CHAPTER VI
It was high time, I felt, to reconsider my position in regard to Eric and Marion. At present the former knew nothing of my residence in the neighbourhood, or of the acquaintance I had formed with his cousin. His letters, always few and intermittent, had for some time ceased altogether. He was no doubt constantly on the move from one place of interest to another; so I had been unable to write to him the news of my appointment to Fleetwater, and, in the light of my recent discovery, I regarded his ignorance of my whereabouts as adding a fresh complication.
If what the Rector had told me was true, and Riverdale was really inclined towards Marion, then my own position was about as difficult a one as could well be imagined. Even a man more conceited (I hope) than myself might well have paused in the presence of such a rival. The very points in his personality that had won him my devotion—his beauty and charm and careless indifference—might well prove equally attractive to his cousin. Add to which, there was his future and assured position, both likely to tell with her father, if not with herself, to say nothing of the chance that he might one day win fame and distinction as a painter.
And against all these advantages, what had I to offer in competition? Nothing, I assured myself repeatedly, nothing, nothing. Only a poor curacy and a moderate competence, while, of personal attraction, in comparison with Eric, again nothing, nothing. But this was the least of all my difficulties—far worse was the being brought into competition with my best and earliest friend; in particular, the self-consciousness that I was a gainer by his absence. When she began to talk of him, as assuredly she would do, so soon as she knew of our friendship, how was I to answer her? My own warm love and admiration for his merits would second and stimulate her own. The temptation, I am thankful to say, was gone before it was realised. Never, not for one moment, did my heart fail in its duty to my friend. Never did the thought even enter my mind of depreciating or disparaging his merits that I might better my own position. To have entertained the thought as possible would have seemed to me an act of incomparable baseness.
However, the thought and self-examination induced by the difficulty ended by dissipating it. The position, I saw, was for the time being irremediable, and I ended where I might have begun—by recognising that my own part must be that of a simple and unprejudiced onlooker, till Fate should have taken the guidance in her hand, and shown me in which direction she intended to turn the scales.
And if my praises of him should help his chances of success—so let it be. Love is not always given to the most attractive and deserving, while if he succeeded, better he, I said to myself, than any other. For him, if for anyone, I could be content, I thought, to stand aside and efface myself, almost without regret.
Meantime my own love, I determined, must be a silent and unsuspected one.
And so, when I met her the day after, I told her frankly of all my love for Riverdale; how he and I had grown up together with every thought in common, how he had befriended me at school, and stood by me at College, and how the first great grief of my life had been our necessity of parting.
She was pleased, I could see, with all my praise of him; pleased too, I thought, that we had discovered this new bond of sympathy between us, and could discuss his career with a mutual interest in his success.
“I wonder what it was,” she said one day, “that brought you and Eric so closely together,”—thereby reproducing the very difficulty that had often puzzled me. “Your natures are about as far removed as the Antipodes. Unless I’m much mistaken, yours is a strong and uncommonly decided character, with the most practical ideas of what life’s work should be. While he is a dear old indolent dreamer, with all the fascination of modern Alcibiades, but with none of the energy or ambition that characterised the splendid young Athenian.”