God's Good Man Part 32

"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 pa.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 amus.e.m.e.nt.

"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 sc.r.a.ps of forest debris which had collected and clung to his tweed suit during his open-air siesta--"To speak truly, I am a trespa.s.ser 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 ident.i.ty, 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 a.s.suredly!"

"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 pa.s.s judgment on the G.o.ds!"

"The G.o.ds!" exclaimed Cicely--"Whatever are you talking about? The G.o.ds 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 embarra.s.sment.

"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 gra.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 ident.i.ty 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 nonent.i.ty 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 h.e.l.l, 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 gra.s.s, with Adderley after her. Through tall b.u.t.tercups and field daisies they raced each other like children,-- startling astonished bees from repasts in clover-cups--and shaking b.u.t.terflies 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!"