Chapter 24

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 up 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!"

Here she made a grimace, drawing her mouth down into the elongated frown of the famous Florentine, with such an irresistibly comic effect that Adderley gave way to a peal of hearty, almost boyish laughter.

"That's right!" said Cicely approvingly--"That's YOU, you know! It's natural to laugh at your age--you're only about six or seven-and- twenty, aren't you?"

"I shall be twenty-seven in August,"--he said with a swift return to solemnity--"That is, as you will admit, getting on towards thirty."

"Oh, nonsense! Everybody's getting on towards thirty, of course--or towards sixty, or towards a hundred. I shall be fifteen in October, but 'you will admit'"--here she mimicked his voice and accent--"that I am getting on towards a hundred. Some folks think I've turned that already, and that I'm entering my second century, I talk so 'old.' But my talk is nothing to what I feel--I feel--oh!" and she gave a kind of angular writhe to her whole figure--"like twenty Methusalehs in one girl!"

"You are an original!"--said Julian, nodding at her with an air of superior wisdom--"That's what you are!"

"Like you, Sir Moon-Calf"--said Cicely--"The word 'moon-calf,' you know, stands for poet--it means a human calf that grazes on the moon. Naturally the animal never gets fat,--nor will you; it always looks odd--and so will you; it never does anything useful,--nor will you; and it puts a kind of lunar crust over itself, under which crust it writes verses. When you break through, its crust you find something like a man, half-asleep--not knowing whether he's man or boy, and uncertain, whether to laugh or be serious till some girl pokes fun at him--and then---"

"And then?"--laughed Adderley, entering vivaciously into her humour- -"What next?"

"This, next!"--and Cicely pelted him full in the face with one of her velvety cowslip-bunches--'And this,--catch me if you can!"

Away she flew over the grass, with Adderley after her. Through tall buttercups and field daisies they raced each other like children,-- startling astonished bees from repasts in clover-cups--and shaking butterflies away from their amours on the starwort and celandines. The private gate leading into Abbot's Manor garden stood open,-- Cicely rushed in, and shut it against her pursuer who reached it almost at the same instant.

"Too bad!" he cried laughingly--"You mustn't keep me out! I'm bound to come inside!"

"Why?" demanded Cicely, breathless with her run, but looking all the better for the colour in her cheeks and the light in her eyes--"I don't see the line of argument at all. Your hair is simply dreadful! You look like Pan, heated in the pursuit of a coy nymph of Delphos. If you only wore skins and a pair of hoofs, the resemblance would be perfect!"

"My dear Cicely!" said a dulcet voice at this moment,--"Where HAVE you been all the morning! How do you do, Mr. Adderley? Won't you come in?"

Adderley took off his hat, as Maryllia came across to the gate from the umbrageous shadow of a knot of pine-trees, looking the embodiment of fresh daintiness, in a soft white gown trimmed with wonderfully knotted tufts of palest rose ribbon, and wearing an enchanting 'poke' straw hat with a careless knot of pink hyacinths tumbling against her lovely hair. She was a perfect picture 'after Romney,' and Adderley thought she knew it. But there he was wrong. Maryllia knew little and cared less about her personal appearance.

"Where have you been?" she repeated, taking Cicely round the waist-- "You wild girl! Do you know it is lunch time? I had almost given you up. Spruce said you had gone into the village--but more than that she couldn't tell me."

"I did go to the village,"--said Cicely--"and I went into the church, and played the organ, and helped the children sing a hymn. And I met the parson, Mr. Walden, and had a talk with him. Then I started home across the fields, and found this man"--and she indicated Adderley with a careless nod of her head--"asleep in a wood. I almost promised him some lunch--I didn't QUITE---"

"My dear Miss Vancourt,"--protested Adderley--"Pray do not think of such a thing!--I would not intrude upon you in this unceremonious way for the world!"

"Why not?" said Maryllia, smiling graciously--"It will be a pleasure if you will stay to luncheon with us. Cicely has carte blanche here you know--genius must have its way!"

"Of course it must!"--agreed Cicely--"If genius wants to etand on its head, it must be allowed to make that exhibition of itself lest it should explode. If genius asks the lame, halt, blind and idiotic into the ancestral halls of Abbot's Manor, then the lame, halt, blind and idiotic are bound to come. If genius summons the god Pan to pipe a roundelay, pipings there shall be! Shall there not, Mr. Pan Adderley?"

Her eyes danced with mirth and mischief, as they flashed from his face to Maryllia's. "Genius,"--she continued--"can even call forth a parson from the vasty deep if it chooses to do so,--Mr. Walden is coming to tea this afternoon."

"Indeed!" And Maryllia's sweet voice was a trifle cold. "Did you invite him, Cicely?"

"Yes. I told him that you thought it rather rude of him not to have come before---"

"Oh Cicely!" said Maryllia reproachfully--"You should not have said that!"

"Why not? You did think him rude,--and so did I,--to refuse two kind invitations from you. Anyhow he seemed sorry, and said he'd make up for it this afternoon. He's really quite good-looking."

"Quite--quite!" agreed Julian Adderley--"I considered him exceptionally so when I first saw him in his own church, opposing a calm front to the intrusive pomposity and appalling ignorance of our venerable acquaintance, Sir Morton Pippitt. I decided that I had found a Man. So new!--so fresh! That is why I took a cottage for the summer close by, that I might be near the rare specimen!"

Maryllia laughed.

"Are you not a man yourself?" she said.

"Not altogether!" he admitted,--"I am but half-grown. I am a raw and impleasing fruit even to my own palate. John Walden is a ripe and mellow creature,--moreover, he seems still ripening in constant sunshine. I go every Sunday to hear him preach, because he reminds me of so much that I had forgotten."

Here they went into luncheon. Maryllia threw off her hat as she seated herself at the head of the table, ruffling her hair with the action into prettier waves of brown-gold. Her cheeks were softly flushed,--her blue eyes radiant.

"You are a better parishioner than I am, Mr. Adderley!"--she said-- "I have not been to church once since I came home. I never go to church."

"Naturally! I quite understand! Few people of any education or intelligence can stand it nowadays," he replied--"The Christian myth is well-nigh exploded. Yet one cannot help having a certain sympathy and interest in men, who, like Mr. Walden, appear to still honestly believe in it."

"The Christian myth!" echoed Cicely--"My word! You do lay down the law! Where should we be without the 'myth' I wonder?"

"Pretty much where we are now,"--said Julian--"Two thousand years of the Christian dispensation leaves the world still pagan. Self- indulgence is still paramount. Wealth still governs both classes and masses. Politics are still corrupt. Trade still plays its old game of 'beggar my neighbour.' What would you! And in this day there is no restraining influence on the laxity of social morals. Literature is decadent,--likewise Painting;--Sculpture and Poetry are moribund. Man's inborn monkeyishness is obtaining the upper hand and bearing him back to his natural filth,--and the glimmerings of the Ideal as shown forth in a few examples of heroic and noble living are like the flash of the rainbow-arch spanning a storm-cloud,--beautiful, but alas!--evanescent."

"I'm afraid you are right"--said Maryllia, with a little sigh; "It is very sad and discouraging, but I fear very true."

"It's nothing of the kind!"--declared Cicely, with quick vehemence-- "It's just absolute nonsense! It is! Ah, 'never shake thy gory locks at me,' Sir Moon-Calf!" and she made a little grimace across the table at Julian, who responded to it with a complacent smile--"You can talk, talk, talk--of course! every man that ever sat in clubs, smoking and drinking, can talk one's head off--but you've got to LIVE, as well as talk! What do you know about self-indulgence being 'paramount,' except in your own case, eh? Do you think at all of the thousands and thousands of poor creatures everywhere, who completely sacrifice their lives to the needs of others?"

"Of course there are such--" admitted Adderley; "But---"