God's Good Man Part 40

Cicely's hand caught hers and gave it an affectionate little pressure, as they bowed their heads together under the solemnly p.r.o.nounced blessing.

"The peace of G.o.d which pa.s.seth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of G.o.d, and of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord,"--here Walden turned ever so slightly towards the place where Maryllia knelt; "and the blessing of G.o.d Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you and remain with you always!"

"A---men!"

With this last response from the choir, the congregation began to disperse, and Walden, glancing over the little moving crowd, saw the eager bustle and pressure of all its units to look at 'the ladies from the Manor' and take stock of their wonderful costumes. The grip of 'the world' was on them, and the only worshipper remaining quietly in his place, with hands clasped across his stick, and eyes closed, was Josey Letherbarrow. The old man seemed to be praying inwardly--his face was rapt and serene. Walden looked down upon him very tenderly. A verse of Browning's ran through his mind:--

"Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be, The last of life for which the first was made.

Our times are in His hand, Who saith: 'A whole I planned,'

Youth shows but half; trust G.o.d; see all, nor be afraid!"

And musing on this, he descended slowly from the pulpit and retired.

XIX

Outside in the churchyard, there was a general little flutter of local excitement. Maryllia lingered there for several minutes, pointing out the various beauties in the architecture of the church to her guests, not that these individuals were very much interested in such matters, for they were of that particular social type which considers that the highest form of good breeding is to show a polite nullity of feeling concerning everything and everybody. They were eminently 'cultured,' which nowadays means pre-eminently dull. Had they been asked, they would have said that it is dangerous to express any opinion on any subject,--even on the architecture of a church. Because the architect himself might be somewhere near,--or the architect's father, or his mother or his great-grandam--one never knows! And by a hasty remark in the wrong place and at the wrong moment, one might make an unnecessary enemy. It is so much nicer--so much safer to say nothing at all! Of course they looked at the church,--it would have been uncivil to their hostess not to look at it, as she was taking the trouble to call their attention to its various points, and they a.s.sumed the usual conventional air of appreciative admiration. But none of, them understood anything about it,--and none of them cared to understand. They had not even noticed the ancient sarcophagus in front of the altar except as 'some odd kind of sculptured ornament.' When they wore told what it was, they smiled vacuously, and said: 'How curious!' But further than this mild and non-aggressive exclamation they did not venture. The villagers hung about shyly, loth to lose sight of the 'quality';-- two or three 'county' people lingered also, to stare at, and comment upon, the notorious 'beauty,' Lady Beaulyon, whose physical charms, having been freely advertised for some years in the society columns of the press, were naturally 'on show' for the criticism of Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry,--Mrs. Mandeville Poreham, marshalling her five marriageable daughters together, stalked magisterially to her private 'bus, very much en evidence, and considerably put out by the supercilious gaze and smile of the perfectly costumed Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay,--Julian Adderley, coming up in response to the beckoning finger of Cicely Bourne, was kindly greeted by Maryllia, introduced to one or two of her friends, and asked then and there to luncheon, an invitation he accepted with alacrity, and, after this, all the Manor party started with their hostess to walk home, leaving the village and villagers behind them, and discussing as they went, the morning's service and sermon in the usual brief and desultory style common to fashionable church-goers. The princ.i.p.al impression they appeared to have on their minds was one of vague amus.e.m.e.nt. The notion that any clergyman should have the 'impudence'--(this was the word used by Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay)--to pause in the service because people came in late, touched the very apex of absurdity.

"So against his own interests too,"--said Lady Beaulyon, carelessly- -"Because where would all the parsons be if they offended their patrons?"

Mr. Bludlip Courtenay, a thin gentleman with a monocle--a.s.sented to this proposition with a "Where indeed!" He considered that clergymen should not forget themselves,--they should show proper respect towards those on whom they depended for support.

"Mr. Walden depends on G.o.d for support, I believe,"--said Cicely Bourne suddenly.

Mr. Bludlip Courtenay fixed his monocle firmly in his left eye and stared at her.

"Really!" he drawled dubiously--"You surprise me!"

"It IS funny, isn't it?" pursued Cicely--"So unlike the Apostles!"

Maryllia smiled. Lady Beaulyon laughed outright.

"Are you trying to be satirical, you droll child?" she enquired languidly.

"Oh no, I'm not trying,"--replied Cicely, with a quick flash of her dark eyes--"It comes quite easy! You were talking about clergymen offending their patrons. Now Mr. Walden hasn't got any patron to offend. He's his own patron." "Has he purchased the advowson, then?" enquired Mr. Courtenay--"Or, to put it more conventionally, has he obtained it through a friend at court?"

"I don't know anything about the how or the why or the when,"--said Cicely--"But I know he owns the living and the church. So of course if he chooses to show people what he thinks of them when they come in to service late, he can do it. If they don't like it, he doesn't care. He doesn't ask anybody for anything,--he doesn't even send round a collection plate."

"No--_I_ noticed that!--awfully jolly!"--said a good-natured looking man who had been walking beside Julian Adderley,--a certain Lord Charlemont whose one joy in life was motoring--"Awfully game! Ought to make him quite famous!"

"It ought,--it ought indeed!" agreed Adderley--"I do not suppose there is another clergyman in England who obliterates the plate from the worship of the Almighty! It is so remote--so very remote!"

"I think he's a funny sort of parson altogether,"--said Cicely meditatively--"He doesn't beg, borrow or steal,--he isn't a toady, he isn't a hypocrite, and he speaks his mind. Queer, isn't it?"

"Very!" laughed Lord Charlemont--"I don't know another like him, give you my word!"

"Well, he can't preach,"--said Lady Beaulyon, decisively--"I never heard quite such a stupid sermon."

All the members of the house-party glanced at one another to see if this verdict were generally endorsed. Apparently some differed in opinion.

"Didn't you like it, Eva?" asked Maryllia.

"My dear child! Who COULD like it! Such transcendental stuff! And all that nonsense about the Soul! In these scientific days too!"

"Ah science, science!" sighed Mr. Bludlip Courtenay, dropping his monocle with a sharp click against his top waistcoat b.u.t.ton--"Where will it end?"

n.o.body volunteered a reply to this profound proposition.

"'Souls' are noted for something else than being saved for heaven nowadays, aren't they, Lady Beaulyon?" queried Lord Charlemont, with a knowing smile.

Lady Beaulyon's small, rather hard mouth tightened into a thin line.

"I really don't know!"--she said carelessly--"If you mean the social 'Souls,' they are rather unconventional certainly, and not always discreet. But they are generally interesting--much more so, I should think, than such 'Souls' as the parson preached about just now."

"Indeed, yes!" agreed Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay--"I can imagine nothing more tiresome than to be a Soul without a Body, climbing from height to height of a heaven where there is no night, no sleep, no rest for ever and ever. Simply dreadful! But there!--one only goes to church for form's sake--just as an example to one's servants--and when it's done, don't you think it's best to forget it as soon as possible?"

She raised her baby eyes appealingly as she put the question.

Everybody laughed, or rather sn.i.g.g.e.red. Real honest laughter is not considered 'good form' by certain sections of society. A gentle imitation of the nanny-goat's bleat is the most seemly way for cultured persons to give vent to the expression of mirth. Maryllia alone was grave and preoccupied. The conversation of her guests annoyed her, though in London she had been quite well accustomed to hear people talk lightly and callously of religion and all religious subjects. Yet here, in the quiet country, things were different, somehow. G.o.d seemed nearer,--it was more difficult to blaspheme and ignore Him. And there was a greater sense of regret and humiliation in one's self for one's own lack of faith. Though, at the same time, it has to be reluctantly conceded that in no quarter of the world is religious hypocrisy and sham so openly manifested as in the English provinces, and especially in the small towns, where, notwithstanding the fact that all the Sundays are pa.s.sed in persistent church and chapel going, the result of this strenuous sham piety is seen in the most unchristian back-biting and mischief-making on every week-day.

But St. Rest was not a town. It was a tiny village apart,--utterly free from the petty pretensions of its nearest neighbour, Riversford, which considered itself almost 'metropolitan' on account of its modern red-brick and stucco villas into which its trades- people 'retired' as soon as they had made enough money to be able to pretend that they had never stood behind a counter in their lives.

St. Rest, on the contrary, was simple in its tastes,--so simple as to be almost primitive, particularly in its religious sentiments, which the ministry of John Walden had, so far, kept faithful and pure. Its atmosphere was therefore utterly at variance with the cheap atheism of the modern world, and it was this discordancy which struck so sharply on Maryllia's emotional nature and gave her such a sense of unaccustomed pain.

At the Manor there were a few other visitors who had not attended church,--none of them important, except to themselves and the society paragraphist,--none of them distinguished as ever having done anything particularly good, or useful in the world,--and none of them possessing any very unconventional characteristics, with the exception of two very quaint old ladies, who were known somewhat irreverently among their acquaintances as the 'Sisters Gemini.' They were of good birth and connection, but, being cast adrift as wrecks on the sh.o.r.es of Time,--the one as a widow, the other as a spinster,--had sworn eternal friendship on the altar of their several disillusioned and immolated affections. In the present day we are not overtroubled by any scruples of reverence for either old widowhood or old spinsterhood; and the 'Sisters Gemini' had become a standing joke with the self-styled 'wise and witty' of London restaurants and late suppers. Lady Wicketts and Miss Fosby were their actual names, and they were happily unconscious of the unfeeling sobriquet bestowed upon them when they were out of hearing. Lady Wicketts had once been a reigning 'beauty,' and she lived on the reputation of that glorious past. Miss Fosby aided and abetted her in this harmless self-deception. Lady Wicketts had been painted by all the famous artists of her era, from the time of her seventeeth birthday to her thirtieth. She had been represented as a 'Shepherdess,' a 'Madonna,' a 'Girl with Lilies,' a 'Lady with a Greyhound,' a 'Nymph Sleeping,' and more briefly and to the purpose, as 'Portrait of Lady Wicketts,' in every exhibition of pictures that had been held during her youth and prime. Miss Fosby carried prints and photographs of these works of art everywhere about with her. She would surprise people by casually taking one of them out of her alb.u.m and saying softly "Isn't that beautiful?"

And then, if the beholders fell into the trap and uttered exclamations of rapture at the 'Shepherdess' or the 'Madonna,' or whatever allegorical subject it happened to be, she would smile triumphantly and say-'Lady Wicketts!'--to all appearance enjoying the violent shock of incredulous amazement which her announcement invariably inflicted on all those who received it.

"Not possible!" they would murmur--"Lady Wicketts---!"

"Yes,--Lady Wicketts when she was young,"--Miss Fosby would say mildly--"She was very beautiful when she was twenty. She is sixty- seven now. But she is still beautiful,--don't you think so? She has such an angelic expression! And she is so good--ah!--so very goodl There is no one like Lady Wicketts!"

All this was very sweet and touching on the part of Miss Fosby, so far as Miss Fosby alone was concerned. To her there was but one woman in the world, and that was Lady Wicketts. But the majority of people saw Lady Wicketts in quite another light. They knew she had been, in her time, as unprincipled as beautiful, and that she had 'gone the pace' more openly than most of her cla.s.s. They beheld her now without spectacles,--an enormously fat woman, with a large round flaccid face, scarred all over by Time's ploughshare with such deep furrows that one might have sown seed in them and expected it to grow.

But Miss Fosby still recognised the 'Shepherdess,' the 'Madonna' and the 'Girl with Lilies,' in the decaying composition of her friend, and Miss Fosby was something of a bore in consequence, though the constancy of her devotion to a totally unworthy object was quaintly pathetic in its way. The poor soul herself was nearer seventy than sixty, and she was quite as lean as her idol was fat,--she had never been loved by anyone in all her life, but,--in her palmy days,--she had loved. And the necessity of loving had apparently remained a part of her nature, otherwise it would have been a sheer impossibility for her to have selected so strange a fetish as Lady Wicketts for her adoration. Lady Wicketts did not, in any marked way, respond to Miss Fosby's tenderness,--she merely allowed herself to be worshipped, just as in her youth she had allowed scores of young bloods to kiss her hand and murmur soft nothings in her then 'sh.e.l.l-like' ear. The young bloods were gone, but Miss Fosby remained. Better the worship of Miss Fosby than no worship at all.

Maryllia had met these two old ladies frequently at various Continental resorts, when she had travelled about with her aunt,-- and she had found something amusing and interesting in them both, especially in Miss Fosby, who was really a good creature,--and when in consultation with Cicely as to who, among the various people she knew, should be asked down to the Manor and who should not, she had selected them as a set-off to the younger, more flippant and casual of her list, and also because they were likely to be convenient personages to play chaperones if necessary.

For the rest, the people were of the usual type one has got accustomed to in what is termed 'smart' society nowadays,--listless, lazy, more or less hypocritical and malicious,--apathetic and indifferent to most things and most persons, save and except those with whom unsavoury intrigues might or would be possible,--sneering and salacious in conversation, bitter and carping of criticism, generally blase, and suffering from the incurable ennui of utter selfishness,--the men concentrating their thoughts chiefly on racing, gaining, and Other Men's Wives,--the women dividing all their stock of emotions between Bridge, Dress, and Other Women's Husbands. And when Julian Adderley, as an author in embryo, found himself seated at luncheon with this particular set of persons, all of whom were more or less well known in the small orbit wherein they moved, he felt considerably enlivened and exhilarated. Life was worth living, he said to himself, when one might study at leisure the little tell-tale lines of vice and animalism on the exquisite features of Lady Beaulyon, and at the same time note admiringly how completely the united forces of ma.s.sage and self-complacency had eradicated every wrinkle from the expressionless countenance of Mrs.

Bludlip Courtenay. These two women were, in a way, notorious as 'leaders' of their own special coteries of social scandalmongers and political brokers; Lady Beaulyon was known best among Jew financiers; Mrs. Courtenay among American 'Kings' of oil and steel.

Each was in her own line a 'power,'--each could coax large advances of money out of the pockets of millionaires to further certain 'schemes' which were vaguely talked about, but which never came to fruition,--each had a little bevy of young journalists in attendance,--press boys whom they petted and flattered, and persuaded to write paragraphs concerning their wit, wisdom and beauty, and how they 'looked radiant in pink' or 'dazzling in pea green.' Contemplating first one and then the other of these ladies, Julian almost resolved to compose a poem about them, ent.i.tled 'The Sirens' and, dividing it into Two Cantos, to dedicate the First Canto to Lady Beaulyon and the Second to Mrs. Courtenay.

"It would be so new--so fresh!" he mused, with a bland antic.i.p.ation of the flutter such a work might possibly cause among society dove- cots--"And if ALL the truth were told, so much more risque than 'Don Juan'!"

Glancing up and down, and across the hospitable board, exquisitely arranged with the loveliest flowers and fruit, and the most priceless old silver, he noticed that every woman of the party was painted and powdered except Maryllia, and her young protegee, Cicely. The dining-room of Abbot's Manor was not a light apartment,- -its oak-panelled walls and raftered ceiling created shadow rather than luminance,--and though the windows were large and lofty, rising from the floor to the cornice, their topmost panes were of very old stained gla.s.s, so that the brightest sunshine only filtered, as it were, through the deeply-encrusted hues of rose and amber and amethyst squares, painted with the arms of the Vancourts, and heraldic emblems of bygone days. Grateful and beautiful indeed was this mysteriously softened light to the ladies round the table,--and for a brief s.p.a.ce they almost LOVED Maryllia. For HER face was flushed, and quite uncooled by powder--'like a dairymaid's--she will get so coa.r.s.e if she lives in the country always!' Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay confided softly to Lord Charlemont, who vaguely murmured-- 'Ah! Yes! I daresay!' quite without any idea of what the woman was talking about. Maryllia's pretty hair too was ruffled, she having merely taken off her hat in the hall on her return from church, without troubling to go up to her room and 'touch up' her appearance as all the other ladies who had suffered from walking exercise had done,--and her eyes looked just a trifle tired. Adderley found her charming with this shade of fatigue and listlessness upon her,--more charming than in her most radiant phases of vivacity. Her peach-like skin, warmed as it was by the sun, was tinted with Nature's own exquisite colouring, and compared most favourably with the cosmetic art so freely displayed by her female friends on either side of her.

Julian began to con verses in his head, and he recalled the lines of seventeeth-century Eichard Crashaw:--