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 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 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. “Nonsense, Walter,” was the Squire’s reply. “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 “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.” “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 “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 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 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,” “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, I was glad that no conversation followed when she had ended. Almost in silence, which I could 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 |