The Argosy — page 256: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Valentine’s Day. 241 CHAPTER II. HE SENDS HIS VALENTINE, THE next morning at the Vicarage, when Mr. Trevor lounged down an hour late for breakfast, he found his future tutorin a curious state of bewilderment. ‘‘ Considerably knocked out of time,” commented that shrewd youth, when Mr. Vyner answered his apologies by saying in an absent way, ‘‘I believe it is only selfishness.” And then perceiv- ing by Trevor’s face of astonishment that he must have said some- thing very odd, he got up from his untouched breakfast, and went into the garden, pleading a headache. This is what had happened. On coming down that morning, he saw on the mantel-piece, in the spot where his letters were always placed, an envelope with his name written across it. Being the most careless of men he never noticed the ‘‘ A. T.” written above, tore open the envelope, flung it behind him, and to his surprise, found in his hands a card, bearing on it a gracefully-executed bunch of primroses, while underneath was pen- cilled in a lady’s hand: ‘In the spring a young man’s fancy, Lightly turns to thoughts of love.” His first thought was to examine the envelope: he turned round to pick it up, but, alas! he had thrown it into the very heart of the fire, and nothing remained of it but a sheet of black ash. After all, there would be nothing in this to account for the Vicar’s mental dis- quietude. The reception of a valentine from an unknown hand would hardly disturb the equanimity of most young men. But Kate’s seed had fallen on fruitful ground. It was so singularly apposite (when opened by the wrong person), and chimed in so well with many of Mr. Vyner’s thoughts during the last year or two, that, while the valentine in itself, or its sender, never cost him another thought, the tempest of recollections, wishes, self-reproaches, and plans for the future that it raised in him were more than he could at once allay. The reflections that had so engrossed him at the breakfast-table, and which he was now attempting to reduce to order, by walking up and down the garden puffing furiously at a big pipe, ran briefly something like this: “Why don’t I marry? Is it, as I tell myself, because I do not wish ? Because I am too poor? Because no girl would marry a slovenly object like me? Or is it because I am too selfish? Because I should have to sacrifice so much that has now become second nature to me ? My bachelor’s ease; my summers on the Continent; my untidy habits ; and, sensual wretch that I am, my claret, cigars and novels ? Do I do my duty here? Not a bit: I know no one intimately ; I care for no one’s opinion; I hate the place. With a wife, all that might be changed. A pleasant companion and a comfortable home are surely EONNIE OOO KS (E() m