Itwas high time, I felt, to reconsider my position in regard to Eric and Marion. At present the former knew nothing of my residence in the neighbourhood, or of the acquaintance I had formed with his cousin. His letters, always few and intermittent, had for some time ceased altogether. He was no doubt constantly on the move from one place of interest to another; so I had been unable to write to him the news of my appointment to Fleetwater, and, in the light of my recent discovery, I regarded his ignorance of my whereabouts as adding a fresh complication.
If what the Rector had told me was true, and Riverdale was really inclined towards Marion, then my own position was about as difficult a one as could well be imagined. Even a man more conceited (I hope) than myself might well have paused in the presence of such a rival. The very points in his personality that had won him my devotion—his beauty and charm and careless indifference—might well prove equally attractive to his cousin. Add to which, there was his future and assured position, both likely to tell with her father, if not with herself, to say nothing of the chance that he might one day win fame and distinction as a painter.
And against all these advantages, what had I to offer in competition? Nothing, I assured myself repeatedly, nothing,nothing. Only a poor curacy and a moderate competence, while, of personal attraction, in comparison with Eric, againnothing,nothing. But this was the least of all my difficulties—far worse was the being brought into competition with my best and earliest friend; in particular, the self-consciousness that I was a gainer by his absence. When she began to talk of him, as assuredly she would do, so soon as she knew of our friendship, how was I to answer her? My own warm love and admiration for his merits would second and stimulate her own. The temptation, I am thankful to say, was gone before it was realised. Never, not for one moment, did my heart fail in its duty to my friend. Never did the thought even enter my mind of depreciating or disparaging his merits that I might better my own position. To have entertained the thought as possible would have seemed to me an act of incomparable baseness.
However, the thought and self-examination induced by the difficulty ended by dissipating it.The position, I saw, was for the time being irremediable, and I ended where I might have begun—by recognising that my own part must be that of a simple and unprejudiced onlooker, till Fate should have taken the guidance in her hand, and shown me in which direction she intended to turn the scales.
And if my praises of him should help his chances of success—so let it be. Love is not always given to the most attractive and deserving, while if he succeeded, better he, I said to myself, than any other. For him, if for anyone, I could be content, I thought, to stand aside and efface myself, almost without regret.
Meantime my own love, I determined, must be a silent and unsuspected one.
And so, when I met her the day after, I told her frankly of all my love for Riverdale; how he and I had grown up together with every thoughtin common, how he had befriended me at school, and stood by me at College, and how the first great grief of my life had been our necessity of parting.
She was pleased, I could see, with all my praise of him; pleased too, I thought, that we had discovered this new bond of sympathy between us, and could discuss his career with a mutual interest in his success.
“I wonder what it was,” she said one day, “that brought you and Eric so closely together,”—thereby reproducing the very difficulty that had often puzzled me. “Your natures are about as far removed as the Antipodes. Unless I’m much mistaken, yours is a strong and uncommonly decided character, with the most practical ideas of what life’s work should be. While he is a dear old indolent dreamer, with all the fascination of modern Alcibiades, but with none of the energy orambition that characterised the splendid young Athenian.”
“Ah, there you are wrong, believe me, and will have to admit it before the world has grown much older. He has in him all the fire of the true artist,—latent it may be for a while. But sooner or later it’s bound to come to the fore. Even now he’s seeing things on the continent that will stimulate it into activity, and then he’ll show what’s in him and surprise us all.”
I had hardly entered upon this policy of masterly inactivity before I was tempted to abandon it. On a hot afternoon towards the end of June I was lazily whipping the Rectory stream on the chance of a trout, when Marion came down to me from the terrace, clad—or so it seemed to my uneducated gaze—in a diaphanous cloud of palest lavender, and holding in her hand an open letter. Then and there I became faithless to myconscience, for never had she appeared to me in prettier guise. Her dress—and I always like those confections of cloud-like tulle or gauze under whatever name they are scientifically known—was in perfect harmony with the cool green tints of the Rectory garden, while excitement, and she was excited now, always showed her at her best. It called up the tawny light that slept in her hazel eyes, and flushed the paleness of her cheeks, while the faintest breath of a summer wind saw its opportunity and played with the tangles of her ruddy hair.
Surely, I thought, I’m hypersensitive, even in respect for a love that has such claims on me as Eric’s. And after all, a man owes a duty to himself no less than to his friend.
“Good news!” she cried, as she floated to me down the steps. “I’m off to the archery fête, and am late already. But I couldn’t go without tellingyou that I’d heard at last from Eric, and, what’s more, we shall see him soon. He’s been through all the great galleries—Paris, Dresden, Florence, and Madrid. Since then he has been studying hard at Rome in one of the best studios. He says his master thinks a lot of him, and will dismiss him soon as needing only practice and hard work, which he can manage just as well in England as in Rome. Meantime, he’s having a really good time of it, making excursions between whiles to all the old towns, and especially to Aquila and the Abruzzi, where every step an artist takes gives him a fresh subject.
“But I must be off now,” she ran on. “Goodbye; I wish you were coming to the fête. But perhaps you are well out of it—(I thought the reverse)—for I know you don’t like archery. It’s too statuesque and Apollo-like for you—would suit Eric better, wouldn’t it? You would likesomething a little more real and murderous. By the way, I wonder you didn’t make a soldier of yourself.”
She left me almost bewildered by her beauty. And, like a true lover, I abandoned the Rectory trout to their own devices, while I mused and dreamed over my lady’s perfections. “Of course,” I said to myself, “Shakespeare is right, as he always is. Fancyisengendered in the eye; at least it was in my case; born before I had seen any reasons for its birth, in fact, in spite of many reasons to the contrary, as I recalled the well-remembered shock of Reggie’s love-scene. And it may either die in its cradle, or else turn to love, as mine did. Then how is it that the unattractive women find their husbands? I suppose there must be men to whom plainness, and even ugliness, can appear perfection. The answer is not forthcoming, and I give it up. At any rate, love’s a phase offeeling and an emotion (often untrue and misleading, by the way), not a deduction or an inference.”
And then a trout took my fly, and I left off dreaming dreams and landed it.
But her news had left me in a happier frame of mind, and I was already beginning to look forward to Eric’s arrival with a wistful eagerness, as certain to determine, in one direction or the other, this wearing period of anxiety and doubt. As a matter of fact, the issue was nearer than I anticipated, and events that followed rapidly had practically settled the decision before he came.
Ihadnow been some months with Mr. Richardson, and had gained a closer acquaintance with his methods and means of influence. To all sinners and backsliders who admitted their frailties he was lenity itself; albeit the sworn enemy, by instinct and persuasion, of those prim respectabilities who never do a wrong thing or (worse still in his eyes) never a foolish one.
For example. To a lad who had lapsed intovice with the hot-headedness of youth, he was a kindly adviser; but hard as the nether millstone to the lad’s father, when he found he had ejected the prodigal from house and home, and then taken credit to himself for having re-adjusted his household with the wisdom of Solomon.
Of his boldness in dealing with the difficulties of his creed, I had a notable experience in the summer days that were with us.
The evening was an exceptionally warm one, and he and I were lingering till late on the terrace, watching them carry the last loads of hay from the glebe that lay beyond the Rectory stream. Everyone was working his hardest, for it was clear to the least experienced eye that the fine weather was nearing its end. Thick rain clouds were gathering in the west, and occasionally dull muffled roars, heralded by distant flashes, ran round us on the level of the horizon.
The Rector, I thought, looked perturbed and anxious. At last he spoke. “I detest more than I can say that new machine which my tenant has introduced this year.” And he pointed to what looked like a threshing-machine that was piling the hay from a huge elevator on to the rick. “Of course it saves labour, but I’m sure it’s most horribly dangerous. It gives the men not a moment of peace to secure their footing, which is never too safe. If they stop for an instant, their work overpowers them. And what with the dust and the noise, and the hay-cloud in which they are buried, I wonder we’ve got along so far without an accident. It isn’t fair to ask a man to work under such conditions. Of course with a threshing-machine it’s different. The straw delivers itself slowly, giving the men time to place and arrange it.”
All at once, and even as he was speaking, thedin was suddenly hushed by the stoppage of the engine, and a silence, all the more palpable for the tumult that preceded it, fell on the crowd of busy workers.
The scene of intense unresting energy had been transformed in a moment into a still picture of arrested life. Like figures that the wand of some Arabian magician had charmed into statues, each labourer stood rigid at his post, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the rick where the nearest of them had gathered and closed round something that lay prone and motionless on the ground. Only the voice of the engine was heard through the stillness, where it stood panting under a full head of steam, as if in protest against the indignity which had so abruptly arrested its forces.
“Something of what I feared,” said the Rector, who was already leaving my side. “Pray God notthe worst. Will you wait for me here? Later on you may be able to help me. But for the moment I had better go to them alone. As yet, you see, you are a stranger among us, but one, I am sure, who will soon be a friend.”
“‘The only son of his mother, and she was a widow,’” I heard him whispering on his return, “and, what is more, the best of sons.”
“It was Harry Hayman,” he added aloud, “the lad I loved most in all the village, a splendid type of what is noblest and manliest in our country rustics. And the accident has happened precisely as I had expected. The boy had his station at the edge of the rick where the pressure is keenest and most dangerous, and at the last it overpowered him. He had called to them—just one minute too late, and I’m afraid in angry words—to stop the engine. Another victim to the press and hurry of existence, which counts a life well lost to save aload of hay. But you and I must see what comfort we can give to his mother. Thank Heaven, he was a good and blameless lad, and ‘as the tree falls there it lies,’ which means, I take it, nothing more than that death has worked no violent change on him, and that he has started anew with what advantage he had gained from a useful and unselfish life.”
The cottage for which we were bound stood at the edge of the village, midway between the Rectory garden and the scene of the accident. And as we crossed the Rectory bridge, intermittent flashes from the clouds that had gathered overhead threw into strong relief the half-completed rick, the engine that still sent upwards a thin thread of smoke, with the gaunt elevator at its side, out of which the wind flung casual wisps of hay, as if in futile effort to continue its arrested task.
The shadow of the accident was full upon us,and when the door of the cottage was opened I expected to see a woman bowed and overwhelmed with grief for a loss that had left her desolate indeed.
What I saw in reality was a stern hard-visaged woman, who met us with a clear unflinching gaze, suggesting a spirit that was up in arms against fate, and with no thought left in her for mourning or for tears.
“I am glad you be come, passon,” she said, “though ’tis little help you can give me, I allow. Kind and true-hearted you be to us all, and well enough we knows it. But even you can’t tell us, wi’ all your new-fangled notions, that the soul which passes to its God wi’ a curse upon its lips shall be saved in the Day of Judgment.”
It was the first and only time I was to see the Rector angry—angry and yet ‘sinning not.’
“Woman,” he said, “the wickedness is yours,”and his voice was hard and stern. “Stay your words before you utter that of which all the life that is left you will be too little for repentance. Have you no greater faith in God’s love and mercy than in your own? Nay—less, far less, for even you would have pardoned him. An angry word, that dropt from him in great stress of terror and excitement—is that to weigh against the record of a life that was a model to all of us in brave unselfish effort? And, remember, he has left his good name in your keeping.”
I confess that I thought him hard and unfeeling, hard almost to cruelty. But he knew—none better—the requirements of the case, and that it is worse than useless to treat with salves a wound that needs the knife.
At the door he turned and said, “I will try and do for you what Harry would have wished, and what he so well began. The lodge at the ManorHouse is vacant, and I think I can promise you the post. But never forget that it is for Harry’s sake I give it you—the lad I loved and valued most in all the parish.”
Thatsame night the change we had been expecting came on us, and a storm raged furiously till the dawn. Sometimes, but very occasionally, a summer gale will carry as much weight in it as one of its winter brethren. And, when this is so, it works far wider damage both by sea and land. It will catch our seamen, unprepared and unsuspecting, on a lee shore of dangerous approach, with some headland or cape to windward that bars their only path to safety.
Less dangerous it may be to dwellers on the shore, but not less dreaded. For it destroys,almost in a moment, the wealth of emerald foliage which Nature in her thriftiness had meant to last for six long months, to perish gradually in greater glory still of gold and scarlet, orange and russet-brown. And then one morning she wakes to find her handiwork destroyed, at a time when it is just too late for her to repair the damage. Nothing left of all she has been secretly and silently creating through the long months of winter, except a few torn and tattered leaves, which she will make all speed she can to discard, seeing that theirs can only be a discredited old age of uniform withered brown.
It was over a foreground like this that I looked seawards that morning.
Under my bedroom window two men were talking. “Aye, she’s done for,” said one of them; “it won’t be more than half-an-hour before she strikes. With only a rag of canvas upon her, and one of her masts gone, he’d better give it up andput her on shore as soon as he can find a quiet place. Though, for the matter of that, one place is no better than another, so far as their chance of saving her goes.”
“That’s just what he’s doing,” his neighbour answered. “Don’t you see he’s trying to push her along just outside the breakers till he can bring her about opposite the coastguard station, and then he’ll shove her on shore. I can see them watching and waiting for her; and they’ve got the rockets ready on the beach.” And they moved off quickly in the direction of their gaze.
Long before our party, which included the Squire and Marion, had reached the scene of the disaster, the busiest part of the proceedings was over. When she first struck, a heavy sea had canted her round and laid her broadside to the shore, where she lay, heaving and groaning like some living creature, under the weight of the seasas they struck her and then flung themselves over her in sheets of foam.
A rocket had carried a guiding rope well across the wreck and into the hands of the crew. Having secured it to the one remaining mast, they had attached the travelling cradle, and, as we came upon the scene, were one by one escaping to the shore.
Not a minute too soon. For the seas were growing heavier with the rising of the tide, and as each one struck her, the ship shuddered through all her length, while jets of foam that burst up through her decks showed that her timbers were yielding to the strain. Even as we stood watching her she rose on the top of a huge breaker, and, as she settled down again upon the bottom, her sole remaining mast cracked and fell, and with it went the rope and cradle that had wrought the safety of the crew.
Another moment, and, above the rush of wind and water, the plaintive howl of a dog reached us from the deck. A large black retriever had been fastened to the mast, and in the hurry and confusion of their own escape the crew had forgotten to loose him. He had waited most patiently, poor beast, while the crew were saving themselves, waited in the belief that his own turn would come at last. And all the while he had never uttered a sound, though the seas that swept over the wreck must almost have drowned or strangled him.
But now that he felt he was abandoned by the crew, fear had fallen on him, which became panic when the mast to which he was tethered crashed down at his side, leaving only the stump standing to which he had been chained. We could see him struggling violently as the seas swept over him, while now and again he uttered a piteous howl, looking appealingly landwards as if to call attentionto his despair. His terror wrought painfully on all our hearts. It was no sight for a woman to see, and I shuddered to think that Marion was there to see it.
“Oh! it’s too cruel,” she cried. “Will no one, no one save him? I would give anything to see him safe.”
“Anything? reallyanything?” I asked, bending my head to hers, for the roar of wind and water made speech and hearing difficult.
She looked me steadily in the face, as if trying to read my meaning in my eyes. And then her own eyes fell before mine. “Yes, anything,” she said, and the word came to me like an echo of the question I had asked her, “anything that friend may claim and I can give.”
It may be that her answer determined me though I think I should have tried it, even without the incentive she had given. It was intolerable tosee the poor brute drowning before our eyes without an effort being made to save him, especially when he had faced the danger so bravely, while he had watched us rescuing the crew and felt there was still a chance for him of life. Only, if it was to be done at all, I saw it must be quickly done. Each sea as it came in was higher than the last, and a seam that had opened in her side towards us showed us that the ship was going fast.
My only chance, I saw, was to follow a spent wave and gain the deck if possible before the next one broke on her. It was all in my favour that she lay broadside to the shore, for her bulk acted as a breakwater against the sea, making it fairly calm water on the side of her that faced us. This would save me, I saw, from the worst danger of all, that of being carried out to sea by the retreating wave, though it brought with it another and almost graver peril in the risk that I might becaught and crushed against her side by the force of its retreat.
In any case now, if ever, my muscular training must stand me in good stead. First of all I wound a rope about me, leaving the shore-end of it in the hands of the coastguards, as I relied on their help to ensure my safety in case I should be overpowered by the rush of the retiring wave. Then I watched and waited my time while one, two, three seas broke over her; but none of them retreated far enough to serve my purpose. The fourth was the heaviest of all, and when it had spent itself, retreated further in proportion. Seizing the opportunity, I dashed through the lake of foam that lay between us and the wreck, and, grasping a rope that hung adrift over her side, and which I had long marked as my one hope on the chance of its being well secured at the further end, I swung myself by means of it up and on to the deck.
Only just in time; for as I landed on the deck a plank broke loose at my feet, through which I saw that her whole side seawards was gone, and that the cargo had nearly all washed out of her. The next blow, I saw, would finish her. So, loosing the dog and dropping him over the side, I hung for a moment while the wave surged round me before I lowered myself. And on the calm that followed the wave’s retreat the watchers drew me to the shore. And then, with a crash that echoed high above the storm, she parted amidships, and the sea poured in volumes through the rent in the severed hull.
I walked straight to the place where Marion was sitting with the dog at her feet.
A word of thanks—no more. But it satisfied me, for a light had sprung into her eyes that told me I had won her love.
Peggyhad come to my study in sore dismay.
There was to be a break and interlude, it seemed, in the monotony of our household arrangements, which, for myself, I was inclined to welcome. Peggy, however, regarded it with extreme displeasure, not unmixed with anxiety.
“You see, sir,” she said, “’tis Miss Gertie’s birthday next Tuesday, and the Rectory’s to be full of the visitors they’ve invited to come for it. Now, you’d think that woman Josephine would know better,”—Peggy always had a shy shot atJosephine whom she detested as a foreigner and interloper—“but no, not she. She’s chosen this very time to invite her brother—I hope heisher brother—no doubt because she thinks it will be fine and lively for him with all these rejoicings. And as they can’t find room for him at the Rectory, what does my lady do but coolly propose that you and I should take him in? Now, if he were a healthy honest Englishman I wouldn’t mind. But I can’t abide these foreigners who wont trouble to talk our language,”—Peggy always premised that to speak English by intuition was the birthright of every baby both at home and abroad—“and who live on toads and snails so that one don’t know how to cook for them.”
“Now, my dear Peggy, don’t worry yourself and me; I’m just in the middle of my sermon. Let him come by all means. I know a smattering of French, and shall be rather glad of a chance ofimproving my accent. Besides, I’ll order the dinners and take all the responsibility off your hands.” Never was heavy charge undertaken with so light a heart.
So Peggy retired, muttering her discontent in the little querulous tones, that, as usual, reminded me of a squirrel when it finds that it has been robbed of its hoard. “I’ll do my best; I can no more; but I’m not going to cook frogs and snails for any foreigner,” was what I heard more and more faintly as her voice receded to the kitchen.
In one respect, at any rate, Peggy was hopelessly astray. Josephine’s friend was an American, and came from Chicago, so that the hopes I had formed of furbishing up my French were doomed to disappointment. It was in a dialect which suggested no possible connection with the French that he opened the conversation immediately on his arrival.
“I don’t care what ‘tucker’ you give me, only I must have cereals.”
So he began.
In my ignorance I read the word “serials,” and imagined that what he wanted was intellectual nourishment while he dined, so I promptly offered him the choice between “Pearson’s” and the “Strand.” “Perhaps,” thought I, “he wishes to study the statistics—amply supplied by these periodicals—of how large an animal would be forthcoming if all the oxen consumed by England in a year were rolled into one.”
But he wanted nothing of the kind. “It is absurd,” he said, “the way you Britishers tamper with your digestions, filling yourselves with heavy, heating food, when all that nature requires is corn and oil and wine—and the less of the latter the better,” he added as an after-thought.
I cordially acquiesced, for he was not a man, Isaw, to stand contradiction in any form. But all the while I was troubling myself anent the dinner I had in store for him.
He had arrived late in the afternoon, and in my innocence I had ordered for him a typical English repast—soup, roast beef, and a ‘fondu’ of cheese.
He waved the soup aside impatiently. “I never touch soup,” he said, “it interferes with my digestion.” It was the same with the roast beef. But the Yorkshire pudding saved me. “I can eat the fat of the beef,” he said condescendingly—“spread on the pudding, it is highly digestible.”
“Rich,” I thought, “much too rich for the ordinary stomach.” But I resigned it to him willingly, yes, all of it—and it was a remarkably fat sirloin—if only because my own inclination did not lie that way. So we got on well for the first day.
But I still had something to learn. I had no idea that “cereals” comprehended the be-all and end-all of his dietary. So I thought to tempt him with what was really a very delicate menu.
A clear soup, red mullet, ptarmigan, with a savoury to follow, was the not un-appetising fare I set before him.
The soup he declined as before, with the air of one who refuses to re-open a question.
When the mullet followed I felt sure of his approval. Not the veriest epicure could have resisted the tempting aroma and the sight of the nut-brown envelopes which enshrouded the “woodcock of the sea.” But no. “This fish has not been cleaned,” was the objection; “how careless of your cook.”
Of course this criticism put him outside the pale. A man who would clean a red mullet wouldreject the soft roe of a herring or (on occasion) murder his mother-in-law.
“The fact is,” he repeated—this time a little angrily—“I can’t dine without cereals.”
My heart sank within me but I said with assumed confidence, “The cereals will follow later on. You see we outsiders like something a little more solid to begin with.” But my bravery was all on the surface. For how was he to sustain nature on one small savoury, even if he sampled the whole of it? If only I had ordered Peggy to supply the ample rice pudding or elegant dumplings of nursery tradition! But it was too late now, for the ptarmigan was already on the table.
“What, no greens?” he said, “broccoli, or beans, or at any rate cabbage?”
I represented to him with deference that none of these dainties were regarded by epicures as the natural concomitants of ptarmigan.
“More of your silly English customs,” he said, “to reject simple nourishing food, and heat the blood with these unnatural kickshaws.”
Whereupon a happy thought struck me, and I commandeered from the kitchen the vegetables which I knew were even then simmering to perfection for Peggy’s supper. A noble broccoli was the result—the very largest I ever saw—and reposing on the very largest dish. How his eyes glistened! It was transferred bodily to his plate, and, drenched in a bottle of salad oil, was, he admitted, no bad substitute for the “cereals” of commerce.
Again I followed up my fortunate idea, and defrauded Peggy of five noble apple dumplings, four of which he accounted for on the spot, and begged (with a smile of repletion which comforted me exceedingly) that the remaining one might be reserved to furnish forth his breakfasttable before he went his way in the morning. But the attempt to reorganise my kitchen on a system to suit his digestion proved too heavy a problem for Peggy and me. So for the remainder of his visit he and I went our separate ways, as far as the meals were concerned. At dinner he seemed happy with vegetables and puddings, and for the rest of the day he drank tea unlimited, and refreshed himself at intervals with apples, bananas, nuts and cakes, with which I was careful to garnish the sideboard during the remainder of his stay. “Monkey Brand,” I called him, and he did not resent the title, “being proud,” he said, “to resemble his ancestors.” For he was a kindly genial fellow, and never took a joke amiss.
Indeed, his simplicity and cheeriness quite won my heart, and reconciled me almost to the trouble of catering for him.
But Peggy was far less amenable, and never became tolerant of his ways. I believe she persuaded herself to the end that he was a Frenchman, who for some evil purpose was masquerading as an American, and pretended, from sheer ‘contrariness’ or worse, to have forgotten his mother-tongue.
Itwas Gertie’s birthday at the Rectory, and there was a sound of merry-making in the air, but what form it would take was held a secret from all of us who were not required to take an active part in its celebration. Only I saw great signs of preparation in progress both at the Rectory and the Manor House. Peggy’s aid was called in to help in the cutting and sewing of many mysterious garments. Music, too, I saw was to be held in requisition, for there was a sound of constant rehearsals in the Rectory and Manor House drawing-rooms.
But what puzzled me most was the refurbishing of an enormous array of old lanterns—not adapted to illumination or calculated to add lustre to the festivities of the day. No; lanterns these of a past and antiquated type, resembling in some degree the lanterns of horn which, as illuminators, have long ago passed out of fashion, and are only to be found occasionally in some stable or cowshed that has lapsed far behind the progress of the age.
Never did I imagine that female tongues—girlish tongues more especially—could keep a secret so rigidly. Not a word was let slip by Marion or the Rectory party in explanation of their proceedings, so all I could do was to possess my soul in patience, thankful that my own presence was not a necessary part in the due performance of these mysteries.
I have told you, I think, something of theposition of the Manor House. But of its greatest, and perhaps unique attraction, I have said nothing. In olden times a monastery of large dimensions had held possession of the ground that lay between the Manor House and the Rectory. Of this the Refectory was the only perfect fragment, a magnificent vaulted building just visible from the Manor House windows where it lay in the valley beneath. Built of some fine grey stone that had taken to itself all the colouring of which lichens are capable, it was tinted now with soft-toned yellows in every possible gradation, and, in the sunlight of an autumn evening, literally glowed in the warmth of the reflected rays. Only a barn now, and the labourers who went in and out of it, to store and stack the produce of the glebe, never bethought themselves of the glory from which it had fallen.
The river that brought us the Rectory troutlower down in its course had been arrested on its way by the monks, and formed a lake, with a tree-clad island in the midst, from which they supplied themselves with Lenten fare. On the ground that rose between the lake and the Manor, scattered fragments of ruins—here an unsupported arch, hard by a standing column or fragment of wall—with sarcophagi, at intervals, that had been removed from their niches and desecrated of their contents, all testified to the power and wide extent of the original community. These ruins lay within the precincts of the Manor House. But just outside the boundary, on the summit of an adjoining hill, there rose into the thin air the wondrous shape of a tiny chapel, beside the perfection of which even the Refectory itself looked coarse and material. Coloured by a growth of lichen of the same soft tones, and with all its delicate tracery untouched by the lapse of some five hundredyears, it seemed the product of some fairy hand. But the hand must have known its business well, for, in spite of the delicate workmanship, every needless point and pinnacle had been rigidly cut down, that the gales which fell full upon it from the broad Atlantic might find no grip or holding ground. Even the buttresses and gargoyles had been allowed no useless ornamentation or finish; all the adornment had wisely been lavished on the interior. It had been fashioned in one single nave, and the fans which sprang from the columns on either side gave a lightness and delicacy to the roof that minuter decoration would have only impaired, while a tiny tower, uprising at the end that over-looked the sea and pierced by a narrow winding stair, supplied just what was needed to break the monotony of the exterior outline.
It was to this wondrous place, I found, that the birthday festivities were directed.
As evening approached, all who were to take part in the ceremonial assembled at the Refectory. In what took place within, no outsider was allowed to participate. But at eight o’clock, and just as the moon was rising, a long procession of robed and cowled monks issued from the building, and holding, each of them, a lantern in his hand, entered on the slow and winding ascent that led to the chapel on the hill. And as they wended their way round and round the grass-clad cone, their voices came to us in slow and solemn hymns for the sailors on the sea. The course of time had been reversed, and once again, as in the days when the chapel was built, we saw re-enacted before us the ritual for which it was intended. It was difficult even for ourselves, who knew well and intimately every one of those cowled monks, to believe that we were not living five centuries before our time, and assisting once again in aceremonial that, in the early days of the monastery, must have taken place again and again when storm and tempest were raging. Only to-night there was no storm and tempest. The necessities of modern comfort and convention had so far interfered with the celebration, that it was re-enacted at a time when the chief requirements for its enactment were obtrusively wanting. And when the summit of the hill had been reached, we watched and waited till the final development came.
On a sudden from the tower that crowned the chapel a light flashed out and burned steadily from a brazier on its summit. Any sailors who were voyaging along that calm and moonlit sea must have been startled by a light that warned them they were approaching a rough and inhospitable coast, of which, in a brightness that was clear as the day, no ship could by any possibility havebeen ignorant, unless the look-out had been hopelessly and disgracefully incapable.
The light burned on for an hour, then vanished.
And the festivities of Gertie’s birthday were ended.
* * * * *
I was beginning to descend the hill among the more belated of the revellers, when a gentle hand was laid on my shoulder, and I turned and saw Marion.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Harold,” she said, “but in all the crowd and confusion you were undiscoverable. Birthday festivities for Gertie, and birthday festivities for you and me, dear—the birthday of our love.”
And then we dropped purposely behind the crowd, who were sweeping in all directions down the hill.
“Let us go back to the chapel, Harold,” shewhispered. “We may never see the view on such a night again. Even the tropics couldn’t supply a scene to smile more sweetly on our love.”
“No, that they couldn’t, dearest. What is it the poet says?—
‘Come away! the heavens aboveJust have light enough for love.’
‘Come away! the heavens aboveJust have light enough for love.’
Well, the heavens have been kinder still to you and me, Marion, and lighted us a lamp by which I can read every glance in your eye, and every smile on your lips. And are you really happy, dear, I wonder? I can never hear you say it too often.”
“Yes, Harold, happy as I never expected or deserved to be.” And then she would say no more—only drew closer to my side—for she was new and strange to the expression of her love. “By the way,” she added, “don’t you wonder how they got up the turret-stairs to light the lamp?I’ve tried them again and again and could never manage more than half of them, even in the daylight. Many of them are gone altogether, and all of them are crumbling and dangerous.”
“Ah! that was part of the secret, dear, they kept so well, though I thought that you at any rate had been entrusted with it. The girls, you see, wanted a man to manage that for them, and so they condescended to trust me with the business. There have been carpenters at work in the tower for days, but always in the late evening and when no one was about. And they’ve made quite a decent flight of wooden steps. Suppose we try them. The view from the top will be finer even than this; and, better still, we shall be alone together for once in the day.”
We did well to climb the turret, for the panorama all around us was clear as on the clearest day.
The chapel hill, on which we stood, rose fromthe centre of a valley which was itself encompassed by a ring of distant hills, except on the side towards the sea, on which two or three small steamers were passing, like flies across a silver shield.
All the deep places of the valley were shrouded in a moonlit mist. Only here and there a tree-top, or some ruined fragment of the monastery beneath, rose high enough to pierce the silver cloud. In the distance the hills shone bright and clear, their smooth and regular outline broken at intervals by rounded tumuli, fit emblems of the Mighty Mother who had taken her children back again to her bosom for their last sleep.
On the velvet sward below us lay the form of another chapel, designed, or so it might have seemed, in ebony or jet. So black and well-defined was the shadow that it seemed more real and substantial than the fabric on which we stood. Each point and parapet of the building was reproducedin clearest silhouette, even to the outline of the hideous gargoyles, of which our own two figures where we leaned upon the parapet might have been modern imitations in a less outlandish form.
At our feet stood the brazier, its weird and slender form reprinted on the platform of the tower, wherein a few live coals, remnant of the spent beacon-fire, still showed a dull and lurid glare. In the moonlight they shone like coloured fruits piled in a basket of ribbed and frosted silver.
“It might be the tripod of the Delphic shrine,” I said, “ready prepared for some solemn incantation. Suppose we try its efficacy, Marion, by swearing fealty to our love.” And then, with only the solemn hills around us and the silence of the moonlit night, my love and I crossed hands above the glowing embers and prayed that the flame ofour love might burn undimmed till the change which men call death should renew it in another and more perfect form.
“Love’s pious flame for ever burneth;From Heaven it came, to Heaven returneth,”
“Love’s pious flame for ever burneth;From Heaven it came, to Heaven returneth,”
quoted Marion, “which is true enough, though Southey was no poet; else he’d have put such a pretty idea in more poetic form.”
“I wonder how you came to love me, Marion,” I said, “especially as I am sure that Eric was my rival. And you know I’m nothing to him in looks or prospects or anything.”
“What, fishing for compliments already, are you? Though perhaps it’s true. He’s a dear old fellow and I love him almost as much as I do you. Only, you see, in another way. And perhaps for a husband one wants something to lean upon—something more manly, it may be, and less picturesque. You aren’t offended, are you, by theimplied compliment? And there was the wreck, and that settled it. You didn’t give me a chance. Why, I never look at Bruno,”—this was the name of the dog, for the captain had given him to her—“without thinking how you risked your life to please my idle fancy. Though indeed it was no fancy, for I should always have been dreaming of him if that poor dog had died. And yet, perhaps—perhaps—I cannot tell. Sometimes I think I might have ended by marrying Eric, if you had stayed away.”
A footstep sounded on the platform behind us, and there, confronting us as we turned to go, stood Riverdale himself. He had heard, I felt sure, Marion’s concluding words.
Ihadwon my mistress, but my mind misgave me that I had lost my friend. Not from any signs of disappointment on his part, or any token that the world outside us could have recognised. Even to myself, who had known his innermost soul for years, there were times when I could cheat myself into the belief that all was well between us. But, just as there are times and seasons when Nature’s face and influence seem out of harmony with our mental and physical being, even so, and quite as surely, itwas borne in upon me that his love for me was gone.
He had taken the news of my engagement well—too well, or so it seemed to me.
Perhaps the greatest charm of our friendship in the good old days had been the thought that I, alone of all his friends, had gained admission to his innermost heart. By all the rest of the world his easy-going air of calm indifference had been accepted for the reality. I alone knew what deep intensities of passion burned beneath that calm exterior.
And this, I take it, is the very highest crown and glory of a love—to feel that you alone have gained admission where no one else may tread.
Now, something, an indefinite something, had come between us. To all but me the change was impalpable; only, if possible, an added charm and courtesy in his relations with Marion and me.Nothing, I think, that she herself could realise or detect, for his manner towards her had always held in it a studied gentleness; only the gentleness was accentuated now.
But between him and me the veil had fallen. To those who did not know him, it would seem strange, no doubt, that Eric had not long ago declared his love. That he had never done so, I knew from Marion herself. Most affectionate, she said, most devoted he had been; but never a word that bordered upon love. At the last she had begun to doubt whether it really existed at all, especially when his letters that reached her were so few and silent on the subject.
But I, who knew him better than she did, saw in this very self-restraint and reticence concerning his feelings only an additional indication of their strength. His, I knew, was a singularly proud temperament, that would never have ventured torisk the final issue till he had well assured himself that failure was impossible. And for this assurance he had been waiting—waiting through all his studentship at Rome, rarely writing and never allowing an intimation of it to betray him in his letters. Simply waiting, till the artist-fire within him should have realised itself in action, and then offering his first great picture, together with the gift of his love, at Marion’s feet.
And then, just when he had realised his heart’s desire of fame, and saw the world’s honours placed within his grasp, he had come home only to find that he had been forestalled by me, and that he had lost beyond recall the greater prize of Marion’s love. Truly a test that might imperil even the friendship of a life.
I would have given much to prevent him, had it been possible, from hearing Marion’s last words on the chapel tower. Not that I could blamemyself in any wise. I had acted loyally to him throughout, and should have continued to do so, had not Fate on a sudden taken the arbitrament into her own hands, and left me no faintest loophole for deciding otherwise than I did. But considering that I had satisfied my conscience, I felt strangely disquieted by the result. Of the reticence I had imposed on myself through long months, and of my determination to await his return for the decision of the issue, he could know nothing. And if he had gained the faintest suspicion that I knew of his love, my action, I felt sure, must wear the appearance of one who had been deliberately working to supplant his friend; worse still, had precipitated the issue so soon as the rumour was forthcoming of his probable return. Worse, too, than all was the possibility that he had heard nothing of my residence at Fleetwater or my growing love for Marion. All this, though whollyunavoidable, as I neither knew nor could discover his address, must needs in his eye seem the very silence of premeditation, which had been waiting to make the disclosure till the result should be irremediable.
But if he had indeed heard our conversation, of which I could feel no doubt, he never by a word alluded to it. With the warmth with which we had parted, with the same he met me again. “He was glad,” he said, “that his two best friends were to be drawn closer to him still,” and, laughing in his old frank way, had added that “we two had not been long in discovering the affinity between us.” This faintest gleam of satire was the only intimation he allowed himself of the feeling that lay buried in his heart.
Eric had hurried his departure from Rome, because the summer heat had set in earlier than usual that year, and because the work still left forhim to do could be done equally well at home as abroad. Then he entered with spirit into the history of his travels. And how it was the Museum at Madrid, and the work of Velasquez in particular, that had fired his imagination and stimulated his activity to try and do likewise.
“You should just see his pictures,” he said, “and what that man can do. Why, his horses and riders come galloping to you out of the canvas! Even that scoundrel Philip II., perhaps the worst and basest coward that ever lived in history, gains something of distinction and nobility by the touch of his pencil. And he can paint you an atmosphere and distance in which a man can breathe and walk. And what does he do it all with? No flaming, gorgeous colours like Titian’s and Tintoret’s, but all in quiet greens and greys and browns that would be dull as ditchwater in any other hand. Opinions, I know, differ, but to meat any rate he has always seemed the greatest of Art’s great Trinity—Titian, Rembrandt, and himself. And to him I owe everything. He it was who read me the lesson that I have tried to learn—to decide what I wanted to paint, and then go straight for it, letting all the accessories and inessentials come in at the end where they can.”
Yes; it was another and a different Eric who was talking to us now from the one with whom I had parted nearly two years ago. The indolent dreamer of those days had been transfigured into the man with a purpose. And I hoped, as I heard him, that he had made a mistress of his art, and might find in his devotion to her the happiness which we are told she always gives to those who worship her with a whole and undivided purpose.
Three days later he left us, to finish, he told us, the first great picture he had attempted. It was already too late for the Academy, but competentjudges thought so highly of its merits that he intended to risk its first appearance in the almost fiercer light of a London show-room. “Of course,” he added, “you two must be the first to see it.”
Inthe general chorus of congratulation that welcomed our engagement I must include a letter I received from my erstwhile rival, Reggie. We had found time during his vacations to become fast friends, and he wrote to me from my old rooms in Trinity, where, by some strange freak of fortune, he was now installed.
“Dear Stirling,“I congratulate you heartily on your engagement to Marion, and think you lucky beyond the majority of mankind. If I hadn’t been her cousin, and much too infantine in years, Iwould have done my level best to supplant you. Peggy, I fancy, would have co-operated with me, as I am sure she believes even now that, if you had only gone the way of the other curates and left me a fair field, I should have won easily in a canter.“Not only do I congratulate you, but I also send you a wedding-present, which is unlike ordinary presents of the kind in that it will be valuable to you while it will cost me nothing. In fact, I am only presenting to you what is already your own property. The picture which I forward herewith was found in the cupboard of your gyp-room. If age is valuable as well as venerable, there is little doubt that I have been happy in the choice of my wedding-present.“You will forgive me, I hope, for my unseasonable jocularity. It is intended to comfort your heart by proving to you that my youthful affectionshave not been so seriously blighted as at one time you had cause to imagine.“Yours, without envy or uncharitableness,“Reggie.”
“Dear Stirling,
“I congratulate you heartily on your engagement to Marion, and think you lucky beyond the majority of mankind. If I hadn’t been her cousin, and much too infantine in years, Iwould have done my level best to supplant you. Peggy, I fancy, would have co-operated with me, as I am sure she believes even now that, if you had only gone the way of the other curates and left me a fair field, I should have won easily in a canter.
“Not only do I congratulate you, but I also send you a wedding-present, which is unlike ordinary presents of the kind in that it will be valuable to you while it will cost me nothing. In fact, I am only presenting to you what is already your own property. The picture which I forward herewith was found in the cupboard of your gyp-room. If age is valuable as well as venerable, there is little doubt that I have been happy in the choice of my wedding-present.
“You will forgive me, I hope, for my unseasonable jocularity. It is intended to comfort your heart by proving to you that my youthful affectionshave not been so seriously blighted as at one time you had cause to imagine.
“Yours, without envy or uncharitableness,
“Reggie.”
“The young rascal,” I muttered. “He must have known all the time—perhaps his sisters told him—that I had been a witness of his youthful escapade. Well, the lad’s got a sense of humour in him at any rate. But I wonder what picture he means? Oh, no doubt it’s the one that’s been in our family for a hundred years at least. My grandfather, I think it was, brought it from Spain, and thought a lot of it too; though why and wherefore, passes my comprehension. But it’s certainly old and dirty enough, as Reggie says, to be valuable. I was always intending to have it re-framed and always forgot it.”
When the picture arrived a day later, the first thing I did was to carry out my intention ofhaving it cleaned and re-framed. We had always supposed it to be the portrait of some cardinal, a faint glow of red being the only colour that had power in it to pierce the dirt of ages.
But now at last was revealed a face of marvellous beauty, and (strange to say) of a pronounced English type. The pale refined features and sunny hair resembled nothing that one encounters among the native types of Italy and Spain.
I should have put him down from his dress as an acolyte or choir boy, or, it might be, some cardinal’s page. But who he was, or how he found himself in Spain, or why he should have clothed himself from head to foot in scarlet, even to his very cap, it was beyond my power to fathom. It was a remarkable coincidence, too, that he much reminded me of a famous portrait by Bronzino that had taken my fancy at Madrid, in connection with which I had been met yearsbefore by the self-same difficulty, when the official catalogue, so far as I remembered, had been equally incompetent to solve it.
It was a mystery, furthermore, how my grandfather could have secured so good a copy. For the possession of the finest gallery in the world has never tempted the Spaniard of to-day to cultivate art, nor has he established in his capital city a community of copyists like that which flourishes at Rome. With such fine traditions of painting to his credit, he is therewith content, and a copy of real excellence, which this undoubtedly was, would, I felt sure, be wholly beyond the range of his capacity.
With the difficulties of the picture still unsolved, I dismissed it from my thoughts, merely telling Peggy to hang it in my sitting-room, where it would find itself in congenial harmony with Eric’sAntinous. Peggy, I could see, resented itsintroduction altogether, as savouring of Papistry and the Scarlet Woman, and would have preferred to turn it with its face to the wall; only I declined to consider her feelings. “I wonder what Eric would say of the picture? I’ll ask him some day,” I said to Marion, who was in raptures over the delicate beauty of the portrait.
My happiness during all this period, but for my anxiety about Riverdale, would have been whole and unalloyed. No one was more surprised than myself to find how many friends I had made during my short residence at Fleetwater. Peggy was the only one who held aloof and was chary of congratulation.
Naturally the Rectory girls were wild with delight. Hardly had they recovered their equanimity after the excitement of Gertie’s birthday, when, lo and behold, they foresaw in the near distance a vision of other and greater festivitiesthat promised to outrival even the ceremonial on Chapel Hill.
From the first the Rector had shown himself a warm friend, and whenever I was free of my duties in the parish, the chances were you would have found me in his company, either helping him to keep down the trout in the Rectory stream, or taking lessons from him in gardening, whereat Marion and I formed the students of his class.
“No arrangement—none, Stirling,” he said, “could have been more in accordance with my plans for the future. So soon as I am too old for work—and I’ve had a twinge or two of gout already—you and Marion will come to the Rectory, while I retire to a little property lower down the river, where I’ll catch all the trout that you allow to escape you in their travels past the garden. You know, of course, that the Park and Manor House are strictly entailed, and will go to a distantcousin. So, for the present, I shall consider that I only hold the living in keeping for you.”
Information privately received from Marion had left me in no fear concerning the result of my proposed interview with the Squire. From the first he had shown a warm liking for me—all the warmer, perhaps, because I was staunch, from his point of view, on the question of fox-hunting; thinking, as I honestly did, that the Rector was hardly so fair as usual in his denunciation of the sport.
I was to dine alone with him that evening, and when Marion had left us to our wine he came at once to the subject. “I am perfectly satisfied, Stirling,” he said, “with Marion’s choice. Personally I have a strong liking for you, and have no ambition whatever that she should make what is called a great marriage. Though I honestly confess I am somewhat disappointed that she hasthrown over Riverdale, who I am sure is devoted to her, and would infallibly have proposed later on. Indeed, it’s been a puzzle to me and to all of us why he’s held back so long. However, all this is none of our business. I would never prejudice a girl’s inclination by so much as a word. But, to speak candidly, I could not have given her to you or to any man who had not a small fortune of his own to start with. And this, not so much for her sake—she will have enough and to spare—as her husband’s. There is nothing that places a man in a more false situation than the fact of his being entirely dependent on his wife’s property. Indeed, no man of any spirit would accept the position.
“There is only one thing more, and then I will dismiss you to join Marion in the drawing-room. To make your income secure, I would suggest to you—simply as a friend—that you remove the part of your capital which you have in the bank—these new concerns are none of them too safe—and place it in some good security that can be recognised by trustees. And now, for I know you are longing to join Marion, I’ll only say that I congratulate you on your success as heartily as I congratulate myself.”
In the drawing-room Marion sang to me my favourite songs, amongst them, of course, ‘The Message’ and ‘The Requital.’ Last of all I asked for ‘My Queen,’ the song which above all others realises the entire self-abandonment which is the very hall-mark of love. For a love that is true and worth the name will impose on itself no restrictions and no limitations, giving itself wholly and unreservedly, without asking the reason why and wherefore, to the object of its worship.
And then we wandered out through the gardens and the park down to the site of the monastery beyond, strolling in and out between the ruinedwalls and arches, while a nightingale, who night after night gave a concert to his mate at the same hour from the same tree, sang to us his own idea of love.
Not talking this time, either of us, as to the mysteries or pleasures of a world to come—too happy, I am afraid, with this one. And certainly dreaming nothing of a danger that was already drawing nearer and still nearer with the intent to wreck our happiness.