"Compulsion is a legal community," he said—"And while powerless to bring affluence to the Christian conscience, it culminates in the citizenship of the heathen. Miss Vancourt, as her father's daughter, should be represented by the baptized spirit, and not by the afflatus of the ungenerate! Good-night!"
Still puckering his brow into lines of mysterious suggestiveness, the learned Netlips went his way, Roger Buggins gazing after him admiringly.
"That man's reg'lar lost down 'ere,"—he observed—"He oughter ha' been in Parliament."
"Ah, so he ought!" agreed Dan Ridley—"Where's there's fog he'd a made it foggier, and where's there's no understandin' he'd a made it less understandable. I daresay he'd a bin Prime Minister in no time- -he's just the sort. They likes a good old muddler for that work— someone as has the knack o' addlin' the people's brains an' makin' them see a straight line as though'twere crooked. It keeps things quiet an' yet worrity-like—first up, then down—this way, then that way, an' never nothin' certain, but plenty o' big words rantin' round. That's Netlips all over,—it's in the shape of his 'ed,—he was born like it. I don't like his style myself,—but he'd make a grand cab-nit minister!"
"Ay, so he would!" acquiesced Buggins, as he drew the little red curtains across the windows of the tap-room and extinguished the hanging lamp—"Easy rest ye, Dan!"
"Same to you, Mr. Buggins!" responded the tailor cheerfully, as he turned out into the cool sweet dimness of the hawthorn-hedged lane in which the 'Mother Huff' stood—"I make bold to say that church or no church, Miss Vancourt's bein' at her own 'ouse 'ull be a gain an' a blessing to the village."
"Mebbe so," returned Buggins laconically,—and closing his door he barred it across for the night, while Dan Ridley, full of the half- poetic, half philosophic thoughts which the subjects of religion and religious worship frequently excite in a more or less untutored rustic mind, trudged slowly homeward.
During these days, Maryllia herself, unconscious of the remarks passed upon her as the lady of the Manor by her village neighbours, had not been idle, nor had she suffered much from depression of spirits, though, socially speaking, she was having what she privately considered in her own mind 'rather a dull time.' To begin with, everybody in the neighbourhood that was anybody in the neighbourhood, had called upon her,—and the antique oaken table in the great hall was littered with a snowy array of variously shaped bits of pasteboard, bearing names small and great,—names of old county families,—names of new mushroom gentry,—names of clergymen and their wives in profusion, and one or two modest cards with the plain 'Mr.' of the only young bachelors anywhere near for fifteen miles round. Nearly every man had a wife—"Such a pity!" commented Maryllia, when noting the fact—"One can never ask any of them to dinner without their dragons!"
Most of the callers had paid their 'duty visits' at a time of the afternoon when she was always out,—roaming over her own woods and fields, and 'taking stock' as she said, of her own possessions,—but on one or two occasions she had been caught 'in,' and this was the case when Sir Morton Pippitt, accompanied by his daughter Tabitha, Mr. Julian Adderley, and Mr. Marius Longford were announced just at the apt and fitting hour of 'five-o'clock tea.' Rising from the chair where she had negligently thrown herself to read for a quiet half hour, she set aside her book, and received those important personages with the careless ease and amiable indifference which was a 'manner familiar' to her, and which invariably succeeded in making less graceful persons than she was, feel wretchedly awkward and unhappy about the management of their hands and feet. With a smiling upward and downward glance, she mastered Sir Morton Pippitt's 'striking and jovial personality,'—his stiffly-carried upright form, large lower chest, close-shaven red face, and pleasantly clean white hair,—"The very picture of a Bone-Melter"—she thought—"He looks as if he had been boiled all over himself—quite a nice well- washed old man,"—her observant eyes flashed over the attenuated form of Julian Adderley with a sparkle of humour,—she noticed the careful carelessness of his attire, the artistic 'set' of his ruddy locks, the eccentric cut of his trousers, and the, to himself, peculiar knot of his tie.
"The poor thing wants to be something out of the common and can't quite manage it," she mentally decided, while she viewed with extreme disfavour the feline elegance affected by Mr. Marius Longford, and the sleek smile, practised by him 'for women only,' with which he blandly admitted her existence. To Miss Tabitha Pippit she offered a chair of capacious dimensions, amply provided with large down cushons, inviting her to sit down in it with a gentleness which implied kindly consideration for her years and for the fatigue she might possibly experience as a result of the drive over from Badsworth Hall,—whereat the severe spinster's chronically red nose reddened more visibly, and between her thin lips she sharply enunciated her preference for 'a higher seat,—no cushions, thank you!' Thereupon she selected the 'higher seat' for herself, in the shape of an old-fashioned music-stool, without back or arm-rest, and sat stiffly upon it like a draper's clothed dummy put up in a window for public inspection. Maryllia smiled,—she knew that kind of woman well;—and paying only the most casual attention to her for the rest of the time, returned to her own place by the open windows and began to dispense the tea, while Sir Morton Pippitt opened conversation by feigning to recall having met her some two or three years back. He was not altogether in the best of humours, the sight of his recently dismissed butler, Primmins, having upset his nerves. He knew how servants 'talked.' Who could tell what Primmins might not say in his new situation at Abbot's Manor, of his former experiences at Badsworth Hall? And so it was with a somewhat heated countenance that Sir Morton endeavoured to allude to a former acquaintance with his hostess at a Foreign Office function.