"Good-bye!" and with a slight further exchange of salutations Maryllia found herself relieved of her visitors. Of all the four, Adderley alone looked back with a half-appealing smile, and received an encouraging little nod for his pains—a nod which said 'Yes—you can come again if you like!' The wheels of the Pippitt equipage crunched heavily down the drive, and as the grating sound died away, clear on the quiet air came the soft slow chime of the church-bells ringing. It was near sunset,—and Walden sometimes held a short simple service of evening prayer at that hour. Leaning against the open window Maryllia listened.
"How pretty it is!" she said—"It must be the nearness of the river that makes the tone of the bells so soft and mellow! Oh, what an insufferable old snob that Pippitt is! And what a precious crew of 'friends' he boasts of! Lumpton, who, when he was a few years younger, danced the skirt-dance in women's clothes for forty pounds a night at a New York restaurant!—Mawdenham, who pawned all his mother's jewels to pay his losses at Bridge—and Lady Elizabeth Messing, who is such an abandoned old creature that her own married daughters won't know her! Oh, dear! And I believe the Knighted Bone- Boiler thinks they are quite good style! That literary man, Longford, was a most unprepossessing looking object,—a friend of Roxmouth's too, which makes him all the more unpleasant. And of course he will at once write off and say he has seen me. And then— and then-dear me! I wonder where Sir Morton picks these people up! He doesn't like the parson here evidently—'a pretentious University prig and upstart'—what a strong way of putting it!—very strong for such a clean-looking old man! 'A pretentious University prig and upstart' are you, Mr. Walden!" Here, smiling to herself, she moved out into the garden and called her dog to her side—"Do you hear that, Plato? Our next-door neighbour is a prig as well as a parson!- -isn't it dreadful!" Plato looked up at her with great loving brown eyes and wagged his plumy tail. "I believe he is,—and yet—yet all the same, I think—yes!—I think, as soon as a convenient opportunity presents itself, I'll ask him to dinner."
XIII
The next day Maryllia was up betimes, and directly after breakfast she sent for Mrs. Spruce. That good lady, moved by the summons into sudden trepidation, lest some duty had been forgotten, or some clause of the household 'rules and regulations' left unfulfilled, hastened to the inner library, a small octagonal room communicating with the larger apartment, and there found her mistress sitting on a low stool, with her lap full of visiting-cards which she was busily sorting.
"Spruce!" and she looked up from her occupation with a mock tragic air—"I'm dull! Positively D U double L! DULL!"
Mrs. Spruce stared,—but merely said:
"Lor, Miss!" and folded her hands on her apron, awaiting the next word.
"I'm dull, dull, dull!" repeated Maryllia, springing up and tossing all the cards into a wide wicker basket near at hand—"I don't know what to do with myself, Spruce! I've got nobody to talk to, nobody to play with, nobody to sing to, nobody to amuse me at all, at all! I've seen everything inside and outside the Manor,—I've visited the church,—I know the village—I've talked to dear old Josey Letherbarrow till he must be just tired of me,—he's certainly the cleverest man in the place,—and yesterday the Pippitts came and finished me. I'm done! I throw up the sponge!—that's slang, Spruce! There's nobody to see, nowhere to go, nothing to do. It's awful! 'The time is out of joint, O cursed spite!' That's Hamlet. Something must HAPPEN, Spruce!"—and here she executed a playful pas-seul around the old housekeeper—"There! Isn't that pretty? Don't look so astonished!—you'll see ever so much worse than that by and bye! I am going to have company. I am, really! I shall fill the house! Get all the beds aired, and all the bedrooms swept out! I shall ask heaps of people,—all the baddest, maddest folks I can find! I want to be bad and mad myself! There's nobody bad or mad enough to keep me going down here. Look at these!" And she raked among the visiting-cards and selected a few. "Listen!—'Miss Ittlethwaite, Miss Agnes Ittlethwaite, Miss Barbara Ittlethwaite, Miss Christina Ittlethwaite, Ittlethwaite Park.' It makes my tongue all rough and funny to read their names! They've called,—and I suppose I shall have to call back, but I don't want to. What's the good? I'm sure I never shall get on with the Ittlethwaites,—we shall never, never agree! Do you know them, Spruce? Who are they?"
Mrs. Spruce drew a long breath, rolled up her eyes, and began:
"Which the Misses Ittlethwaite is a county fam'ly, Miss, livin' some seven or eight miles from here as proud as proud, owin' to their forebears 'avin' sworn death on Magnum Chartus for servin' of King John—an' Miss Ittlethwaite proper, she be gettin' on in years, but she's a great huntin' lady, an' come November is allus to be seen follerin' the 'ounds, stickin' to the saddle wonderful for 'er size an' time o' life, an' Miss Barbara, she doos a lot o' sick visitin', an' Bible readin', not 'ere, for our people won't stand it, an' Passon Walden ain't great on breakin' into private 'ouses without owners' consents for Bible readin', but she, she's 'Igh, an' tramps into Riversford near every day which the carrier's cart brings 'er 'ome to 'er own place they 'avin' given up a kerridge owin' to spekylation in railways, an' Miss Hagnes she works lovely with 'er needle, an' makes altar cloths an' vestis for Mr. Francis Anthony, the 'Igh Church clergyman at Riversford, he not bein' married, though myself I should say there worn't no chance for 'er, bein' frightful skinny an' a bit off in 'er looks—an' Miss Christina she do still play at bein' a baby like, she's the youngest, an' over forty, yet quite a giddy in 'er way, wearin' ribbins round her waist, an' if 'twarn't for 'er cheeks droppin' in long like, she wouldn't look so bad, but they're all that proud—"