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.