God's Good Man: A Simple Love Story

by Marie Corelli

"Maryllia Vancourt and a country parson!" she exclaimed, "The whole thing is TOO delicious! Go to bed, Eva! Get your beauty sleep or you'll have ever so many more wrinkles than you need! Good-night, dearest! If Maryllia declines to know US, we shall soon find excellent reasons for not knowing HER! Good-night!"

With a shrill little laugh, the lady kissed her dear friend affectionately—and if the caress was not returned with very great fervour, it may be presumed that this coldness was due more to the unlovely impression created by the night 'toilette' of the Ever- Youthful one, than anything else. Anyway the two social schemers parted on the most cordial terms, and retired to their several couches with an edifying sense of virtue pervading them both morally and physically.

And while they and others in the Manor were sleeping, Maryllia lay broad awake, watching the moonbeams creeping about her room like thin silver threads, interlacing every object in a network of pale luminance,—and listening to the slow tick-tock of the rusty timepiece in the courtyard which said, 'Give all—take nothing— give—all—take—no—thing!'—with such steady and monotonous persistence. She was sad yet happy,—perplexed, yet peaceful;—she had decided on her own course of action, and though that course involved some immediate vexation and inconvenience to herself, she was satisfied that it was the only one possible to adopt under the irritating circumstances by which she was hemmed in and surrounded.

"It will be best for everyone concerned,"—she said, with a sigh— "Of course it upsets all my plans and spoils my whole summer,—but it is the only thing to do—the wisest and safest, both for—for Mr. Walden—and for me. I should be a very poor friend if I could not sacrifice myself and my own pleasure to save him from possible annoyance,—and though it is a little hard—yes!—it IS hard!—it can't be helped, and I must go through with it. 'Home, Home, sweet Home!' Yes—dear old Home!—you shall not be darkened by a shadow of deceit or treachery if I can prevent it!—and for the present, my way is the only way!"

One or two tears glittered on her long lashes when she at last fell into a light slumber, and the old pendulum's rusty voice croaking out: 'Give all—take no—thing' echoed hoarsely through her dreams like a harsh command which it was more or less difficult to obey. But life, as we all know, is not made up of great events so much as of irritating trifles,—poor, wretched, apparently insignificant trifles, which, nevertheless do so act upon our destinies sometimes as to put everything out of gear, and make havoc and confusion where there should be nothing but peace. It was the merest trifle that Sir Morton Pippitt should have brought his 'distinguished guests,' including Marius Longford, to see John Walden's church—and also have taken him to visit Maryllia in her own home;—it was equally trifling that Longford, improving on the knightly Bone-Melter's acquaintance, should have chosen to import Lord Roxmouth into the neighbourhood through the convenient precincts of Badsworth Hall;— it was a trifle that Maryllia should have actually believed in the good faith of two women who had formerly entertained her at their own houses and whose hospitality she was anxious to return;—and it was a trifle that John Walden should, so to speak, have made a conventionally social 'slip' in his protest against smoking women;— but there the trifles stopped. Maryllia knew well enough that only the very strongest feeling, the very deepest and most intense emotion could have made the quiet, self-contained 'man o' God' as Mrs. Spruce called him, speak to her as he had done,—and she also knew that only the most bitter malice and cruel under-intent to do mischief could have roused Roxmouth, usually so coldly self-centred, to the white heat of wrath which had blazed out of him that evening. Between these two men she stood—a quite worthless object of regard, so she assured herself,—through her, one of them was like to have his name torn to shreds in the foul mouths of up-to-date salacious slanderers,—and likewise through her, the other was prepared and ready to commit himself to any kind of lie, any sort of treachery, in order to gain his own interested ends. Small wonder that tears rose to her eyes even in sleep—and that in an uneasy and confused dream she saw John Walden standing in his garden near the lilac-tree from which he had once given her a spray,—and that he turned upon her a sad white face, furrowed with pain and grief, while he said in weary accents—"Why have you troubled my peace? I was so happy till you came!" And she cried out—"Oh, let me go away! No one wants me! I have never been loved much in all my life—but I am loving enough not to wish to give pain to my friends—let me go away from my dear old home and never come back again, rather than make you wretched!"

And then with a cry she awoke, shivering and half-sobbing, to feel herself the loneliest of little mortals—to long impotently for her father's touch, her father's kiss,—to pray to that dimly-radiant phantom of her mother's loveliness which was pictured on her brain, and anon to stretch out her pretty rounded arms with a soft cry of mingled tenderness and pain—"Oh, I am so sorry!—so sorry for HIM! I know he is unhappy!—and it's all my fault! I wish—I wish—-"

But what she wished she could not express, even to herself. Her sensitive nature was keenly alive to every slight impression of kindness or of coldness;—and the intense longing for love, which had been the pulse of her inmost being since her earliest infancy, and which had filled her with such passionate devotion to her father that her grief at his loss had been almost abnormally profound and despairing, made her feel poignantly every little incident which emphasised, or seemed to emphasise, her own utter loneliness in the world; and she was just now strung up to such a nervous tension, that she would almost have consented to wed Lord Roxmouth if by so doing she could have saved any possible mischief occurring to John Walden through Roxmouth's malignancy. But the shuddering physical repulsion she felt at the bare contemplation of such a marriage was too strong for her.

"Anything but that!"—she said to herself, with something of a prayer—"O dear God!—anything but that!"

Sometimes God hears these little petitions which are not of the orthodox Church. Sometimes, as it seems, by a strange chance, the cry of a helpless and innocent soul does reach that vast Profound where all the secrets of life and destiny lie hidden in mysterious embryo. And thus it happens that across the din and bustle of our petty striving and restless disquietudes there is struck a sudden great silence, by way of answer,—sometimes it is the silence of Death which ends all sorrow,—sometimes it is the sweeter silence of Love which turns sorrow into joy.

Next day all the guests at the Manor had departed with the exception of three—Louis Gigue, and the 'Sisters Gemini,' namely, Lady Wicketts and Miss Fosby. With much gush and gratitude for a 'charming stay—a delightful time!' Lady Beaulyon and Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay took leave of their 'dear Maryllia,' who received their farewells and embraces with an irresponsively civil coldness. Lord Charlemont and Mr. Bludlip Courtenay 'motored' to London, undertaking with each other to keep up a speed of fifty miles an hour, provided there were not too many hills and not too much 'slowing down' for the benefit of unexpected policemen round corners. And at sunset, a pleasant peace and stillness settled on the Manor grounds, erstwhile disturbed by groups of restless persons walking aimlessly to and fro,—persons who picked flowers merely to throw them away again, and played tennis and croquet only to become quarrelsome and declare that the weather was much too hot for games. Everybody that was anybody had gone their ways,—and within her own domicile Mrs. Spruce breathed capaciously and freely, and said in confidence to the cook and to Primmins: