Love Eternal - H. Rider Haggard (ereader ebook .TXT) 📗

Still there was a good house with an excellent garden, too good indeed, with its beautiful and ancient rooms which a former rector of archæological knowledge and means had in part restored to their pristine state, while for the rest his tastes were simple and his needs few, for, of course, he neither drank wine nor smoked. Therefore, as has been said, he took the living with thankfulness and determined to make the best of it on a total income of about £350 a year.

On the whole Monk's Acre suited Mr. Knight fairly well. It is true that he did not like the Abbey, as it was still called, of which the associations and architectural beauty made no appeal to him, and thought often with affection of the lodging-house-like abode in which he had dwelt in his southern seaport town amid the Victorian surroundings that were suited to his Victorian nature. The glorious church, too, irritated him, partly because it was so glorious, and notwithstanding all that the Reformation had done to mar it, so suggestive of papistical practice and errors, and partly because the congregation was so scanty in that great expanse of nave and aisle, to say nothing of the chancel and sundry chapels, that they looked like a few wandering sheep left by themselves in a vast and almost emptied fold. Nor was this strange, seeing that the total population of the parish was but one hundred and forty-seven souls.

Of his squire and patron he saw but little. Occasionally Mr. Blake attended church and as lay-rector was accommodated in an ugly oak box in the chancel, where his big body and florid countenance reminded Godfrey of Farmer Johnson's prize polled ox in its stall. These state visits were not however very frequent and depended largely upon the guests who were staying for the week-end at the Hall. If Mr. Blake discovered that these gentlemen were religiously inclined, he went to church. If otherwise, and this was more common, acting on his principle of being all things to all men, he stopped away.

Personally he did not bother his head about the matter which, in secret, he looked upon as one of the ramifications of the great edifice of British cant. The vast majority of people in his view went to church, not because they believed in anything or wished for instruction or spiritual consolation, but because it looked respectable, which was exactly why he did so himself. Even then nearly always he sat alone in the oak box, his visitors generally preferring to occupy the pew in the nave which was frequented by Lady Jane and Isobel.

Nor did the two often meet socially since their natures were antipathetic. In the bosom of his family Mr. Blake would refer to Mr. Knight as the "little parson rat," while in his bosom Mr. Knight would think of Mr. Blake as "that bull of Bashan." Further, after some troubles had arisen about a question of tithe, also about the upkeep of the chancel, Blake discovered that beneath his meek exterior the clergyman had a strong will and very clear ideas of the difference between right and wrong, in short, that he was not a man to be trifled with, and less still one of whom he could make a tool. Having ascertained these things he left him alone as much as possible.

Mr. Knight very soon became aware first that his income was insufficient to his needs, and secondly, especially now when his health was much improved, that after a busy and hard-working life, time at Monk's Acre hung heavily upon his hands. The latter trouble to some extent he palliated by beginning the great work that he had planned ever since he became a deacon, for which his undoubted scholarship gave him certain qualifications. Its provisional title was, "Babylon Unveiled" (he would have liked to substitute "The Scarlet Woman" for Babylon) and its apparent object an elaborate attack upon the Roman Church, which in fact was but a cover for the real onslaught. With the Romans, although perhaps he did not know it himself, he had certain sympathies, for instance, in the matter of celibacy. Nor did he entirely disapprove of the monastic orders. Then he found nothing shocking in the tenets and methods of the Jesuits working for what they conceived to be a good end. The real targets of his animosity were his high-church brethren of the Church of England, wretches who, whilst retaining all the privileges of the Anglican Establishment, such as marriage, did not hesitate to adopt almost every error of Rome and to make use of her secret power over the souls of men by the practice of Confession and otherwise.

As this monumental treatise began in the times of the Early Fathers and was planned to fill ten volumes of at least a hundred thousand words apiece, no one will be surprised to learn that it never reached the stage of publication, or indeed, to be accurate, that it came to final stop somewhere about the time of Athanasius.

Realizing that the work was likely to equal that of Gibbon both in length and the years necessary to its completion; also that from it could be expected no immediate pecuniary profits, Mr. Knight looked round to find some other way of occupying his leisure, and adding to his income. Although a reserved person, on a certain Sunday when he went to lunch at the Hall, in the absence of Mr. Blake who was spending the week-end somewhere else, he confided his difficulties to Lady Jane whom he felt to be sympathetic.

"The house is so big," he complained. "Mrs. Parsons" (Godfrey's old nurse and his housekeeper) "and one girl cannot even keep it clean. It was most foolish of my predecessor in the living to restore that old refectory and all the southern dormitories upon which I am told he spent no less than £1,500 of his own money, never reflecting on the expense which his successors must incur merely to keep them in order, since being once there they are liable for charges for dilapidations. It would have been better, after permission obtained, to let them go to ruin."

"No doubt, but they are very beautiful, are they not?" remarked Lady Jane feebly.

"Beauty is a luxury and, I may add, a snare. It is a mistaken love of beauty and pomp, baits that the Evil One well knows how to use, which have led so large a section of our Church astray," he replied sipping at his tumbler of water.

A silence followed, for Lady Jane, who from early and tender associations loved high-church practices, did not know what to answer. It was broken by Isobel who had been listening to the conversation in her acute way, and now said in her clear, strong voice:

"Why don't you keep a school, Mr. Knight? There's lots of room for it in the Abbey."

"A school!" he said. "A school! I never thought of that. No, it is ridiculous. Still, pupils perhaps. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, &c. Well, it is time for me to be going. I will think the matter over after church."

Mr. Knight did think the matter over and after consultation with his housekeeper, Mrs. Parsons, an advertisement appeared in /The Times/ and /The Spectator/ inviting parents and guardians to entrust two or three lads to the advertiser's care to receive preliminary education, together with his own son. It proved fruitful, and after an exchange of the "highest references," two little boys appeared at Monk's Acre, both of them rather delicate in health. This was shortly before the crisis arose as to the future teaching of Isobel, when the last governess, wishing her "a better spirit," had bidden her a frigid farewell and shaken the dust of Hawk's Hall off her feet.

One day Isobel was sent with a note to the Abbey House. She rang the bell but no one came, for Mr. Knight was out walking with his pupils and Mrs. Parsons and the parlour-maid were elsewhere. Tired of waiting, she wandered round the grey old building in the hope of finding someone to whom she could deliver the letter, and came to the refectory which had a separate entrance. The door was open and she peeped in. At first, after the brilliant sunlight without, she saw nothing except the great emptiness of the place with its splendid oak roof on the repair of which the late incumbent had spent so much, since as is common in monkish buildings, the windows were high and narrow. Presently, however, she perceived a little figure seated in the shadow at the end of the long oaken refectory table, that at which the monks had eaten, which still remained where it had stood for hundreds of years, one of the fixtures of the house, and knew it for that of Godfrey, Mr. Knight's son. Gliding towards him quietly she saw that he was asleep and stopped to study him.

He was a beautiful boy, pale just now for he had recovered but recently from some childish illness. His hair was dark and curling, dark, too, were his eyes, though these she could not see, and the lashes over them, while his hands were long and fine. He looked most lonely and pathetic, there in the big oak chair that had so often accommodated the portly forms of departed abbots, and her warm heart went out towards him. Of course Isobel knew him, but not very well, for he was a shy lad and her father had never encouraged intimacy between the Abbey House and the Hall.

Somehow she had the idea that he was unhappy, for indeed he looked so even in his sleep, though perhaps this was to be accounted for by a paper of unfinished sums before him. Sympathy welled up in Isobel, who remembered the oppressions of the last governess--her of the inkpot. Sympathy, yes, and more than sympathy, for of a sudden she felt as she had never felt before. She loved the little lad as though he were her brother. A strange affinity for him came home to her, although she did not define it thus; it was as if she knew that her spirit was intimate with his, yes, and always had been and always would be intimate.

This subtle knowledge went through Isobel like fire and shook her. She turned pale, her nostrils expanded, her large eyes opened and she sighed. She did more indeed. Drawn by some over-mastering impulse she drew near to Godfrey and kissed him gently on the forehead, then glided back again frightened and ashamed at her own act.

Now he woke up; she felt his dark eyes looking at her. Then he spoke in a slow, puzzled voice, saying:

"I have had such a funny dream. I dreamed that a spirit came and kissed me. I did not see it, but I think it must have been my mother's."

"Why?" asked Isobel.

"Because no one else ever cared enough for me to kiss me, except Mrs. Parsons, and she has given it up now that the other boys are here."

"Does not your father kiss you?" she asked.

"Yes, once a week, on Sunday evening when