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.”