We ‘eerd down in the village as ‘ow you’d come ‘ome, Miss, and as ‘ow you’d give your orders that the Five Sisters was to be left stannin’, and we coomed up wi’ Spruce to see ‘ow Leach ‘ud take it, an’ ‘fore we could say a wurrd Leach he up wi’ his whip and cut Spruce across the for’ead as ye see–“
Maryllia raised her hand and silenced him with a gesture. “Thank you! That will do. I understand!” She turned towards Leach; “What have you to say for yourself?” “I take no orders from a servant,” replied Leach, insolently; “I have managed this estate for ten years, and I give in my statements and receive my instructions from the firm of solicitors who have it in charge. I am not called upon to accept any different arrangement without proper notice.”
Maryllia heard him out with coldly attentive patience.
“You will accept a different arrangement without any further notice at all,” she said; “You will leave the premises and resign all management of my property from this day henceforward. I dismiss you, for disobedience and insolence, and for assaulting my servant, Spruce, in the execution of his duty. And as for these trees, if any man touches a bough of one of them without my permission, I will have him prosecuted! Now you know my mind!”.
She sat proudly erect in her saddle, while the village hobbledehoys who had instinctively gathered round her, like steel shavings round a magnet, fairly gasped for breath. Oliver Leach dismissed! Oliver Leach, the petty tyrant, the carping, snarling jack-in-office, cast out like a handful of bad rubbish! It was like a thunderbolt fallen from heaven and riving the earth on which they stood! Bainton heard, and could scarcely keep back a chuckle of satisfaction. He longed to make Spruce understand what was going on, but that unfortunate individual was slightly stunned by Leach’s heavy blow, and sitting on the grass with his head between his two hands, was gazing, in a kind of stupefaction at the ‘new Missis’; so that any ‘bellowing’ into his ear was scarcely possible.
Leach himself stared blankly and incredulously,–his face crimsoned with a sudden rush of enraged blood and then paled again, and changing his former insolent tone for one both fawning and propitiatory, he stammered out:
“I am very sorry–I–I beg your pardon, Madam!–if you will give yourself a little time to consider, you will see I have done my duty on this property all the time I have been connected with it. I hope you will not dismiss me for the first fault!–I–I–admit I should not have struck Spruce,–but–I–I was taken by surprise–I–I know my business,–and I am not accustomed to be interfered with–” Here his pent-up anger got the better of him and he again began to bluster. “I have done my duty–no man better!” he said in fierce accents. “There’s not an acre of woodland here that isn’t in a better condition than it was ten years ago–Ah!–and bringing in more money too!–and now I am to be turned off for a parcel of village idiots who hardly know a beech from an elm! I’ll make a case of it! Sir Morton Pippitt knows me–I’ll speak to Sir Morton Pippitt–“
“Sir Morton Pippitt!” echoed Maryllia disdainfully; “What has he to do with me or my property?” Here she suddenly spied Walden, who, in his eagerness to hear every word that passed had, unconsciously to himself, moved well out of the sheltering shadow of the trees–“Are YOU Sir Morton Pippitt?”
A broad grin, deepening into a scarcely suppressed titter, Went the round of the gaping young rustics. Walden himself smiled,–and recognising that the time had now come to declare himself, he advanced a step or two and lifted his hat.
“I have not that pleasure! I am the minister of this parish, and my name is John Walden. I’m afraid I am rather a trespasser here!–but I have loved these old trees for many years, and I came up this morning,–having heard what your orders were from my gardener Bainton,–to see that those orders were properly carried out,–and also to save possible disturbance–“
He broke off. Maryllia, while he spoke, had eyed him somewhat critically, and now favoured him with a charming smile.
“Thank you very much!” she said sweetly; “It was most kind of you! I wonder–” And she paused, knitting her pretty brows in perplexity; “I wonder if you could get rid of everybody for me?”
He glanced up at her in a little wonderment.
“Could you?” she repeated.
He drew nearer.
“Get rid of everybody?–you mean?–“
She leaned confidentially from her saddle.
“Yes–YOU know! Send them all about their business! Clergymen can always do that, can’t they? There’s really nothing more to be said or done–the trees shall not be touched,–the matter is finished. Tell all these big boys to go away–and–oh, YOU know!”
A twinkle of merriment danced in Walden’s eyes. But he turned quite a set and serious face round on the magnetised lads of the village, who hung about, loth to lose a single glance or a single word of the wonderful ‘Missis’ who had the audacious courage to dismiss Leach.
“Now, boys!” he said peremptorily; “Clear away home and begin your day’s work! You’re not wanted here any longer. The trees are safe,– and you can tell everyone what Miss Vancourt says about them. Bainton! You take these fellows home,–Spruce had better go with you. Just call at the doctor’s on the way and get his wound attended to. Come now, boys!–sharp’s the word!”
A general scrambling movement followed this brief exordium. With shy awkwardness each young fellow lifted his cap as he shambled sheepishly past Maryllia, who acknowledged these salutes smilingly,- -Bainton assisted Spruce to rise to his feet, and then took him off under his personal escort,–and only Leach remained, convulsively gripping his dog-whip which he had picked up from the ground where the lads had thrown it,–and anon striking it against his boot with a movement of impatience and irritation.
“GOOD-morning, Mr. Leach!” said Walden pointedly. But Leach stood still, looking askance at Maryllia.
“Miss Vancourt,” he said, hoarsely; “Am I to understand that you meant what you said just now?”
She glanced at him coldly.
“That I dismiss you from my service? Of course I meant it! Of course I mean it!”
“I am bound to have fair notice,” he muttered. “I cannot collect all my accounts in a moment–“
“Whatever else you may do, you will leave this place at, once;” said Maryllia, firmly,–“I will communicate my decision to the solicitors and they will settle with you. No more words, please!”
She turned her mare slowly round on the grassy knoll, looking up meanwhile at the lovely canopy of tremulous young green above her head. John Walden watched her. So did Oliver Leach,–and with a sudden oath, rapped out like a discordant bomb bursting in the still air, he exclaimed savagely:
“You shall repent this, my fine lady! By God, you shall! You shall rue the day you ever saw Abbot’s Manor again! You had far better have stayed with your rich Yankee relations than have made such a home-coming as this for yourself, and such an outgoing for me! My curse on you!”
Shaking his fist threateningly at her, he sprang down the knoll, and plunging through the grass and fern was soon lost to sight.
The soft colour in Maryllia’s cheeks paled a little and a slight tremor ran through her frame. She looked at Walden,–then laughed carelessly.
“Guess I’ve given him fits!” she said, relapsing into one of her Aunt Emily’s American colloquialisms, with happy unconsciousness that this particular phrase coming from her pretty lips sent a kind of shock through John’s sensitive nerves. “He’s not a very pleasant man to meet anyway! And it isn’t altogether agreeable to be cursed on the first morning of my return home. But, after all, it doesn’t matter much, as there’s a clergyman present!” And her blue eyes. danced mischievously; “Isn’t it lucky you came? You can stop that curse on its way and send it back like a homing pigeon, can’t you? What do you say when you do it? ‘Retro me Sathanas,’ or something of that kind, isn’t it? Whatever it is, say it now, won’t you?”
Walden laughed,–he could not help laughing. She spoke, with such a whimsical flippancy, and she looked so bewitchingly pretty.
“Really, Miss Vancourt, I don’t think I need utter any special formula on this occasion,” he said, gaily. “You have done a good action to the whole community by dismissing Leach. Good actions bring their own reward, while curses, like chickens, come home to roost. Pray forgive me for quoting copybook maxims! But, for the curse of one ill-conditioned boor, you will have the thanks and blessings of all your tenantry. That will take the edge of the malediction; don’t you think so?”
She turned her mare in the homeward direction, and began to guide it gently down the slope. Walking by her side, John held back one of the vast leafy boughs of the great trees to allow her to pass more easily, and glanced up at her smilingly as he put his question.
She met his eyes with an open frankness that somewhat disconcerted him.
“Well, I don’t know about that!” she replied. “You see, in these days of telepathy and hypnotic suggestion, there may be something very catching about a curse. It’s just like a little seed of disease;–if it falls on the right soil it germinates and spreads, and then all manner of wicked souls get the infection. I believe that in the old days everybody guessed this instinctively, without being able to express it scientifically,–and that’s why they ran to the Church for protection agaiast curses, and the evil eye, and things of that sort. See how some of the old Scottish curses cling even to this day! The only way to take the sting out of a curse is to get it transposed”–and she smiled, glancing meditatively up into the brightening blue of the sky. “Like a song, you know! If it’s too low for the voice you transpose it to a higher key. I daresay the Church was able to do that in the days when it had REAL faith–oh!– I beg your pardon!–I ought not to say that to a man of your calling.”
“Why not?” said Walden; “Pray say anything you like to me, Miss Vancourt;–I should be a very poor and unsatisfactory sort of creature if I could not bear any criticism on my vocation. Besides, I quite agree with you. The early Church had certainly more faith than it has now.”
“You’re not a bit like a parson,” said Maryllia gravely, studying his face with embarrassing candour and closeness; “You look quite a nice pleasant sort of man.”
John Walden laughed again,–this time with sincere heartiness. Maryllia’s eyes twinkled, and little dimples came and went round her mouth and chin.
“You seem amused at that,” she said; “But I’ve seen a great deal of life–and I have met heaps and heaps of parsons–parsons young and parsons old–and they were all horrid, simply horrid! Some talked Bible–and others talked the Sporting Times–any amount of them talked the drama, and played villains in private theatricals. I never met but one real minister,–that is a man who ministers to the poor,–and he died in a London slum before he was thirty. I believe he was a saint; and if he had lived in the days of the early Church, he would certainly have been canonised. He would have been Saint William–his name was William. But he was only one William,–I’ve seen hundreds of them.”
“Hundreds of Williams?” queried Walden suggestively.
This time it was Maryllia who laughed,–a gay little laugh like that of a child.
“No, I guess not!” she answered; “Some of them are real Johnnies! Oh dear me!”–and again her laughter broke forth; “I quite forgot! You said YOUR name was John!”
“So it is.” And he smiled; “I’m sorry you don’t like it!”
She checked her merriment abruptly, and became suddenly serious.
“But I do like it! You mustn’t think I don’t. Oh, how rude I must seem to you! Please forgive me! I really do like the name of John!”
He glanced up at her, still smiling.
“Thank you! It’s very kind of you to say so!”
“You believe me, don’t you?” she said persistently.
“Of course I do! Of course I must! Though unhappily a Churchman, I am not altogether a heretic.'”
The smile deepened in his eyes,–and as she met his somewhat quizzical glance a slight wave of colour rose to her cheeks and brow. She drew herself up in her saddle with a sudden, proud movement and carried her little head a trifle higher. Walden looked at her now as he would have looked at a charming picture, without the least embarrassment. She appeared so extremely young to him. She awakened in his mind a feeling of kindly paternal interest, such as he might have felt for Susie Prescott or Ipsie Frost. He was not even quite sure that he considered her in any way out of the common, so far as her beauty was concerned,–though he recognised that she was almost the living image of ‘the lady in the vi’let velvet’ whose portrait adorned the gallery in Abbot’s Manor. The resemblance was heightened by the violet colour of the riding dress she wore and the absence of any head-covering save her own pretty brown-gold hair.
“I’m glad I’ve saved the old trees,” she said presently, checking her mare’s pace, and looking back at the Five Sisters standing in unmolested grandeur on their grassy throne. “I feel a pleasant consciousness of having done something useful. They are beautiful! I haven’t looked at them half enough. I shall come here all by myself this afternoon and bring a book and read under their lovely boughs. Just now I’ve only had time to cry ‘rescue.'” She hesitated a moment, then added:” I’m very much obliged to you for your assistance, Mr. Walden!–and I’m glad you also like the trees. They shall never be touched in my lifetime, I assure you I–and I believe–yes, I believe I’ll put something in my last will and testament about them–something binding, you know! Something that will set up a block in the way of land agents. Such trees as these ought to stand as long as Nature will allow them.”
Walden was silent. Somehow her tone had changed from kind playfulness to ordinary formality, and her eyes rested upon him with a cool, slightly depreciatory expression. The mare was restless, and pawed the green turf impatiently.
“She longs for a gallop;” said Maryllia, patting the fine creature’s glossy neck; “Don’t you, Cleo? Her name is Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. Isn’t she a beauty?”
“She is indeed!” murmured Walden, with conventional politeness, though he scarcely glanced at the eulogised animal.
“She isn’t a bit safe, you know,” continued Maryllia; “Nobody can hold her but me! She’s a perfectly magnificent hunter. I have another one who is gentleness itself, called Daffodil. My groom rides her. He could never ride Cleo.” She paused, patting the mare’s neck again,–then gathering up the reins in her small, loosely- gloved hand, she said: “Well, good-morning, Mr. Walden! It was most kind of you to get up so early and come to help defend my trees! I am ever so grateful to you! Pray call and see me at the Manor when you have nothing better to do. You will be very welcome!”
She nodded gracefully to him, and a few loose curls of lovely hair fell with the action like a web of sunbeams over her brow. Smiling, she tossed them back.
“Good-bye!” she called.
He raised his hat,–and in another moment the gallop of Cleopatra’s swift hoofs thudded across the grass and echoed over the fields, gradually diminishing and dying away, as mare and rider disappeared within the enfolding green of the Manor woods. He stood for a while looking after the vanishing flash of violet, brown and gold, scudding over the turf and disappearing under the closely twisted boughs of budding oak and elm,–and then started to walk home himself. His face was a study of curiously mingled expressions. Surprise, amusement, and a touch of admiration struggled for the mastery in his mind, and he was compelled to admit to himself, albeit reluctantly, that the doubtfully-anticipated ‘Squire-ess’ was by no means the sort of person he had expected to see. Herein he was at one with Bainton.
“‘Like a little sugar figure on a wedding-cake, looking sweet, and smiling pleasant!'” thought Walden, humorously recalling his gardener’s description; “Scarcely that! She has a will of her own, and–possibly–a temper! A kind of spoilt child-woman, I should imagine; just the person to wear all the fripperies Mrs. Spruce was so anxious about the other day, and quite frivolous enough to squeeze her feet into shoes a couple of sizes too small for her. Beautiful? No,–her features are not regular enough for actual beauty. Pretty? Well,–perhaps she is!–in a certain sense,–but I’m no judge. Fascinating? Possibly she might be–to some men. She certainly has a sweet voice, and a very charming manner. And I don’t think she is likely to be disagreeable or discourteous. But there is nothing remarkable about her–she’s just a woman–with a bright smile,–and a touch of American vivacity running through her English insularity. Just a woman–with a way!”
And he strode on, his terrier trotting soberly at his heels. But he was on the whole glad he had met the lady of the Manor, because now he no longer felt any uneasiness concerning her. His curiosity was satisfied,–his instinctive dislike of her had changed to a kindly toleration, and his somewhat morbid interest in her arrival had quite abated. The ‘Five Sisters’ were saved–that was a good thing; and as for Miss Vancourt herself,–well!–she was evidently a harmless creature who would most likely play tennis and croquet all day and take very little interest in anything except herself.
“She will not interfere with me, nor I with her,” said Walden with a sigh of satisfaction and relief; “And though we live in the same village, we shall be as far apart as the poles,–which is a great comfort'”
XI
Meanwhile, Maryllia cantered home through the woods in complacent and lively humour. The first few hours of her return to the home of her forefathers had certainly not been lacking in interest and excitement. She had heard and granted a village appeal,–she had stopped an act of vandalism,–she had saved five of the noblest trees in England,–she had conquered the hearts of several village yokels,–she had thrust a tyrant out of office,–she had been cursed by the said tyrant, a circumstance which was, to say the very least of it, quite new to her experience and almost dramatic,–and,–she had ‘made eyes’ at a parson! Surely this was enough adventure for one morning, especially as it was not yet eight o’clock. The whole day had yet to come; possibly she might be involved later on in still more thrilling and sensational episodes,–who could tell! She carolled a song for pure gaiety of heart, and told the rustling leaves and opening flowers in very charmingly pronounced French that
“Votre coeur a beau se defendre De s’enflammer,–Le moment vient, il faut se rendre, Il faut aimer!”
Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, curveted and pranced daintily at every check imposed on her rein, as became an equine royalty,–she was conscious of the elastic turf under her hoofs, and glad of the fresh pure air in her nostrils,–and her mistress shared with her the sense of freedom and buoyancy which an open country and fair landscape must naturally inspire in those to whom life is a daily and abounding vigorous delight, not a mere sickly brooding over the past, or a morbid anticipation of the future. The woods surrounding Abbot’s Manor were by no means depressing,–they were not dark silent vistas of solemn pine, leading into deeper and deeper gloom, but cheery and picturesque clumps of elm and beech and oak, at constant intervals with hazel-copse, hawthorn and eglantine,–true English woods, suggestive of delicate romance and poesy, and made magical by the songs of birds, whose silver-throated melodies are never heard to sweeter advantage than under the leafy boughs of such unspoilt green lanes and dells as yet remain to make the charm and glamour of rural England. Primroses peeped out in smiling clusters from every mossy nook, and the pale purple of a myriad violets spread a wave of soft colour among the last year’s fallen leaves, which had served good purpose in keeping the tender buds warm till Spring should lift them from their earth-cradles into full-grown blossom. Maryllia’s bright eyes, glancing here and there, saw and noted a thousand beauties at every turn,–the chains of social convention and ordinance had fallen from her soul, and a joyous pulse of freedom quickened her blood and sent it dancing through her veins in currents of new exhilaration and vitality. With her multi- millionaire aunt, she had lived a life of artificial constraint, against which, despite its worldly brilliancy, her inmost and best instincts had always more or less rebelled;–now,–finding herself alone, as it were, with Mother Nature, she sprang like a child to that great maternal bosom, and nestled there with a sense of glad refreshment and peace.
“What dear wildflowers!” she murmured now, as restraining Cleopatra’s coquettish gambols, she rode more slowly along, and spied the bluebells standing up among tangles of green, making exquisite contrast with the golden glow of aconites and the fragile white of wood-anemones,–“They are ever so much prettier than the hot-house things one gets any day in Paris and London! Big forced roses,–great lolling, sickly-scented lilies, and orchids–oh dear! how tired I am of orchids! Every evening a bouquet of orchids for five weeks–Sundays NOT excepted,–shall I ever forget the detestable ‘rare specimens’!”
A little frown puckered her brow, and for a moment the lines of her pretty mouth drooped and pouted with a quaintly petulant expression, like that of a child going to cry.
“It was complete persecution!” she went on, crooning her complaints to herself and patting Cleopatra’s arched neck by way of accompaniment to her thoughts–“Absolute dodging and spying round corners after the style of a police detective. I just hate a lover who makes his love, if it is love, into a kind of whip to flog your poor soul with! Roxmouth here, Roxmouth there, Roxmouth everywhere!- -he was just like the water in the Ancient Mariner ‘and not a drop to drink.’ At the play, at the Opera, in the picture-galleries, at the races, at the flower-shows, at all the ‘crushes’ and big functions,–in London, in Paris, in New York, in St. Petersburg, in Vienna,–always ‘ce cher Roxmouth’–as Aunt Emily said;–money no consideration, distance no object,–always ‘ce cher Roxmouth,’ stiff as a poker, clean as fresh paint, and apparently as virtuous as an old maid,–with all his aristocratic family looming behind him, and a long ancestry of ghosts in the shadow of time, extending away back to some Saxon ‘nobles,’ who no doubt were coarse barbarians that ate more raw meat than was good for them, and had to be carried to bed dead drunk on mead! It IS so absurd to boast of one’s ancestry! If we could only just see the dreadful men who began all the great families, we should be perfectly ashamed of them! Most of them tore up their food with their fingers. Now we Vancourts are supposed to be descended from a warrior bold, named Robert Priaulx de Vaignecourt, who fought in the Crusades. Poor Uncle Fred used to be so proud of that! He was always talking about it, especially when we were in America. He liked to try and make the Pilgrim-Father- families jealous. Just as he used to boast that if he had only been born three minutes before my father, instead of three minutes after, he would have been the owner of Abbot’s Manor. That three minutes’ delay and consideration he took about coming into the world made him the youngest twin, and cut off his chances. And he told me that Robert the Crusader had a brother named Osmond, who was believed to have founded a monastery somewhere in this neighbourhood, and who died, so the story goes, during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, though there’s no authentic trace left of either Osmond or Robert anywhere. They might, of course, have been very decent and agreeable men,–but it’s rather doubtful. If Osmond went on a pilgrimage he would never have washed himself, to begin with,–it would have destroyed his sanctity. And as for Robert the warrior bold, he would have been dreadfully fierce and hairy,–and I’m quite sure I could not possibly have asked him to dinner!”
She laughed at her own fancies, and guided her mare under a drooping canopy of early-flowering wild acacia, just for the sheer pleasure of springing lightly up in her saddle to pull off a tuft of scented white blossom.
“The fact is,” she continued half aloud, “there’s nobody I can ask to dinner even now as it is. Not down here. The local descriptions of Sir Morton Pippitt do not tempt me to make his acquaintance, and as for the parson I met just now,-why he would be impossible!– simply impossible!” she repeated with emphasis–” I can see exactly what he’s like at a glance. One of those cold, quiet, clever men who ‘quiz’ women and never admire them,–I know the kind of horrid University creature! A sort of superior, touch-me-not-person who can barely tolerate a woman’s presence in the room, and in his heart of hearts relegates the female sex generally to the lowest class of the animal creation. I can read it all in his face. He’s rather good- looking–not very,–his hair curls quite nicely, but it’s getting grey, and so is his moustache,–he must be at least fifty, I should think. He has a good figure–for a clergyman;–and his eyes–no, I’m not sure that I like his eyes–I believe they’re deceitful. I must look at them again before I make up my mind. But I know he’s just as conceited and disagreeable as most parsons–he probably thinks that he helps to turn this world and the next round on his little finger,–and I daresay he tells the poor village folk here that if they don’t obey him, they’ll go to hell, and if they do, they’ll fly straight to heaven and put on golden crowns at once. Dear me! What a ridiculous state of things! Fancy the dear old man in the smock who came to see me last night, with a pair of wings and a crown!”
Laughing again, she flicked Cleopatra’s neck with the reins, and started off at an easy swinging gallop, turning out of the woods into the carriage drive, and never checking her pace till she reached the house.
All that day she gave marked evidence that her reign as mistress of Abbot’s Manor had begun in earnest. Changing her riding dress for a sober little tailor-made frock of home-spun, she flitted busily over the old house of her ancestors, visiting it in every part, peering into shadowy corners, opening antique presses and cupboards, finding out the secret of sliding panels in the Jacobean oak that covered the walls, and leaving no room unsearched. The apartment in which her father’s body had lain in its coffin was solemnly unlocked and disclosed to her view under the title of ‘the Ghost Room,’–whereat she was sorrowfully indignant,–so much so indeed that Mrs. Spruce shivered in her shoes, pricked by the sting of a guilty conscience, for, if the truth be told, it was to Mrs. Spruce’s own too-talkative tongue that this offending name owed its origin. Quietly entering the peaceful chamber with its harmless and almost holy air of beautiful, darkened calm, Maryllia drew up the blinds, threw back the curtains, and opened the latticed windows wide, admitting a flood of sunshine and sweet air.
“It must never be called ‘the Ghost Room’ again,”–she said, with a reproachful gravity, which greatly disconcerted and overawed Mrs. Spruce–“otherwise it will have an evil reputation which it does not deserve. There is nothing ghostly or terrifying about it. It is a sacred room,–sacred to the memory of one of the dearest and best of men! It is wrong to let such a room be considered as haunted,–I shall sleep in it myself sometimes,–and I shall make it bright and pretty for visitors when they come. I would put a little child to sleep in it,–for my father was a good man, and nothing evil can ever be associated with him. Death is only dreadful to the ignorant and the wicked.”
Mrs. Spruce wisely held her peace, and dutifully followed her new mistress to the morning-room, where she had to undergo what might be called quite a stiff examination regarding all the household and housekeeping matters. Armed with a fascinating little velvet-bound notebook and pencil, Maryllia put down all the names of the different servants, both indoor and outdoor (making a small private mark of her own against those who had served her father in any capacity, and those who were just new to the place), together with the amount of wages due every month to each,–she counted over all the fine house linen, much of which had been purchased for her mother’s home-coming and had never been used;–she examined with all a connoisseur’s admiration the almost priceless old china with which the Manor shelves, dressers and cupboards were crowded,–and finally after luncheon and an hour’s deep cogitation by herself in the library, she wrote out in a round clerkly hand certain ‘rules and regulations,’ for the daily routine of her household, and handed the document to Mrs. Spruce,–much to that estimable dame’s perturbation and astonishment.
“These are my hours, Spruce,” she said–“And it will of course be your business to see that the work is done punctually and with proper method. There must be no waste or extravagance,–and you will bring me all the accounts every week, as I won’t have bills running up longer than that period. I shall leave all the ordering in of provisions to you,–if it ever happens that you send something to table which I don’t like, I will tell you, and the mistake need not occur again. Now is there anything else?”–and she paused meditatively, finger on lip, knitting her brows–“You see I’ve never done any housekeeping, but I’ve always had notions as to how I should do it if I ever got the chance to try, and I’m just beginning. I believe in method,–and I like everything that HAS a place to be in IN its place, and everything that HAS a time, to come up to its time. It saves ever so much worry and trouble! Now let me think!–oh yes!–I knew there was another matter. Please let the gardeners and outdoor men generally know that if they want to speak to me, they can always see me from ten to half-past every morning. And, by the way, Spruce, tell the maids to go about their work quietly,–there is nothing more objectionable than a noise and fuss in the house just because a room is being swept and turned out. I simply hate it! In the event of any quarrels or complaints, please refer them to me–and–and–” Here she paused again with a smile– “Yes! I think that’s all–for the present! I haven’t yet gone through the library or the picture-gallery;–however those rooms have nothing to do with the ordinary daily housekeeping,–if I find anything wanting to be done there, I’ll send for you again. But that’s about all now!”
Poor Mrs. Spruce curtseyed deferentially and tremulously. She was not going to have it all her own way as she had fondly imagined when she first saw the apparently child-like personality of her new lady. The child-like personality was merely the rose-flesh covering of a somewhat determined character.
“And anything I can do for you, Spruce, or for your husband,” continued Maryllia, dropping her business-like tone for one of as coaxing a sweetness as ever Shakespeare’s Juliet practised for the persuasion of her too tardy Nurse–“will be done with ever so much pleasure! You know that, don’t you?” And she laid her pretty little hands on the worthy woman’s portly shoulders–“You shall go out whenever you like–after work, of course!–duty first, pleasure second!–and you shall even grumble, if you feel like it,–and have your little naps when the midday meal is done with,–Aunt Emily’s housekeeper in London used to have them, and she snored dreadfully! the second footman–QUITE a nice lad–used to tickle her nose with a straw! But I can’t afford to keep a second footman–one is quite enough,–or a coachman, or a carriage;–besides, I would always rather ride than drive,–and my groom, Bennett, will only want a stable-boy to help him with Cleo and Daffodil. So I hope there’ll be no one downstairs to tease you, Spruce dear, by tickling YOUR nose with a straw! Primmins looks much too staid and respectable to think of such a thing.”
She laughed merrily,–and Mrs. Spruce for the life of her could not help laughing too. The picture of Primmins condescending to indulge in a game of ‘nose and straw’ was too grotesque to be considered with gravity.
“Well I never, Miss!” she ejaculated–“You do put things that funny!”
“Do I? I’m so glad!” said Maryllia demurely–“it’s nice to be funny to other people, even if you’re not funny to yourself! But I want you to understand from the first, Spruce, that everyone must feel happy and contented in my household. So if anything goes wrong, you must tell me, and I will try and set it right. Now I’m going for an hour’s walk with Plato, and when I come in, and have had my tea, I’ll visit the picture-gallery. I know all about it,–Uncle Fred told me,”–she paused, and her eyes darkened with a wistful and deepening gravity,–then she added gently–“I shall not want you there, Spruce,–I must be quite alone.”
Mrs. Spruce again curtseyed humbly, and was about to withdraw, when Maryllia called her back.
“What about the clergyman here, Mr. Walden?”–she asked–“Is he a nice man?–kind to the village people, I mean, and good to the poor?”
Mrs. Spruce gave a kind of ecstatic gasp, folded her fat hands tightly together in front of her voluminous apron, and launched forth straightway on her favourite theme.
“Mr. Walden is jest one of the finest men God ever made, Miss,” she said, with solemnity and unction–“You may take my word for it! He’s that good, that as we often sez, if m’appen there ain’t no saint in the Sarky an’ nowt but dust, we’ve got a real live saint walkin’ free among us as is far more ‘spectable to look at in his plain coat an’ trousers than they monks an’ friars in the picter-books wi’ ropes around their waistses an’ bald crowns, which ain’t no sign to me o’ bein’ full o’ grace, but rather loss of ‘air,–an’ which you will presently see yourself, Miss, as ‘ow Mr. Walden’s done the church beautiful, like a dream, as all the visitors sez, which there isn’t its like in all England–an’ he’s jest a father to the village an’ friends with every man, woman, an’ child in it, an’ grudges nothink to ‘elp in cases deservin’, an’ works like a nigger, he do, for the school, which if he’d ‘ad a wife it might a’ been better an’ it might a’ been worse, the Lord only knows, for no woman would a’ come up ‘ere an’ stood that patient watchin’ me an’ my work, an’ I tell you truly, Miss Maryllia, that when your boxes came an’ I had to unpack ’em an’ sort the clothes in ’em, I sent for Passon Walden jest to show ‘im that I felt my ‘sponsibility, an’ he sez, sez he: ‘You go on doin’ your duty, Missis Spruce, an’ your lady will be all right’–an’ though I begged ‘im to stop, he wouldn’t while I was a- shakin’ out your dresses with Nancy–“
Here she was interrupted by a ringing peal of laughter from Maryllia, who, running up to her, put a little hand on her mouth.
“Stop, stop, Spruce!” she exclaimed–“Oh dear, oh dear I Do you think I can understand all this? Did you show the parson my clothes- -actually? You did!” For Mrs. Spruce nodded violently in the affirmative. “Good gracious! What a perfectly dreadful thing to do!” And she laughed again. “And what is the saint in the Sarky?” Here she removed her hand from the mouth she was guarding. “Say it in one word, if you can,–what is the Sarky?”
“It’s in the church,”–said Mrs. Spruce, dauntlessly proceeding with her flow of narrative, and encouraged thereto by the sparkling mirth in her mistress’s face–“We calls it Sarky for short. Josey Letherbarrow, what reads, an’ ‘as larnin’, calls it the Sarky Fagus, an’ my Kitty, she’s studied at the school, an’ SHE sez ‘it’s Sar-KO- fagus, mother,’ which it may be or it mayn’t, for the schools don’t know more than the public-‘ouses in my opinion,–leastways it’s a great long white coffin what’s supposed to ‘ave the body of a saint inside it, an’ Mr. Walden he discovered it when he was rebuildin’ the church, an’ when the Bishop come to conskrate it, he sez ’twas a saint in there an’ that’s why the village is called St. Rest–but you’ll find it all out yourself. Miss, an’ as I sez an’ I don’t care who ‘ears me, the real saint ain’t in the Sarky at all,–it’s just Mr. Walden himself,–“
Again Maryllia’s hand closed her mouth.
“You really must stop, Spruce! You are the dearest old gabbler possible–but you must stop! You’ll have no breath left–and I shall have no patience! I’ve heard quite enough. I met Mr. Walden this morning, and I’m sure he isn’t a saint at all! He’s a very ordinary person indeed,–most ordinary–not in the very least remarkable. I’m. glad he’s good to the people, and that they like him–that’s really all that’s necessary, and it’s all I want to know. Go along, Spruce!–don’t talk to me any more about saints in the Sarky or out of the Sarky! There never was a real saint in the world–never!–not in the shape of a man!”
With laughter still dancing in her eyes, she turned away, and Mrs. Spruce, in full possession of restored nerve and vivacity, bustled off on her round of household duty, the temporary awe she had felt concerning the new written code of domestic ‘Rules and Regulations’ having somewhat subsided under the influence of her mistress’s gay good-humour. And Maryllia herself, putting on her hat, called Plato to her side, and started off for the village, resolved to make the church her first object of interest, in order to see the wondrous ‘Sarky.’
“I never was so much entertained in my life!” she declared to herself, as she walked lightly along,–her huge dog bounding in front of her and anon returning to kiss her hand and announce by deep joyous barks his delight at finding himself at liberty in the open country–“Spruce is a perfect comedy in herself,–ever so much better than a stage play! And then the quaint funny men who came to see me last night,–and those village boys this morning! And the ‘saintly’ parson! I’m sure he’ll turn out to be comic too,–in a way–he’ll be the ‘heavy father’ of the piece! Really I never imagined I should have so much fun!”
Here, spying a delicate pinnacle gleaming through the trees, she rightly concluded that it belonged to the church she intended to visit, and finding a footpath leading across the fields, she followed it. It was the same path which Walden had for so many years been accustomed to take in his constant walks to and from the Manor. It soon brought her to the highroad which ran through the village, and across this it was but a few steps to the gate of the churchyard. Laying one hand on her dog’s neck, she checked the great creature’s gambols and compelled him to walk sedately by her side, as with hushed footsteps she entered the ‘Sleepy Hollow’ of death’s long repose, and went straight up to the church door which, as usual, stood open.
“Stay here, Plato!” she whispered to her four-footed comrade, who, understanding the mandate, lay down at once submissively in the porch to wait her pleasure.
Entering the sacred shrine she stood still,–awed by its exquisite beauty and impressive simplicity. The deep silence, the glamour of the soft vari-coloured light that flowed through the lancet windows on either side,–the open purity of the nave, without any disfiguring pews or fixed seats to mar its clear space,–(for the chairs which were used at service were all packed away in a remote corner out of sight)–the fair, slender columns, springing up into flowering capitals, like the stems of palms breaking into leaf- coronals,–the dignified plainness of the altar, with that strange white sarcophagus set in front of it,–all these taken together, composed a picture of sweet sanctity and calm unlike anything she had ever seen before. Her emotional nature responded to the beautiful in all things, and this small perfectly designed House of Prayer, with its unknown saintly occupant at rest within its walls, touched her almost to tears. Stepping on tip-toe up to the altar- rails, she instinctively dropped on her knees, while she read all that could be seen of the worn inscription on the sarcophagus from that side-‘In Resurrectione–Sanctorum–Resurget.’ The atmosphere around her seemed surcharged with mystical suggestions,–a vague poetic sense of the super-human and divine moved her to a faint touch of fear, and made her heart beat more quickly than its wont.
“It is lovely–lovely!” she murmured under her breath, as she rose from her kneeling attitude–“The whole church is a perfect gem of architecture! I have never seen anything more beautiful in its way,- -not even the Chapel of the Thorn at Pisa. And according to Mrs. Spruce’s account, the man I met this morning–the quizzical parson with the grey-brown curly-locks, did it all at his own expense–he must really be quite clever,–such an unusual thing for a country clergyman!”
She took another observant survey of the whole building, and then went out again into the churchyard. There she paused, her dog beside her, shading her eyes from the sun as she looked wistfully from right to left across the sadly suggestive little hillocks of mossy turf besprinkled with daisies, in search of an object which was as a landmark of disaster in her life.
She saw it at last, and moved slowly towards it,–a plain white marble cross, rising from a smooth grassy eminence, where a rambling rose, carefully and even artistically trained, was just beginning to show pale creamy buds among its glossy dark green leaves. Great tears rose to her eyes and fell unheeded, as she read the brief inscription–‘Sacred to the Memory of Robert Vancourt of Abbot’s Manor,’ this being followed by the usual dates of birth and death, and the one word ‘Resting.’ With tender touch Maryllia gathered one leaf from the climbing rose foliage, and kissing it amid her tears, turned away, unable to bear the thoughts and memories which began to crowd thickly upon her. Almost she seemed to hear her father’s deep mellow voice which had been the music of her childhood, playfully saying as was so often his wont:–“Well, my little girl! How goes the world with you?” Alas, the world had gone very ill with her for a long, long time after his death! Hers was too loving and passionately clinging a nature to find easy consolation for such a loss. Her uncle Frederick, though indulgent to her and always kind, had never filled her father’s place,–her uncle Frederick’s American wife, had, in spite of much conscientious tutelage and chaperonage, altogether failed to win her affection or sympathy. The sorrowful sense that she was an orphan, all alone as it were with herself to face the mystery of life, never deserted her,–and it was perhaps in the most brilliant centres of society that this consciousness of isolation chiefly weighed upon her. She saw other girls around her with their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters,–but she–she, by the very act of being born had caused her mother’s death,–and she well knew that her father’s heart, quietly as he had endured his grief to all outward appearances, had never healed of that agonising wound.
“I think I should never have come into the world at all,”–she said to herself with a sigh, as she returned over the fields to the Manor–“I am no use to anybody,–I never have been of any use! Aunt Emily says all I have to do to show my sense of proper feeling and gratitude to her for her care of me is to marry–and marry well– marry Lord Roxmouth, in short–he will be a duke when his father dies, and Aunt Emily would like to have the satisfaction of leaving her millions to enrich an English dukedom. Nothing could commend itself more favourably to her ideas–only it just happens my ideas won’t fit in the same groove. Oh dear! Why can’t I be ‘amenable’ and become a future duchess, and ‘build up’ the fortunes of a great family? I don’t know I’m sure,–except that I don’t feel like it! Great families don’t appeal to me. I shouldn’t care if there were none left. They are never interesting at the best of times,–perhaps out of several of them may come one clever man or woman,–and all the rest will be utter noodles. It isn’t worth while to marry Roxmouth on such dubious grounds of possibility!”
Entering the Manor, she was conscious of some fatigue and listlessness,–a touch of depression weighed down her naturally bright spirits. She exchanged her home-spun walking dress for a tea- gown, and descended somewhat languidly to the morning-room where tea was served with more ceremoniousness than on the previous day, Primmins having taken command, with the assistance of the footman. Both men-servants stole respectful glances at their mistress, as she sat pensively alone at the open window, looking out on the verdant landscape that spread away from the terrace, in undulations of lawn, foliage and field to the last border of trees that closed in Abbot’s Manor grounds from the public highway. Both would have said had they been asked, that she was much too pretty and delicate to be all alone in the great old house, with no companion of her own age to exchange ideas with by speech or glance,–and, with that masculine self-assurance which is common to all the lords of creation, whether they be emperors or household domestics, they would have opined that ‘she ought to be married.’ In which they would have entirely agreed with Maryllia’s ‘dragon’ Aunt Emily. But Maryllia’s own mind was far from being set on such themes as love and marriage. Her meditations were melancholy, and not unmixed with self-reproach. She blamed herself for having stayed away so long from her childhood’s home, and her father’s grave.
“I might have visited it at least once a year!” she thought with sharp compunction–“I never really forgot,–why did I seem to forget?”
The sun was sinking slowly in a glory of crimson and amber cloud, when, having resolved upon what she was going to do, she entered the picture-gallery. Softly she trod the polished floor,–with keen quick instinct and appreciative eyes, she noted the fine Vandyke portraits,–the exquisite Greuze that shone out, star-like, from a dark corner of the panelled walls,–and walking with measured pace she went straight up to the picture of ‘Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt’–and gazed at it with friendly and familiar eyes.
“I know YOU quite well!”–she said, addressing the painted beauty– “I have often dreamed about you since I left home! I always admired you and wanted to be like you. I remember when I must have been about seven or eight years old, I ran in from a game in the garden one summer’s afternoon, and I knelt down in front of you and I said: ‘Pray God make little Maryllia as pretty as big Mary Elia!’ And I think,–I really do think–though of course I’m not half or quarter as pretty, I’m just a little like you! Just a very, very little! For instance my hair is the same colour–almost–and my eyes–no! I’m sure I haven’t such beautiful eyes as yours–I wish I had!”
Her lovely ancestress appeared to smile,–if she could have spoken from the canvas that held her painted image she might have said:– “You have eyes that mirror the sunshine,–you have life, and I am dead,–your day is still with you–mine is done! For me love and the world’s delight are ended,–and whither my phantom fairness has fled, who knows! But you are a vital breathing essence of beauty–be glad and rejoice in it while you may!”
Some thought of this kind would have suggested itself to an imaginative beholder had such an one stood by to compare the picture with its almost twin living copy. Maryllia however had a very small stock of vanity,–she was only pleasantly aware that she possessed a certain grace and fascination not common to the ordinary of her sex, but beyond that, she rated her personal charms at very slight value. The portrait of Mary Elia Adelgisa made her more seriously discontented with herself than ever,–and after closely studying the picturesque make of the violet velvet riding-dress which the fair one of Charles the Second’s day had worn, and deciding that she would have one ‘created’ for her own adornment exactly like it, she turned towards the other end of the gallery. There hung that preciously guarded mysterious portrait of her dead mother, which she herself had never gazed upon, covered close with its dark green baize curtain,–a curtain no hand save her father’s had ever dared to raise. She remembered how often he had used to enter here all alone and lock the doors, remaining thus in sorrow and solitude many hours. She recalled her own childish fears when, by chance running in to look at the pictures for her own entertainment, or to play with her ball on a rainy day for the convenience of space and a lofty ceiling, she was suddenly checked and held in awe by the sight of that great gilded frame enshrining the, to her, unknown presentment of a veiled Personality. Her father alone was familiar with the face hidden behind that covering which he had put up with his own hands,–fastening it by means of a spring pulley, which in its turn was secured to the wall by lock and key. Ever since his death Maryllia had worn that key on a gold chain hidden in her bosom, and she drew it out now with a beating heart and many tremours of hesitation. The trailing folds of her pretty tea-gown, all of the filmiest old lace and ivory-hued cashmere, seemed to make an obtrusive noise as they softly swept the floor,–she felt almost as though she were about to commit a sacrilege and break open a shrine,–yet–
“I must see her!” she said, whisperingly–“I shall not offend her memory. I have never done anything very wrong in my life,–if I had, I should have reason to be afraid–or ashamed,–and then of course wouldn’t dare to look at her. I have often been silly and frivolous and thoughtless,–but never spiteful or malicious, or really wicked. I could meet my father if he were here, just as frankly as if I were still a little girl,–and I think he would wish me to see his Dearest now! His Dearest! He always called her that!”
With the breath coming and going quickly through her parted lips, she stepped slowly and timidly up to that corner in the wall behind the picture, where the fastenings of the spring pulley were concealed, and fitted the key into the padlock which guarded it. The light of the setting sun threw a flame of glory aslant through the windows, and filled the gallery with a warm rush of living colour and radiance; and as she removed the padlock, and came to the front of the picture to pull the curtain-cord, she stood, unconsciously to herself, in a pure halo of gold, which intensified the brown and amber shades of her hair and the creamy folds of her gown, so that she resembled ‘an angel newly drest, save wings, for heaven,’ such as one may see delineated on the illuminated page of some antique missal. Her hand trembled, as at the first touch on the pulley the curtain began to move,–inch by inch it ascended, showing pale glimmerings of white and rose,–still higher it moved, giving to the light a woman’s beautiful hand, so delicately painted as to seem almost living. The hand held a letter, and plainly on the half unfolded scroll could be read the words:
“Thine till death, ROBERT VANCOURT.”
Another touch, and the whole covering rolled up swiftly to its full height,–while Maryllia breathless with excitement and interest gazed with all her soul in her eyes at the exquisite, dreamy, poetic loveliness of the face disclosed. All the beauty of girlhood with the tenderness of womanhood,–all the visions of young romance, united to the fulfilled passion of the heart,–all the budding happiness of a radiant life,-all the promise of a perfect love;– these were faithfully reflected in the purely moulded features, the dark blue caressing eyes, and the sweet mouth, which to Maryllia’s fervid imagination appeared to tremble plaintively with a sigh of longing for the joy of life that had been snatched away so soon. Arrayed in simplest white, with a rose at her breast, and her husband’s letter clasped in her hand, the fair form of the young bride that never came home gathered from the sunset-radiance an aspect of life, and seemed to float forth from the dark canvas like a holy spirit of beauty and blessing. Shadow and Substance–dead mother and living child–these twain gazed on each other through cloud-veils of impenetrable mystery,–nor is it impossible to conceive that some intangible contact between them might, through the transference of a thought, a longing, a prayer, have been realised at that mystic moment. With a sudden cry of irresistible emotion Maryllia stretched out her arms, and dropping on her knees, broke out into a passion of tears.
“Oh mother, mother!” she sobbed–“Oh darling mother! I would have loved you!”
XII
In such wise, under the silent benediction of the lost loving dead, the long-deserted old Manor received back the sole daughter of its ancestry to that protection which we understand, or did understand at one time in our history, as ‘Home.’ Home was once a safe and sacred institution in England. There seemed no likelihood of its ever being supplanted by the public restaurant. That it has, in a great measure, been so supplanted, is no advantage to the country, and that many women, young and old, prefer to be seen in gregarious over-dressed hordes, taking their meals in Piccadilly eating-houses, rather than essay the becoming grace of a simple and sincere hospitality to their friends in their own homes, is no evidence of their improved taste or good breeding. Abbot’s Manor was in every sense ‘Home’ in the old English sense of the word. Its ancient walls, hallowed by long tradition, formed a peaceful and sweet harbour of rest for a woman’s life,–and the tranquil dignity of her old-world surroundings with all the legends and memories they awakened, soon had a beneficial effect on Maryllia’s impressionable temperament, which, under her aunt’s ‘social’ influence, had been more or less chafed and uneasy. She began to feel at peace with herself and all the world,–while the relief she experienced at having deliberately severed herself by both word and act from the undesired attentions of a too-persistent and detested lover in the person of Lord Roxmouth, future Duke of Ormistonne, was as keen and pleasurable as that of a child who has run away from school. She was almost confident that the fact of her having thrown off her aunt’s protection together with all hope of inheriting her aunt’s wealth, would be sufficient to keep him away from her for the future. “For it is Aunt Emily’s money he wants–not me;” she said to herself–“He doesn’t care a jot about me personally–any woman will do, provided she has the millions. And when he knows I’ve given up the millions, and don’t intend ever to have the millions, he’ll leave me alone. And he’ll go over to America in search of somebody else–some proud daughter of oil or pork or steel!–and what a blessing that will be!”
Meanwhile, such brief excitement as had been caused in St. Rest by the return of ‘th’ owld Squire’s gel’ and by the almost simultaneous dismissal of Oliver Leach, had well-nigh abated. A new agent had been appointed, and though Leach had left the immediate vicinity, having employment on Sir Morton Pippitt’s lands, he had secured a cottage for himself in the small outlying hamlet of Badsworth. He also undertook some work for the Reverend ‘Putty’ Leveson in assisting him to form an entomological collection for the private museum at Badsworth Hall. Mr. Leveson had a singular fellow-feeling for insects,–he studied their habits, and collected specimens of various kinds in bottles, or ‘pinned’ them on cardboard trays,–he was an interested observer of the sprightly manners practised by the harvest-bug, and the sagacious customs of the ruminating spider,–as well as the many surprising and agreeable talents developed by the common flea. Leach’s virulent hatred of Maryllia Vancourt was not lessened by the apparently useful and scientific nature of the employment he had newly taken up under the guidance of his reverend instructor,–and whenever he caught a butterfly and ran his murderous pin through its quivering body at Leveson’s bland command, he thought of her, and wished vindictively that she might perish as swiftly and utterly as the winged lover of the flowers. Every small bright thing in Nature’s garden that he slew and brought home as trophy, inspired him with the same secret fierce desire. The act of killing a beautiful or harmless creature gave him pleasure, and he did not disguise it from himself. The Reverend ‘Putty’ was delighted with his aptitude, and with the many valuable additions he made to the ‘specimen’ cards and bottles, and the two became constant companions in their search for fresh victims among the blossoming hedgerows and fields. St. Rest, as a village, was only too glad to be rid of Leach’s long detested presence to care anything at all as to his further occupations or future career,–and only Bainton kept as he said ‘an eye on him.’
Bainton was a somewhat curious personage,–talkative as he showed himself on most occasions, he was both shrewd and circumspect; no stone was more uncommunicative than he when he chose. In his heart he had set Maryllia Vancourt as second to none save his own master, John Walden,–her beauty and grace, her firm action with regard to the rescue of the ‘Five Sisters,’ and her quick dismissal of Oliver Leach, had all inspired him with the most unbounded admiration and respect, and he felt that he now had a double interest in life,–the ‘Passon’–and the ‘lady of the Manor.’ But he found very little opportunity to talk about his new and cherished theme of Miss Vancourt and Miss Vancourt’s many attractions to Walden,–for John always ‘shut him up’ on the subject with quite a curt and peremptory decision whenever be so much as mentioned her name. Which conduct on the part of one who was generally so willing to hear and patient to listen, somewhat surprised Bainton.
“For,” he argued–“there ain’t much doin’ in the village,–we ain’t always ‘on the go’–an’ when a pretty face comes among us, surely it’s worth looking at an’ pickin’ to pieces as ’twere. But Passon’s that sharp on me when I sez any little thing wot might be interestin’ about the lady, that I’m thinkin’ he’s got out o’ the habit o’ knowin’ when a face is a male or a female one, which is wot often happens to bacheldors when they gits fixed like old shrubs in one pertikler spot o’ ground. Now I should a’ said he’d a’ bin glad to ‘ear of somethin’ new an’ oncommon as ’twere,–he likes it in the way o’ flowers, an’ why not in the way o’ wimmin? But Passon ain’t like other folk–he don’t git on with wimmin nohow–an’ the prettier they are the more he seems skeered off them.”
But such opinions as Bainton entertained concerning his master, he kept to himself, and having once grasped the fact that any mention of Miss Vancourt’s ways or Miss Vancourt’s looks appeared to displease rather than to entertain the Reverend John, he avoided the subject altogether. This course of action on his part, if the truth must be told, was equally annoying to Walden, who was in the curious mental condition of wishing to know what he declined to hear.
For the rest, the village generally grew speedily accustomed to the presence of the mistress of the Manor. She had fulfilled her promise of paying a visit to Josey Letherbarrow, and had sat with the old man in his cottage, talking to him for the better part of two hours. Rumour asserted that she had even put the kettle on the fire for him, and had made his tea. Josey himself was reticent,–and beyond the fact that he held up his head with more dignity, and showed a touch of more conscious superiority in his demeanour, he did not give himself away by condescending to narrate any word of the lengthy interview that had taken place between himself and ‘th’ owld Squire’s little gel.’ One remarkable thing was noticed by the villagers and commented upon,–Miss Vancourt had now passed two Sundays in their midst, and had never once attended church. Her servants were always there at morning service, but she herself was absent. This occasioned much whispering and head-shaking in the little community, and one evening the subject was openly discussed in the bar-room of the ‘Mother Huff’ by a group of rustic worthies whose knowledge of matters theological and political was, by themselves, considered profound. Mrs. Buggins had started the conversation, and Mrs. Buggins was well known to be a lady both pious and depressing. She presided over her husband’s ‘public’ with an air of meek resignation, not unmixed with sorrowful protest,–she occasionally tasted the finer cordials in the bar-room, and was often moved to gentle tears at the excellence of their flavour,–she had a chronic ‘stitch in the side,’ and a long smooth pale yellow countenance from which the thin grey hair was combed well back from the temples in the frankly unbecoming fashion affected by the provincial British matron. She begun her remarks by plaintively opining that “it was a very strange thing not to see Miss Vancourt at church, on either of the Sundays that had passed since her return–very strange! Perhaps she was ‘High’? Perhaps she had driven into Riversford to attend the ‘processional’ service of the Reverend Francis Anthony?”
“Perhaps she ain’t done nothing of the sort!”–growled a thick-set burly farmer, who with a capacious mug of ale before him was sucking at his pipe with as much zeal as a baby at its bottle–“Ef you cares for my ‘pinion, which, m’appen you doan’t, she’s neither Low nor ‘Igh. She’s no Seck. If she h’longed to a Seck, she wouldn’t be readin’ on a book under the Five Sisters last Sunday marnin’ when the bells was a-ringin’ for church time. I goes past ‘er, an’ I sez ‘Marnin,’ mum!’ an’ she looks up smilin’-like, an’ sez she: ‘Good- marnin!’ Nice day, isn’t it?’ ‘Splendid day, mum,’ sez I, an’ she went on readin’, an’ I went on a walkin’. I sez then, and I sez now, she ain’t no Seck!”
“Example,” sighed Mrs. Buggins, “is better than precept. It would be more decent if the lady showed herself in church as a lesson to others,–if she did so more lost sheep might follow!”
“Hor-hor-hor!” chuckled Bainton, from a corner of the room–“Don’t you worrit yourself, Missis Buggins, ’bout no lost sheep! Sheep allus goes where there’s somethin’ to graze upon,–leastways that’s my ‘speriemce, an’ if there ain’t no grazin’ there ain’t no sheep! An’ them as grazes on Passon Walden, gittin’ out of ‘im all they can to ‘elp ’em along, wouldn’t go to church, no more than Miss Vancourt do, if they didn’t know wot a man ‘e is to be relied on in times o’ trouble, an’ a reg’lar ‘usband to the parish in sickness an’ in ‘elth, for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, till death do ‘im part. Miss Vancourt don’t want nothin’ out of ‘im as all we doos, an’ she kin show ‘er independence ef she likes to by stayin’ away from church when she fancies, an’ readin’ books instead of ‘earin’ sermons,–there ain’t no harm in that.”
“I’m not so sure that I agree with you, Mr. Bainton,”–said a stout, oily-looking personage, named Netlips, the grocer and ‘general store’ dealer of the village, a man who was renowned in the district for the profundity and point of his observations at electoral meetings, and for the entirely original manner in which he ‘used’ the English language; “Public worship is a necessary evil. It is a factor in vulgar civilisations. Without it, the system of religious politics would fall into cohesion,–absolute cohesion!” And he rapped his fist on the table with a smartness that made his hearers jump. “At the last meeting I addressed in this division, I said we must support the props. The aristocracy must bear them on their shoulders. If your Squire stays away from church, he may be called a heathen with propriety, though a Liberal. And why? Because he makes public exposure of himself as a heathen negative! He is bound to keep up the church factor in the community. Otherwise he runs straight aground on Cohesion.”
This oratorical outburst on the part of Mr. Netlips was listened to with respectful awe and admiration.
“Ay, ay!” said Roger Buggins, who as ‘mine host’ stood in his shirt sleeves at the entrance of his bar, surveying his customers and mentally counting up their reckonings–“Cohesion would never do– cohesion government would send the country to pieces. You’re right, Mr. Netlips,–you’re right! Props must be kep’ up!”
“I don’t see no props in goin’ to church,”–said Dan Ridley, the little working tailor of the village–“I goes because I likes Mr. Walden, but if there was a man in the pulpit I didn’t like, I’d stop away. There’s a deal too many wolves in sheep’s clothing getting ordained in the service o’ the Lord, an’ I don’t blame Miss Vancourt if so be she takes time to find out the sort o’ man Mr. Walden is before settin’ under him as ’twere. She can say prayers an’ read ’em too in her own room, an’ study the Bible all right without goin’ to church. Many folks as goes to church reg’lar are downright mean lyin’ raskills–and don’t never read their Bibles at all. Mebbe they does as much harm as what Mr. Netlips calls Cohesion, though I don’t myself purfess to understand Government language, it bein’ too deep for me.”
Mr. Netlips smiled condescendingly, and nodded as one who should say–‘You do well, my poor fellow, to be humble in my presence!’– and buried his nose in his tankard of ale.
“Mebbe Cohesion’s got hold o’ my red cow”–said the burly farmer who had spoken before–“For she’s as ailin’ as ever she was, an’ if I lose her, I loses a bit o’ my livin.’ An’ that’s what I sez an’ ‘olds by, no church-goin’ seems to ‘elp us in a bit o’ trouble, an’ it ain’t decent or Christian like, so it ‘pears, to pray to the Almighty for the savin’ of a cow. I asked Passon Walden if ‘twould be right, for the cow’s as valuable to me as ever my wife was when she was alive, if not more, an’ he sez quite pleasant-like–‘Well no, Mister Thorpe, I think it best not to make any sort of special prayer for the poor beast, but just do all you can for it, and leave the rest to Providence. A cow is worldly goods, you see–and we’re not quite justified in praying to be allowed to keep our worldly goods.’ ‘Ain’t we!’ I sez–‘Is that a fact? He smiled and said it was. So I thanked him and comed away. But I’ve been thinkin’ it over since, an’ I sez to myself–ef we ain’t to pray for keepin’ an’ ‘avin’ our worldly goods, wot ‘ave we got to pray for?”
“Oh Mr. Thorpe!” ejaculated Mrs. Buggins, almost tearfully–“It is not this world but the next, that we must think of! We must pray for our souls!”
“Well, marm, I ain’t got a ‘soul’ wot I knows on–an’ as for the next world, if there ain’t no cattle farmin’ there, I reckon I’ll be out o’ work. Do you count on keepin’ a bar in the ‘eavenly country?”
A loud guffaw went the round of the room, and Mrs. Buggins gasped with horror.
“Oh, Roger!” she murmured, addressing her portly spouse, who at once took up the argument.
“You goes too fur–you goes too fur, Mister Thorpe!” he said severely–“There ain’t no keepin’ bars nor farmin’ carried on in the next world, nor marrying nor givin’ in marriage. We be all as the angels there.”
“A nice angel you’ll make too, Mr. Buggins!” said Farmer Thorpe, as he sent his tankard to be refilled,–“Lord! We won’t know you!”
Again the laugh went round, and Mrs. Buggins precipitately retired to her ‘inner parlour’ there to recover from the shock occasioned to her religious feelings by the irreverent remarks of her too matter- of-fact customer. Meanwhile Dan Ridley, the tailor, had again reverted to the subject of Miss Vancourt.
“There’s one thing about her comin’ to church,”–he said; “If so be as she did come it ‘ud do us all good, for she’s real pleasant to look at. I’ve seen her a many times in the village.”
“Ah, so have I!” chorussed two or three more men.
“She’s been in to see Adam Frost’s children an’ she gave Baby Hippolyta a bag o’ sweeties,”–said Bainton. “An’ she’s called at the schoolhouse, but Miss Eden, she worn’t in an’ Susie Prescott saw her, an’ Susie was that struck that she ‘adn’t a wurrd to say, so she tells us, an’ Miss Vancourt she went to old Josey Letherbarrow’s straight away an’ there she stayed iver so long. She ain’t called at our house yet.”
“Which ‘ouse might you be a-meanin’, Tummas?” queried Farmer Thorpe, with a slow grin–“Your own or your measter’s?”
“When we speaks in the plural we means not one, but two,”–rejoined Bainton with dignity. “An’ when I sez ‘our’ I means myself an’ Passon, which Miss Vancourt ain’t as yet left her card on Passon. He went up in a great ‘urry one afternoon when he knowed she was out,– he knowed it, ‘cos I told ‘im as ‘ow I’d seen her gallopin’ by on that mare of hers which, they calls Cleopatra-an’ away ‘e run like a March ‘are, an’ he ups to the Manor and down again, an’ sez he, laughin’ like: ‘I’ve done my dooty by the lady’ sez he–‘I’ve left my card!’ That was three days ago, an’ there ain’t been no return o’ the perliteness up to the present–“
Here he broke off and began to drink his ale, as a small dapper man entered the bar-room with a brisk step and called for ‘a glass of home-brewed,’ looking round on those assembled with a condescending smile. All of them knew him as Jim Bennett, Miss Vancourt’s groom.
“Well, mates!” he said with a sprightly air of familiarity–“All well and hearty?”
“As yourself, Mr. Bennett,”–replied Roger Buggins, acting as spokesman for the rest, and personally serving him with the foaming draught he had ordered. “Which, we likewise trusts your lady is well?”
“My lady enjoys the hest of health, thank you!” said Bennett, with polite gravity. And tossing off the contents of his glass, he signified by an eloquent gesture and accompanying wink, that he was ‘good for another.’
“We was just a-sayin’ as you come in, Mr. Bennett,” observed Dan Ridley, “that we’d none of us seen your lady at church yet on Sundays, Mebbe she ain’t of our ‘persuasion’ as they sez, or mehbe she goes into Riversford, preferrin’ ‘Igh services—“
Bennett smiled a superior smile, and leaning easily against the bar, crossed his legs and surveyed the company generally with a compassionate air.
“I suppose it’s quite a business down here,–goin’ to church, eh?” he queried–“Sort of excitement like–only bit of fun you’ve got– helps to keep you all alive! That’s the country way, but Lord bless you!–in town we’re not taking any!”
Bainton looked up,–and Mr. Netlips loosened his collar and lifted his head, as though preparing himself for another flow of ‘cohesion’ eloquence. Farmer Thorpe turned his bull-neck slowly round, and brought his eyes to bear on the speaker.
“How d’ye make that out, Mr. Bennett?” he demanded. “Doan’t ye sarve the A’mighty same in town as in country?”
“Not a bit of it!” replied Bennett airily–“You’re a long way behind the times, Mr. Thorpe!–you are indeed, beggin’ your pardon for sayin’ so! The ‘best’ people have given up the Almighty altogether, owing to recent scientific discoveries. They’ve taken to the Almighty Dollar instead which no science can do away with. And Sundays aren’t used any more for church-going, except among the middle-class population,–they’re just Bridge days with OUR set– Bridge lunches, Bridge suppers,–every Sunday’s chock full of engagements to ‘Bridge,’ right through the ‘season.'”
“That’s cards, ain’t it?” enquired Dan Ridley.
“Just so! Harmless cards!” rejoined Bennett–“Only you can chuck away a few thousands or so on ’em if you like!”
Mr. Netlips here pushed aside his emptied ale-glass and raised his fat head unctuously out of his stiff shirt-collar.
“Are we to understand,” he began ponderously, “that Miss Vancourt is addicted to this fashion of procrastinating the Lord’s Day?”
Bennett straightened his dapper figure suddenly.
“Now don’t you put yourself out, Mr. Netlips, don’t, that’s a good feller!” he said in sarcastically soothing tones–“There’s no elections going on just at present–when there is you can bring your best leg foremost, and rant away for all you’re worth! My lady don’t gamble, if that’s what you mean,–though she’s always with the swagger set, and likely so to remain. But you keep up your spirits!- -your groceries ‘ull be paid for all right!–she don’t run up no bills–so don’t you fear, cards or no cards! And as for procrastinating the Lord’s Day, whatever that may be, I could name to you the folks what does worse than play Bridge on Sundays. And who are they? Why the clergymen theirselves! And how does they do worse? Why by tellin’ lies as fast as they can stick! They says