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-The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Chapel on the Hill, by Alfred Pretor
-
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-
-Title: The Chapel on the Hill
-
-
-Author: Alfred Pretor
-
-
-
-Release Date: September 26, 2020  [eBook #63310]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-
-***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHAPEL ON THE HILL***
-
-
-Transcribed from the 1904 Deighton Bell & Co. edition by David Price,
-email ccx074@pglaf.org
-
-
-
-
-
-                                THE CHAPEL
-                               ON THE HILL
-
-
-                                * * * * *
-
-                                    BY
-
-                              ALFRED PRETOR
-
-               FELLOW OF ST. CATHARINE’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
-                         AUTHOR OF ‘RONALD AND I’
-
-                                * * * * *
-
-                 “Some falls are means the happier to arise.”
-
-                                              —_Cymbeline_, IV. 2 _ad fin_
-
-                                * * * * *
-
-                                CAMBRIDGE
-                           DEIGHTON BELL & CO.
-                        LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS
-                                   1904
-
-                                * * * * *
-
-                                CAMBRIDGE
-                        PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER
-                             ALEXANDRA STREET
-
-                                * * * * *
-
-_To the_
-_memory of_
-‘_Judy_’
-(_Ob. Aug. 27_, _1904_)
-
-    “A soul she had on earth.”
-
-                                                                   —BYRON.
-
-    “The more I learn to know man, the better I like dogs.”
-
-                                                      —GERMAN PHILOSOPHER.
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE
-
-
-_To those_, _I think a lessening number_, _who may find themselves at
-variance with_ “_my Rector’s_” _theology_, _I tender the following
-quotation from one of the ablest and deepest thinkers of the past
-century_:
-
-    “If, instead of the ‘glad tidings’ that there exists a Being in whom
-    all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive exist
-    in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is
-    ruled by a Being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we
-    cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except
-    that ‘the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving’
-    does not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as
-    I may.  But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same
-    time call this Being by the names which express and affirm the
-    highest human morality, I say in plain terms I will call no being
-    good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my
-    fellow-creatures.”—J. S. MILL, _Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s
-    Philosophy_, pp. 102, 103 (Criticism of Mansel).
-
-_I have omitted from the above the author’s peroration_, _which is
-couched in language too strong to suit the taste of the present
-generation_.
-
-_That the Bible is our one and only true guide_, _we believe_; _but we
-are nowhere instructed to make an idol and a fetish of the form in which
-it is presented_.  _It was written to suit all times_; _we must read it
-in the language of to-day_.
-
-_In the controversy between the Squire and himself the Rector is by no
-means guiltless of plagiarism_.  _Ford_, _who knew Spain as intimately as
-an Englishman can ever know it_, _advances the self-same arguments in his
-comments on the national sport_.
-
-_A word more and I have done_.  _It is reported on good authority that
-one of our greatest divines—the author of_ ‘Butler’s Analogy’—_held a
-confident belief in the re-existence of animals_.  _They share our doom
-of suffering and death_: _why not our promise of happiness beyond_?
-_They have done nothing to forfeit their reward_.
-
-                                                                   _A. P._
-
-CAMBRIDGE,
-         _August_, 1904.
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION
-
-
-RIVERDALE and I—to wit one Harold Stirling by name—had been close friends
-almost since life began, at our private school, our public school, and
-again at college.  And we were meeting now for the last time as
-undergraduates in Riverdale’s rooms at Cambridge.  For the choice that
-comes, once at any rate in a lifetime, to all, had come to us, and we had
-chosen divergent, to some it would appear antagonistic, careers.
-
-To judge from his personal appearance, Riverdale at any rate had chosen
-wisely for himself when he elected to become an artist.  Smoking at his
-ease, in a picturesque environment of flowers and ferns, pictures and
-statuettes, he looked like what he was—a well-to-do indolent dreamer, who
-might possibly succeed as a painter, but would never make much of life in
-any other line.  Fortunately for him he had no need to trouble himself
-about the future.  A kindly fate had settled all this in advance, when
-his only surviving relative, an uncle, had made him a comfortable
-allowance of a thousand a year, adding the still more comfortable
-assurance that the family estate of Riverdale should be his when the time
-came that he himself should have no further use for it.
-
-Study him, as the glow from a reading-lamp falls full on his features,
-and you will say that his personality is concentrated in his eyes.
-Sapphire blue they would have been called by a casual observer, but it
-always seemed to me that they held in them a deeper tint, as of violet or
-purple.  But whatever their colour, they are about as rare in humanity as
-is a blue rose or a green chrysanthemum among the creations of the floral
-world.  Not that they betoken much character, I think.  It is simply
-their beauty, and perhaps their rarity, that constitutes the attraction.
-At any rate, veiled by long lashes, and set in Italian features, as was
-the case with Riverdale, it is impossible to hold them indicative of
-energy or activity in life.
-
-It was a strange coincidence that had made bosom friends of two natures
-so antagonistic, to all appearance, as Riverdale’s and mine.  But it was
-a coincidence that occurs oftener than would at first sight seem
-possible.  Perhaps it is explicable by the well-known theory that every
-character is on the search for its complement.  If so, it may well be
-that my own sturdy directness found its natural relaxation in the
-captivating indifferentism of my friend.  Anyhow, the companionship had
-begun early at school, where a mutual admiration for one’s opposite is
-often the secret of a lifelong friendship.  And as Riverdale’s good looks
-and careless insouciance had always been found irresistible, it was my
-own commonplace personality that was envied by my schoolfellows for the
-dignity it had acquired by his friendship.
-
-And now that I have given you an idea of my friend, let me for once
-attempt the impossible and try to describe myself.  An athlete I think I
-may call myself, for I have raced and rowed and played cricket and
-football ever since I was a boy of ten—of the type which is welcomed in
-all our schools as the recognised trainer of youth.  Not so very plain, I
-hope, and certainly well set up in the way of muscles and sinews.  But
-quite as certainly not in any way striking like Riverdale, and without
-the faintest pretension to anything remarkable in the direction of
-beauty.  Finally, and to complete the portrait, fair in complexion, with
-blue eyes and a slight tendency to freckles, which I abominate.  In all
-respects a worthy foil to Riverdale’s dreamy picturesqueness.
-
-Left an orphan at an early date, with a comfortable income of £300 a
-year, I had never known the want of money, though I had no large balance
-to waste on the luxuries that had become necessaries to my friend.
-Without any real talent, and notwithstanding my devotion to athletics, I
-had taken a fair degree, and learned something of theology under the
-guidance of one of the leading minds at Cambridge.  Only as yet I had
-come to no conclusions outside the main doctrines of our faith; and to
-what end my views were shaping themselves I had never paused on my way to
-consider.  Experience and circumstances, as they developed themselves,
-would, I supposed, answer the question, and, having been confronted as
-yet by no definite difficulties, I had not troubled to bethink me how I
-should meet them.
-
-“And now tell me, Eric,” I asked, “where are all the Cupids and Psyches
-and Fauns to go while you are painting dusky Venetians and the
-fair-haired beauties of Genoa?”
-
-“Oh, I’ve taken a flat, Harold, in a house overlooking Battersea Park,
-and they’ll all be transferred there as soon as I am off to-morrow.  By
-the way, you must look in on them now and then, and see that they are all
-right.  And you must have that little gladiator I brought from Rome for
-yourself.  It would never do to separate you, for I’m sure you’d never be
-happy without him.  Rather like you, I think he is, with his steady
-sturdy gaze, as if he knew he had a tough business before him, but
-intended to make the best of it, and worry through.  Lucky we weren’t
-born in each other’s shoes, any way for me, Harold.  I couldn’t have
-faced life without funds, but should have drifted down and down till I
-ended the business with a dose of morphia.”
-
-“What nonsense, Eric.  I do wish you wouldn’t cheapen yourself like that.
-You’ve talent enough for both of us, and will be exhibiting in the
-Academy while I’m a country curate, and a poor one at that.  By the way,
-if you don’t mind, I’d sooner have that Antinous than the gladiator.  I
-don’t particularly want a replica of myself, if it’s all the same to you,
-while you might have posed for the Antinous, if you’d been handy; and it
-will be better than nothing to have it to look at when I haven’t got the
-original on the other side of the table.  And now, old friend, good-bye.
-It’s past twelve already, and I’ve all my packing to do before the
-morning.  For I shall be off long before a sybarite like you thinks of
-stirring.  Let me hear from you now and then, and don’t let the foreign
-signoras and Roman models steal all your heart from me.”
-
-The next day we had parted; he to enjoy life and study art in all the
-best galleries on the continent, and I to prepare myself for Ordination
-in a quiet village of the West.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-
-IT was a cheerful scene on which my eye rested as I looked out upon it
-from the Rector’s study, while awaiting my introduction to the Rector
-himself.  Two large bay windows opened on a terrace, from which a short
-flight of steps led down to a lawn, fringed with gaily-coloured flower
-beds.  Through the open windows streamed into the room a veritable flood
-of light and air, creating an atmosphere in which sadness and depression
-would have been hopelessly out of place.
-
-“Impossible,” I murmured, “to write a gloomy Calvinistic sermon in a room
-like this, though it’s strange, by the way, that his letters should have
-told me nothing of his views.”
-
-The emerald lawn in the foreground contrasted pleasantly with the violet
-haze that rested on the far horizon, and the very air itself seemed
-steeped in quiet and repose.  Only the song of birds and the mysterious
-hum of insect-life broke the stillness of the summer day, to which the
-chafing of a trout stream, as it murmured over its rocky bed at the foot
-of the Rectory garden, sounded a soft accompaniment.
-
-And out past the Rectory grounds, past the cheery meadow-land beyond,
-where reaping was now in progress, I caught a glimpse of the far off sea
-and the Isle of Portland lying on the line of the horizon, with a
-delicate veil of summer gauze folded about its head.  The charm of it all
-wove a spell upon me like a dream.
-
-“If the Rector is as nice as his Rectory, I shall have a pleasant time of
-it,” I said to myself.  And the next moment the unspoken thought was
-answered in the affirmative, for I felt my hand warmly grasped by the
-gentlest-looking and most benevolent of men.  And my heart went out to
-him on the instant, as to one whose help and guidance I knew would never
-fail me, even when my work under him should be ended, and, whether for
-good or evil, laid behind me among the retrospects of life.
-
-“Yes, you’ll do,” he said, after studying me keenly for half-a-minute
-with eyes that pierced me through and through.  “You look as if you’d
-work hard in the right way, and make friends with my villagers and
-parishioners.  They are a queer lot—to be led, not driven.  Above all,
-you look as if you had no foolish fads or fancies—the only things I can’t
-tolerate when there is so much real work to be done.  And you’ll be
-content to do it closely on the lines laid down for us all in the Sermon
-on the Mount, before Christianity, as Christ left it, had lost its
-identity among a crowd of sects and superstitions.  By the way, you must
-have been surprised, I imagine, that I asked no questions in my letters
-as to your opinions, and gave you no hints about my own.
-
-“The fact is,” he continued, “I care more for what a man does than for
-what he thinks, and if you will look after my cottagers, soul and
-body—beginning with the body first—you and I will get on well together,
-no matter what opinions you hold on all the open questions of the day.
-Of course I don’t use the term ‘open’ of anything plainly taught us in
-the Gospel narrative and the precepts of our Church.  Though even the
-latter, as it seems to me, might have been conceived in a somewhat wider
-spirit without being wide enough to embrace the Christianity of Christ.
-And for this reason I am altogether opposed to commissions and enquiries
-of any kind that might impose still further limits and restrictions where
-He Himself has made none.  What are wanted for the Church are active
-energetic workmen, and the wider the doors are thrown open the more of
-them we shall get for the work.  Think what missionary effort itself
-could accomplish if all its labourers were content to waive, one and all
-of them, their private specifics, and preach only the clear unquestioned
-truths which the Master Himself has sanctioned.
-
-“On all questions but these you may hold what theories you will—that the
-world was created in six days or in six times as many millions of years;
-that the Old Testament miracles were literal facts, or allegories for the
-suggestion of much-needed truths.  And you may hold, if you will, that no
-creature that has life will perish.  We are told, are we not? that He
-‘will save both man and beast,’ which means, if its means anything, that
-other creatures besides man will have a portion in the future state.
-
-“But think well and carefully before you teach an Eternity of Punishment.
-The responsibility of doing so is far too grave to be carelessly incurred
-in the light of a wider and clearer-sighted knowledge.  Almost it seems
-that the guess which Charlotte Brontë hazarded in the mouth of one of her
-characters will before long have crystallized into doctrine: ‘No; I
-cannot believe that.  I hold another creed, which no one ever taught me,
-and which I never mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling,
-for it extends hope to all; it makes eternity a rest—a mighty home, not a
-terror and an abyss.’
-
-“Above all things, do not confuse your mind and paralyse your energies
-with the question, so all-engrossing now-a-days, of the co-existence of
-good and evil, of joy and sorrow, in the world, which is after all no
-mystery at all.  Or, if there be a mystery, surely it lies in the fact
-that anyone should have thought a world of infinite perfection possible.
-Why, the fallacy was refuted by Plato himself, to whom it was a
-self-evident truth that the creations of The Infinite must needs be
-finite and imperfect: in other words, not ‘infinitely’ but only ‘very’
-good.
-
-“Limitation, imperfection and (by consequence) evil, with their natural
-development in sin and suffering and death, were the inevitable portion
-of created life, but accompanied (thank heaven!) with a birthright of
-possibilities for good, that, rightly used here and hereafter, shall make
-us worthy of association, at the last perhaps of union, with the Infinite
-Itself.
-
-“Forgive me if my sermon has wearied you.  I can at any rate summarise it
-in brief.  Teach mainly what has come to us directly from our Master’s
-lips—first and foremost, the paramount duty of unselfishness; it embodies
-the whole duty of man to man, and a part at least of his duty to his
-Creator.  And remember that those who came after Him were after all but
-men, not exempt from the bias of inclination and judgment, who sometimes
-(it is quite possible) may have obscured where they thought to enlighten.
-To be followed therefore with all care and caution whenever they defined
-or limited what He left wide enough to embrace the world.
-
-“Of course you will dine with me to-night,” he added cheerily, “and I’ll
-try to make amends for the penance I have inflicted on you.  Besides, I
-want your opinion on the trout from the Rectory stream.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-
-LIKE his brother at the Manor House hard by, my Rector, Mr. Richardson,
-was a widower, having lost his wife only six months before my arrival.
-His family was comprised of four children, whose ages descended by even
-gradations from Reginald, the eldest, a handsome lad of eighteen whose
-school-life had just ended, down to Aggie the youngest, a wild little
-maiden of twelve.
-
-As yet their characters were still unformed, and had been entrusted for
-their development to a clever little Belgian, Josephine Armand by name,
-who, in addition to the superintendence of their education, managed the
-Rector’s household for him, and ruled the domestics with a rod of iron.
-
-On the day after my arrival I was studying the church and the streets of
-the village, which radiated like a fan from the foot of the hill where I
-stood, when I was met by Reginald who had dined with us the evening
-before.  He was to start early the next day for the continent, where he
-was to pick up what foreign languages he could before he entered at
-Cambridge in the following October.
-
-By the gate of the churchyard, through which we passed to the Rectory,
-stood a time-worn placard requesting visitors not to touch any of the
-flowers “excepting those on their own graves.”
-
-“A remarkable instance of realistic prevision,” said Reggie, “and far too
-good to be improved away.  Fortunately our villagers are not keenly
-appreciative of humour, else the best joke in the county would have been
-lost to us long ago.  And what are you up to, my children?” he added,
-looking in at the window of the Rectory schoolroom, where his sisters
-were busily writing at the untidiest of tables, forgetful for once of the
-glorious sunshine that blazed down upon the world outside.  “Some
-mischief, I’ll be bound, else you’d never be so abnormally quiet.”
-
-“You go on, and don’t disturb us, Reggie,” said Agnes, a lean wiry girl,
-with hair much dishevelled under the excitement of composition.  “We are
-busy preparing verses for the Attar competition prize, the new
-dentifrice, you know; you may hear mine if you like.  I go in for plain
-and simple fact—‘beauty unadorned’ you see:
-
-    ‘Carbolic, camphor, chalk are done;
-    Attar is all and all in one.’”
-
-“Admirable, Aggie.  Good solid sense, and no foolish striving after the
-artistic.  And now for yours, Gertie.  Being the poetess of the family,
-you won’t be content with stern simplicity like that.  There’s love and
-lovemaking in yours, I’ll be bound.”
-
-“Well, Reggie, I _have_ tried to add a little romance to it.  But somehow
-or other the teeth don’t seem to lend themselves readily to the genius of
-poetry:
-
-    ‘If Attar you had used in time,
-    Your teeth would have been white—like mine;
-    But now my love for you is dead:
-    Another, ’nother girl I’ll wed.’”
-
-“Bravo, Gertie!  You’re really brilliant.  ‘Time’ rhymes admirably with
-‘mine,’ and it’s a stroke of true genius to intensify grief by the simple
-process of prodelision.”
-
-“I’m glad you like it, Reggie, though I haven’t the faintest notion of
-what ‘prodelision’ means.”
-
-“And now, Nellie, for yours.  I’ve a rooted belief that yours will be the
-prize-winner.  You’ve a clever head on your shoulders, and can make a
-good guess at what will pay.”
-
-“Well, mine _is_ rather a bold venture, Reggie.  I want, you see, to
-combine the allied arts of painting and poetry.  There’s to be a picture
-of King Attar at the top, launching thunderbolts at a crowd of flying
-dentists.  Off they go in the distance, with their implements of torture
-in their hands, and at the bottom of the picture these words are written:
-
-    ‘King Attar and the dentists see;
-    Choose Attar—and the dentists flee!’
-
-But I wish I were handier at drawing.  King Attar in his chair of state
-is all out of perspective.  And the flying dentists look like a lot of
-daddy-longlegs; while as for their implements, they might be anything you
-please.  However, I can easily remedy that by drawing lines to the margin
-with an explanation of each particular instrument—‘these are tweezers,’
-‘this is a file’—like Melton Prior does in his war pictures, you know.”
-
-“Capital!  You’ve got everything cut and dried, I see.  Though, by the
-way, you needn’t talk bad grammar under the stimulus of composition.
-Didn’t your governess teach you that ‘like Melton Prior does’ is bad
-grammar?  If not, she isn’t worth her salt.”
-
-“It’s our French, Reggie, that troubles her more than our English.  At
-any rate, when she called us in to dinner yesterday, I said, ‘_Je suis
-déjà_,’ meaning, of course, ‘I am all ready,’ and she had just the
-faintest suspicion in the world that I intended it for a joke, and boxed
-my ears on the chance.”
-
-“And served you jolly well right for your cheek.  But I can’t stop
-chattering here.  Give me half the prize if you get it, for the
-encouragement I’ve given you.”
-
-As the door closed upon him something suspiciously like the sound of a
-kiss was heard in the corridor outside, whereupon the door re-opened and
-a laughing face peeped in at the children.
-
-A dainty little personage she was, to whom her cousin Reggie had long ago
-given his heart.  And a pretty picture she made in the school-room as the
-sunlight fell on her hair from the window opposite, and warmed its ruddy
-glow to the famed Venetian tint.  Not the very highest type of beauty,
-perhaps.  At any rate the best masters of antiquity would not have
-sanctioned the tip-tilted nose and over-large mouth.  Yet even they could
-have found no fault with the delicate poise of the head, the shapely
-neck, above all, with the tawny hazel eyes and slyly drooping lids; and
-you must have gone direct to the Faun of the Capitol if you had wished to
-rival the sunny brightness of the face, and the rippling smile that
-played about her lips.  Almost one expected to catch a glimpse of the
-pointed ears which Donatello was supposed to conceal behind his curls.
-
-“Well, you pickles,” she exclaimed, “and where’s your guardian angel
-Josephine gone?  Not left you to your own devices if she’s a wise woman.”
-
-“Oh! she’s off to the garden, Cousin Marion, ‘to cut a cabbage to make an
-apple pie,’ as Verdant Green said.  I mean she’s gone to dig up all the
-weeds and dandelions that lie handy.  ‘It must be,’ she said, ‘that I
-have herbs—savage herbs—to aid the digestion.’  Only the other day she
-half poisoned herself with celandine roots, which she thought looked
-promising for the composition of a salad.”
-
-“She’s as good as another gardener,” put in Gertie, “and does all the
-weeding.  Besides, she’s so beautifully tidy, and consumes all that she
-gets, like a well-regulated bonfire.  But do stay a minute and help us,
-Marion.  We’re making poetry to win the Attar Competition.  Do give us a
-verse or two; we’ve used up all our ideas.”
-
-“What I, my child?  Why, I never made a line of poetry in my life, and
-hardly ever remembered one.  See how the very thought of it has made me
-fly.”  At the door she looked back laughing:
-
-    “‘Reggie, you kissed me just outside the door;
-    Use Attar, or don’t kiss me any more!’”
-
-And, laughing still, she fled—fortunately without seeing me, who had
-watched the proceedings unobtrusively from the shelter of a friendly
-clematis.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-
-I HAD found lodgings with one Peggy Ransom, whom I soon discovered to be
-one of the chief characters in the village, as the Rector had reported
-her.  A tiny old lady she was, with a small and shrivelled face, like a
-Ribston pippin that had survived well on into April, and bright beady
-eyes that always reminded me of a squirrel’s.  She had, too, something of
-the same small creature’s animal vivacity, and talked in a queer little
-chirpy strain that suggested its note of satisfaction when it has lighted
-upon a particularly fine nut or acorn.
-
-In dress she was scrupulously neat, though in the dress of some
-pre-historic age.  For example, she never appeared without a silk
-’kerchief bound over her head, because, as she said, you never “knew
-where a draught might find you, and prevention was better than cure.”
-
-On Sundays and holidays she appeared resplendent in a black silk gown,
-which, she told me with pride, could “stand of itself in the days when
-the Rector gave it her”—how many years before I had never had the
-rudeness to enquire.  But it was still a fine article of raiment, and had
-been preserved with such scrupulous care that even in its old age it
-still retained its dignity.
-
-She was not, I found, a heart-whole admirer of the Rector’s opinions.
-“As good and kindly a gentleman,” she said, “as ever trod in shoeleather,
-and a real Christian.  But takes things a bit too pleasantly, I allow,
-and makes out the next world to be a more comfortable place than some of
-us, I fear, will find it.  Not but what ’tis better that way than to go
-about, as some of us do, with faces sad enough to sour the cream, finding
-no pleasure in all the gifts the Almighty has showered upon us.”
-
-She had lost her husband and all her family one by one, and found the joy
-of her life in the Rector and the Rectory children, who were always in
-and out of the kitchen, worrying her and hindering her work, it seemed to
-me, though she would never hear a word from anyone against them.  “Bless
-their hearts,” she would say, “I’d be a lone and dreary old body without
-them, though I do wish that child Aggie would come up the garden path
-like a Christian, instead of jumping over the flower-beds and tempting
-the cats to play hide-and-seek among my lilies of the valley.”
-
-But of all the Rectory children Reginald was her first and special
-favourite.  This was unfortunate for me.  Not but what I liked the
-lad—what little I had seen of him before he left for the continent.  But
-it was tedious to be reminded so often of his perfections.  Besides, I
-had a lively remembrance of the love-scene that had passed between him
-and his cousin on the day that followed my arrival, which for some reason
-or other I had thought out of place and unseasonable.  Though of course I
-had no right to begrudge two cousins the pleasure of a cousinly
-salutation, and perhaps, if Marion had been old and ill-favoured, I
-should have found no temptation to do so.  As it was, and for whatever
-reason, I was glad that Reggie was for the moment out of the field of my
-vision.  And I should have tried to forget the liberty, for so I called
-it, that he had taken in kissing her, if only Peggy had not so strongly
-insisted on the nearness and intimacy of their relations.  She was for
-ever harping on Reggie’s good looks—he was well enough I admit, but,
-after all, nothing to compare with Riverdale—and what a handsome pair
-they’d make, and how suitable the match would be.  “And Master Reginald
-just worships the ground under her feet,” she would add; as if I couldn’t
-see that much without Peggy’s interference.  And then she would look
-slyly at me and say, “I suppose _you_ think her good-looking, don’t you,
-sir?  The two curates who were here before you both made eyes at
-her—really Peggy, I thought, you can be a little vulgar at times—indeed,
-I may say it was for that reason they left us, and because they saw they
-had no chance against Master Reginald.  It is true they were none too
-well favoured—short and dark the first was, and the last one thin and
-scraggy.  Not but what he was beautifully fair in complexion.”
-
-For a while after this interview Peggy and I were at variance.  Every
-scrap of her information had been distasteful to me, especially her
-reference to the complexion of the curate who had preceded me, in which I
-detected, however gratuitously, an allusion to that slight tendency to
-freckles which I thought somewhat marred my own completeness.
-
-But on the whole Peggy and I got on capitally together, and she was in
-most respects an ideal landlady for a curate who was new and strange to
-his surroundings.  She had lived her life in the parish, and knew its
-landmarks as no one else knew them.  Besides, she amused me with her
-gossip, especially when I could draw her on the subject of the Rector and
-his theories, which she was never weary of discussing.
-
-“The worst of it is,” she would say authoritatively, “he’s none too
-strict, to my way of thinking, in the matter of church-going.  Only the
-other day he said to me ‘Yes, Peggy, church-going is good for all of us,
-not but what we may have too much of it’—did ever woman hear the like
-from her minister?—or rather we may follow it to the exclusion of better
-things.  To _do_ the thing we ought is better than to _listen to_ it, and
-I’d come down easy on any one who stayed away from Church to do a kind
-act for a neighbour.  Unluckily it’s usually to please ourselves, and not
-to help our neighbours, that we fight so shy of our Church.’”
-
-In her little peculiarities Peggy was wonderfully diverting.  For
-example, whenever she found herself in difficulties, as when the potatoes
-were hard, or the meat overdone, she would take refuge in the platitude,
-“I’ve done my best: I can no more,” thus casting all her care upon Fate
-as the inscrutable power which had wrought the mischief and must take the
-responsibility.  She was also a firm believer in the guidance of
-astrology, always planting her flowers and vegetables when two benign
-planets were in conjunction, and avoiding with scrupulous care the
-baleful influence of Mars and Saturn.  Only I wish she had abstained more
-wisely from words of which she had not mastered the meaning, as when she
-told me they had been “hanging a hamlet” in the Rectory garden, or
-“keeping the university” of the King’s birthday!
-
-There was something else by the way that gave Peggy Ransom a special
-interest in my eyes.  She had been housekeeper at the Manor House in the
-days of Marion’s youth, but had left it fifteen years before to form her
-own ill-fated marriage.
-
-It was not much, but I suppose it was better than nothing, for an
-incipient lover like myself to learn at first-hand what his lady-love was
-like in the days of her infancy.  But either Peggy’s memory was failing
-her, or her love for the Rectory children had made her forgetful of her
-earlier charge, for her reminiscences of Marion at that age were hardly
-of absorbing interest, being limited for the most part to a rambling
-catalogue of childish illnesses, and the skill with which Peggy had
-treated them.  But possibly in the very warmest heart it would be
-difficult to stimulate raptures by a record of what your lady-love was
-doing at the early age of five.
-
-This afternoon, for example, I had reached the stage at which Marion was
-recovering from a vague and mysterious illness called “thrush,” when we
-were interrupted by Aggie, who, as usual, made a bee-line towards us in
-flying leaps and bounds across the garden beds.  “Here’s a letter for
-you, Mr. Stirling,” she cried, “from the Manor House.  Uncle Edgar wants
-you to dine with him this evening at eight.  I told him you had no
-engagement; besides, Marion who came with him said she was dying to make
-your acquaintance.  But you must hurry up and dress for it’s past seven
-already.”  As she spoke, she had pounced on Peggy’s two cats—Toby and
-Sambo by name—who were reposing peacefully on the porch above our heads,
-and was off again home down the garden with the pair of them close at her
-heels, all the three doing their level best to break off as many flowers
-as possible in their passage down the garden.
-
-There were to be only four of us at dinner that evening.  In the
-ignorance of my heart I rejoiced at Reggie’s absence, little thinking
-that, before the evening was over, I should have been glad to welcome his
-cousinly attentions to Marion as a far less dangerous rivalry than the
-one which was suddenly to burst upon me from a quarter wholly beyond the
-range of my vision.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-
-THE old Manor House was looking its best, as half an hour later I walked
-up through the avenue by which it was approached.
-
-Planted against the south-west side of a hill, the ground gently falling
-away in front of it, it caught the evening sun, which burnished the trees
-on either side, and called up all the lovely shades of colour that lie
-dormant in old red brick, as the fires that are latent in opal and
-carbuncle wake up at the touch of light.  It is the fashion already to
-disparage Ruskin, and to find that we have over-rated him like so many of
-our heroes, but at any rate he was right in his devotion to the fine red
-brick of Elizabethan architecture.  One marvels how any one who has
-looked upon Hatfield or Aston can condescend to build in any other
-medium.  There is much stone, I know—Ham Hill by preference—that takes a
-lovely colouring from age, to which lichen and stonecrop and ivy would
-seem to have an instinctive affinity.  But the setting provided by
-Nature, and the requirements of our dull uncongenial atmosphere find
-their proper complement, I think, in a brick-dust red, just as surely as
-they repudiate its vile twin brother, the white and yellow clay which
-time in its progress only makes more and more disreputable.
-
-That evening, for the first time, I recognised that I was in love with
-Marion—a love that must have had in it no steps and no gradations.  The
-leap must have been taken at a bound on the day that I caught my first
-glimpse of her in the Rectory nursery, though I suppose time added fresh
-strength to my devotion by developing fresh features of sympathy and
-mutual interest.
-
-Our party, as I have said, was limited to four, and as the Rector and his
-brother at once paired off for the evening, Marion was left to my care,
-and our acquaintance progressed rapidly.
-
-Squire Richardson was, in character and even in appearance, a replica of
-his brother—a replica with a single difference.  The Squire loved
-foxhunting with all the devotion of a country gentleman, while to the
-Rector it was the one sport above all others of which he was intolerant.
-They had hardly sat down to dinner when the question turned up, and it
-was nearly over before they had threshed it out without the smallest
-advantage to either side.  The Rector was the assailant.
-
-“How, Edgar, you can possibly justify the cruelty of hunting an animal
-which you can’t eat, or use for any purpose when you’ve killed it, I
-can’t conceive.  Talk of a bull-fight—nonsense, why it’s a fair fight by
-comparison.  The bull is Master of Ceremonies up to the time of its
-death, and then it’s killed painlessly by a single blow.  And its flesh
-serves the best purpose imaginable, for it’s distributed round among the
-poor of the city, who, but for the chance, would never taste any meat but
-pork from one year’s end to another.  Only the other day I had a specimen
-of the methods of your sport.  A miserable fox that had been kept in
-agonies of terror for half-an-hour was hunted out of its shelter behind a
-rock, and deliberately torn to pieces in a shallow lake to which it had
-taken itself as a last refuge.  Justify that, Edgar, if you can.”
-
-“Nonsense, Walter,” was the Squire’s reply.  “The case was one in a
-thousand.  The sport, man, is the making of the British yeoman—breeds
-pluck and manliness and good riders and good fellowship, and a hundred
-other virtues.  Besides, what of the horses in a bull-fight?  Have they
-any of the sport which you tell me the bull enjoys?”
-
-“Well—no.  I grant you have me there.  Only unluckily it can’t be
-avoided, they told me in Spain.  There’s no man living, whatever his
-skill and courage, who could tackle one of those wild Spanish bulls if it
-came fresh and untired to his hand.  And the horses are poor wretched
-screws whose life is valueless and worse to them.  Besides, the bull
-kills them at least as painlessly as they would die by neglect or in some
-knacker’s yard.  Only it’s a sport that does not bear transplanting to
-the provinces.  You must see it at Seville or Madrid—or nowhere.”  And
-while the argument between them raged furiously, but in a perfect spirit
-of friendliness, Marion and I were left to ourselves—an opportunity of
-which I was not slow to avail myself.
-
-“Butchered to make a British holiday!” shouted the Rector.
-
-“Rather to give mettle to our horses and manliness to our men!” shouted
-back the Squire.
-
-With a smile of despair, and a nod in my direction that answered my
-unspoken query for permission to accompany her, Marion slipt quietly
-through the open window out on to the terrace, and I followed her.
-
-“They’ll go on like that,” she said, “till they’ve finished their wine.
-And the best of it is they never lose their temper, but end as amicably
-as they began.  It’s a really pretty object-lesson in Christian
-forbearance.”
-
-It was a glorious summer evening, soft and still, with a glow in the sky
-that might have been a reflection of the noontide glare, as we went down
-the steps of the terrace and across the velvet sward of the old
-pleasaunce out into the shrubberies beyond.
-
-“I wonder which side of the question you took at dinner?” I asked,
-anxious to find whether the advanced theories of the Rector had found an
-echo in herself.
-
-“Oh, on the question of hunting,” she answered, “I’m with him.  It
-savours, I think, of torturing.  Of course it’s difficult,” she added,
-“to see where to draw the line.  For I don’t think we were intended to be
-vegetarians.  We haven’t the proper teeth, have we?  And so it seems to
-me that his distinction is a tenable one, and that we may kill animals
-that are required for our use.  If so, one can’t reasonably object to
-shooting them.  It’s as painless a death as any other, and, for his own
-credit, the man who wants to shoot his game will collect the most
-experienced hands he can find to do it.”
-
-“But what about the side-issues,” I slyly asked her, “arising from the
-possibility that all these animals will live again?  How shall we meet in
-the next world the reproachful glances of the creatures we have slain in
-this?”
-
-“The matter doesn’t trouble me at all,” she answered, “it’s too remote.
-Perhaps only the ones we loved will take the forms again in which we knew
-them.  Perhaps that very love itself will be the constraining power that
-shapes them to our recognition.  And, after all, something of the same
-difficulty meets us in our own case.  So far as I can make a guess, it
-may be a world very like the present one.  Only the animals, I hope, will
-be nice and gentle, with all their bad qualities eliminated.  Anyhow, no
-one, certainly not my uncle, would pretend to have a cut-and-dried
-formula for mapping out the future world as they plan an undeveloped city
-in America.  All he says is that life, like matter, is, in all
-probability, indestructible.  Many persons, I know, regard such
-speculations as worse than unprofitable.  To me, on the other hand, they
-seem elevating and comforting.  And no one can say they are
-unwarrantable, when we have the account of the so-called Millennium to
-guide us.”
-
-A strange conversation, you will think, for the first evening of our
-meeting, and certainly not symptomatic of the love-making I foreshadowed.
-But, after all, a sympathy of interests is not a bad substratum for the
-growth of love.  Already I felt sure that this was no ordinary girl, and
-that she was deeply interested in her uncle’s theories.  Indeed there was
-perhaps just a trifle of subtlety in my suggestion that I was not
-disinclined to accept them.
-
-And so we strolled among the dimly-lighted shrubberies, chatting on less
-impracticable subjects, till the light faded out of the sky, and the
-shadows fell, and the Squire shouted a summons to us to join them in the
-drawing-room.
-
-The ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ for and against foxhunting having been exhausted
-over their wine, the Squire and the Rector were now deep in discussion
-over matters affecting the village.  Now and again I heard references to
-a certain mysterious council, to a meeting of which my attendance had
-been requested for the following day.  The Rector had only smiled when he
-gave me the message, advising me to attend, and adding a promise of
-amusement.
-
-“I wonder why you tolerate that old institution,” said the Squire, “it’s
-purely ridiculous, and only brings contempt on the parish.”
-
-“It’s just because it is old, Edgar, that I tolerate it—and also
-absolutely harmless.  The fact is I’m fearfully conservative, and never
-meddle with old institutions if I can possibly avoid it.  Besides, the
-members are all of them very old men, who would be sadly at a loss if
-they missed their weekly reunion.  But they are to elect no new members,
-and, as it is, I revise and reverse their resolutions, when necessary.
-So it only means they have the pleasure of passing them.”
-
-Something like the above I heard from time to time in the intervals of
-Marion’s singing.  But I had little thought to spare on it.  My whole
-attention was absorbed in a voice and execution that would have held
-their own in any London concert-room.
-
-It was a pure soprano, of the finest quality, that had been splendidly
-trained (I heard afterwards) under the best masters of Leipzig and
-Dresden.  She began with Tosti’s familiar ballad ‘For ever and for
-ever’—a song of atrociously bad sentiment, but wedded to music that fits
-it ‘like a glove.’  Only one other writer, within my own range of
-knowledge, has realised with such pathos the depths of an infinite
-despair, and, if only for the closing scenes of ‘Cometh up as a Flower’
-and ‘Good-bye Sweetheart,’ their authoress should stand not very far
-lower than the topmost pinnacle of Fame.  Then she passed to a higher
-class of music and sang Blumenthal’s ‘Message’ and ‘Requital.’  And my
-wonder was that even habituation could have rendered the squire and his
-brother so insensitive as to prefer the discussion of their parochial
-trivialities.
-
-I was glad that no conversation followed when she had ended.  Almost in
-silence, which I could see she appreciated better than words, we parted.
-It was only as I turned to say good-bye that my eye rested for a moment
-on a photograph which stood on a small table in a corner near the music
-stand.  It was a portrait of Riverdale, and the companion picture stood
-always before my eyes on my writing-table at home.  So I had gained a
-fresh lesson in the disquietudes of love.  In my case, at any rate, its
-course was not to lie in smooth untroubled waters.
-
-As soon as we had started on our walk back to the village, I questioned
-the Rector concerning my discovery.  “What, you know Riverdale?” he
-answered, “and well enough to call him your dearest friend?  Verily the
-world is small indeed, as wiser men than I have said.  He’s a distant
-cousin of Marion’s, and, as soon as his work on the continent is ended,
-this will be one of the first places that will see him.  For we are all
-devoted to him, and look forward to some faint reflection of his glory
-when he shall have become a well-known artist.  Besides, he was always
-rather taken with Marion—a suitable match—very—supposing it comes off,
-and I think, I may almost say I’m sure, it will.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-
-THE following evening, punctually at eight o’clock, I presented myself at
-the door of the Council Chamber.  But the comedy which I had been
-promised was not forthcoming.  To the surprise of all of us, a tragedy
-was represented in its place.
-
-It was only a self-constituted Council of four, and had nothing to do
-with roadways and sanitation.  And it met in the village inn of
-Fleetwater on a Saturday night, as it had met in the same room at the
-same time for fifty years previously.  It was deliberative rather than
-executive in character, for its one ostensible function was to select the
-hymns for the Sunday services.  And when this was done it resolved itself
-into a committee for discussing the affairs of the parish and the nation
-at large.
-
-“’Twill be a privilege for ye, Master Stirling, to mix for onst wi’ men
-as be so much older an’ wiser nor yerself.  For wi’ all the book-learnin’
-that has been yours at school and college, ’tis nowt but age an’
-experience as gi’es the true wisdom.  Life must be well nigh ended afore
-as ever we begins to see the drift an’ bearin’ on’t.  An’ so the young
-can’t never be wise, though, ’tis true, the aged may sometimes be
-foolish.”
-
-You will gather from the above that Joseph Weyman did not begin by
-flattering me.
-
-The Old Inn where we met was a picturesque thatched cottage, that had
-crept up beside the churchyard porch, either to shelter itself beneath
-the churchyard trees, or to sanctify its reputation by the proximity of
-things divine.  And as it lay embowered in a valley three miles from our
-western shore, it was cheered rather than saddened by a gentle sighing
-from the sea, alternating at times with a deep and hollow roar when a
-storm was on its way towards the coast.
-
-Neither was the Council Chamber without a certain picturesqueness of its
-own.  Bare it undoubtedly was, for it boasted of only one small table,
-drawn up cosily across the fire, and flanked on either side by two
-settees with panelled arms and backs, designed apparently to accommodate
-the number of the Council; or it may have been that the Council
-pre-arranged its number to suit the accommodation supplied for it.  For
-myself, as the visitor of honour, one of those fine old chairs that
-surprise one occasionally in the humblest of cottages had been introduced
-from the adjoining room.
-
-Of course the Council could not deliberate without the sustenance of beer
-and tobacco.  And the smoke of continuous churchwardens (I include both
-the man and his pipe) had toned the colouring of the panels into a rich
-and tawny brown, from which the quivering firelight was reflected as from
-the ebon mirror favoured by Egyptian palmists.
-
-The proceedings were opened by our drinking the health of the King with
-solemn enthusiasm.  And then, before the business of the sitting was
-begun, a few words of general conversation were held to be admissible.
-It was a former Rector who formed the key-note of it, and a strange
-character he must have been if all the stories were true that I heard of
-him.
-
-“’Twas a queer christenin’ you had once in this church, Mr. Weyman, or so
-at least I’m told.”  The speaker was one Ebenezer Higgins, an Evangelical
-of the most pronounced type.  For though he represented only a minority
-of the parish, it was thought right that all phases of belief within the
-Church should be represented on the Council.
-
-“Aye, ’twas that indeed, Mr. Higgins.  You see, our old Rector was
-gettin’ aged an’ hard o’ hearin’, an’ when Lucy Stone handed ’n the
-child, he said in his easy-goin’ pleasant way, ‘An’ what be we to call
-’n, Lucy?’
-
-“‘Lucy, Sir,’ she whispered—for ’twas her first, ye see, an’ a terrible
-shy young ’ooman she were—‘Lucy, Sir—same as me.’
-
-“‘Lucifer!’ he cried, ‘’twill never do; ’tis heathenish, an’ wus than
-heathenish.’
-
-“An’ I had to shout in his ear, while they was a-titterin’ all round,
-till I hadn’t no voice left in me to lead the hymn.”
-
-“Reminds me, it do,” said Samuel Smiley—landlord he was of the Old Inn
-where we met—“o’ when we was marryin’ Andrew and Rebecca Blake.  Andrew
-was a shy man—a very shy man he were, same as Lucy Stone.  You remember
-’n well, Mr. Strong.  An’ when the time came for unitin’ them in one, he
-wouldn’t be pushed to the fore, nohow.  While his cousin, what was actin’
-for ’n, was that forward that any stranger in the church would ha’ taken
-he for the bridegroom.  So between the two on ’m Rector were fairly
-puzzled, and afore he saw the right on ’t—’tis true as I sit here—he’d
-married the wrong man to the wrong ’ooman.  ’Twas like to ha’ been a
-troublesome business for all on us, for once ye joins a couple, there’s
-no man can’t put ’em asunder.  An’ they two would never ha’ jogged along
-in peace an’ harmony, one with t’ other, as I knows, who’ve lived next
-door to Rebecca ever since she was a gal.  Howsomever, luck was wi’ us
-that day, for ’twas discovered in the vestry as how his cousin, who was a
-sailor an’ hadn’t come to Fleetwater not an hour afore, was married
-already, an’ had two childern.  So back us went into Church agin an’
-wedded the proper couple.  An’ rare an’ thankful we was to ’scape so
-easily out o’ what might ha’ made a tidy potheration.”
-
-“Aye, you’ve got the story right enough,” said the Chairman approvingly.
-“An’ now to business, if _you_ please.  An’ thank ye kindly, Mr. Higgins,
-I’ll take another glass afore we begins.  It isn’t long that’s left me
-for the drinkin’ o’ good ale, seein’ I was eighty-four yesterday, an’
-(thank God) never a drunkard, an’ not much time for it now.  As I told my
-old gran’mother what died at eighty-six, an’ was real afeard of a
-spoonful of brandy to stay her stomach: ‘Don’t ye be frettin’ yerself, my
-dear old soul, ’tis they as begins sooner nor you did what has cause to
-fear the drink.’”
-
-All had been peace and amity so far, but the discussion that followed on
-the choice of the hymns threatened to be acrimonious.
-
-“There be seasons,” said the Chairman reflectively, “when marriage bain’t
-that satisfaction as it ought to be.  ’Twas only just afore I came along
-that I said to my wife, ‘Mary Ann,’ says I, ‘I be that downhearted an’
-low-sperrit’d in my mind, for all the world as if I’d met a buryin’.  An’
-I see’d a magpie by hisself to-day, an’ I took off my hat to ’n, I did.’
-
-“‘Aye, Joseph,’ said she, when what I wanted was cheerin’ an’ cossettin’
-’long of my downheartedness, ‘Aye, Joseph, we be all on us bound to go,
-and p’raps ’tis yerself as’ll be the next.  ’Tis breakin’ up fast ye be,
-an’ no mistake, an’ ye looks terrible rough an’ aged, ye does.  I doubt
-as how ye’ll be much longer wi’ us.’  An’, to make sure as how I doesn’t
-forget it, nowt’ll satisfy her to-morrow but ‘There’s no repentance in
-the grave,’ or one o’ they dreary grave-diggin’ tunes as I can’t stomach
-no how.  She says as how the childern of the parish be gettin’ that
-oudacious that nowt won’t turn ’em from their wickedness but one of they
-scarin’ terrifyin’ hymns.”
-
-“An’ right she be, to my way o’ thinkin’,” said Ebenezer Higgins.  “’Tis
-nowt we hear now a long but o’ the marcy of the Lord—not a word of His
-judgments, an’ o’ the fire and brimston’ what’s in store for the wicked.
-Where be the sense, I axes, o’ strainin’ an’ strivin’ after the narrer
-gate an’ takin’ no part in the sins an’ wickedness o’ this wurld, if ’tis
-all one at the end, whether ye’ve been on the Lord’s side or on Satan’s?”
-
-“No, Mr. Higgins; I can’t go wi’ ye so far,” said Andrew Strong, the
-advanced freethinker of the parish.  “I don’t hold nowise wi’ scarin’
-souls into the path o’ peace.  An’ ’tis queer to my mind, that the ’oomen
-of all people, wi’ their tender hearts as wouldn’t hurt a worm, should be
-so set on punishin’ wi’ out no end to it.  An’ there be wiser men nor we,
-an’ our own passon too, as doesn’t find such doctrine written in the
-Book, save an’ except you twists an’ turns God’s word to suit yer own
-imaginin’s.  Bain’t reasonable, it seems to I, not to gi ’us another
-chance, an’ may be more nor one, same as you’d gi’ yer own childern if so
-be they crossed an’ shamed ye.  An’ we be told, bain’t we? as how there’s
-preachin’ to the sperrits in the wurld below?  Now where be the good o’
-preachin’, I axes, if so be that no good’s to come to ’m along o’ it?
-Why, even in this wurld taint no good beatin’ an’ bastin’ yer childern
-wi’ out ye throws in a word o’ hope to sweeten it.”
-
-“I think as how ye be right,” said Samuel Smiley, who was a trimmer by
-nature, and felt sure of his way now that he had a majority to follow.
-“An’ I gives my vote for ‘O ’twas a joyful sound to hear,’ an’ some o’
-they other lively tunes what leaves ye wi’ an appetite for your vittles
-and doesn’t curdle the very food in yer stomach wi’ terror.  An’ ye can
-tell yer wife, Mr. Weyman, as how we don’t admit no ’oomen on this here
-Council, no more nor ’postle Paul allowed ’m to be preachers an’
-busybodies in the Church.  Shame on me to say it, but ’tis my hope as how
-there’ll be a corner or two in Heaven where th’ ’oomen will ha’ silent
-tongues.”
-
-It was at this point, when feeling began to run high, that the situation
-was saved by a remark from the Chairman.
-
-“Heaven help us!” he said, “an’ who be that, I wonder, starin’ in at us
-through the winder, just as if ’twere a raree show or a menagerie?  I’m
-blessed if it bain’t old Bob (you knows him well, Mr. Smiley) what has a
-pension o’ five shillings from the Government—thirteen pound a year it
-be—an’ how he lives on ’t no man knows.  For ’tis too aged he be for
-work, an’ spends his time now-a-long in pickin’ up odds an’ ends what
-comes ashore wi’ the tide.  ’Tis miles he’ll walk for a few bits of
-timber or a coil of old rope as bain’t worth sixpence when he’s got ’em.
-An’ ’tis bits of firewood he’s got on his back now by the look on’t—from
-the wreck, I allow, what come ashore last week.”
-
-“No, you are wrong there, Mr. Weyman.  ’Tain’t wood from the wreck he’s
-got wi’ ’n now.  That be all fine clean planks, new as new can be, for
-’twas straight from Norway she came, wi’ as fine a lot of timber in her
-as ever I see’d in my life.  An’ what he’s got on his back be old bits of
-blackened wood what’s been floatin’ by the look on ’t for weeks in the
-water.  Though why he should ha’ been at the pains to gather ’m is more
-nor I can say, wi’ all that fine new stuff afore his feet, what’d keep
-all the parishes along the coast in firewood for years to come.  But wi’
-your permission, Mr. Chairman, we’ll call ’n in an’ axe him.  ’Tis a
-quiet God-fearin’ old chap he be, wi’ a friendly word for everyone.  An’
-’twere sorry I were when he left us an’ went to Bayview.”
-
-It was Samuel Smiley who left the room in quest of him.  “No, he won’t
-come in, Mr. Weyman.  An’ what’s more, I can’t get speech wi ’n.  He’s
-gone down along the road towards th’ old church an’ village.  But he
-turned now an’ agin as if he wanted a word wi’ us.  An’ he looks pale an’
-frighted like—or so it seem’d to I in the dim light—same as if he’d had a
-scare.  May be he _were_ scared to see us all seated so serious,
-discussin’ questions o’ the Church and Parish.  For he’s a quiet man what
-never intrudes hisself, ’cept it be to beg a plug of ’bacca now an’ agin
-when he meets one on the shore.  Seems as how chewin’ be his sole
-satisfaction.  Though why he can’t smoke his ’bacca sensible in a pipe
-like the rest on us has allus been a puzzle to I.  May be he got the
-notion in the wars agin old Boney, where he gained his pension.”
-
-Not sorry to be interrupted in their deliberations, for the question of
-the hymns had been practically settled, and discussion could only have
-tended to further embitterment, the Council sallied forth, and I followed
-in their wake.  We found the old man still lingering by the churchyard
-porch, but, as soon as he saw we were following him, he turned and
-continued his walk in the direction of the village, travelling quietly,
-it is true, but still at a steady rate that surprised me in so old a man,
-quicker by far than I should have imagined he could walk, especially when
-encumbered with so heavy a load.
-
-“Seems queer an’ strange,” said our Chairman, “why he don’t stop an’ talk
-wi’ us, when we’ve been old friends and neighbours time out o’ memory.
-An’ ’tis fast he travels for an aged man like he.  I be out o’ breath, I
-be, wi’ follerin’ ’n, an’ seems as how we don’t get no nigher to ’n for
-all our hurry-in’.  An’ where on earth be he bound for?  One’d fancy he
-were makin’ for the shore, unless so be he intends to stop at Widder
-Russell’s, for there bain’t no other buildin’ along the road, ’cept the
-old church, an’ ’tain’t likely as how he be makin’ for that.”
-
-But no; it wasn’t Widow Russell’s he was bound for.  Past the house he
-went, still onwards to the shore, ever and again turning to see that we
-still followed him, until he had reached the gate of the old churchyard.
-
-Of the old church nothing was left but the chancel.  The main building
-had been swept away by the sea in the hurricane of 1824, and not a stone
-remained to show where it had formed a continuation of the chancel.  Of
-all the eccentricities that accompany the action of water, none of a
-surety was ever more surprising than this.  Sheared as by a knife from
-the rest of the building, the nave had vanished; the chancel still stood,
-wreathed from head to foot in a draping of ivy, but without the
-displacement of a single stone, and as solid, to all appearance, as on
-the day of its erection hundreds of years ago.  Our parish services had
-long been transferred to the new church, safe out of harm’s way at the
-head of the valley.  But the old churchyard was—and is to this day—still
-used for interments.  And though the size of the parish has increased
-since then, there is no fear of its being overcrowded yet.
-
-At the gate of the churchyard he paused, and then turned into it, with a
-final look behind him as if to satisfy himself that we had not abandoned
-the pursuit.
-
-“Sakes alive,” said old Weyman, “if he bain’t standin’ nigh the very bit
-o’ ground as I’d mapped out in my mind’s eye for our next buryin’.  I’m
-well nigh scared, I be, by the thought that what we’ve been a-follerin’
-ain’t flesh an’ blood at all, but a sperrit.  Else why don’t he say a
-word to I, when he sees I be spent an’ weary wi’ all this traipsin’ after
-’n?  ’Stead of which ’tis speerin’ an’ pointin’ he be to that plot o’
-ground as if to show us ’tis there he be choosin’ a spot for his last
-restin’ place.”
-
-But no; again he passed on and out of the churchyard through another
-gate, which opened into the same road, and steadily pursued his way along
-an old smuggling lane which led straight downwards to the sea.  And when
-he had reached the water’s edge he paused—and vanished.
-
-Yes; the mystery was solved at last—the quest on which he had led us was
-ended and explained.  For there, in only two feet of water, lay his body,
-encumbered as we had seen it with its heavy load of timber, collected, it
-must have been, with infinite toil and, as we now realised, at the cost
-of his life.
-
-In default of all certainty, the theory was accepted that he had lost his
-life a fortnight previously, but where and how there was no evidence to
-show.  Probably he had over-balanced himself in reaching for a baulk of
-floating timber, and had been drifted by the ebb and flow of each
-recurring tide from the place of his death—no one knew where—to the home
-of his birth where he had chosen his grave.
-
-A humble example of the Irony of Fate, which on the day that followed his
-death had strewn his path lavishly with the objects of his quest.  Only
-he was not there to gather them.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-
-IT was 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, again nothing, _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 thought in
-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 or ambition 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 my conscience, 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 telling
-you 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 like something 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.  Fancy _is_ engendered 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
-of feeling 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.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-
-I HAD now 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 into vice 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, the din 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 not the 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 a load 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 Manor
-House 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.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-
-THAT same 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 and put 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 seas as 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 attention to 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? really _anything_?” 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
-to see 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 be
-caught 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.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-
-PEGGY had 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 at Josephine whom she detested as a foreigner and
-interloper—“but no, not she.  She’s chosen this very time to invite her
-brother—I hope he _is_ her 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 of improving 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, I saw, 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 would reject 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 breakfast table
-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.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-
-IT was 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 the position 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 trout lower 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 hundred years, 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 a
-ceremonial 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 have been 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,” she whispered.  “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 above
-    Just 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 from the 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 reproduced in
-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 of our 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,”
-
-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 the implied 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.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-
-I HAD won 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, it was
-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 to risk 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 blame
-myself 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 wholly unavoidable, 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 for him
-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 me at 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
-competent judges 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.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-
-IN the 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, I would 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
-    affections have 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 of having 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 years before 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’s _Antinous_.  Peggy, I
-could see, resented its introduction 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 festivities that 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 distant cousin.  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 has thrown 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 ruined
-walls 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.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-
-MEANWHILE the wreck still lay in shattered fragments on the beach, and
-had brought discredit and disaster to at least one family in the village
-before it disappeared in another and still heavier gale.
-
-It was the best-looking young woman in the parish and the best-looking
-young man whom I had united to-day in the holy bond of matrimony.  And
-now the wedding-dance was being held in a room twelve feet by twelve,
-while the wedding-feast of light refreshments was spread in the
-wash-house adjoining.
-
-Ned Baker was a young fellow of the pale, refined type, looking younger
-even than his years, and they numbered only twenty-four—a type rarely met
-with in a country village, with clean and well-cut features, light wavy
-hair, and the slim hand and tapering fingers that one assigns to a
-musician, and associates not at all with the rough training of a village
-carpenter.  More fitted, you would say, to stand behind a London counter
-and minister yards of drapery to some west-end beauty.  Perhaps his
-refinement may have been partially due to delicate health since boyhood;
-nothing serious his friends would tell you, but just sufficient to unfit
-him for out-door labour, and direct the tenor of his life to the
-comparative ease of a carpenter’s workshop.
-
-His wife in all probability, judging from her appearance, would rule the
-roost.  A woman of the strong, well-bosomed order, outcome oftener of the
-village than the town, with the wild westerly breezes and salt sea air of
-the Atlantic mantling in her cheek.
-
-Truth to say, Ned was hardly a popular inmate of what was now his native
-village.  In appearance and refinement he was far above the tribe of
-fishermen who inhabited the scattered hamlet, and won a precarious
-livelihood from fishing and boating—sometimes, ’twas said, from the
-jetson cast up by the sea beyond, when a wreck, such as still lay in
-fragments not one hundred yards from their doors, would strew the shore
-for miles and miles with drift of freight and timber.
-
-It was natural, perhaps, that they should resent a superiority which
-contrasted only too strongly with their own rough and rugged natures.
-Besides, he was an alien—literally a drift from the sea—cast up and laid
-for dead upon the sand some twenty years ago.
-
-No one knew aught of him—he did not know anything of himself—though his
-wavy sun-locks and bright blue eyes might have proclaimed him of the
-north, the fragile incarnation of some Viking of the past.  But all was
-guess-work and mystery, for he was a little lad of three years old when
-the sea laid him at their doors, after claiming for its own the ship and
-everything, dead or living, that it had carried for its freight.
-
-Kindly hands had welcomed him.  An old fisherman and his wife, without
-children or relations of their own, had loved and cherished the boy to
-manhood.  But they were dead and gone, and for years since he had lived
-his life alone, till Arabella Bond, the beauty of the village, had been
-won by the very grace and refinement which had made him alien and outcast
-from the other villagers.
-
-Indeed, with the single exception of the couple who had reared him,
-Arabella had been his first and only friend.  Three or four years older
-than himself, she had, as a child, taken him under her special
-protection, comforting him in all his troubles, and waging incessant war
-with the lads of the village on his behalf.  Her strong motherly
-instincts, fired as time went on by a warm passion of love, had gone out
-in pity to the youth who had been flung, alien and isolated, among a
-world of strangers.  And her devotion never wavered.  Even now her
-feeling towards him was rather that of the mother than the wife, and, but
-for her, his prayer would have been that the sea might yet reclaim its
-gift of life.  Nameless and unknown, he was from the first an object of
-suspicion to the villagers.  Add to which, he had been cast up by the
-sea, and the awe which clings round such a one, and the peril that it
-foreshadows to his preservers, were for ever present in their minds.
-
-With a race of men animated by their traditions King Arthur himself, if
-he had been cast upon their shore, would never have gained their
-confidence.  And with Ned’s growth in years the feeling against him had
-only become stronger and more accentuated.  A high regard for
-honour—honour in every word and deed—was the dominant characteristic of
-his life, shown in nothing more conspicuously than in his scrupulous
-honesty respecting all property recovered from the sea.  Such views were
-in hopeless antagonism to all the traditions of the neighbourhood, where
-the villagers, whose ancestors may have smuggled a little in the days
-gone by, held a rooted belief that the sea was their property, placed
-where it was by a beneficent Providence to afford them a livelihood, and
-sometimes, though not half so often as they wished, to present them with
-an unearned increment in the shape of a wreck and the perquisites that
-followed from it.
-
-And, most unfortunately for Ned, no one held this faith with stronger
-persistence than Arabella’s mother.  To discover, if possible, the owner
-of such property, or to report it to the recognised authorities would
-have been judged by her a superlative act of folly, a wanton flying in
-the face of Providence, which sent them such windfalls, as it did the
-mackerel and the herrings—only with less regularity.  It may be, I fancy,
-that the northern nations, from whom Ned inherited his birthright, are as
-punctilious in the practice of honour as southerners are in the
-profession of it.
-
-Anyhow, Ned and his folly were perpetual irritants to Arabella’s mother.
-And matters were in no wise improved when he became a suitor for her
-daughter’s hand.  Even his personal appearance and his love-locks,
-“clustering o’er his fair forehead like a girl’s,” came in for her abuse.
-“A fine gen’elman you be,” she would say, “to teach us all our duties,
-and make out as how we be thieves an’ liars.  Why, you bain’t no better
-nor a gal—an’ a poor ’un at that—wi’ all your long hair a-danglin’ about
-your forehead, an’ no strength in ye to pull an oar or gi’ a hand to the
-fishin’-tackle or the lobster-pots.  Blest if I can tell what Arabella
-sees in ye.  But there—there’s no accountin’ for tastes.  ’Twas sommat
-liker to a man that would ha’ suited I, when I was lookin’ round me for a
-husband.”
-
-Then Arabella would heal the wound and say: “Never ’e mind, Ned.  ’Tis
-because ye be so much better than they that they hates ye so cruel.  Wi’
-yer fine language and looks that shames ’em all every time they meets ye,
-no wonder they can’t stomach ye.  Not but what you be learnin’ a lot of
-our talk now along, and ye clips yer words fine, same a’ most as we does.
-May be they’ll think the better of ye by and bye, when you gets a bit
-liker to ’em.  Not that I wishes it, my dear, never think it.  ’Tisn’t I
-that would have loved ye so fondly if ye hadn’t been better an’ cleverer
-an’ handsomer than all the rest of ’m.”
-
-But to-day all past animosities were forgotten, and the company who had
-been called to the festivities could only bethink themselves of the
-arrangements provided for their comfort.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-
-“’TIS a rare sight this, granfer, for a weddin’.  I only wish as how my
-old mother what’s bedridden upstairs—her’s ninety, come Thursday—could
-crawl down along and glad her aged eyes wi’ it.  But that’s more a’most
-than we can claim o’ the Almighty, seein’ she’s kept her bed now for nigh
-on five years.  Not but what she’s rare and hearty still, and can eat her
-bread an’ cheese and drain a pot of beer most as well as I can.  ’Tis a
-wonderful strong and lusty constitution, to _be_ sure.  Her eyesight
-don’t fail her—only her limbs ain’t so strong as once they was.  And no
-wonder, what wi’ lyin’ a-bed all this ’ere time, which she thinks more
-comferable and gives less trouble.  Wi’ her pipe, too, most allus a
-goin’, and some day there’ll be the ’ouse o’ fire along o’ it, I’m
-afeard.  And how cleverly she do hid’ en, to be sure—right under piller
-or blanket ’e goes, smokin’ hot—soon as ever she hears passon’s footstep
-on the stairs.  Talk of good ’bacca hurtin’ a man.  They Lunnon doctors
-should come and ha’ a look at she, and they’ll see an ole woman what’s
-smoked her ounce of shag a day for twenty years to _my_ sure and sartain
-knowledge.”
-
-“Aye, ’tis a grand sight truly this ’ere weddin’, and a credit to the
-village and yerself, Michael.  Such a company o’ rare young maids and
-lusty young fellows I don’t know as ever I see’d congregated together in
-one room.  And the beer and the sperrits you’ve provided for ’em!  I’ve
-been into that there wash-house of yourn, and made glad my eyes wi’ as
-rare a cask of strong beer—none of your fourpenny ale, I allow—and as
-neat a keg o’ sperrits as ever I cast eyes on.  The wenches to-night need
-have comeliness and grace to tempt the young fellows out o’ that there
-shed.  For ale and sperrits is better nor beauty, Michael; ’tis so at
-least when men be gettin’ in the vale, the likes o’ you and I.  And
-what’s more, I’ll go and sample it, just that I may tell the others what
-’tis like, ’fore as ever the dancin’ begins.  Not but what I likes a
-funeral better nor a weddin’.  ’Tis quieter and more sober-like, and you
-takes your vittles more peaceable.  None of this ’ere het an’ dust an’
-potheration what comes o’ the dancin’.  No, gi’ I a funeral for comfort,
-specially when ye be a bit aged.  Not but what ’tis disperitin’, and
-craves a mortal lot of stimmilent to carry one thro’ wi’ it.  An’ some
-there be what doesn’t hold wi’ feastin’ on the dead.  But ’tis mostly
-they of a savin’ sullen nature, what grudges the vittles, an’ finds no
-comfort in thanksgivin’ an’ the voice o’ merriment.”
-
-The fun was at its height, and the ale cask and the spirit keg would have
-been valued at one half their original cost, when the company were
-startled by two hurriedly-repeated knocks at the door, and a young girl
-stood panting in their midst.  No wedding guest this—rather a ghost in
-all but the strong and youthful grace of budding womanhood.
-
-“Heaven help us!  What’s happened to ’e, Meg?  Why on earth do you bust
-in upon a house o’ merriment lookin’ like a corpse?  Out wi’ it, lass,
-and don’t stand gapin’ there, scarin’ us out of our wits, for all the
-world like a frighted owl.”
-
-“’Tis the p’leece!” she cried.
-
-“Be ye gone stark starin’ mad, you fule of a girl?  We ain’t that drunk
-and disorderly yet that we need fear to look a p’leeceman in the face.
-P’leece indeed—to a decent respectable woman what’s had no dealin’s wi’
-such truck, time out of memory.”
-
-“’Tain’t the drink—’tis the copper off the ship that was wrecked while
-ago on the Rudge.  Some of us ha’ been handlin’ it, and they’re a-comin’
-round to every house in the village, wi’ a search-warrant they calls it,
-and they’re at top o’ street now, an’ ’ll be punchin’ at your door afore
-you can say Jack Robinson.”
-
-Fear—was it fear for themselves or for others?—had sobered the guests on
-the instant.  Silent and shamed they slunk away into corners, as if they
-prayed for the earth to swallow them, or were assisting at a funeral
-instead of a wedding.
-
-Only the mistress of the house retained her self-possession.  With a nod
-at her husband to follow her she retreated with him for consultation into
-an adjoining room.  When they returned—“We’ve been thinkin’ this ’ere
-matter over,” she said, “and there’s nowt to be done but a corpse in the
-house.”
-
-“Sakes alive!” cried grandfer, “and whose is the corpse?  Not mine, I
-tell ’e straight.  I be as full o’ life and health as the youngest among
-’e.  Not but what they tell I that I be nearin’ life’s end.  Not a bit of
-it, says I; I be younger and lustier, I be, than this time last year, and
-lustier then than the year afore.  I be intended, I allow, to follow
-Methusalum, and show what we can do now-along when we sets ourselves
-serious to the job of livin’.”
-
-“Stop yer silly nonsense, you old fule,” cried the dame, “we’ve no time
-to listen to your fulery, and none of us wants yer corpse.  Not but what
-a corpse we must have—or maybe a dyin’ man’ll do.  Then they wont dare
-search the house, and we’ll ha’ time to pick up the odds and ends of
-copper and bury it in the garden.  Bad luck that ever I set eyes on it.
-And ’tis young Ned there that must be the dyin’ man.  He’s far and away
-the most nesh and tender-lookin’ of all of us.  And crop his hair short,
-and lay him in bed wi’ a bandage full over his face, and no one’ll know
-whether he’s dyin’ or dead.  And he was allus that weakly and bad in his
-breath that we can say he was taken wi’ heart disease, or summat, along
-o’ the dancin’, and no one’ll be the wiser.  Besides, ’tis he what took
-the copper, so ’tis only fair as he should be at the trouble o’ savin’
-on’t.  An’ we’ll put ye in Arabella’s room, Ned—sure ’tis no shame to do
-so for as how ye be a wedded couple.  An’ ’tis safer the copper’ll be,
-seein’ it be stored under her bed, the main of it; not but what there’s
-two sheets as was flatter nor the rest, an’ they lies ’twixt mattress and
-blanket.  Rare an’ uncomferable ’twill be for ye to lay on, but ’tis
-yourself what made the bed an’ you must lay on’t.  An’ we’ll come an’ let
-’e out as soon as ever the p’leece be gone, an’ ’twon’t be long as
-they’ll stay, soon as ever they hears we’ve dead an’ dyin’ in the house.
-Up wi’ ’e, Ned, and we’ll have ’e tucked up afore as ever they come nigh
-the place.  Sure ’tis no falsity neither, for what wi’ the scare and the
-fright ye looks most dead already, so help me, ye does.”
-
-It was not till the end of this harangue that Ned’s temper broke loose,
-though an angry flush that flamed on his delicate cheek had showed he was
-nearing the end of his self-control.
-
-“Shame on ye, woman,” he cried, as the last of the guests filed out of
-the room, “shame on ye to belie me thus afore the face of your own
-daughter, and her my wedded wife.  I’d a’ saved the copper for ye
-willingly—rot the stuff—and I’ll save it now if I can.  An’ I’ve kept
-silence afore all your company rather than let ’em know you was lying.
-But I’ll not begin wedded life wi’ disgrace ’twixt me an’ my wife.  So I
-tell ye, Arabella, where ye stand, and glad I am of the chance, that I
-never fingered aught of the copper—only to help ’em in hidin’ it—and
-’twas your own father and mother what stript it and stored it, and you
-needn’t be afeared but what you’ve wedded an honest man.  And now,”
-turning to his mother-in-law, “I’m ready to go along wi’ ye.  May be I’ll
-save your honour; we can’t make worse o’ mine.”
-
-In ten minute’s time the house that had been ablaze with lights was
-shrouded in darkness, and resumed its ordinary well-conditioned aspect.
-The blinds were drawn, articles of furniture that had been ousted and
-piled to meet the requirements of the dancing had been re-placed in
-position.  The guests had slunk away, more or less disquieted according
-to the state of each man’s inner consciousness, and, to the onlooker from
-without, it was as reposeful and undisturbed as any of its neighbours in
-the quiet well-ordered street.
-
-Scarcely had this transformation scene been effected when the expected
-summons came.  “Sorry to disturb ye, Mrs. Bond, when ye be all arranged
-so quiet for the night.  But ’tis our bounden duty, ma’am, and we’ve a
-very particular reason here (exhibiting the warrant) for wishin’ to look
-through your premises, if so be as you has no objection.”
-
-“Aye, ye can come in, Bob Davis.  An’ if I can’t gi’ ye a hearty welcome,
-’tis only yerself you has to thank for it.  ’Twould ha’ been more
-neighbour-like, I’m thinkin’, if ye’d come in open daylight, ’stead o’
-disturbin’ a peaceful family at this hour o’ the night.  An’ we wi’
-sickness in the house that’s like to be death afore the mornin’.  For
-sure as ever Ned sees yer face an’ that great lout you’ve brought in wi’
-ye, ’twill scare the life breath out on ’m.  An’ ’tis more nor that scrap
-o’ paper you’ll be needin’ then to make yer peace, wi’ murder on yer
-soul.”
-
-“Come, old lady, none of that gammon; it’s too good for us.  Don’t we
-know that your daughter has been married this very day, and that you was
-a-keepin’ the weddin’ wi’ a fiddle and dancin’ till half-an-hour ago?
-Besides, there’s a strong suspicion that some of the copper we’re
-a-lookin’ for is to be found in this here house—and perhaps that’s why
-you shut up so sharp, hearin’ that we were comin’ along to have a look at
-ye.”
-
-But when the search elsewhere was ended, and the door of Arabella’s room
-had been opened to admit them, Mrs. Bond enjoyed a short-lived triumph.
-Not the most strenuous of officials, urged by the strongest sense of
-duty, but would have paused in the presence of what looked like death.
-
-“No, ma’am—though thank you kindly—we’ll not intrude.  We’ve done our
-duty, an’ the law itself can’t call on us for more.  An’ you’ll look
-after that lad of yourn, Mrs. Bond; you’ll excuse me for sayin’ it.  ’Tis
-close on death he looks, though glad I’d be to be mistaken.  An’ if so be
-’twill ease your mind, I’ll make time to go an’ fetch the doctor for ye
-afore as ever I goes home to-night.”
-
-But in the bedroom upstairs, as the steps of the officers were heard
-retreating down the street, the bride was saying: “Up wi’ you, Ned!
-You’ll be glad, I allow, that I be come to release you.  ’Tain’t becomin’
-no wise that a bridegroom on the night of his weddin’ should be lyin’ all
-stark an’ streaked like a corpse.  Not but what you look finer and
-grander-like than ever you’ll do in life agin.  Up wi’ you, man, though I
-be most sorry, that I be, to untie ye.”
-
-But no voice or sound made answer from the bed.  Only the jaw had fallen,
-and the eyes stared full on the speaker, and the silence of death—death
-itself—was in the room.  Fear and excitement had done their work on an
-enfeebled heart, and Ned had crossed the narrow borderland—the “space
-between the spears” the ancients called it—which separates God’s great
-twin armies, the living and the dead.
-
-The villagers will tell you that Death came to him in anger, because of
-the jest that travestied his grim prerogative.  Rather, I think, it was
-in pity for the lad, and to save him from disillusions sadder still, that
-
-                  “God’s finger touched him, and he slept.”
-
-So the marriage was followed by a death, and the lighter refreshments of
-the dance were merged in the splendours of a funeral feast.  And the soul
-of granfer Wiseman was satisfied withal.
-
-The Rector was sorely troubled by the disaster that had taken from him
-another of his prime favourites among the lads of the village.
-
-But of the events that had led up to it he was strangely tolerant.  “It’s
-heredity,” he said, “and you can’t fight against it.  Not an angel from
-heaven could persuade them that the sea has not made over to them all the
-property it lays at their doors.  It mayn’t be good law,” he added, “but,
-after all, there’s something to be said in favour of their view.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-
-AND now, during the calm and quiet summer months that followed, my life
-took its tone from the harmony of Nature, and rested itself for a while
-in one great calm.  Taking its rest like Nature, the better to prepare
-itself against the advent of stress and storm.
-
-Hardly a day passed during this halcyon time that I did not see Marion.
-Sometimes it would be at the Rectory, sometimes at the Manor House;
-oftener still in some cottage where there was sickness or trouble which
-she could comfort and relieve.  To ourselves, at any rate, life in those
-days was full of interest; it may be, for that very reason, void of
-interest to those who only watched its progress from without.
-
-One day the rooks re-appeared in the trees of the Manor House farm.  I
-suppose it was one of the periodical visits which they are accustomed to
-pay, off and on, before they close their summer establishment finally to
-take up their abode in some mysterious winter residence.  In my boyish
-days it seemed to me the height of unwisdom to abandon your city of
-habitation just when the winter gales were due.  But perhaps a rook lives
-his real life elsewhere, and only comes down to rusticate in the country
-as a volunteer or militiaman goes into camp, _i.e._ for duty’s sake,
-which, in the case of the rook, means the fatigue duty of rearing and
-raising a family.  Somewhere (in the pages of the ‘Encyclopaedia
-Britannica’ for example) and some day I will look up their winter
-address.  In this neighbourhood it is probably among the cliffs of
-Portland or on the rock-bound promontory of St. Aldhelm’s Head that a
-letter would find them.  Anyhow, they were with us again to-day.
-
-“Do you think they talk to one another, Peggy?” I said, as they were
-making a great to-do in the trees adjoining our garden.
-
-“I can’t say, sir, I’m sure; but if they do, it’s pretty much, I allow,
-on the same subject.  Seems like a warning of some kind to my ears.”
-
-“Perhaps it may be, Peggy, and, so far as I can read it, couched in very
-classical language.  It sounds to me exactly like the Latin word ‘cave,’
-which your favourite Reggie must often have told you means ‘take care.’
-We pronounce the word now-a-days ‘caue,’ which, in the clipt
-pronunciation of an excited rook, might easily have degenerated into
-‘caw.’  If so, they are very lavish of their presentiments at the present
-moment.”
-
-“And no wonder,” was Peggy’s reply, “for there’s trouble enough and to
-spare in the village to-day.  And will be through all the country round
-for the matter of that.  You know, I suppose, sir, that the bank has
-failed?  There were whispers of it in the street last evening, and to-day
-the postman tells me that the shutters are up.”
-
-I glanced at the letters on the table before me—at an aggressive-looking
-blue one in particular, which might possibly contain a bill—a letter of
-the kind that one ordinarily leaves unopened till the last.  In it was a
-short circular, confirming the fact of the failure in the plain
-unsympathetic language with which a disaster that spells ruin to hundreds
-is officially announced.
-
-There are many ways in which a bank may fail, though the result in all of
-them is pretty much the same in the end.  Sometimes it dies of inanition,
-by a slow decay of life and credit, and this is the form of suicide that
-novelists and journalists prefer.  For it offers a fine field for
-sensational writing—the whispers in the air, the mysteries and doubts;
-then the ‘run,’ with all its train of interesting incidents, the
-reinforcements of gold that are hurried down post haste from London, the
-noise and tumult of desperate claimants, with the cashier’s final
-announcement that his resources are exhausted.
-
-Sometimes, on the other hand, the suicide is sudden, without preliminary
-word or warning—‘foudroyant,’ as the French would call it.  And this is
-how our bank elected to fall.  To the last it drew in money and paid it
-out, and then on a grey November morning the shutters were up, for the
-bank had died in the night.  But for us in Fleetwater there was not even
-the poor satisfaction of watching its last hours or gazing upon the
-closed shutters.  For the bank had died elsewhere, at the county town
-some miles away, and the news had only filtered to us at second hand (as
-Peggy told me) through the postman.
-
-Most people, I suppose, were stunned at first by the novelty of the
-disaster.  I can remember that for some definite period, how long I never
-knew, I studied the circular before me dreamily, with a strange feeling
-that it would be bad for some other people, but never realising what it
-meant for me.  “What will Peggy do?” I asked myself.  “She had all her
-savings, I know, invested in it.  And what again of Richard Smiley, who
-only two days ago placed in it all that the Old Inn has earned for him in
-twenty years?”
-
-Worse still, I thought, for Andrew Strong and his widowed mother, before
-whom I saw nothing but the refuge of the Union, for they were old and
-feeble now, and had been living, I knew, for years on the slender
-pittance they drew in driblets from the bank.  And so by degrees, and
-through many vague wanderings of thought, by realising all that it meant
-for others, I came at last to realise all that it meant for me.
-
-At this point in my meditations I did what it would have been wiser for
-me to do a few months earlier, when I should have been in time to act
-upon the Squire’s advice.  I bethought me of turning up the original
-prospectus of the bank where it had lain forgotten among a number of old
-papers, mostly unimportant, that had come into my possession at the time
-of my father’s death.  The information that I gained from it was
-startling.  It was to the effect that the company had been registered in
-shares of £50 each, only half of which had been as yet called up.  So I
-had no need to go to London to win the knowledge that I was a ruined man.
-
-This time I did not lose myself in vain misgivings.  I had become, I
-suppose, already somewhat callous to surprise.  But I set myself the task
-of looking the future in the face by thinking and working out my plans on
-the basis of this new discovery.  And I took the business in hand with
-something of that strange unquestioning instinct which leads the fatalist
-to work out his destiny in a crisis that has come upon him suddenly, and
-over which he has lost the control.
-
-Whereby I saw that, under the best possible conditions, I had no right to
-continue my claim to Marion’s hand.  Even now there were rumours afloat
-in the village that the failure was a bad one, and that the bank would
-only pay a small dividend.  And, though I could not satisfy myself on
-this point till I had been to London to consult my agents, as I intended
-to do on the following day, it was already perfectly clear that the
-company would have to call up all its capital, and that, dividend or no
-dividend, the result to me would be the loss of most of my small fortune.
-
-And this meant, first of all, the loss of Marion.  How could I ask her
-father to consent to our marriage, even if his opinion on a contingency
-which was now realised had been less plainly given at the time of our
-engagement?
-
-No; neither he nor I could have consented to it.  And so the failure
-meant to me the loss of all that, for the time at any rate, made life
-worth living.  Other work I could get, of course; possibly other friends.
-But a love like Marion’s never again.  And, for the time, I could bring
-myself to think of nothing save the loss of her.  I was young, it is
-true, but not weak, I think, in character; and I could never picture
-myself in the future as loving another with such love as I had given her.
-Yet she and I must surely part.  The clearest and most decisive judgment
-dictated it.  And I must be the one to go.
-
-Even if I had been content to remain among my present surroundings, every
-smallest detail of which reminded me of her, yet for her sake my
-continuance in Fleetwater was impossible.  If I stayed, it would mean for
-her nothing less than banishment from her father and her home.
-
-I had asked the Rector to tell her of my discovery and of the changes
-that must follow from it.  Not yet could I see her personally.  Only I
-asked her to meet me a few hours later for a walk in the adjoining
-forest.  Perhaps that few hours’ interval might tell me in what words to
-greet her.
-
-With the Rector my arrangements were quickly made.  Once put in
-possession of the facts he saw, clearly as I had done, that I had decided
-on the only course that was open to me under the circumstances of the
-case.  “No honourable man could have done otherwise,” he said, and, as he
-grasped my hand at parting, the same kindly look came into his eye that
-had welcomed me on the first day we met in the Rectory study.  Only time
-and our warm friendship had strengthened it into the look with which a
-father greets his well-beloved son.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-
-THE Squire was wise enough not to embitter my position by attempting to
-alter my resolution.  He had meant what he said at our former interview,
-and remembered it too.  It was too late for him to retract now, even if
-he had been tempted to do so from a false regard for his daughter’s
-happiness.
-
-The walk with Marion, to which I had looked forward with something of
-dread, was made almost a happiness by her quiet fortitude.  I need not, I
-found, have steeled my heart and strengthened my mind with arguments for
-leaving her.  She was not the woman to make of my sorrow a burden heavier
-still to bear.  She might have told her love in the words of which
-quotation has made a platitude:—
-
-    “I could not love thee, dear, so much,
-    Loved I not honour more.”
-
-Not by so much as a suggestion would she have made the path before me
-more difficult.  She had realised, almost before I had told her my
-intention, that not only my honour, but even my very love for her,
-necessitated our parting.  Only, instead of the parting almost without
-hope as I had pictured it, she made of it a parting that had in it sure
-promise that we should meet again.
-
-We knew each other’s love too well by now for need of speech.  Our walk
-was almost a silent one, except for the words with which she ever and
-again encouraged my despondency, and directed it, by her own strong
-confidence, towards the hopefulness she was determined I should share.
-
-Instinctively, and without acknowledged purpose, our steps led us to a
-spot that we had visited again and again in the earlier part of the
-summer that was gone.
-
-It was a miniature forest, embedded in a sheltered valley that lay beyond
-the outskirts of the village between the elbows of two mighty hills.
-Protected by these watchful guardians, it was safe from the withering
-gales that swept up from the Atlantic.  When all the surrounding trees
-stood bare and blighted by recurrent storms, Nature, in this quiet nook,
-was permitted to fulfil her perfect work, changing her garb, as month by
-month passed on, from emerald to sober green, but always keeping her
-brightest tints to weave her funeral robe, folding it at last upon her
-bosom with the air of one who has lived her life and done her work, and
-now falls peacefully to sleep in painless, restful weariness.
-
-It was one of those perfect days in latest autumn that seem intended to
-give us, just once or twice in the year, and especially before it leaves
-us, an idea of all the glorious adornments Nature has in her keeping.
-Perhaps the brightest beds in a nobleman’s _parterre_ might suggest the
-colouring.  But the stiff arrangement and orderly rows of bloom are the
-very antipodes of Nature’s handiwork.  A flush of crimson mountain-ash,
-thrusting itself in irregular patches between groups of dusky pines, and
-these in their turn lost among beeches of burnished gold, with oak and
-hornbeam and ash to give the softer intermediate tones is, at best, a
-poverty-stricken catalogue of the colours that flamed all round us on
-that autumn day.  No marvel that to a dweller by our storm-swept seas,
-when a gale in August will wither all the rest of our foliage two months
-before it falls, the scene I am describing should be the one we chose to
-close around our parting.
-
-It was in the depths of this fairy forest that we lost ourselves—Marion
-and I.  We met no one by the way.  Nothing but the silent trees above us
-with their mist of tangled colours, and at our feet a maze of undergrowth
-only just less brilliant in colouring than the tree-tops overhead, with
-an occasional squirrel or blackbird or thrush to suggest the life with
-which the scene had palpitated in the sweltering summer heat.  Even the
-voices of the birds were silent.  They would only have marred the
-peaceful stillness of that wondrous day.  Till the early autumn evening
-began to close about us, and it was time to set our faces homewards.
-
-And after we had left the forest we turned aside through a bye-lane of
-the village to mount once more the Chapel hill, feeling, both of us, that
-the spot which had seen the consecration of our love would be the fitting
-witness of its untimely end.  And there we said good-bye.  “I shall never
-marry, Harold,” Marion said, “till you come back again to claim me.  For
-come again you surely will.  And never think I blame you for this
-parting.  In honour you could not have done otherwise than leave me now.
-And hard as it is, dear, for us to part so soon, my love (if that be
-possible) is only made the stronger by the parting.”
-
-And so she left me—with none of the prayers and protests that would only
-have made my duty harder for me.  With nothing but a confident hope, in
-which I could not bring myself as yet to share, that time in its course
-would smooth away all difficulties in the fulfilment of our love.
-
-“When that day comes,” and these were her last words, “we will meet once
-more, Harold, in this same place, and dedicate anew the love which
-chances like this will have been powerless to change.”
-
-The next day we parted: I on my visit to Eric in London, and she to a
-relative in the Midlands, with whom she was to stay during the month I
-should remain at Fleetwater.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-
-“OF course you’re going to stay with me, old man?” said Eric, when he met
-me at Waterloo station next day.  “You surely didn’t imagine I should let
-you go to an hotel?”
-
-Nothing in these few words of the studied tone of unimpeachable
-politeness to which he had accustomed me at our last meeting.  This was
-the hearty undergraduate greeting of old, and I needed no more to tell me
-that his sorrow on my account had dispersed the cloud that lay between
-us.
-
-It was good to see him again; to feel the grasp of his strong hand, and
-read the look of welcome in his troubled eyes.  And then we went to dine
-at ‘Simpson’s’ in reminiscence of the past, when I had had a pleasant
-balance to draw upon, and banks had not taken to breaking.  And then for
-a long stroll and back again to his rooms.
-
-“You see I’ve got them all ready for you, and the lobster supper that you
-always favoured, though how on earth you manage to sleep after it, passes
-my comprehension.  And then we’ll chat on as in the good old days, and
-fancy ourselves undergraduates again, and that all this trouble is an
-evil dream.  And remember that a room will always be kept ready for you
-in the future.  Send me a wire when you want to use it, and the oftener
-you come and the longer you stay the better for me.  But it’s late in the
-day of our friendship to be telling you all this, as if you hadn’t known
-it years and years ago.”
-
-All my vague misgivings had vanished before his welcome, and it has dwelt
-with me since as a pleasurable thought that Eric, I am sure, meant fairly
-by me then, and that for what happened later on between us, the blame in
-part must rest with me, who had spread, however unwittingly, a snare
-before his feet.
-
-After supper we drew up our chairs side-by-side before the fire—for the
-autumn evenings had become chilly now in town—and discussed the situation
-from every possible view and bearing, without, I candidly admit, finding
-any means of bettering it.
-
-Eric was far too wise to offer me monetary help.  But his hand-grasp told
-me I might have had it for the asking—aye, anything he could have given
-me.  And I grew cheerier and more hopeful of the future, and thought with
-thankfulness how much it means to any man to have just one true friend in
-life.  How few of us can say as much, especially when life’s sun begins
-to verge towards its setting, and the friends we have made are gone
-before us, and ourselves have lost the will and opportunity to win us new
-ones.
-
-To-night I was tasting this cup of happiness in fullest measure.  Time
-for me had rolled backwards, and he and I were together again—the friend
-in whom I could see no change; the lad who in days gone by had slipped up
-with me from Cambridge for many an evening just like this.
-
-The next morning I went to call upon my agents, after arranging with Eric
-to meet him in the Strand at the private gallery where his picture was on
-view.
-
-In those early days there was little information, I knew, to be expected
-from them, and such as it was it only went to confirm my gloomy forecast.
-The bank, they told me, was irretrievably ruined, and all the capital it
-could command would infallibly be called up.
-
-Afterwards I joined Eric in the Strand, and he took me into a room from
-which all natural light had been carefully excluded.  And as I stood
-looking at a curtain which shrouded the farther wall, it suddenly rolled
-back, and under a perfect light, and with all the accessories that art
-could lend to its environment, I saw before me the picture that had made
-him famous.
-
-It was in no wise a sensational subject.  Only a precipitous rock, rent
-in twain by a huge fissure, through which I looked down upon a valley
-which opened and fell away in front of me.  From its foot a mountain
-stream foamed and fretted down a steep incline.  And on either side of
-the valley, wherever a projection or an eminence promised safety from the
-torrents that scored the declivities, tiny sparks of fire, few and far
-between, flickered from the cottage windows, with a pleasant suggestion
-of the cheeriness within.  Crowning the precipice which occupied the
-foreground on the right hand of the picture, I could see the outline of
-the village church, where glowed a larger, ruddier flame, from the lamp,
-no doubt, which burned before the altar of the sanctuary.
-
-It was a wonderful piece of work for a lad so young in years.  I am no
-painter, and the defects there may have been in it were all invisible to
-me.  But the cleverness of the composition, and the marvellous adjustment
-of the lights and shadows, flung by the afterglow upon the surrounding
-hills, could only have been inspired by genius.  No wonder that his work
-had made him famous.
-
-He had entitled it “Val Verde.”
-
-“It commemorates a story, Harold,” he whispered—for there were visitors
-besides ourselves—“that has grown up around a picture which forms the
-altar-piece of the church.  Whether the legend rests on any historic
-ground-work, I could never satisfactorily determine.  I only know that
-versions of it, in many various forms, are current in most of the
-adjoining villages.  But this evening, if you like, I will tell it to you
-precisely as it was told to me by the curé of the parish.  True or
-untrue, it is interesting enough as a story, though I could wish we had
-fallen upon a more cheerful topic for the enlivenment of our last
-evening.”
-
-As we were leaving the gallery, I bethought me of the picture which
-Reggie had unearthed for me at Cambridge.
-
-“By the way, Eric,” I said, “I’ve got a picture, too, in my possession,
-on which I want your opinion.  If you don’t mind the trouble, old man,
-I’ll send it up to you when I get home to-morrow.  It’s only a copy, for
-I’ve seen the original.  But it’s a fairly good one, unless I am much
-mistaken.  And in these days, when I don’t know where to look for a
-five-pound note, anything, however small, will come in handy.  So, if you
-think it’s worth a few pounds, please do the best you can for me, and
-I’ll be awfully grateful.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-
-IN the evening, as we sat before the fire, Eric told me the story. {190}
-
-“I had lost my way in the Abruzzi.  All the day long I had wandered in
-fruitless quest of a subject to complete my series of Italian sketches.
-And now the twilight had fallen upon me with the suddenness of an Italian
-autumn.  Up to this time I had followed the guidance of a faint
-bridle-path, but on a sudden the ground shelved downwards, and I found
-myself at the entrance of a narrow ravine, confronted by a blank,
-precipitous rock, while the path I had been following wandered off to the
-left, and was lost in the obscurity of the moor beyond.  Nothing in the
-shape of a village, nothing that promised me a shelter for the night, was
-visible on the moorland I had been traversing.  So my only hope lay in
-the chance of what might lie beyond the rock that barred my progress.
-
-“Stumbling and halting at every step, for the night was falling rapidly
-and progress rendered difficult by boulders and watercourses, I at length
-made my way past the obstruction through a fissure at the side, and found
-to my delight that the subject of my picture lay before me.  What it was
-you have seen to-day.
-
-“Cheered by my good fortune, for the wind was rising rapidly, and there
-was every suggestion of an autumn gale, I made for one of the larger
-cottages that faced me.  I had chosen well, as the event proved, for I
-found it to be the residence of the village priest—a kindly and refined
-old man—who met me at the door with outstretched hands, and with a
-welcome that in England we accord only to long-established friends.
-
-“‘You are welcome, my son, most welcome,’ he began.  ‘Few visitors reach
-me in this Val Verde—for so I have christened it, not very appropriately,
-I fear, but in memory of my home in Spain—and when they do come we keep
-them, be assured, for as long as they will stay.  But now let me show you
-my guest-chamber.  Poor as it is, it is better than would have fallen to
-your lot if you had missed the entrance to our valley.  And in an hour
-Annetta will be ready with our evening meal, and afterwards we will sit
-and talk over a flask of Chianti till late into the night.  Or rather,
-you shall talk and I will listen, for news of the outer world is the
-payment we exact from our visitors for such welcome as we can give them.’
-
-“Annetta was still busy with her preparations when I rejoined him in the
-little sitting-room, so comfortable in its contrast with the world
-outside, where a hurricane raged and roared through the ravines that fell
-away from either side of the house.
-
-“I went to the window and looked out at the tiny lights blinking from the
-cottages like glow-worms that had lost their confidence.  And right on
-the top of the grim rock facing me gleamed the red light from the church
-that crowned its summit.
-
-“‘The story of a terrible tragedy attaches to that lamp,’ said my host,
-who had come forward to join me.  And his words, by a strange
-coincidence, came almost as an answer to my thought.  ‘When we settle
-down,’ he added, ‘for our evening chat, my contribution to our
-entertainment shall be the story of the tragedy that it commemorates.
-Meanwhile, as Annetta is behindhand with her preparations, and will not
-serve us yet awhile, do you feel bold enough to climb that hill with me
-in face of the storm, and see for yourself what my church contains?  It
-can boast, at any rate, of one good picture, which, by the way, you ought
-to study before you hear the story I have promised you, and with which it
-is connected.’
-
-“‘With pleasure,’ was my reply, ‘though surely it is hardly fair to judge
-a picture on a night like this, and by what looks like the glimmer of one
-feeble lamp.  It would be difficult, I imagine, to devise worse
-conditions for appreciating an artist’s work.’
-
-“‘As a rule, no doubt.  But remember that pictures, like music, may be
-composed to suit certain accompaniments; and this is one of them, as I
-think you will admit, if you are content to take my words on trust and
-brave the storm in faith of them.’
-
-“Lantern in hand, the old man sallied forth, and I followed him.  The
-distance was not so great as I had anticipated, nor the wind so
-overpowering.  The church was really nearer than I had judged it to be in
-the twilight of the approaching night, and the precipice up which our
-pathway lay acted as a barrier to the wind, which had gathered in the
-moorland beyond, and, parted into two currents, swept the defiles on
-either side of us.
-
-“On entering the church I saw at once that the main building was in
-darkness, save for the glimmering flame before the sanctuary.  But from a
-side chapel that opened on the choir streamed another and fuller
-radiance, which had been concentrated by a careful adjustment on the
-picture I had come to study.
-
-“It was a ‘Descent from the Cross,’ left by the artist, as I gathered at
-a glance, in an unfinished state.  Nothing indeed had been attempted
-except the central Figure, which lay unattended and alone at the foot of
-the Cross.  One weak and wavering line, visible only to the expert’s eye,
-might have been taken to imply that, worn out by his task, the painter
-had flung down his brush, and, satisfied or dissatisfied with the result,
-had never cared to re-touch his work.
-
-“Yet satisfied he surely must have been, for, in spite of numerous
-faults, it was great, immeasurably great, in rough untutored power.  What
-most impressed me was the terrible truthfulness with which he had
-realised the details.  Surely, such total collapse, such limp and inert
-limbs, such lights and shadows on the livid skin, were never the outcome
-of the painter’s consciousness?  Death alone, and death that was only
-just not life, had been the model from which he drew.
-
-“And then, as I studied it more closely, other minor details grew out of
-the obscurity and impressed themselves upon me.  It was unfinished, as I
-said, and had been painted with lightning rapidity, probably at a single
-sitting.  It had been painted, too, by artificial light—the tone of the
-colouring proved it—but painted certainly to suit its surroundings, and
-probably on the very spot where we stood to view it.  Now and again, as
-the wind forced its way through the time-worn casement, it swayed the
-draperies that hung around the picture—only another accessory, or so it
-seemed, to which the painter had attuned his work.
-
-“‘Strong and terrible as a Ribera,’ was my verdict, ‘but a Ribera
-inspired and glorified.’  For this was no morbid study of Death the
-Destroyer’s handiwork.  No; the artist had carried his subject far beyond
-the dominion of Death, when he transfigured the Face on the canvas with
-the light of an Everlasting Love.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-
-IN the evening after supper Eric told me the story of the picture as he
-had heard it from his friend the priest.
-
-“Years ago,” he said—“for so I heard the story on my arrival in the
-parish—a rich Englishman, travelling for pleasure, found his way to our
-village, and, intending to stay three weeks, was detained for eight.  For
-he had caught the fever which prevails in the lower valleys, and only
-recovered from it thanks to the care he received from my predecessor in
-the house to which it has been my pleasure to welcome you.  On his
-departure he left a hundred pounds with the priest as a thank-offering
-for his recovery, on the understanding that it was to be employed in the
-purchase of an altar-piece for our church, painted, if possible, by some
-local artist from the surrounding district.  Many competed, but it was
-felt from the first that the honour was as good as won by Agostino
-Villari, a young painter of extraordinary talent, who lived in the house
-I showed you at the further end of the village.  At that time he was only
-twenty—hardly more than a boy—and his talent was almost wholly
-undeveloped.  But he only wanted time and teaching.  The power was there,
-as you have seen for yourself to-day.  Well, Agostino had but one great
-friend, a cousin, who shared his house, sat for his model, and whose
-single hope and assurance was that Agostino would live to be a famous
-painter.  Cecco, for so he was called, was about thirty, a pale sedate
-man, of a gentle loving nature.  But why describe him?  You have seen him
-to-day, pictured by his friend’s hand as no words of mine could paint
-him.
-
-“As the time for the competition drew on, the two friends were wholly
-absorbed in anticipating the result.  Agostino was to be immortalised as
-the painter, Cecco as the model.  And their love for each other made them
-wholly unselfish; each hoped for success solely in the interest of his
-friend.  Nothing short of a perfect likeness would satisfy Agostino,
-nothing short of a perfect picture would satisfy Cecco’s ambition for his
-friend.
-
-“On the night before the pictures were to be sent in, the two went up
-together to the church, to place the painting in position and to judge of
-its effect, taking with them the materials for retouching it if it should
-be required.  It was a wild night—a night like this (for the story is
-precise in its details)—and the two friends had a hard climb up the hill
-to the church, where they placed the picture in the side chapel, because
-they could utilise the stronger light to throw into relief the details of
-the composition.
-
-“You ask for the result?  Well, Cecco was in raptures.  ‘It is
-immortality, ’Tino,’ he cried, ‘for both of us.  How great you are!  It
-is I—I myself, and to the very life—only grander, nobler, spiritualised.’
-‘Yes, it is you,’ said ’Tino hesitatingly, ‘you, no doubt, and to the
-very life, as you say.  But will that do?  Look at that face, that chest,
-those firm and muscular limbs.  True to life, I admit, well-drawn and
-well-painted.  But life, not death, and _death_ is what we wanted.  Strip
-yourself, Cecco, and lie at the foot of the Cross; see if you can help
-me.  You know I can never paint the smallest detail without a model.
-There—fling yourself down in a heap as if you had lost all strength, all
-energy.  Yes, that is well.  You have given me the attitude.  But the
-blood, the rich colouring in your face and limbs—it is life, vigorous
-life, all of it—and I cannot even picture what they would be like, shrunk
-and colourless and lifeless.  If you could only faint, Cecco, I might do
-something.  Can’t you faint—just for one moment—just to oblige me?’  ‘No,
-’Tino, but I will do more for you and the picture than that.  Only
-promise to finish it—here, this evening, before you leave the church.
-’Tino, remember, _I count upon your promise_.’
-
-“One short swift stroke, and he had dealt himself the blow before ’Tino’s
-hand could stay him.
-
-“But ’Tino set up his easel beside the corpse, and all the night through
-he painted—painted as if the Furies were upon him—till the dawn looked in
-at the window and his friend’s form took shape on the canvas, and the
-task that had been appointed him was done.
-
-“Then ’Tino, too, vanished from among us, leaving the story of Cecco’s
-death in writing beside the corpse.
-
-“And it was said by some, but never believed by those who knew him, that
-’Tino had slain his friend.”
-
-                                * * * * *
-
-It was some time before I or Eric spoke.
-
-“I wonder what became of ’Tino,” I murmured.  “Stay; do not tell me, even
-if the legend has recorded it.  I can picture it without words.  Lonely
-he must have been, for he had seen that which must have built a barrier
-for ever between him and the world outside.  And I can assume with equal
-certainty that he never handled brush or palette again.  And
-sometimes—always at night—he would reappear at the church and watch
-through the darkness in company with his friend.  Yes, lonely he must
-have been—but not unhappy, brightened by a great love here and by a
-vision of the Greater beyond.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX
-
-
-WHEN I returned to Fleetwater, Marion was gone.  It was better so, I
-felt, much as I missed her.  Indeed, our last good-bye had been said in
-the place she had chosen for it,—on the Chapel Hill where she had turned
-and left me.
-
-Two days later Eric’s verdict on the picture came.  It was short and to
-the point.
-
-    “Dear Harold,
-
-    “Why, it’s a Bronzino (he wrote), the great Bronzino at Madrid.  I
-    mean, of course, a copy.  But a remarkably good one, and worth
-    something if only for the excellence of the work.  I’ll do what I can
-    with it.  The original is safe, as you know, in the Museum at
-    Madrid—at least it was, unless you have stolen it since I left the
-    place last autumn.
-
-                            “Yours affectionately,
-
-                                                                   “ERIC.”
-
-I do not know what other answer we could have expected.  But
-notwithstanding, it was a disappointment to all of us.  Most fortunate it
-proved that I had seen the original at Madrid, and been able, in
-consequence, to repress the growing confidence of those around me in the
-value of the picture.  Indeed, I had been obliged to insist on this point
-again and again in my conversations with the Rector and Marion, neither
-of whom could in any wise be persuaded that it was only a copy.  Marion,
-if possible, had been the more obstinate of the two, and had almost
-succeeded in convincing me that I had never seen the original at all.  “I
-believe it was a dream, Harold,” she would say, “and that you only
-fancied you saw it.  Why, I’ve had the same feeling a hundred times over.
-Dreams with me often take such a real and tangible form that I’ve found
-myself hunting again and again for some article which I was sure I had in
-my possession, and which very possibly never existed at all.  Reason in
-such cases is absolutely powerless.  Even to this very day I constantly
-wake up with a belief that I’ve bought a whole gallery of pictures, and
-am short of the money to pay for them.  And so real is the fancy that I
-could describe to you at this moment the shop where I bought them, the
-man who sold them to me, and the subject of each picture in detail.
-
-“Besides, you must have been picture-blind by the time you got to Madrid.
-By your own showing it came at the end of a long round of galleries, and
-I suspect that this dream-picture of yours is a sort of blend of all the
-best pictures you’d been seeing at Rome and Florence and Dresden.  A
-cardinal gave you the dress, and Bindo Altoviti the face, and lo and
-behold you had your portrait complete.”
-
-And the Rector, who had a fine eye for drawing and colouring, had been
-not one whit more easy to persuade.  “I can’t solve the mystery,
-Stirling.  But of one thing I’m certain—that no copyist did it.  Do you
-mean to tell me that a painter who could do work like that would waste
-his time on the slavish task of copying?  Why, the man who painted that
-picture might command the Royal Academy.  It’s no such easy matter,
-remember, to reproduce a picture in flaming scarlet, without a touch of
-any other colour to relieve it.  Try it, my boy—you’re a dabbler in the
-art yourself—and see if you can produce anything on the same lines that
-will be worth hanging as a signboard on the village Inn.”
-
-Even Peggy, too, had had her fling at my unbelief.  “Why, it’s simply
-lovely, Mr. Stirling,” she’d tell me, “though I say it as shouldn’t, for
-it goes sore against my conscience to praise that idolatrous young
-heathen, who, but for the cut of his dress, might be the Scarlet Woman
-herself.  And even she couldn’t have chosen herself a more beautiful
-material; I will say that for it, scarlet or no scarlet.  You can’t find
-such a texture as that in a shop now-a-days for love or money.  Look at
-the gloss and sheen on it, and the beautiful folds that it makes, that’ll
-never show a crease in them till years after that young jackanapes has
-grown out of it.”
-
-Well, I had my revenge on all of them at last when Eric’s letter came,
-confirming my statement that I had left the original at Madrid.
-
-But I question whether revenge is ever at any time satisfactory; it
-certainly was not so to me.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI
-
-
-IN the days that followed, my life took a dull sad monotone, lightened at
-intervals by the reflection of past memories, which lay along its path
-like the sunlit pools left on a shore by the receding tide.
-
-Leave-takings are bad enough at any time, unless they form the prelude to
-a brighter future.  And future before me I had none, except a grim
-monotony of work in a curacy at the East End, into which I intended to
-throw all the energy I could command, if only to keep my thoughts from
-brooding on the past.
-
-And yet of quiet happiness there was something left me still.  For
-everyone at Fleetwater seemed sorry at my going.  Even Higgins, our one
-great Calvinist, with whom on questions of theology the Rector and I had
-found ourselves at bitter feud, was troubled at my leaving.  He had
-hoped, I think, to convert me to his theories.  But as his arguments went
-chiefly to prove that one of the great pleasures of the righteous in the
-world to come would be to listen to the tortures of the wicked, I
-declined his ministrations, and became to him in his own words as “the
-deaf adder that stoppeth her ears.”
-
-Stranger still, even Peggy was sorry, now that the time had come for me
-to go the way of all the curates, even though I was fulfilling my
-preordained destiny, and going on the question of Marion’s love.  Not
-even the knowledge that Reggie would soon be home again, to find a fair
-field and plenty of her own favour, could reconcile her wholly to the
-parting.
-
-And at the Rectory all was sadness and dismay.  The Rector seldom alluded
-to my going; I think he could not trust himself.  But the children, who
-had been always fond of me, were less reticent of their grief, especially
-as they saw before them a blank future, from which the wedding and its
-attendant festivities had been suddenly withdrawn.
-
-And still the dreary days went on.  Each day a Good-bye said to some one
-who had become a kindly friend, and each day a Good-bye to some haunt in
-which Marion and I had walked and loved.
-
-If only I could have shared in her firm confidence, the task before me
-would have been lightened.  But each day I heard news of the bank that
-increased more and more my hopelessness.  Already I had been obliged to
-borrow funds to meet the calls that were in prospect, and, when they
-should have been paid in full, I foresaw myself starting anew in life
-with a load of encumbrances about my neck that, out of a curate’s slender
-pittance, there was small hope of reducing, granted that I could find the
-means of paying the annual interest.
-
-Even now I found myself hampered by the expenses necessitated by my
-leaving.  And it was in the hope of getting something to relieve my
-present embarrassment that I wrote again to Eric, reminding him of his
-promise, and asking him in so many words if he had been able to do
-anything towards finding me a market for the picture.
-
-He delayed his answer for many days, from the difficulty, I thought, he
-had found in getting any offer that he would be warranted in accepting.
-
-And then, when the last day of my time at Fleetwater was come, and I had
-almost given up the hope of hearing any news from him, his answer reached
-me.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII
-
-
-    “DEAR HAROLD,
-
-    “I have been behaving like a cad.
-
-    Your picture is an original Bronzino, worth quite enough to free you
-    from all the difficulties brought about by the bank.  Any copyist who
-    could do such work could expend his time more profitably on a picture
-    of his own.  Besides, it’s a _tour de force_ in colouring that no
-    sane copyist would dream of imitating.  Bronzino, I suppose, fancied
-    his subject, and, like some other great painters, reproduced it in
-    duplicate, with just the smallest amount of alteration that would
-    serve to characterize and identify it.
-
-    “And now for my own part in this sorry business.  It was a mean
-    trick, but, thank Heaven, I hadn’t the strength, and, I hope, not the
-    will to carry it through.  You see I wanted her so badly that I
-    couldn’t give her up even to you.  And then the question of the
-    picture turned up, and, unluckily, I found in it my opportunity.
-    Till then, believe me, I had kept my honour safe.  All of a sudden,
-    the words she had used of me on Chapel hill, the night of the show,
-    flashed across my mind, and I thought that, if you were out of the
-    way for a time, I might win her still.  And it _was_ hard for me, you
-    know, when I had waited for her all these years, and had come home at
-    last to claim her, to find that you had won her love.
-
-    “Believe me, Harold, when I say I am sorry.  I have sinned against
-    the friend of my youth and the woman of my love.  But try, old
-    friend—not now but in the future—to win my pardon from Marion and
-    yourself.  You will have time to do so, for I leave England to-morrow
-    for the East, and shall not return, if I ever do, till I can face
-    your happiness without a thought of envy or regret.  Don’t tell
-    Marion more than you can help.  Old friend, good-bye.
-
-                                                                   “ERIC.”
-
-“P.S.—I enclose Christie and Manson’s receipt for your picture, which
-will go into their next sale.  ‘Bronzino _at his best_’ the critics
-pronounce it, which in his case means a big difference.  I am forwarding
-you my own picture of ‘Val Verde,’ which I always intended for Marion.”
-
-
-
-
-EPILOGUE
-
-
-ERIC, I fancy, will never marry.  At least, he says so, and the words
-mean more with him than they would do on the lips of other men.
-
-His was not a character—I recognised at last—to love lightly, or to
-change the object easily where once it had given its love.  In every
-single point he had falsified the career which I had mapped out for him
-at starting.  Not always, it is clear, does Cicero’s rule hold
-good—“_Imago animi vultus_; _indices oculi_.”  Eric, for one, had
-demonstrated its incompleteness.  I had thought him weak and vacillating.
-And his weakness, if ever it existed, had become his strength.  Strong he
-had shown himself (in spite of his own words) both for the friend of his
-youth and the woman of his choice; strong to build himself a grand
-career; strong above all to conquer a temptation before which the
-strongest might have fallen; strong finally to fall and rise again, which
-is greater and grander, I take it, than not to fall.  True of him, if of
-anyone—
-
-    “That men may rise on stepping-stones
-    Of their dead selves to higher things.”
-
-Thank Heaven! there is no shadow of a cloud between us now.  And though I
-cannot look for him at Fleetwater as yet, where the tantalising proximity
-of all he held most dear would make life for a time unbearable; yet
-surely, most surely, I know that we shall see him there some time, some
-day.
-
-In appearance he is not altered much from the lad I loved at school and
-college, and from whom I parted not quite three years ago in his rooms at
-Trinity, starting, each of us, so confidently on the journey of a life
-for which I had made forecast of such different results.  Only a weary
-look in his eyes, which time, I think, will surely lighten; only a line
-or two on his forehead, which time, I think, will surely smooth away.
-
-And when he left us again for a long round of travel in Italy, Egypt, and
-the East, to enlarge his ideas and find fresh subjects for his pencil, it
-was with a heart full of hope and thankfulness that I bade him Godspeed.
-
-For surely, most surely, I know that we shall have him once again with
-us—the Eric of the past, the dearest friend, save one, I ever knew—to
-share in and complete the happiness he had won for us out of the strong
-heart that only failed him once, and made out of failure a greater and
-far more glorious recovery.  For time has been quietly perfecting its
-work, and when he comes to us again, we shall meet, I know, the Eric of
-the future, too, uprising from the Eric of the past.
-
-                                * * * * *
-
-                                 THE END.
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTE.
-
-
-{190}  The following legend formed the subject of a short story in the
-“Cambridge Review,” June 1903.
-
-                                * * * * *
-
-
-
-
-
-                               Ronald and I
-
-
-                  Crown 8vo.  Illustrated.  3s. 6d. net.
-
-                         _OPINIONS OF THE PRESS_
-
-_ST. JAMES’S GAZETTE_.—“Stones and Sketches . . .  There is not one which
-is not of its kind perfect.”
-
-_BIRKENHEAD NEWS_.—“There is literature here, and that of the very best,
-witness ‘The Cruel Crawling Foam.’”
-
-_LITERATURE_.—“We had finished Mr. Pretor’s book, and had been refreshed
-by the knowledge and humour and tenderness underlying his descriptions of
-‘Our Rector,’ ‘Our Professor,’ and ‘Bindo.’”
-
-_CAMBRIDGE REVIEW_.—“Mr. Pretor’s power for delicate delineation is
-unequalled.  His style is alone a charm.  We have read the book with
-genuine delight, and we think it appeals to all cultivated people who
-care for simple yet well drawn pictures of real life.”
-
-_ACADEMY_.—“A series of studies, grim, humorous, fanciful and pathetic . . .
-The pleasant mixture is dedicated to Mrs. Thomas Hardy.”
-
-_SPECTATOR_.—“A volume of clever sketches.  Indeed, there is more than
-cleverness in them.  There is feeling, often expressed with no little
-subtlety and skill, and plenty of humour.  Some of the stories are of the
-strangest.”
-
-_SATURDAY REVIEW_.—“Mr. Thomas Hardy did well to encourage.”
-
-_LITERARY WORLD_.—“Mr. Pretor possesses the panoply of a successful
-writer unless we are much mistaken.”
-
-                                * * * * *
-
-                      Cambridge Deighton Bell & Co.
-                        London George Bell & Sons.
-
-
-
-
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