God's Good Man Part 60

"Oh no! Only for two or three days. I want to see my Bishop."

"On a point of conscience?"

John smiled, but coloured a little too.

"No--not exactly! We are very old friends, Brent and I--but we have not met for seven years,--not since my church was consecrated. It will be pleasant to us to have a chat about old times---"

"And new times--don't leave THEM out," said Julian--"They are quite as interesting. The present is as pleasing as the past, don't you think so?"

Walden hesitated. A touch of sorrow and lingering regret clouded his eyes.

"No--I cannot say that I do!" he answered, at last, with a sigh--"In the past I was young, with all the world before me,--in the present I am old, with all the world behind me!"

"Does it matter?" and Adderley lifted his eyelids with a languid expression--"For instance let us suppose that in the past you have lost something and that in the present you gain something, does it not equalise the position?"

"The gain is very little in my case!"--said John, yet even as he spoke he felt a pang of shame at his own thanklessness. Had he not secured a peaceful home, a round of work that he loved, and happiness far beyond his merits, and had not G.o.d blessed him with health and a quiet mind? Yes--till quite lately he had had a quiet mind--but now---

"You perhaps do not realise how much the gain is, or how far it extends,"--pursued Adderley, thoughtfully--"Youth and age appear to me to have perfectly equal delights and drawbacks. Take me, for example,--I am young, but I am in haste to be older, and when I am old I am sure I shall never want to be young again. It is too unsettled a condition!"

Walden smiled, but made no answer. They walked on in comparative silence till they reached Adderley's cottage--a humble but charmingly artistic tenement, with a thatched roof and a small garden in front which was little more than a tangle of roses.

"I am taking this house--this mansion--on," said Julian, pausing at the gate--"I shall stop here all winter. The surroundings suit me.

Inspiration visits me in the flowering of the honeysuckle, and encircles me in the whispering of the wind among the roses. When the leaves drop and the roses fade, I shall hear a different chord on the harp of song. When the sleet and snow begin to fall, I shall listen to the dripping of the tears of Nature with as much sympathy as I now bask in her smiles. I have been writing verses to the name of Maryllia--they are not finished--but they will come by degrees-- yes!--I am sure they will come! This is how they begin,"--and leaning on the low gate of his cottage entrance he recited softly, with half-closed eyes:

In the flowering-time of year When the heavens were crystal clear, And the skylark's singing sweet Close against the sun did beat,-- All the sylphs of all the streams, All the fairies born in dreams, All the elves with wings of flame, Trooping forth from Cloudland came To the wooing of Maryllia!

Walden murmured something inarticulate, but Adderley waved him into silence, and continued:

Woodland sprites of ferns and trees, Ariels of the wandering breeze, Kelpies from the hidden caves Coral-bordered 'neath the waves, Sylphs, that in the rose's heart, Laugh when leaves are blown apart,-- All the Faun and Dryad crew From their mystic forests flew To the wooing of Maryllia!

"Very fanciful!" said John, with a forced smile--"I suppose you can go on like that interminably?"

"I can, and I will,"--said Julian--"So long as the fit possesses me.

But not now. You are in a hurry, and you wish to say good-bye. You imply the P.P.C. in your aspect. So be it! I shall see you on Sunday in the pulpit as usual?"

"Yes."

"Badsworth Hall will probably attend your ministrations, so I am told,"--continued Julian--"Lord Roxmouth wants to hear you preach,-- and Sir Morton himself proposes to 'sit under' you."

"Sorry for it!" said Walden abruptly--"He should attend his own 'cure'--Mr. Leveson."

They laughed.

"Of course you don't credit that story about Miss Vancourt's marriage with Lord Roxmouth?" queried Adderley, suddenly.

"I am slow to believe anything I hear,"--replied John--"But--is it quite without foundation?"

Adderley looked him straight in the eyes.

"Quite! Very quite! Most quite! My dear Walden, you are pale! A change, even a brief one, will do you good. Go and see your Bishop by all means. And tell him how nearly, how very nearly you gave prestige to the calling of a Churchman by knocking down a rascal!"

They parted then; and by sundown Walden was in the train speeding away from St. Rest at the rate of fifty miles an hour to one of the great manufacturing cities where human beings swarm together more thickly than bees in a hive, and overcrowd and jostle each other's lives out in the desperate struggle for mere bread. Bainton and Nebbie were left sole masters of the rectory and its garden, and both man and dog were depressed in spirits, and more or less restless and discontented.

"'Tain't what it used to be by no manner o' means,"--muttered Bainton, looking with a dejected air round the orchard, where the wall fruit was hanging in green cl.u.s.ters of promise--"Pa.s.son don't seem to care, an' when HE don't care then I don't care! Why, it seems onny t'other day 'twas May morning, an' he was carryin' Ipsie Frost on his shoulder, an' leadin' all the children wi' the Maypole into the big meadow, an' all was as right as right could be,--yet 'ere we're onny just in August an' everything's topsy-turvy like.

Lord, Lord!--'ow trifles do make up a sum o' life to be sure, as the copybooks sez--for arter all, what's 'appened? Naught in any wise partikler. Miss Vancourt 'as come 'ome to her own,--an' she's 'ad a few friends from Lunnon stayin' with 'er. That's simple enough, as simple as plantains growin' in a lawn. Then Miss Vancourt's 'usband that is to be, comes down an' stays with old Bl.u.s.terdash Pippitt at the 'All, in order to be near 'is sweet'art. There ain't nothin' out of the common in that. It's all as plain as piecrust. An' Pa.s.son ain't done nothin' either but jest his dooty as he allus doos it,-- he ain't been up to the Manor more'n once,--he ain't been at the 'All,--an' Miss Vancourt she ain't been 'ere neither since the day he broke his best lilac for her. So it can't be she what's done mischief--nor him, nor any on 'em. So I sez to myself, what is it?

What's come over the old place? What's come over Pa.s.son? Neither place nor man's the same somehow, yet blest if I know where the change comes in. It's like one of the ways o' the Lord, past findin'

out!"

He might have thought there was something still more to wonder at if he could have looked into Josey Letterbarrow's cottage that evening and seen Maryllia there, sitting on a low stool at the old man's knee and patting his wrinkled hand tenderly, while she talked to him in a soft undertone and he listened with grave intentness and sagacity, though, also with something of sorrow.

"An' so ye think it's the onny way, my beauty!" he queried, anxiously--"There ain't no other corner round it?"

"I'm afraid not, dear Josey!" she answered, with a sigh--"And I'm telling you all about it, because you knew my father, and because you saw me when I was a little child. You would not like me to marry a man whom I hate,--a man who is bad right through, and who only wants my aunt's money, which he would get if I consented to be his wife. I am sure, Josey, you don't think money is the best thing in life, do you?--I know you agree with me that love is better?"

Josey looked down upon her where she sat with an almost devout tenderness.

"Love's the onny thing in the world worth 'avin' an' keeping my beauty!" he said--"An' love's wot you desarves, an' wot you're sure to get. I wouldn't see Squire's gel married for money, no, not if it was a reglar gold mine!--I'd rather see 'er in 'er daisy grave fust!

An' I don't want to see 'er with a lord nor a duke,--I'll be content to see 'er with a good man if the Lord will grant me that 'fore I die! An' you do as you feels to be right, an' all things 'ull work together for good to them as loves the Lord! That's Pa.s.son's teachin' an' rare good teachin' it be!"

At this Maryllia rose rather hurriedly and put on her hat, tying its chiffon strings slowly under her chin.

"Good-bye, Josey dear!"--she said--"It won't be for very long. But you must keep my secret--you mustn't say a word, not even"--here she paused and laughed a little forcedly--"not even to the Parson you're so fond of!"

Josey looked at her sideways, with a quaintly meditative expression.

"Pa.s.son be gone away hisself,"--he said, a little smile creeping among the kindly wrinkles of his brown weather-beaten face--"He baint comin' back till Sunday."

"Gone away?" Maryllia was quite unconscious of the vibration of pain in her voice as she asked the question, as she was equally of the startled sorrow in her pretty eyes.

"Ah, my beauty, gone away,"--repeated Josey, with a curious sort of placid satisfaction--"Pa.s.son, he be lookin' downhearted like, an' a change o' scene 'ull do 'im good mebbe, an' bring 'im back all the better for it. He came an' said good-bye to me this marnin'."

Maryllia stood for a moment irresolute. Why had he gone away? Her brows met in a little puckered line of puzzled wonder.

"He be gone to see the Bishop,"--pursued Josey, watching her tenderly with his old dim eyes,--it was like reading a love-story to see the faint colour flus.h.i.+ng those soft round cheeks of hers, and the tremulous quiver of that sweet sensitive mouth--"Church business, likely. But never you mind, my beauty!--he'll be 'ere to preach, please the Lord, on Sunday."

"Oh, I don't mind," said Maryllia, quickly recovering herself--"Only I shan't be here, you see--and--and I had intended to explain something to him--however, it doesn't matter! I can write all I wanted to say. Good-bye, Josey! Give my love to Ipsie!"

"Good-bye, my beauty!" returned Josey, with emphatic earnestness-- "An' G.o.d bless ye an' make all the rough places smooth for ye!

You'll find us all 'ere, lovin' an' true, whenever ye comes, mornin', noon or night--the village ain't the world, but you've got round it, my dearie--you've got round it!"

And in the deep midnight when the church chimes rang the hour, and the moon poured a pearly shower of luminance over the hushed woodland and silently winding river, Josey lay broad awake, resignedly conscious of his extreme age, and thinking soberly of the beginning and end of life,--the dawn and fruition of love,--the wonderful, beautiful, complex labyrinth of experience through which every human soul is guided from one mystic turn to another of mingled joy and sorrow by that supreme Wisdom, Whom, though we cannot see, we trust,--and feeling the near close of his own long life-journey, he folded his withered hands and prayed aloud:

"For all Thy childern, O Lord G.o.d, that 'ave gone by the last milestone on the road an' are growin' footsore an' weary, let there be Thy peace which pa.s.seth all understandin'!--but for Squire's gel with the little lonely heart of 'er beatin' like the wings of a bird that wants a nest, let there be Love!"

XXVI