God's Good Man Part 20

Leach himself stared blankly and incredulously,--his face crimsoned with a sudden rush of enraged blood and then paled again, and changing his former insolent tone for one both fawning and propitiatory, he stammered out:

"I am very sorry--I--I beg your pardon, Madam!--if you will give yourself a little time to consider, you will see I have done my duty on this property all the time I have been connected with it. I hope you will not dismiss me for the first fault!--I--I--admit I should not have struck Spruce,--but--I--I was taken by surprise--I--I know my business,--and I am not accustomed to be interfered with--" Here his pent-up anger got the better of him and he again began to bl.u.s.ter. "I have done my duty--no man better!" he said in fierce accents. "There's not an acre of woodland here that isn't in a better condition than it was ten years ago--Ah!--and bringing in more money too!--and now I am to be turned off for a parcel of village idiots who hardly know a beech from an elm! I'll make a case of it! Sir Morton Pippitt knows me--I'll speak to Sir Morton Pippitt--"

"Sir Morton Pippitt!" echoed Maryllia disdainfully; "What has he to do with me or my property?" Here she suddenly spied Walden, who, in his eagerness to hear every word that pa.s.sed had, unconsciously to himself, moved well out of the sheltering shadow of the trees--"Are YOU Sir Morton Pippitt?"

A broad grin, deepening into a scarcely suppressed t.i.tter, Went the round of the gaping young rustics. Walden himself smiled,--and recognising that the time had now come to declare himself, he advanced a step or two and lifted his hat.

"I have not that pleasure! I am the minister of this parish, and my name is John Walden. I'm afraid I am rather a trespa.s.ser here!--but I have loved these old trees for many years, and I came up this morning,--having heard what your orders were from my gardener Bainton,--to see that those orders were properly carried out,--and also to save possible disturbance--"

He broke off. Maryllia, while he spoke, had eyed him somewhat critically, and now favoured him with a charming smile.

"Thank you very much!" she said sweetly; "It was most kind of you! I wonder--" And she paused, knitting her pretty brows in perplexity; "I wonder if you could get rid of everybody for me?"

He glanced up at her in a little wonderment.

"Could you?" she repeated.

He drew nearer.

"Get rid of everybody?--you mean?--"

She leaned confidentially from her saddle.

"Yes--YOU know! Send them all about their business! Clergymen can always do that, can't they? There's really nothing more to be said or done--the trees shall not be touched,--the matter is finished.

Tell all these big boys to go away--and--oh, YOU know!"

A twinkle of merriment danced in Walden's eyes. But he turned quite a set and serious face round on the magnetised lads of the village, who hung about, loth to lose a single glance or a single word of the wonderful 'Missis' who had the audacious courage to dismiss Leach.

"Now, boys!" he said peremptorily; "Clear away home and begin your day's work! You're not wanted here any longer. The trees are safe,-- and you can tell everyone what Miss Vancourt says about them.

Bainton! You take these fellows home,--Spruce had better go with you. Just call at the doctor's on the way and get his wound attended to. Come now, boys!--sharp's the word!"

A general scrambling movement followed this brief exordium. With shy awkwardness each young fellow lifted his cap as he shambled sheepishly past Maryllia, who acknowledged these salutes smilingly,- -Bainton a.s.sisted Spruce to rise to his feet, and then took him off under his personal escort,--and only Leach remained, convulsively gripping his dog-whip which he had picked up from the ground where the lads had thrown it,--and anon striking it against his boot with a movement of impatience and irritation.

"GOOD-morning, Mr. Leach!" said Walden pointedly. But Leach stood still, looking askance at Maryllia.

"Miss Vancourt," he said, hoa.r.s.ely; "Am I to understand that you meant what you said just now?"

She glanced at him coldly.

"That I dismiss you from my service? Of course I meant it! Of course I mean it!"

"I am bound to have fair notice," he muttered. "I cannot collect all my accounts in a moment--"

"Whatever else you may do, you will leave this place at, once;" said Maryllia, firmly,--"I will communicate my decision to the solicitors and they will settle with you. No more words, please!"

She turned her mare slowly round on the gra.s.sy knoll, looking up meanwhile at the lovely canopy of tremulous young green above her head. John Walden watched her. So did Oliver Leach,--and with a sudden oath, rapped out like a discordant bomb bursting in the still air, he exclaimed savagely:

"You shall repent this, my fine lady! By G.o.d, you shall! You shall rue the day you ever saw Abbot's Manor again! You had far better have stayed with your rich Yankee relations than have made such a home-coming as this for yourself, and such an outgoing for me! My curse on you!"

Shaking his fist threateningly at her, he sprang down the knoll, and plunging through the gra.s.s and fern was soon lost to sight.

The soft colour in Maryllia's cheeks paled a little and a slight tremor ran through her frame. She looked at Walden,--then laughed carelessly.

"Guess I've given him fits!" she said, relapsing into one of her Aunt Emily's American colloquialisms, with happy unconsciousness that this particular phrase coming from her pretty lips sent a kind of shock through John's sensitive nerves. "He's not a very pleasant man to meet anyway! And it isn't altogether agreeable to be cursed on the first morning of my return home. But, after all, it doesn't matter much, as there's a clergyman present!" And her blue eyes.

danced mischievously; "Isn't it lucky you came? You can stop that curse on its way and send it back like a homing pigeon, can't you?

What do you say when you do it? 'Retro me Sathanas,' or something of that kind, isn't it? Whatever it is, say it now, won't you?"

Walden laughed,--he could not help laughing. She spoke, with such a whimsical flippancy, and she looked so bewitchingly pretty.

"Really, Miss Vancourt, I don't think I need utter any special formula on this occasion," he said, gaily. "You have done a good action to the whole community by dismissing Leach. Good actions bring their own reward, while curses, like chickens, come home to roost. Pray forgive me for quoting copybook maxims! But, for the curse of one ill-conditioned boor, you will have the thanks and blessings of all your tenantry. That will take the edge of the malediction; don't you think so?"

She turned her mare in the homeward direction, and began to guide it gently down the slope. Walking by her side, John held back one of the vast leafy boughs of the great trees to allow her to pa.s.s more easily, and glanced up at her smilingly as he put his question.

She met his eyes with an open frankness that somewhat disconcerted him.

"Well, I don't know about that!" she replied. "You see, in these days of telepathy and hypnotic suggestion, there may be something very catching about a curse. It's just like a little seed of disease;--if it falls on the right soil it germinates and spreads, and then all manner of wicked souls get the infection. I believe that in the old days everybody guessed this instinctively, without being able to express it scientifically,--and that's why they ran to the Church for protection agaiast curses, and the evil eye, and things of that sort. See how some of the old Scottish curses cling even to this day! The only way to take the sting out of a curse is to get it transposed"--and she smiled, glancing meditatively up into the brightening blue of the sky. "Like a song, you know! If it's too low for the voice you transpose it to a higher key. I daresay the Church was able to do that in the days when it had REAL faith--oh!-- I beg your pardon!--I ought not to say that to a man of your calling."

"Why not?" said Walden; "Pray say anything you like to me, Miss Vancourt;--I should be a very poor and unsatisfactory sort of creature if I could not bear any criticism on my vocation. Besides, I quite agree with you. The early Church had certainly more faith than it has now."

"You're not a bit like a parson," said Maryllia gravely, studying his face with embarra.s.sing candour and closeness; "You look quite a nice pleasant sort of man."

John Walden laughed again,--this time with sincere heartiness.

Maryllia's eyes twinkled, and little dimples came and went round her mouth and chin.

"You seem amused at that," she said; "But I've seen a great deal of life--and I have met heaps and heaps of parsons--parsons young and parsons old--and they were all horrid, simply horrid! Some talked Bible--and others talked the Sporting Times--any amount of them talked the drama, and played villains in private theatricals. I never met but one real minister,--that is a man who ministers to the poor,--and he died in a London slum before he was thirty. I believe he was a saint; and if he had lived in the days of the early Church, he would certainly have been canonised. He would have been Saint William--his name was William. But he was only one William,--I've seen hundreds of them."

"Hundreds of Williams?" queried Walden suggestively.

This time it was Maryllia who laughed,--a gay little laugh like that of a child.

"No, I guess not!" she answered; "Some of them are real Johnnies! Oh dear me!"--and again her laughter broke forth; "I quite forgot! You said YOUR name was John!"

"So it is." And he smiled; "I'm sorry you don't like it!"

She checked her merriment abruptly, and became suddenly serious.

"But I do like it! You mustn't think I don't. Oh, how rude I must seem to you! Please forgive me! I really do like the name of John!"

He glanced up at her, still smiling.

"Thank you! It's very kind of you to say so!"

"You believe me, don't you?" she said persistently.

"Of course I do! Of course I must! Though unhappily a Churchman, I am not altogether a heretic.'"

The smile deepened in his eyes,--and as she met his somewhat quizzical glance a slight wave of colour rose to her cheeks and brow. She drew herself up in her saddle with a sudden, proud movement and carried her little head a trifle higher. Walden looked at her now as he would have looked at a charming picture, without the least embarra.s.sment. She appeared so extremely young to him. She awakened in his mind a feeling of kindly paternal interest, such as he might have felt for Susie Prescott or Ipsie Frost. He was not even quite sure that he considered her in any way out of the common, so far as her beauty was concerned,--though he recognised that she was almost the living image of 'the lady in the vi'let velvet' whose portrait adorned the gallery in Abbot's Manor. The resemblance was heightened by the violet colour of the riding dress she wore and the absence of any head-covering save her own pretty brown-gold hair.

"I'm glad I've saved the old trees," she said presently, checking her mare's pace, and looking back at the Five Sisters standing in unmolested grandeur on their gra.s.sy throne. "I feel a pleasant consciousness of having done something useful. They are beautiful! I haven't looked at them half enough. I shall come here all by myself this afternoon and bring a book and read under their lovely boughs.