Of course this 'sympathetic' message was not read by its intended recipient at the time of its arrival. Maryllia lay blind, deaf and senseless to all that was going on around her, and for many days gave no sign of life whatever save a faint uneasy breathing and an occasional moan. Cicely was left alone to face all difficulties, to receive and answer all messages and to take upon herself for the time being the ostensible duties of the mistress of Abbot's Manor. She bent her energies to the task, though she felt that her heart must break in the effort,—and with tears blinding her eyes, she told poor Mrs. Spruce, who was quite stupefied by the sudden crash of misfortune that had fallen upon the household, that she meant to try and do her best to keep everything going on just as Maryllia would wish it kept, "till—till—she gets better,"—she faltered sobbingly—"and you will help me, dear Mrs. Spruce, won't you?"
Whereupon Mrs. Spruce took the poor child into her motherly arms, and they both cried and kissed each other, moved by the same common woe.
The Manor was soon besieged with callers. Everyone in the county flocked thither to leave cards, and express their sympathy for the unfortunate mischance that had overtaken the bright creature who had been the cynosure of all eyes for her beauty and grace on the morning of the first fox-hunt of the year. All the ill-natured gossip, all the slanderous tittle-tattle which had been started by Lord Roxmouth and fostered by Miss Tabitha Pippitt, ebbed and died away in the great wave of honest regret and kindly pity that pervaded the whole neighbourhood. Even Sir Morton Pippitt, smitten by compunction for certain selfish motives which had inspired him to serve Lord Roxmouth as a willing tool, was an indefatigable, almost daily enquirer as to Maryllia's condition, for though pompous, blusterous, and to a very great extent something of a snob, his nature was not altogether lacking in the milk of human kindness like that of his daughter Tabitha. She, still smarting under the jealous conviction that John Walden was secretly enamoured of the Lady of the Manor, had heard the strange story of his having so far forgotten his usual self as to wander out bareheaded in the evening air and recite the commencement of the burial service like a man distraught when Maryllia's crushed body had been brought home, and she thought of it often with an inward rage she could scarcely conceal. Almost,—such was her acrimony and vindictiveness—she wished Maryllia would die.
"Serve her right!" she said to herself, setting her thin lips spitefully together—"Serve her right!"
There are a great many eminently respectable ladies of Miss Tabitha's temperament who always say 'Serve her right,' when a pretty and charming woman, superior to themselves, meets with some misfortune. They regard it as a just dispensation of Providence.
John Walden meanwhile had braced himself to face the worst that could happen. Or rather, as he chose to put it, strength, not his own, had been given him to stand up, albeit feebly, under the shock of unexpected disaster. Pale, composed, punctilious in the performance of all his duties, and patiently attentive to the needs of his parishioners, he went about among them as usual in his own quiet, sympathetic way just as if his heart were not crying out in fierce rebellion against inexorable destiny,—and as if he were not wildly clamouring to be near her whom, now that she was being taken from him, he knew that he loved with an ardour far deeper and stronger than with the same passion common to men in the first flush of their early manhood. And though he sent Bainton every day up to the Manor to make enquiries about her, he never went near the place himself. He could not. Brave as he tried to be, he could not meet Cicely Bourne. He knew that one look into the little singer's piteous dark eyes would have broken him down completely.
Every night Dr. 'Jimmy' Forsyth came to the rectory with the latest details respecting Maryllia's condition,—though for weeks there was no change to report. She was suffering from violent concussion of the brain, and was otherwise seriously injured, but Forsyth would not as yet state how serious the injuries were. For he guessed Walden's secret, and was deeply touched by the quiet patience and restrained sorrow of the apparently calm, self-contained man who, notwithstanding his own inward acute agony, never forgot a single detail having to do with the poor or sick of the parish,—who soothed little Ipsie Frost's bewildered grief concerning her 'poor bootiful white lady-love,'—and who sat with old Josey Letherbarrow by his cottage fire, trying as best he could to explain, ay, even to excuse the mysterious ways of divine Providence as apparently shown in the visitation of cruel affliction on the head of a sweet and innocent woman. Josey was a little dazed about it all and could not be brought to realise that 'th' owld Squire's gel' might never rise from her bed again.
"G'arn with ye!" he said, indignantly, to the melancholy village gossips who came in to see him and shake their heads generally over life and its brief vanities—"Th' Almighty Lord ain't a pulin', spiteful, hoppitty kicketty devil wot ain't sure of 'is own mind! He don't make a pretty thing just to break it agin all for nowt! Didn't ye all come clickettin' to me about the Five Sister beeches, an' ain't they still stannin'? An' Miss Maryllia 'ull stan' too just as fast an' firm as the trees,—you take my wurrd for't! She ain't goin' to die! Why look at me—just on ninety, an' I ain't dead yet!"
But a qualm of fear and foreboding came over him whenever 'Passon' visited him. John's sad face told him more than words could express.
"Ain't she no better, Passon?" he would ask, timidly and tremblingly.