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

fury, so that he lifted his clenched hands above his head and shook them, muttering:

"And in my church, /my/ church!"

Then unable to bear more of this spectacle, he slipped away again, heedless of the pouring skies.

By nature, although in obedience to a rash promise once he had married, Mr. Knight was a true woman-hater. That sex and everything to do with it were repellent to him. Even the most harmless manifestations of natural affection between male and female he considered disgusting, indeed indecent, and if these were carried any further he held it to be among the greatest of crimes. He was one of those who, if he had the power, would have hounded any poor girl who, in the country phrase, "had got into trouble," to the river brink and over it, as a creature not fit to live; or if she escaped destruction, would have, and indeed often had, pursued her with unceasing malignity, thinking that thereby he did God service. His attitude towards such a person was that of an Inquisitor towards a fallen nun.

Moreover, he could do this with a clear conscience, since he could truly say that he was qualified to throw the first stone, being of those who mistake personal aversion for personal virtue. Because his cold-hearted nature rejected it, he loathed this kind of human failing and felt good in the loathing. Nor did it ever occur to him to reflect that others, such as secret malice, jealousy and all uncharitableness on which his heart fed, might be much worse than the outrush of human passion in obedience to the almighty decree of Nature that is determined not to die.

These being his views, the feelings that the sight awoke in him of this pair declaring their holy love in the accustomed, human fashion, can scarcely be measured and are certainly beyond description. Had he been another sort of man who had found some devil flogging a child to death, the rage and indignation aroused in his breast could not have been greater, even if it were his own child.

The one thing that Mr. Knight had feared for years was that Godfrey, who, as he knew, was fonder of Isobel than of any other living creature, should come to love her in a fuller fashion: Isobel, a girl who had laughed at and flouted him and once told him to his face that a study of his character and treatment of others had done more to turn her from the Christian religion than anything else.

In a sense he was unselfish in this matter, or rather his hate mastered his selfishness. He knew very well that Isobel would be a great match for Godfrey, and he was by no means a man who underrated money and position and their power. He guessed, too, that she really loved him and would have made him the best of wives; that with her at his side he might do almost anything in the world. But these considerations did not in the least soften his loathing of the very thought of such a marriage. Incredible as it may seem, he would rather have seen Godfrey dead than the happy husband of Isobel.

Mr. Knight, drunk with rage, reeled rather than walked away from the church door, wondering what he might do to baulk and shame that living, loving pair who could kiss and cling even among the tombs. A thought came to him, a very evil thought which he welcomed as an inspiration sent straight from an offended Heaven. Sir John Blake had come home; he knew it, for he had passed him on the road seated alone in a fine motor-car, and they had waved their hands to each other not ten minutes before. He would go and tell him all; in the character of an upright man who does not like to see his rich neighbour harmed by the entanglement of that neighbour's daughter in an undesirable relationship. That Sir John would consider himself to be harmed, he was sure enough, being by no means ignorant of his plans and aspirations for the future of that daughter, who was expected to make a great alliance in return for the fortune which she would bring to her husband.

No sooner said than done. In three minutes he was at the Hall and, as it chanced, met Sir John by the front door.

"Hullo, Reverend! How are you? You look very wet and miserable; taking refuge from the rain, I suppose, though it is clearing off now. Have a brandy and soda, or a glass of port?"

"Thank you, Sir John, I am an abstainer, but a cup of hot tea would be welcome."

"Tea--ah! yes, but that takes time to make, so I should have to leave you to drink it by yourself. Fact is I want to find my daughter. Some of those blessed guests of mine, including Mounteroy, the young Earl, you know, whom I wish her to meet particularly, are coming down to-night by the last train and not to-morrow, so I must get everything arranged in a hurry. Can't make out where the girl has gone."

"I think I can tell you, Sir John," said Mr. Knight with a sickly smile; "at least I saw her a little while ago rather peculiarly engaged."

"Where, and how was she engaged?"

Without asking permission Mr. Knight entered the house and stepped into a cloak-room that opened out of the hall. Being curious, Sir John followed him. Mr. Knight shut the door and, supporting himself against the frame of a marble wash-basin with gilded taps, said:

"I saw her in the chancel of the Abbey Church and she was kissing my son, Godfrey; at least he was kissing her, and she seemed to be responding to his infamous advances, for her arms were round his neck and I heard sounds which suggested that this was so."

"Holy Moses!" ejaculated Sir John, "what in the name of hell are they after?"

"Your question, stripped of its unnecessary and profane expletives, seems easy to answer. I imagine that my immoral son has just proposed to your daughter, and been accepted with--well, unusual emphasis."

"Perhaps you are right. But if he had I don't see anything particularly immoral about it. If I had never done anything worse than that I shouldn't feel myself called to go upon my knees and cry /peccavi/. However, that ain't the point. The point is that a game of this sort don't at all suit my book, but," here he looked at the clergyman shrewdly, "why do /you/ come to tell about it? I should have thought that under all the circumstances /you/ should have been glad. Isobel isn't likely to be exactly a beggar, you know, so it seems devilish queer that you should object, as I gather you do; unless it is to the kissing, which has been heard of before."

"I do object most strongly, Sir John," replied Mr. Knight in his iciest tones. "I disapprove entirely of your daughter, whose lack of any Christian feeling is notorious, and whose corrupting influence will, I fear, make my son as bad as herself."

"Damn her lack of Christian feeling, and damn yours and your impudence too, you half-drowned church rat! Why don't you call her Jezebel at once, and have done with it? One of the things I like about her is that she has the pluck to snap her fingers at such as you and all your ignorant superstitions. What are you getting at? That is what I want to know."

"I put aside your insults to which as a clergyman it is my duty to turn the other cheek," replied Mr. Knight, with a furious gasp. "As to the rest I am trying to get at the pure and sacred truth."

"You look as though you would do better to get at the pure and sacred brandy," remarked Sir John, surveying him critically, "but that's your affair. Now, what is the truth?"

"Alas! that I must say it. I believe my son to be that basest of creatures, a fortune-hunter. How did he get that money left to him by another woman?"

"Don't know, I'm sure. Perhaps the old girl found the young chap attractive, and wished to acknowledge favours received. Such things have been known. You don't suppose he forged her will, do you?"

"You are ribald, Sir, ribald."

"Am I? Well, and you are jolly offensive. Thank God you weren't my father. Now, from what I remember of that boy of yours, I shouldn't have thought that he was a fortune-hunter. I should have thought that he was a young beggar who wished to get hold of the girl he fancies, and that's all. Still, you know him best, and I dare say you are right. Anyway, for your own peculiar and crack-brained reasons, you don't want this business, and I say at once you can't want it less than I do. Do you suppose that I wish to see my only child, who will have half a million of money and might be a countess, or half a dozen countesses, to-morrow, married to the son of a beggarly sniveller like you, for as you are so fond of the pure and sacred truth, I'll give it you--a fellow who can come and peach upon your own boy and his girl."

"My conscience and my duty----" began Mr. Knight.

"Oh! drat your conscience and blow your duty. You're a spy and a backbiting tell-tale, that's what you are. Did you never kiss a girl yourself?"

"Never until after I was married, when we are specially enjoined by the great Apostle----"

"Then I'm sorry for your wife, for she must have had a lot to teach you. But let's stop slanging, we have our own opinions of each other and there's an end. Now we have both the same object, you because you are a pious crank and no more human than a dried eel, and I because I am a man of the world who want to see my daughter where she ought to be, wearing a coronet in the House of Lords. The question is: How is the job to be done? You don't understand Isobel, but I do. If her back is put up, wild horses won't move her. She'd snap her fingers in my face, and tell me to go to a place that you are better acquainted with than I am, or will be, and take my money with me. Of course, I could hold her for a few months, till she is of age perhaps, but after that, No. So it seems that the only chance is your son. Now, what's his weak point? Can he be bought off?"

"Certainly not," said Mr. Knight.

"Oh! that's odd in one who, you say, is a fortune-hunter. Well, what is it? Everyone has a weak point, and another girl won't do just now."

"His weakest point is his fondness for that treacherous and abominable sex of which I have just had so painful an example; and in the church too, yes, in my church."

"And a jolly good place to get to in such a rain, for of course they didn't know that you were hiding under the pews. But I've told you that cock won't fight at present. What's the next?"

At these accumulated insults Mr. Knight turned perfectly livid with suppressed rage. But he did suppress it, for he had an object to gain which, to his perverted mind, was the most important in the whole world--namely, the final separation of his son and Isobel.

"His next bad point," he went on, "is his pride, which is abnormal, although from childhood I have done my best to inculcate humility of spirit into his heart. He cannot bear any affront, or even neglect. For instance, he left me for some years just because he did not consider that he was received properly on his return from Switzerland; also because he went into a rage, for he has a very evil temper if roused, when I