Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22)

by Marie Corelli

  Susie blushed deeply and curtsied. It had got about in the village that Miss Vancourt’s young friend from Paris was a musical ‘prodigy,’ and praise from her was something to be remembered.

  “Now listen!” went on Cicely— “I’m not going to sing full voice, because I’m not allowed to yet, — but this is how that hymn should go!” And her pure tones floated forth pianissimo, with slow and tender solemnity: —

  “The Lord is my Shepherd; O Shepherd sweet, Leave me not here to stray; But guide me safe to Thy heavenly fold, And keep me there, I pray! Amen!”

  Silence followed. The children stood wonder-struck, and Miss Eden’s eyes filled with emotional tears.

  “How beautiful!” she murmured— “How very beautiful!”

  Cicely rose from the organ-stool, and turned round.

  “Here is Mr. Walden,” she said, in quite a matter-of-fact way as she perceived him. “It IS Mr. Walden, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” replied John, advancing with a smile— “And very fortunate Mr. Walden is to have heard such lovely singing!”

  “Oh, that’s not lovely,” said Cicely, carelessly— “I was only humming the last verse, just to put the expression right. I thought it must be you! — though, of course, as I have not been introduced to you, I couldn’t be sure! Maryllia — Miss Vancourt — has told me all about you, — and I know she has written twice since I’ve been here to ask you up to the Manor — once to tea, and once to dinner. Why haven’t you come?” Walden was slightly embarrassed by this point- blank question. It was perfectly true he had received two invitations from the lady of the Manor, and had refused both. Why he had refused, he could not himself have told.

  “I suppose you didn’t want to meet me!” said Cicely, showing all her white teeth in a flashing smile— “But there’s no escape for it, you see, — here I am! I’m not such a rascal as I look, though! I’ve been playing accompaniments for the children! — go on singing, please!” — and she addressed Miss Eden and Susie Prescott, who collecting their straying thoughts, began hesitatingly to resume the interrupted practice— “It’s a nice little organ — very full and sweet. The church is perfectly exquisite! I come in every day to look at it except Sundays.”

  “Why except Sundays?” asked Walden, amused.

  She gave him a quaint side-glance.

  “I’ll tell you some day, — not now!” — she answered— “This is not the fitting time or place.” She moved to the altar rails, and hung over them, looking at the alabaster sarcophagus “This thing has a perfect fascination for me!” she went on— “I can’t bear not to know whose bones are inside! I wonder you haven’t opened it.”

  “It was not meant to be opened by those who closed it,” said Walden, quietly.

  Cicely drooped her gipsy-bright eyes.

  “That’s one for me!” she thought— “He’s just like what Maryllia says he is, — very certain of his own mind, and not likely to move out of his own way.”

  “I think,” pursued Walden— “if you knew that someone very dear to you had been laid in that sarcophagus ‘to eternal rest,’ you would resent any disturbance of even the mere dust of what was once life,- -would you not?”

  “I might;” said Cicely dubiously— “But I have never had any ‘someone very dear to me’ except Maryllia Vancourt. And if she died, I should die too!”

  John was silent, but he looked at her with increased interest and kindliness.

  They walked out of the church together, and once in the open air, he became politely conventional.

  “And how is Miss Vancourt?” he enquired.

  “She is very well indeed,” — replied Cicely— “But tremendously busy just now with no end of household matters. The new agent, Mr. Stanways, is going over every yard of the Abbot’s Manor property with her, and she is making any quantity of new rules. All the tenants’ rents are to be reduced, for one thing — I know THAT. Then there are a lot of London people coming down to stay — big house- parties in relays, — I’ve helped write all the invitations. We shall be simply crowded at the end of June and all July. We mean to be very gay!”

  “And you will like that, of course?” queried Walden, indulgently, while conscious of a little sense of hurt and annoyance, though he knew not why.

  “Naturally!” and Cicely shrugged her shoulders carelessly, “Doesn’t the Bible say ‘the laughter of fools is like the crackling of thorns under a pot’? I love to set the pot down and hear the thorns crackle!”

  What a weird girl she was! He looked at her in mute amaze, and she smiled.

  “Do come up to tea some afternoon!” she said coaxingly, “We should be so glad to see you! I know Maryllia would like it — she thinks you are rather rude, you know! I’m to be here all the summer, but I’ll try to be good and not say things to vex you. And as you’re a clergyman, I can tell you all about myself — like the confessional secrets! And when you hear some of my experiences, you won’t wonder a bit at my queer ways. I can’t be like other girls of my age, — I really CAN’T! — my life won’t let me!”

  Her tone was one of light banter, but her eyes were wistful and pathetic. Walden was conscious of a sudden sympathy with this wild little soul of song, and taking her hand, pressed it kindly.

  “Wait till I see some of your ‘queer ways,’ as you call them!” he said, with a genial laugh— “I know you sing very beautifully-is that a ‘queer way’?”

  Cicely shook her mop-like tresses of hair back over her shoulders with a careless gesture.

  “It is — to people who can’t do it!” she said. “Surely you know that? For example, if you preach very well — I don’t know that you do, because I’ve never heard you, but Maryllia’s housekeeper, Mrs. Spruce, says you’ve got ‘a mouth of angels’ — she does really!” and, as Walden laughed, she laughed with him— “Well, as I say, if you preach very well with a mouth of angels, there must be several parsons round here who haven’t got that mouth, and who say of you, of course metaphorically: ‘He hath a devil’! Isn’t it so?”

  John hesitated.

  “No doubt opinions differ,” — he began.

  “Oh, of course! — you can get out of it that way, if you like!” she retorted, gaily— “You won’t say uncharitable things of the rest of your brethren if you can help it, but you know — yes, you must know that parsons are as jealous of each other and as nasty to each other as actors, singers, writers, or any other ‘professional’ persons in the world. In fact, I believe if you were to set two spiteful clergymen nagging at each other, they’d beat any two ‘leading ladies’ on the operatic stage, for right-down malice and meanness!”

  “The conversation is growing quite personal!” said Walden, a broad smile lighting up his fine soft eyes— “Shall we finish it at the Manor when I come up to tea?”

  “But are you really coming?” queried Cicely— “And when?”

  “Suppose I say this afternoon—” he began. Cicely clapped her hands.

  “Good! I’ll scamper home and tell Maryllia! I’ll say I have met you, and that I’ve been as impudent as I possibly could be to you—”

  “No, don’t say that!” laughed Walden— “Say that I have found you to be a very delightful and original young lady—”

  “I’m not a young lady,” — said Cicely, decisively— “I was born a peasant on the sea-coast of Cornwall — and I’m glad of it. A ‘young lady’ nowadays means a milliner’s apprentice or a draper’s model. I am neither. I am just a girl — and hope, if I live, to be a woman. I’ll take my own ideas of a suitable message from you to Maryllia — don’t YOU bother!” And she nodded sagaciously. “I won’t make ructions, I promise! Come about five!”

  She waved her hand and ran off, leaving Walden in a mood between perplexity and amusement. She was certainly an ‘original,’ and he hardly knew what to make of her. There was something ‘uncanny’ and goblin-like in her appearance, and yet her sallow face had a certain charm when the smile illumined it, and the light of aspiration burned u
p in the large wild eyes. In any case, she had persuaded him in a moment, as it were, and almost involuntarily, to take tea at the Manor that afternoon. Why he had consented to do what he had hitherto refused, he could not imagine. Cicely’s remark that Miss Vancourt thought him ‘rather rude,’ worried him a little.

  “Perhaps I have been rude” — he reflected, uneasily— “But I am not a society man; — I’m altogether out of my element in the company of ladies — and it seemed so much better that I should avoid being drawn into any intimacy with persons who are not likely to have anything in common with me — but of course I ought to be civil — in fact, I suppose I ought to be neighbourly—”

  Here a sudden irritation against the nature of his own thoughts disturbed him. He was not arguing fairly with himself, and he knew it. He was perfectly aware that ever since the day of their meeting in the village post-office, he had wished to see Miss Vancourt again. He had hoped she might pass the gate of the rectory, or perhaps even look into his garden for a moment, — but his expectation had not been realised. He had heard of Cicely Bourne’s arrival, — and he had received two charmingly-worded notes from Maryllia, inviting him to the Manor, — which invitations, as has already been stated, he had, with briefest courtesy, declined. Now, why, — if he indeed wished to see her again, — had he deliberately refused the opportunities given him of doing so? He could not answer this at all satisfactorily to his own mind, and he was considerably annoyed with himself to be forced to admit the existence of certain portions of his mental composition which were apparently not to be probed by logic, or measured by mathematics.

  “Well, at any rate, as I have promised the little singer, I can go up to tea just this once, and have done with it,” he decided— “I shall then be exonerated from ‘rudeness’ — and I can explain to Miss Vancourt — quite kindly and courteously of course — that I am not a visiting man, — that my habits are rather those of a recluse, and then — for the future — she will understand.”

  Cicely Bourne, meanwhile, on her way back to the Manor through the fields, paused many times to gather cowslips, which were blooming by thousands in the grass at her feet, and as she recklessly pulled up dozens of the pale-green stems, weighted with their nodding golden honey-bells, she thought a good deal about John Walden.

  “Maryllia never told me he was handsome,” — she mused; “But he is! I wonder why she didn’t mention it? So odd of her, — because really there are very few good-looking men anywhere, and one in the shape of a parson is a positive rarity and ought to go on exhibition! He’s clever too — and — obstinate? Yes, I should say he was obstinate! But he has kind eyes. And he isn’t married. What a comfort THAT is! Parsons are uninteresting enough in themselves as a rule, but their wives are the last possibility in the way of dullness. Oh, that honeysuckle!” And she sprang over the grass to the corner of a hedge where a long trail of the exquisitely-scented flower hung temptingly, as it seemed within reach, but when she approached it, she found it just too high above her to be plucked from the bough where its tendrils twined. Looking up at it, she carolled softly:

  “O Fortune capricieuse! Comme tu es cruelle! Pourquoi moques-tu ton esclave Qui sert un destin immortel!”

  Here a sudden rustle in the leaves on the other side of the hedge startled her, and a curious-looking human head adorned profusely with somewhat disordered locks of red hair perked up enquiringly. Cicely jumped back with an exclamation.

  “Saint Moses! What is it?”

  “It is me! Merely me!” and Sir Morton Pippitt’s quondam guest, Mr. Julian Adderley, rose to his full lanky height, and turned his flaccid face of more or less comic melancholy upon her— “Pray do not be alarmed! I have been reposing under the trees, — and I was, or so I imagine, in a brief slumber, when some dulcet warblings as of a nightingale awoke me” — here, stooping to the ground for his hat, he secured it, and waved it expressively— “and I have, I fear, created some dismay in the mind of the interesting young person who, if I mistake not, is a friend of Miss Vancourt?”

  Cicely surveyed him with considerable amusement.

  “Never mind who I am!” she said, coolly— “Tell me who YOU are! My faith! — you are as rough all over as a bear! What have you been doing to yourself? Your clothes are covered with leaves!”

  “Even as a Babe in the Wood!” responded Adderley, “Yes! — it is so!” and he began to pick off delicately the various burs and scraps of forest debris which had collected and clung to his tweed suit during his open-air siesta— “To speak truly, I am a trespasser in these domains, — they are the Manor woods, I know, — forbidden precincts, and possibly guarded by spring-guns. But I heeded not the board which speaks of prosecution. I came to gather bluebells, — innocent bluebells! — merely that and no more, to adorn my humble cot, — I have a cot not far from here. And as for my identity, my name is Adderley — Julian Adderley — a poor scribbler of rhymes — a votre service!”

  He waved his hat with a grand flourish again, and smiled.

  “Oh I know!” said Cicely— “Maryllia has spoken of you — you’ve taken a cottage here for the summer. Pick that bit of honeysuckle for me, will you? — that long trail just hanging over you!”

  “With pleasure!” and he gathered the coveted spray and handed it to her.

  “Thanks!” and she smiled appreciatively as she took it. “How did you get into that wood? Did you jump the hedge?”

  “I did!” replied Adderley.

  “Could you jump it again?”

  “Most assuredly!”

  “Then do it!”

  Whereupon Adderley clapped his hat on his head, and resting a hand firmly on one of the rough posts which supported the close green barrier between them, vaulted lightly over it and stood beside her.

  “Not badly done,” — said Cicely, eyeing him quizzically— “for ‘a poor scribbler of rhymes’ as you call yourself. Most men who moon about and write verse are too drunken, and vicious to even see a hedge, — much less jump over it.”

  “Oh, say not so!” exclaimed Adderley— “You are too young to pass judgment on the gods!”

  “The gods!” exclaimed Cicely— “Whatever are you talking about? The gods of Greece? They were an awful lot — perfectly awful! They wouldn’t have been admitted EVEN into modern society, and that’s bad enough. I don’t think the worst woman that ever dined at a Paris restaurant with an English Cabinet Minister would have spoken to Venus, par exemple. I’m sure she wouldn’t. She’d have drawn the line there.”

  “Gracious Heavens!” and Adderley stared in wonderment at his companion, first up, then down, — at her wild hair, now loosened from its convent form of pigtail, and scarcely restrained by the big sun- hat which was tied on anyhow, — at her great dark eyes, — at her thin angular figure and long scraggy legs, — legs which were still somewhat too visible, though since her arrival at Abbot’s Manor Maryllia had made some thoughtful alterations in the dress of her musical protegee which had considerably improved her appearance— “Is it possible to hear such things—”

  “Why, of course it is, as you’ve got ears and HAVE heard them!” said Cicely, with a laugh— “Don’t ask ’is it possible’ to do a thing when you’ve done it! That’s not logical, — and men do pride themselves on their logic, though I could never find out why. Do you like cowslips?” And she thrust the great bunch she had gathered up against his nose— “There’s a wordless poem for you!”

  Inhaling the fresh fine odour of the field blossoms, he still looked at her in amazement, she meeting his gaze without the least touch of embarrassment.

  “You can walk home with me, if you like!” — she observed condescendingly— “I won’t promise to ask you into the Manor, because perhaps Maryllia won’t want you, and I daresay she won’t approve of my picking up a young man in the woods. But it’s rather fun to talk to a poet, — I’ve never met one before. They don’t come out in Paris. They live in holes and corners, drinking absinthe to keep off hunger.”

  “
Alas, that is so!” and Adderley began to keep pace with the thin black-stockinged legs that were already starting off through the long grass and flowers— “The arts are at a discount nowadays. Poetry is the last thing people want to read.”

  “Then why do you write it?” and Cicely turned a sharp glance of enquiry upon him— “What’s the good?”

  “There you offer me a problem Miss — er — Miss—”

  “Bourne,” — finished Cicely— “Don’t fight with my name — it’s quite easy — though I don’t know how I got it. I ought to have been a Tre or a Pol-I was born in Cornwall. Never mind that, — go on with the ‘problem.’”

  “True — go on with the problem,” — said Julian vaguely, taking off his hat and raking his hair with his fingers as he was wont to do when at all puzzled— “The problem is— ‘why do I write poetry if nobody wants to read it’ — and ‘what’s the good’? Now, in the first place, I will reply that I am not sure I write ‘poetry.’ I try to express my identity in rhythm and rhyme — but after all, that expression of myself may be prose, and wholly without interest to the majority. You see? I put it to you quite plainly. Then as to ‘what’s the good?’ — I would argue ‘what’s the bad?’ So far, I live quite harmlessly. From the unexpected demise of an uncle whom I never saw, I have a life-income of sixty pounds a year. I am happy on that — I desire no more than that. On that I seek to evolve myself into SOMETHING — from a nonentity into shape and substance — and if, as is quite possible, there can be no ‘good,’ there may be a certain less of ‘bad’ than might otherwise chance to me. What think you?”

  Cicely surveyed him scrutinisingly.

  “I’m not at all sure about that” — she said— “Poets have all been doubtful specimens of humanity at their best. You see their lives are entirely occupied in writing what isn’t true — and of course it tells’ on them in the long run. They deceive others first, and then they deceive themselves, though in their fits of ‘inspiration’ as they call it, they may, while weaving a thousand lies, accidentally hit on one truth. But the lies chiefly predominate. Dante, for example, was a perfectly brazen liar. He DIDN’T go to Hell, or Purgatory, or Paradise — and he DIDN’T bother himself about Beatrice at all. He married someone else and had a family. Nothing could be more commonplace. He invented his Inferno in order to put his enemies there, all roasting, boiling, baking or freezing. It was pure personal spite — and it is the very force of his vindictiveness that makes the Inferno the best part of hid epic. The portraits of Dante alone are enough to show you the sort of man he was. WHAT a creature to meet in a dark lane at midnight!”