“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.”