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.”