Chapter 21

"It's rather long,"--she said thoughtfully, as she finished it. "But for Gigue it is necessary to explain fully. I hope you can make it out?"

Poor Mrs. Tapple quivered with inward agitation as she took the terrible telegram in hand, and made a brave effort to rise to the occasion.

"Yes, Miss," she stammered, "Louis Gigue--G.i.g.u.e., that's right-- yes--at the Conservatory, Paris."

"'No, no!" said Maryllia, with a little laugh--"Not Conservatory-- Conservatoire--TOIRE, t.o.i.r.e., the place where they study music."

"Oh, yes--I see!" and Mrs. Tapple tried to smile knowingly, as she fixed her spectacles more firmly on her nose, and began to murmur slowly--"Je desire, d.e.sire--oh, yes--desire!--que--q.u.e.--Cicely- -yes that's all right!--passe, an e to pass--yes--now let me wait a minute; one minute, Miss, if you please!--l'ete--l apostrophe e, stroke across the e,--t, and e, stroke across the e---"

Maryllia's eyebrows went up in pretty perplexity.

"Oh dear, I'm afraid you won't be able to get it right that way!" she said--"I had better write it in English,--why, here's Mr. Walden!" This, as she saw the clergyman's tall athletic figure entering Mrs. Tapple's tiny garden,--"Good-morning, Mr. Walden!" and as he raised his hat, she smiled graciously--"I want to send off a French telegram, and I'm afraid it's rather difficult---"

A glance at Mrs. Tapple explained the rest, and Walden's eyes twinkled mirthfully.

"Perhaps _I_ can be of some use, Miss Vancourt," he said. "Shall I try?"

Maryllia nodded, and he walked into the little office.

"Let me send off those telegrams for you, Mrs. Tapple," he said. "You know you often allow me to amuse myself in that way! I haven't touched the instrument for a month at least, and am getting quite out of practice. May I come in?"

Mrs. Tapple's face shone with relief and gladness.

"Well now, Mr. Walden, if it isn't a real blessin' that you happened to look in this mornin'!" she exclaimed--"For now there won't be no delay,--not but what I knew a bit o' French as a gel, an' I'd 'ave made my way to spell it out somehow, no matter how slow,--but there! you're that handy that 'twon't take no time, an' Miss Vancourt will be sure of her message 'avin' gone straight off from here correct,-- an' if they makes mistakes at Riversford, 'twon't be my fault!"

While she thus ran on, Walden was handling the telegraphic apparatus. His back was turned to Maryllia, but he felt her eyes upon him,--as indeed they were,--and there was a slight flush of colour in his bronzed cheeks as he presenty looked round and said:

"May I have the telegram?"

"There are two--both for Paris," replied Maryllia, handing him the filled-up forms--"One is quite easy--in English." "And the other quite difficult--in French!"--he laughed. "Let me see if I can make it out correctly." Thereupon he read aloud: "'Louis Gigue, Conservatoire, Paris. Je desire que Cicely passe l'ete avec moi et qu'elle arrive immediatement. Elle peut tres-bien continuer ses etudes ici. Vous pouvez suivre, cher maitre, a votre plaisir.' Is that right?"

Maryllia's eyes opened a little more widely,--like blue flowers wakening to the sun. This country clergyman's pronunciation of French was perfect,--more perfect than her own trained Parisian accent. Mrs. Tapple clasped her dumpy red hands in a silent ecstasy of admiration. 'Passon' knew everything!

"Is it right?" Walden repeated.

Maryllia gave a little start.

"Oh I beg your pardon! Yes--quite right!--thank you ever so much!"

Click-click-click-click! The telegraphic apparatus was at work, and the unofficial operator was entirely engrossed in his business. Mrs. Tapple stood respectfully dumb and motionless, watching him. Maryllia, leaning against the ledge of the office counter, watched him, too. She took quiet observation of the well-poised head, covered with its rich brown-grey waving locks of hair,--the broad shoulders, the white firm muscular hands that worked the telegraphic instrument, and she was conscious of the impression of authority, order, knowledge, and self-possession, which seemed to have come into the little office with him, and to have created quite a new atmosphere. Outside, in the small garden, among mignonette and early flowering sweetpeas, Plato sat on his huge haunches in lion-like dignity, blinking at the sun,--while Walden's terrier Nebbie executed absurd but entirely friendly gambols in front of him, now pouncing down on two forepaws with nose to ground and eyes leering sideways,--now wagging an excited tail with excessive violence to demonstrate goodwill and a desire for amity.--and anon giving a short yelp of suppressed feeling,--to all of which conciliatory approaches Plato gave no other response than a vast yawn and meditative stare.

The monotonous click-click-click continued,--now stopping for a second, then going on more rapidly again, till Maryllia began to feel quite unreasonably impatient. She found something irritating at last in the contemplation of the back of Walden's cranium,--it was too well-shaped, she decided,--she could discover no fault in it. Humming a tune carelessly under her breath, she turned towards Mrs. Tapple's small grocery department, and feigned to be absorbed in an admiring survey of peppermint balls and toffee. Certain glistening squares of sticky white substance on a corner shelf commended themselves to her notice as specimens of stale 'nougat,' wherein the almonds represented a remote antiquity,--and a mass of stringy yellow matter laid out in lumps on blue paper and marked 'One Penny per ounce' claimed attention as a certain 'hardbake' peculiar to St. Rest, which was best eaten in a highly glutinous condition. A dozen or so of wrinkled apples which, to judge by their damaged and worn exteriors, must have been several autumns old, kept melancholy companionship with assorted packages of the 'Choice Tea' whereof the label was displayed in the window, and Maryllia was just about wondering whether she would, or could buy anything out of the musty- fusty collection, when the click-click-click stopped abruptly, and Walden stepped forth from the interior 'den' of the post-office.

"That's all right, Miss Vancourt," he said. "Your telegrams are sent correctly as far as Riversford anyhow, and there is one operator there who is acquainted with the French language. Whether they will transmit correctly from London I shouldn't like to say!--we are a singular nation, and one of our singularities is that we scorn to know the language of our nearest neighbours!"

She smiled up at him,--and as his glance met hers he was taken aback, as it were, by the pellucid beauty and frank innocence of the grave dark-blue eyes that shone so serenely into his own.

"Thank you so very, very much! You have been most kind!" and with a swift droop of her white eyelids she veiled those seductive 'mirrors of the soul' beneath a concealing fringe of long golden-brown lashes--"It's quite a new experience to find a clergyman able and willing to be a telegraph clerk as well! So useful, isn't it?"

"In a village like this it is," rejoined Walden, gaily--"And after all, there's not much use in being a minister unless one can practically succeed in the art of 'ministering' to every sort of demand made upon one's capabilities! Even to Miss Vancourt's needs, should she require anything, from the preservation of trees to the sending of telegrams, that St. Rest can provide!"

Again Maryllia glanced at him, and again a little smile lifted the corners of her mouth.

"I must pay for the telegrams," she said abruptly--"Mrs. Tapple---"

"Yes, Miss--I've written it all down," murmured Mrs. Tapple nervously--"It's right, Mr. Walden, isn't it? If you would be so good as to look at it, bein' tuppence a word, it do make it different like, an' m'appen there might be a mistake---"

Walden glanced over the scrap of paper on which she had scrawled her rough figures.

"Fivepence out, I declare, Mrs. Tapple!" he said, merrily. "Dear, dear! Whatever is going to become of you, eh? To cheat yourself wouldn't matter--nobody minds THAT--but to do the British Government out of fivepence would be a dreadful thing! Now if I had not seen this you would have been what is called 'short' this evening in making up accounts." Here he handed the corrected paper to Maryllia. "I think you will find that right."

Maryllia opened her purse and paid the amount,--and Mrs. Tapple, in giving her change for a sovereign, included among the coins a bright new threepenny piece with a hole in it. Spying this little bit of silver, Maryllia held it up in front of Walden's eyes triumphantly.

"Luck!" she exclaimed--"That's for you! It's a reward for your telegraphic operations! Will you be grateful if I give it to you?"

He laughed.

"Profoundly! It shall be my D.S.O.!"

"Then there you are!" and she placed the tiny coin in the palm of the hand he held out to receive it. "The labourer is worthy of his hire! Now you can never go about like some clergymen, grumbling and saying you work for no pay!" Her eyes sparkled mischievously. "What shall we do next? Oh, I know! Let's buy some acid drops!"

Mrs. Tapple stared and smiled.

"Or pear-drops," continued Maryllia, glancing critically at the various jars of 'sweeties,'--"I see the real old-fashioned pink ones up there,--lumpy at one end and tapering at the other. Do you like them? Or brandy balls? I think the pear-drops carry one back to the age of ten most quickly! But which do you prefer?"

Walden tried to look serious, but could not succeed. Laughter twinkled all over his face, and he began to feel extremely young.

"Well,--really, Miss Vancourt,---" he began.

"There, I know what you are going to say!" exclaimed Maryllia--"You are going to tell me that it would never do for a clergyman to be seen munching pear-drops in his own parish. _I_ understand! But clergymen do ever so much. worse than that sometimes. They do, really! Two ounces of pear-drops for me, Mrs. Tapple, please!--and one of brandy balls!"

Mrs. Tapple bustled out of her 'Gove'nment' office, and came to the grocery counter to dispense these dainties.

"They stick to the jar so," said Maryllia, watching her thoughtfully; "They always did. I remember, as a child, seeing a man put his finger in to detach them. Don't put your finger in, Mrs. Tapple!--take a bit of wood--an old skewer or something. Oh, they're coming out all right! That's it!" And she popped one of the pear- drops into her mouth. "They are really very good--better than French fondants--so much more innocent and refreshing!" Here she took possession of the little paper-bags which Mrs. Tapple had filled with the sweets. "Thank you, Mrs. Tapple! If any answers to my telegrams come from Paris, please send them up to the Manor at once. Good-morning!"

"Good-morning, Miss!" And Mrs. Tapple, curtseying, pulled the door of her double establishment wider open to let the young lady pass out, which she did, with a smile and nod, Walden following her. Plato rose and paced majestically after his mistress, Nebbie trotting meekly at the rear, and so they all went forth from the postmistress's garden into the road, where Walden, pausing, raised his hat in farewell.

"Oh, are you going?" queried Maryllia. "Won't you walk with me as far as your own rectory?"

"Certainly, if you wish it,"--he answered with a slight touch of embarrassment; "I thought perhaps---"

"You thought perhaps,--what?" laughed Maryllia, glancing up at him archly--"That I was going to make you eat pear-drops against your will? Not I! I wouldn't be so rude. But I really thought I ought to buy something from Mrs. Tapple,--she was so worried, poor old dear!- -till you came in. Then she looked as happy as though she saw a vision of angels. She's a perfect picture, with her funny old shawl and spectacles and knobbly red fingers--and do you know, all the time you were working the telegraph you were under the fragrant shadow of a big piece of bacon which was 'curing,'--positively 'curing' over your head! Couldn't you smell it?"

Walden's eyes twinkled.

"There was certainly a fine aroma in the air," he said--"But it seemed to me no more than the customary perfume common to Mrs. Tapple's surroundings. I daresay it was new to you! A country clergyman is perhaps the only human being who has to inure himself to bacon odours as the prevailing sweetness of cottage interiors."

Maryllia laughed. She had a pretty laugh, silver-clear and joyous without loudness.

"Fancy your being so clever as to be able to send off telegrams!" she exclaimed--"What an accomplishment for a Churchman! Don't you want to know all about the messages you sent?--who the persons are, and what I have to do with them?"

"Not in the least!" answered John, smiling.

"Are you not of a curious disposition?"

"I never care about other people's business," he said, meeting her upturned eyes with friendly frankness--"I have enough to do to attend to my own."

"Then you are positively inhuman!" declared Maryllia--"And absolutely unnatural! You are, really! Every two-legged creature on earth wants to find out all the ins and cuts of every other two- legged creature,--for if this were not the case wars would be at an end, and the wicked cease from troubling and the weary be at rest. So just because you don't want to know about my two friends in Paris, I'm going to tell you. Louis Gigue is the greatest teacher of singing there is,--and Cicely Bourne is his pupil, a perfectly wonderful little girl with a marvellous compass of voice, whose training and education I am paying for. I want her with me here--and I have sent for her;--Gigue can come on if he thinks it necessary to give her a few lessons during the summer, but of course she is not to sing in public until she is sixteen. She is only fourteen now."

Walden listened in silence. He was looking at his companion sideways, and noting the delicate ebb and flow of the rose tint in her cheeks, the bright flecks of gold in the otherwise brown hair, and the light poise of her dainty rounded figure as she stepped along beside him with an almost aerial grace and swiftness.

"She was the child of a Cornish labourer,"--went on Maryllia. "Her mother sold her for ten pounds. Yes!--wasn't it dreadful!" This, as John's face expressed surprise. "But it is true! You shall hear all the story some day,--it is quite a little romance. And she is so clever!--you would think her ever so much older than she is, to hear her talk. Sometimes she is rather blunt, and people get offended with her-but she is true--oh, so true!--she wouldn't do a mean action for the world! She is just devoted to me,--and that is perhaps why I am devoted to her,--because after all, it's a great thing to be loved, isn't it?"

"It is indeed!" replied John, mechanically, beginning to feel a little dazed under the influence of the bright eyes, animated face, smiling lips and clear, sweet voice--"It ought to be the best of all things."

"It ought to be, and it is!" declared Maryllia emphatically. "Oh, what a lovely bush of lilac!" And she hastened on a few steps in order to look more closely at the admired blossoms, which were swaying in the light breeze over the top of a thick green hedge-- "Why, it must be growing in your garden! Yes, it is!--of course it is!--this is your gate. May I come in?"

She paused, her hand on the latch,--and for a moment Walden hesitated. A wave of colour swept up to his brows,--he was conscious of a struggling desire to refuse her request, united to a still more earnest craving to grant it. She looked at him, wistfully smiling.

"May I come in?" she repeated.

He advanced, and opened the gate, standing aside for her to pass.

"Of course you may!"--he said gently,--"And welcome!"

XIV

Now it happened that Bainton was at that moment engaged in training some long branches of honey-suckle across the rectory walls, and being half-way up a ladder for the purpose, the surprise he experienced at seeing 'Passon' and Miss Vancourt enter the garden together and walk slowly side by side across the lawn, was so excessive, that in jerking his head round to convince himself that it was not a vision but a reality, he nearly lost his balance.

"Woa, steady!" he muttered, addressing the ladder which for a second swayed beneath him--"Woa, I sez! This ain't no billowy ocean with wot they calls an underground swell! So the ice 'ave broke, 'ave it! She, wot don't like clergymen, an' he, wot don't like ladies, 'as both come to saunterin' peaceful like with one another over the blessed green grass all on a fine May mornin'! Which it's gettin' nigh on June now an' no sign o' the weather losin' temper. Well, well! Wonders won't never cease it's true, but I'd as soon a' thought o' my old 'ooman dancin' a 'ornpipe among her cream cheeses as that Passon Walden would a' let Miss Vancourt inside this 'ere gate so easy like, an' he a bacheldor. But there!--arter all, he's gettin' on in years, an' she's ever so much younger than he is, an' I dessay he's made up his mind to treat 'er kind like, as 'twere her father, which he should do, bein' spiritooal 'ead o' the village, an' as for the pretty face of 'er, he's not the man to look at it more'n once, an' then he couldn't tell you wot it's like. He favours his water-lilies mor'n females,--ah, an' I bet he'd give ten pound for a new specimen of a flower when he wouldn't lay out a 'apenny on a new specimen of a woman." Here, pausing in his reflections, he again looked cautiously round from his high vantage point of view on the ladder, and saw Walden break off a spray of white lilac from one bush of a very special kind near the edge of the lawn, and give it to Miss Vancourt. "Well, now that do beat me altogether!" he ejaculated under his breath. "If he's told me once, he's told me a 'undred times that he won't 'ave no blossoms broke off that bush on no account An' there he is a-pickin' of it hisself! That's a kind of thing which do make me feel that men is a poor feeble-minded lot,-- it do reely now!"

But feeble-minded or not, John had nevertheless gathered the choice flower, and moreover, had found a certain pleasure in giving it to his fair companion, who inhaled its delicious odour with an appreciative smile.

"What a dear old house you have!" she said, glancing up at the crossed timbers, projecting gables, and quaint dormer windows set like eyes in the roof--"I had no idea that it was so pretty! And the garden is perfectly lovely. It is so very artistic!--it looks like a woman's dream of a garden rather than a man's."

John smiled.

"You think women more artistic than men?" he queried.

"In the decorative line--yes," she replied--"Especially where flowers are concerned. If one leaves the planning of a garden entirely to a man, he is sure to make it too stiff and mathematical,--he will not allow Nature to have her own way in the least little bit,--in fact"--and she laughed--"I don't think men as a rule like to let anything or anybody have their own way except themselves!"

The smile still lingered kindly round the corners of Walden's mouth.

"Possibly you may be right,"--he said--"I almost believe you are. Men are selfish,--much more selfish than women. Nature made them so in the first instance,--and our methods of education and training all tend to intensify our natural bent. But"--here he paused and looked at her thoughtfully; "I am not sure that absolute unselfishness would be a wise or strong trait in the character of a man. You see the first thing he has to do in this world is to earn the right to live,--and if he were always backing politely out of everybody else's way, and allowing himself to be hustled to one side in an unselfish desire to let others get to the front, he would scarcely be able to hold his own in any profession. And all those dependent upon his efforts would also suffer,--so that his 'unselfishness' might become the very worst kind of selfishness in the end--don't you think so?" "Well--yes--perhaps in that way it might!" hesitated Maryllia, with a faint blush--"I ought not to judge anyone I know--but--oh dear!--the men one meets in town--the society men with their insufferable airs of conceit and condescension,--their dullness of intellect,--their preference for cigars, whiskey, and Bridge to anything else under the sun,--their intensely absorbed love of personal ease, and their perfectly absurd confidence in their own supreme wisdom!--these are the hybrid creatures that make one doubt the worth of the rest of their sex altogether."

"But there are hybrid creatures on both sides,"--said Walden quietly--"Just as there are the men you speak of, so there are women of the same useless and insufferable character. Is it not so?"

She looked up at him and laughed.

"Why, yes, of course!" she frankly admitted--"I guess I won't argue with you on the six of one and half-dozen of the other! But it's just as natural for women to criticise men as for men to criticise nowadays. Long ago, in the lovely 'once upon a time' fairy period, the habit of criticism doesn't appear to have developed strongly in either sex. The men were chivalrous and tender,--the women adoring and devoted--I think it must have been perfectly charming to have lived then! It is all so different now!"

"Fortunately, it is," said John, with a mirthful sparkle in his eyes--"I am sure you would not have liked that 'once upon a time fairy period' as you call it, at all, Miss Vancourt! Poets and romancists may tell us that the men were 'chivalrous and tender,' but plain fact convinces us that they were very rough unwashen tyrants who used to shut up their ladies in gloomy castles where very little light and air could penetrate,--and the adoring and devoted ladies, in their turn, made very short work of the whole business by either dying of their own grief and ill-treatment, or else getting killed in cold blood by order of their lords and masters. Why, one of the finest proofs of an improvement in our civilisation is the freedom of thought and action given to women in the present day. Personally speaking, I admit to a great fondness for old-fashioned ways, and particularly for old-fashioned manners,- -but I cannot shut my mind to the fact that for centuries women have been unfairly hindered by men in every possible way from all chance of developing the great powers of intelligence they possess,--and it is certainly time the opposition to their advancement should cease. Of course, being a man myself,"--and he smiled--"I daresay that in my heart of hearts I like the type of woman I first learned to know and love best,--my mother. She had the early Victorian, ways,--they were very simple, but also very sweet."

He broke off, and for a moment or two they paced the lawn in silence.

"I suppose you live all alone here?" asked Maryllia, suddenly.

"Yes. Quite alone."

"And are you happy?"

"I am content."

"I understand!" and she looked at him somewhat earnestly:--"'Happy' is a word that should seldom be used I think. It is only at the rarest possible moments that one can feel real true happiness."

"You are too young to say that,"--he rejoined gently--"All your life is before you. The greater part of mine lies behind me." Again she glanced at him somewhat timidly.

"Mr. Walden"--she began--"I'm afraid--I suppose--I daresay you think---"

John caught the appealing flash of the blue eyes, and wondering what she was going to say. She played with the spray of lilac he had given her, and for a moment seemed to have lost her self-possession.

"I am quite sure,"--she went on, hurriedly--"that you--I mean, I'm afraid you haven't a very good opinion of me because I don't go to church---"

He looked at her, smiling a little.

"Dor't you go to church?" he asked--"I didn't know it!"