God's Good Man by Marie Corelli (speld decodable readers txt) 📕

very nice!” she said—“Very nice indeed! But you know, Maryllia, if you would only get one of those wonderful box things one sees advertised so much in the papers, the pianista or mutuscope or gramophone—no, I THINK it’s pianola, but I’m not quite sure—you would save such a lot of study and brain-work for this poor child! And it sounds quite as well! I’m sure she could manage a gramophone thing—I mean pianista—pianola—quite nicely for you when you want any music. Couldn’t you, my dear?”

And she gazed at Cicely with a bland kindliness as she put the question. Cicely’s eyes sparkled with fun and satire.

“I’m sure I could!” she declared, with the utmost seriousness—“It would be delightful! Just like organ-grinding, only much more so! I should enjoy it of all things! Of course one ought NEVER to use the brain in music!”

“Not nowadays,”—said Mrs. Courtenay, with conviction—“Things have improved so much. Mechanism does everything so well. And it is SUCH a pity to use up one’s vital energy in doing what one of those box- things can do better. And do you too play music?”

And she addressed herself to Adderley who happened to be standing near her. He made one of his fantastic salutes.

“Not I, madam! I am merely a writer,—one who makes rhymes and verses---”

Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay waved him away with a hand on which at least five diamond rings sparkled gorgeously.

“Oh dear! Don’t come near me!” she said, with a little affected laugh—“I simply HATE poetry! I’m so sorry you write it! I can’t think why you do. Do you like it?—or are you doing it for somebody because you must?”

Julian smiled, and ran his fingers through his hair, sticking it up rather on end, much to Mrs. Courtenay’s abhorrence.

“I like it more than anything else in the world!” he said. “I’m doing it quite for myself, and for nobody else.”

“Really!”—and Mrs. Courtenay gave him a glance of displeased surprise—“How dreadful!” Here she turned to Maryllia. “Au revoir, my dear, for the present! As you won’t allow any Bridge, I’m going to sleep. Then I shall do massage for an hour. May I have tea in my own room?”

“Certainly!” said Maryllia.

“Thanks!” She glided out, with a frou-frou of her silken skirts and a trail of perfume floating after her.

The three she left behind her exchanged amused glances.

“Wonderful woman!” said Adderley,—“And, no doubt, a perfectly happy one!”

“Why of course! I don’t suppose she has ever shed a tear, lest it should make a wrinkle!” And Cicely, as she made these remarks, patted her own thin, sallow cheeks consolingly. “Look at my poor face and hers! Mine is all lined and puckered with tears and sad thoughts—SHE hasn’t a wrinkle! And I’m fourteen, and she’s forty! Oh dear! Why did I cry so much over all the sorrow and beauty of life when I was young!”

“Ah—and why didn’t you have a pianista-pianola!” said Adderley. They all laughed,—and then at Maryllia’s suggestion, joined the rest of the guests in the garden.

That same evening when Maryllia was dressing for dinner, there came a tap at her bedroom door, and in response to her ‘Come in!’ Eva Beaulyon entered.

“May I speak to you alone for a minute?” she said.

Maryllia assented, giving a sign to her maid to leave the room.

“Well, what is it, Eva?” said Maryllia, when the girl had gone— “Anything wrong?”

Eva Beaulyon sank into a chair somewhat wearily, and her beautiful violet eyes, despite artistic ‘touching up’ looked hard and tired.

“Not so far as I am concerned,”—she said, with a little mirthless laugh—“Only I think you behaved very oddly this afternoon. Do you really mean that you object to Bridge on Sundays, or was it only a put on?”

“It was a put off!” responded Maryllia, gaily—“It stopped the intended game! Seriously, Eva, I meant it and I do mean it. There’s too much Bridge everywhere—and I don’t think it necessary,—I don’t think it even decent—to keep it going on Sundays.”

“I suppose the parson of your parish has told you that!” said Lady Beaulyon, suddenly.

Maryllia’s eyes met hers with a smile.

“The parson of the parish has not presumed to dictate to me on my actions,”—she said—“I should deeply resent it if he did.”

“Well, he had no eyes for anyone but you in the church this morning. A mole could have seen that in the dark. He was preaching AT us and FOR you all the while!”

A slight flush swept over Maryllia’s cheeks,—then she laughed.

“My dear Eva! I never thought you were imaginative! The parson has nothing whatever to do with me,—why, this is the first Sunday I have ever been to his church,—you know I never go to church.”

Lady Beaulyon looked at her narrowly, unconvinced.

“What have you left your aunt for?” she asked.

“Simply because she wants me to marry Roxmouth, and I won’t!” said Maryllia, emphatically.

“Why not?”

“First, because I don’t love him,—second, because he has slandered me by telling people that I am running after his title, to excuse himself for running after Aunt Emily’s millions; and lastly, but by no means leastly, because he is—unclean.”

“All men are;” said Eva Beaulyon, drily—“It’s no use objecting to that!”

Maryllia made no remark. She was standing before her dressing-table, singing softly to herself, while she dexterously fastened a tiny diamond arrow in her hair.

“I suppose you’re going to try and ‘live good’ down here!”—went on Lady Beaulyon, after a pause—“It’s a mistake,—no one born of human flesh and blood can do it. You can’t ‘live good’ and enjoy yourself!”

“No?” said Maryllia, tentatively.

“No, certainly not! For if you never do anything out of the humdrum line, and never compromise yourself in any way, Society will be so furious with your superiority to itself that it will invent a thousand calumnies and hang them all on your name. And you will never know how they arise, and never be able to disprove them.”

“Does it matter?”—and Maryllia smiled—“If one’s conscience is clear, need one care what people say?”

“Conscience!” exclaimed Lady Beaulyon—“What an old-fashioned expression! Surely it’s better to do something people can lay hold of and talk about, than have them invent something you have never done! They will give you no credit for virtue or honesty in this world, Maryllia, unless you grow ugly and deformed. Then perhaps they will admit you may be good, and they will add—‘She has no temptation to be otherwise.’”

“I do not like your code of morality, Eva,” said Maryllia, quietly.

“Perhaps not, but it’s the only one that works in OUR day!” replied Eva, with some heat, “Surely you know that?”

“I try to forget it as much as possible,”—and Maryllia’s eyes were full of a sweet wistfulness as she spoke—“Especially here—in my father’s home!”

“Oh well!” said Lady Beaulyon, with a touch of impatience—“You are a strange girl—you always were! You can ‘live good,’ or try to, if you like; and stay down here all alone with the doldrums and the humdrums. But you’ll be sick of it in six months. I’m sure you will! Not a man will come near you,—they hate virtuous women nowadays,— and scarce a woman will come either, save old and ugly ones! You will kill yourself socially altogether by the effort. Life’s too short to lose all the fun out of it for the sake of an ideal or a theory!”

Here the gong sounded for dinner. Maryllia turned away from her dressing-table, and confronted her friend. Her face was grave and earnest in its expression, and her eyes were very steadfast and clear.

“I don’t want what you call ‘fun,’ Eva,”—she said—“I want love! Love seems to me the only good thing in life. Do you understand? You ask me why I left my aunt—it was to escape a loveless marriage,—a marriage that would be a positive hell to me for which neither wealth nor position could atone. As for ‘living good,’ I am not trying that way. I only want to understand myself, and find out my own possibilities and limitations. And if I never do win the love I want,—if no one ever cares for me at all, then I shall be perfectly content to live and die unmarried.”

“What a fate!” laughed Lady Beaulyon, shrugging her white shoulders.

“A better one than the usual divorce court result of some ‘society’ marriages,”—said Maryllia, calmly—“Anyhow, I’d rather risk single blessedness than united ‘cussedness’! Let us go down to dinner, Eva! On all questions pertaining to ‘Souls’ and modern social ethics, we must agree to differ!”

XX

For the next fortnight St. Rest was a scene of constant and unwonted excitement. There was a continual coming and going, to and from Abbot’s Manor,—some of the guests went away to be replaced by others, and some who had intended to spend only a week-end and then depart, stayed on, moved by unaccountable fascination, not only for their hostess, but for the general pleasantness of the house, and the old-world, tranquil and beautiful surroundings of the whole neighbourhood. Lord Charlemont and Mr. Bludlip Courtenay had brought their newest up-to-date motor-cars with them,—terrible objects to the villagers whenever they dashed, like escaped waggons off an express train, through the little street, with their horns blowing violently as though in a fog at sea. Mrs. Frost was ever on the alert lest any of her smaller children should get in the way of these huge rubber-tyred vehicles tearing along at reckless speed,— and old Josey Letherbarrow resolutely refused to go outside his garden gate except on Sundays.

“Not but what I ain’t willin’ an’ cheerful to die whenever the Lord A’mighty sends for me;”—he would say—“But I ain’t got no fancy for bein’ gashed and jambled.”

‘Gashed and jambled,’ was his own expression,—one that had both novelty and suggestiveness. Unfortunately, it happened that a small pet dog belonging to one of the village schoolboys, no other than Bob Keeley, the admitted sweet-heart of Kitty Spruce, had been run over by Mr. Bludlip Courtenay, as that gentleman, driving his car himself, and staring indifferently through his monocle, had ‘timed’ his rush through the village to a minute and a half, on a bet with Lord Charlemont,—and ‘gashed and jambled’ was the only description to apply to the innocent little animal as it lay dead in the dust. Bob Keeley cried for days,—cried so much, in fact, over what he considered ‘a wicked murder’ that his mother sent for ‘Passon’ to console him. And Walden, with his usual patience, listened to the lad’s sobbing tale:

“Which the little beast wor my friend!” he gasped amid his tears— “An’ he wor Kitty’s friend too! Kitty’s cryin’ ‘erself sick, same as me! I’d ‘ad ‘im from a pup—Kitty carried ‘im in ‘er apron when ‘e was a week old,—he loved me—yes ‘e did!—an’ ‘e slept in my weskit iviry night of ‘is life!—an’ he ‘adn’t a fault in ‘im, all lovin’ an’ true!—an’ now ‘e’s gone—an’—an’I HATE the quality up at the Manor-yes I do!—I HATE ‘em!—an’ if Miss Vancourt ‘adn’t never come ‘ome, my doggie ‘ad been livin’ now, an’ we’d all a’ bin ‘appy!”

Walden patted the boy’s rough towzled head gently, and thought of his faithful ‘Nebbie.’ It would have been mere hypocrisy to preach resignation to Bob, when he, the Reverend John, knew perfectly well that if his own canine comrade had been thus cruelly slain, he also would have ‘hated the quality.’

“Look here, Bob,” he said at last,—“I know just how you feel! It’s just as bad as bad can be. But try and be a man, won’t you? You can’t bring the