The weary days rolled on in rain and gloom, — Christmas came and went with a weight and dullness never before known in St. Rest. Every Sunday since the accident, Walden had earnestly requested the prayers of his congregation for Miss Vancourt, ‘who was seriously ill’ — and on Christmas Day, he gave out the same request, with a pathetic alteration in the wording, which as he uttered it, caused many people to sob as they listened.
“The prayers of this congregation,” he said— “are desired for Maryllia Vancourt, who has been much beloved among you, and whose life is now in imminent peril!”
A chill seemed to strike through the church, — an icy blast far colder than the wintry wind, — the alabaster sarcophagus in front of the altar seemed all at once invested with a terrible significance,- -death, and death only was the sovereign ruler of the world! And when the children’s choir rose to give the ‘Hark the herald angels sing, Glory to the new-born King’ — their voices were unsteady and fell out of tune into tears.
Maryllia was indeed in ‘imminent peril.’ She had become suddenly restless, and her suffering had proportionately increased. At the earliest symptom of returning consciousness, the attention of the watchers at her bedside became redoubled; — should she speak, they were anxious to hear the first word that escaped her lips. For as yet, no one knew how she had come by her accident. None of the hunters had seen her fall, and Bennett the groom, stoutly refused to believe that the mare had either missed her jump, or thrown her mistress.
“She couldn’t have done it,” — he declared— “And if she could, she wouldn’t! She’s too sensible, and Miss Vancourt’s too sure a rider. Something’s at the bottom of it all, and I’d give a good deal to find out what it is, and WHO it is!”
Thus said Bennett, with many dark nods of meaning, and gradually the idea that Maryllia had been the victim of foul play, took root in the minds of all the villagers who heard him. Everyone in the place was on the watch for a clue, — a whisper, — a stray suggestion as to the possible cause of the mischief. But so far nothing had been discovered.
On the night before the last of the year, Maryllia, who had been tossing uneasily all the afternoon, and moaning piteously, suddenly opened her eyes and looked about her with a frightened air of recognition. Cicely, always at hand with the nurse in attendance, went quickly to the bedside in a tremour of hope and fear.
“Maryllia! Dearest, do you know me?”
She stared vaguely, and a faint smile hovered about her lips. Then her brows suddenly knitted into a perplexed, pained frown, and she said quite clearly —
“It was Oliver Leach!”
Cicely gave a little cry. The nurse warned her into silence by a gesture. There was a pause. Maryllia looked from one to the other wistfully.
“It was not Cleo’s fault,” she went on, speaking slowly, but distinctly— “Cleo never missed. Oliver Leach took the hedge just behind us. It was wrong! He meant to kill me. I saw it in his face!” She shuddered violently, and her eyelids closed. “He was cruel — cruel!” she murmured feebly— “But I was too happy!”
She drifted again into a stupor, — and Cicely, her whole soul awakened by these broken words into a white heat of wrath and desire for vengeance, left the room with sufficient information to set the whole village in an uproar. Oliver Leach! In less than four-and- twenty hours, the news was all over the place. The spreading wave of indignation soon rose to an overwhelming high tide, and had Leach shown himself anywhere in or near the village he would have stood an uncommonly good chance of being first horsewhipped, and then ‘ducked’ in the river by an excited crowd. Oliver Leach! The hated, petty upstart who had ground down the Abbot’s Manor tenantry to the very last penny that could be wrested from them! — who had destroyed old cherished land-marks, and made ugly havoc in many once fair woodland places in order to put money in his own pocket, — even he, so long an object of aversion among them, was the would-be murderer of the last descendant of the Vancourts! The villagers talked of nothing else, — quiet and God-fearing rustics as they were, they had no patience with treachery, meanness and cowardice, and were the last kind of people in the world to hold their peace on a matter of wickedness or injustice, merely because Leach was in the employ of several neighbouring land-owners, including Sir Morton Pippitt. Murmurs and threats ran from mouth to mouth, and Walden when he heard of it, said nothing for, or against, their clamour for revenge. The rage and sorrow of his own soul were greater than the wrath of combined hundreds, — and his feeling was all the more deep and terrible because it found no expression in words. The knowledge that such a low and vile creature as Oliver Leach had been the cause, and possibly the intentional cause of Maryllia’s grievous suffering and injury, moved him to realise for the first time in his life what it was to be conscious of a criminal impulse. He himself longed to kill the wretch who had brought such destruction on a woman’s beauty and happiness! — and it was with a curious sort of satisfaction that he found himself called upon in the ordinary course of things to read at evening service during the first week in January, the Twenty-eighth Psalm, wherein David beseeches God to punish the ungodly.
“Reward them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their own inventions!
“Recompense them after the work of their hands: pay them that they have deserved!”
Such demands for the punishment of one’s enemies may not be ‘Christian,’ but they are Scriptural, and as such, John felt himself justified in pronouncing them with peculiar emphasis and fervour.
Meanwhile, by slow degrees, the ‘imminent peril’ passed, and Maryllia came back to her conscious self, — a self that was tortured in every nerve by pain, — but, with the return of her senses came also her natural sweetness and gentleness, which now took the form of a touching patience, very sad, yet very beautiful to see. The first little gleam of gladness in her eyea awoke for Cicely, — to whom, as soon as she recognised her, she put up her lips to be kissed. Her accident had not disfigured her, — the fair face had been spared, though it was white and drawn with anguish. But she could not move her limbs, — and when she had proved this for herself, she lay very still, thinking quietly, with a dream-like wonder and sorrow in her blue eyes, like the wistfulness in the eyes of a wounded animal that knows not why it should be made to suffer. Docile to her nurses, and grateful for every little service, she remained for some days in a sort of waking reverie, holding Cicely’s hand often, and asking her an occasional question about the house, the gardens and the village. And January was nearly at an end, when she began at last to talk connectedly and to enquire closely as to her own actual condition.
“Am I going to die, Cicely?” she asked one morning— “You will tell me the truth, dear, won’t you? I would rather know.”
Cicely choked back her tears, and smiled bravely.
“No, darling, no! You are better, — but — but you will be a long time ill!”
Maryllia looked at her searchingly, and sighed a little.
“What have they done with Cleo?” she murmured.
“Cleo is all right,” — said Cicely— “She was badly hurt, but Bennett knows how you love her, and he is doing all he can for her. She will never hunt again, I’m afraid!”
“Nor shall I!” and Maryllia sighed again, and closed her eyes to hide the tears that welled up in them.
There was a dark presentiment in her mind, — a heavy foreboding to which she would not give utterance before Cicely, lest it should grieve her. But the next day, when Dr. Forsyth paid her his usual visit, and said in his usual cheery way that all was ‘going on well’ — she startled him by requesting to speak to him alone, without anyone else in the room, not even the attendant nurse.
“It is only a little question I want to ask!” she said with the faint reflex of her old bright smile on her face— “And I’m sure you’ll answer it!”
‘Jimmy’ Forsyth hesitated. He felt desperately uncomfortable. He instinctively knew what her question would be, — a questi
on to which there was only one miserable answer. But her grave pleading glance was not to be resisted, — so, making the best of a bad business, he cleared the room, shut the door, and remained in earnest conversation with his patient for half-an-hour. And at the end of that time, he went out, with tears in his keen eyes, and a suspicious cough catching his throat, as he strode away from the Manor through the leafless avenues, and heard the branches of the trees rattling like prison chains in an angry winter’s wind.
The worst was said, — and when it was once said, it was soon known. Maryllia was not to die — not yet. Fate had willed it otherwise. But she was to be a cripple for life. That was her doom. Never again would her little feet go tripping through the rose gardens and walks of her beloved home, — never would her dainty form be borne, a weightless burden, by ‘Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt’ through the flowering woods of spring, — from henceforth she would have to be carried by others up and down, to and fro, a maimed and helpless creature, with all the physical and healthful joys of living cut away from her at one cruel blow! And yet — it was very strange! — she herself was not stricken with any particular horror or despair at her destiny. When, after the doctor had left, Cicely came in, trembling and afraid, — Maryllia smiled at her with quite a sweet placidity.
“I know all about myself now,” — she said, quietly— “I’m sorry in a way, — because I shall be so useless. But — I have escaped Roxmouth for good this time!”
“Oh my darling!” wept Cicely— “Oh my dear, beautiful Maryllia! If it were only me instead of you!”
Maryllia drew the dark head down on the pillow beside her.
“Nonsense! Why should it have been you!” she said, cheerfully— “You will be a delight to the world with your voice, Cicely, — whereas I am nothing, and never have been anything. I shall not be missed—”
Her voice faltered a moment, as the thought of John Walden suddenly crossed her mind. He would perhaps — only perhaps — miss her! Anon, a braver and purely unselfish emotion moved her soul, and she began to be almost glad that she was, as she said to herself, ‘laid aside.’
“For now,” — she mused— “they can say nothing at all about him at MY expense. Even Roxmouth’s tongue must stop calumniating me, — for though many people are very heartless, they do draw the line at slandering a crippled woman! It’s all for the best, — I’m sure it’s all for the best!”
And a serene contentment took possession of her, — a marvellous peace that brought healing in its train, for with the earliest days of February, when the first snowdrops were beginning to make their white way through the dark earth, she was able to be moved from her bed, and carried down to the morning room, where, lying on her couch, near a sparkling fire, with a bunch of early flowering aconites opening their golden eyes in a vase beside her, she looked almost as if she were getting well enough soon to rise and walk again. She was bright and calm, and quickly managed to impart her own brightness and calmness to others. She summoned all the servants of the household to her in turn, and spoke to them so kindly, and thanked them so sweetly for the trouble and care they had taken and were taking on her behalf that they could scarcely hide their tears. As for poor Mrs. Spruce, who had nervously hesitated to approach her for fear of breaking down in her presence, she no sooner made her appearance than Maryllia stretched out her arms like a child, with a smile on her face.
“Come and kiss me, Spruce!” she said, almost playfully— “and don’t cry! I’m not crying for myself, you see, and I don’t want anyone else to cry for me. You’ll help to make the cripple-time pleasant, won’t you? — yes, of course you will! — and I can do the housekeeping just the same as ever — nothing need alter that. Only instead of running about all over the place, and getting in the way, I shall have to keep still, — and you will always know where to find me. That’s something of an advantage, Spruce! And you’ll talk to me! — oh yes! — trust you for talking, you dear thing! — and I shall know just as much about everybody as I want to, — there Spruce! — you WILL cry!- -so run away just now, and come back presently when you feel better- -and braver!” Whereat Mrs. Spruce had kissed her on the cheek at her own request, and had caught her little hand and kissed that, and had then hurried out of the room before her rising sobs could break out, as they did, into rebellious blubbering.
“Which the Lord Almighty’s ways are ‘ard to bear!” she wailed. “An’ that they’re past findin’ out, no sensible person will contradict, for why Miss Maryllia should be laid on ‘er back an’ me left to stan’ upright is a mystery Gospel itself can’t clear! An’ if I could onny see Passon Walden, I’d ask ’im what it all means, for if anybody knows it he will, — but he won’t see no one, an’ Dr. Forsyth says best not trouble ’im, so there I am all at sea without a life- belt, which Spruce bein’ ‘arder of ‘earin’ than ever, don’t understand nohow nor never will. But if there’s no way out of all this trouble, the Lord Himself ain’t as wise as I took ’im for, for didn’t He say to a man what ‘ad crutches in the Testymen ‘Arise an’ walk’? — an’ why shouldn’t He say ‘Arise an’ walk’ to Miss Maryllia? I do ‘ope I’m not sinful, but I’m fair mazed when I see the Lord ‘oldin’ off ’is hand as ‘twere, an’ not doin’ the right thing as ’e should do!”
Thus Mrs. Spruce argued, and it is to be feared that ‘not doing the right thing’ was rather generally attributed to ‘the Lord,’ by the good folk of St. Rest at that immediate period. Most of them were thirsting to try a little ‘right’ on their own account as concerned Oliver Leach. For the whole story was now known, — though had Maryllia not told it quite involuntarily in a state of semi- consciousness, she would never have betrayed the identity of her cowardly assailant. But finding that she had, unknowingly to herself, related the incident as it happened, there was nothing to be done on her part, except to entreat that Leach might be allowed to go unpunished. This, however, was a form of ultra-Christianity which did not in any way commend itself to the villagers of St. Rest. They were on the watch for him day and night, — scouts traversed the high road to Riversford from east to west, from north to south in the hope of meeting him driving along to the town as usual on his estate agency business, but not a sign of him had been seen since the evening of the fox-hunt, when Maryllia’s body had been found in Farmer’s Thorpe’s field. Then, one of Adam Frost’s eldest boys had noticed him talking to the Reverend Putwood Leveson at the entrance of the park surrounding Badsworth Hall, but since that time he had not shown himself, and enquiries at his cottage failed to elicit other information than that he was ‘not at home.’ The people generally suspected him of being ‘in hiding,’ and they were not far wrong.
One day, soon after her first move from her bedroom to the morning room, and when she had grown in part accustomed to being carried up and down, Maryllia suddenly expressed a wish to hear the village choir.
“I should like the children to come and sing to me,” — she said to Cicely— “You remember the hymn they sang on that one Sunday I went to church last summer— ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’? You sang it with them, Cicely, — and it was so very sweet! Couldn’t they come up here to the Manor and sing it to me again?”
“Of course they could if you wish it, darling!” said Cicely, blinking away the tears that were only too ready to fall at every gentle request proffered by her friend— “And I’m sure they will! I’ll go now and tell Miss Eden you want them.”
“Yes, do!” said Maryllia, eagerly— “And, Cicely, — wait a minute! Have you seen Mr. Walden at all since I’ve been ill?”
“No,” — replied Cicely, quietly— “He has not been very well himself, so Dr. Forsyth says, — and he has not been about much except to perform service on Sundays, and to visit his sick parishioners—”
“Well, I am a sick parishioner!” said Maryllia— “Why should he leave me out?”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 643