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

on his part fell in with her wishes, and indeed was well content to do so. For a while he wanted nothing more than just to lie there and watch her moving in and out of his room, with his food or flowers, or whatever it might be, for a burst of bad weather prevented him from going out of doors. Then, as he strengthened she began to talk to him (which Mrs. Parsons did long before that event), telling him all that for years he had longed to know; no, not all, but some things. Among other matters she described to him the details of her father's end, which occurred in a very characteristic fashion.

"You see, dear," she said, "as he grew older his passion for money- making increased more and more; why, I am sure I cannot say, seeing that Heaven knows he had enough."

"Yes," said Godfrey, "I suppose you are a very rich woman."

She nodded, saying: "So rich that I don't know how rich, for really I haven't troubled even to read all the figures, and as yet they are not complete. Moreover, I believe that soon I shall be much richer. I'll tell you why presently. The odd thing is, too, that my father died intestate, so I get every farthing. I believe he meant to make a will with some rather peculiar provisions that perhaps you can guess. But this will was never made."

"Why not?" asked Godfrey.

"Because he died first, that's all. It was this way. He, or rather his firm, which is only another name for him, for he owned three-fourths of the capital, got some tremendous shipping contract with the Government arising out of the war, that secures an enormous profit to them; how much I can't tell you, but hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds. He had been very anxious about this contract, for his terms were so stiff that the officials who manage such affairs hesitated about signing them. At last one day after a long and I gather, stormy interview with I don't know whom, in the course of which some rather strong language seems to have been used, the contract was signed and delivered to the firm. My father came home to this house with a copy of it in his pocket. He was very triumphant, for he looked at the matter solely from a business point of view, not at all from that of the country. Also he was very tired, for he had aged much during the last few years, and suffered occasionally from heart attacks. To keep himself up he drank a great deal of wine at dinner, first champagne and then the best part of a bottle of port. This made him talkative, and he kept me sitting there to listen to him while he boasted, poor man, of how he had 'walked round' the officials who thought themselves so clever, but never saw some trap which he had set for them."

"And what did you do?" asked Godfrey.

"You know very well what I did. I grew angry, I could not help it, and told him I thought it was shameful to make money wrongfully out of the country at such a time, especially when he did not want it at all. Then he was furious and answered that he did want it, to support the peerage which he was going to get. He said also," she added slowly, "that I was 'an ignorant, interfering vixen,' yes, that is what he called me, a vixen, who had always been a disappointment to him and thwarted his plans. 'However,' he went on, 'as you think so little of my hard-earned money, I'll take care that you don't have more of it than I can help. I am not going to leave it to be wasted on silly charities by a sour old maid, for that's what you are, since you can't get hold of your precious parson's son, who I hope will be sent to the war and killed. I'll see the lawyers to-morrow, and make a will, which I hope you'll find pleasant reading one day.'

"I answered that he might make what will he liked, and left the room, though he tried to stop me.

"About half an hour later I saw the butler running about the garden where I was, looking for me in the gloom, and heard him calling: 'Come to Sir John, miss. Come to Sir John!'

"I went in and there was my father fallen forward on the dining-room table, with blood coming from his lips, though I believe this was caused by a crushed wineglass. His pocket-book was open beneath him, in which he had been writing figures of his estate, and, I think, headings for the will he meant to make, but these I could not read since the faint pencilling was blotted out with blood. He was quite dead from some kind of a stroke followed by heart failure, as the doctors said."

"Is that all the pleasant story?" asked Godfrey.

"Yes, except that there being no will I inherited everything, or shall do so. I tried to get that contract cancelled, but could not; first, because having once made it the Government would not consent, since to do so would have been a reflection on those concerned, and secondly, for the reason that the other partners in the shipping business objected. So we shall have to give it back in some other way."

Godfrey looked at her, and said:

"You meant to say that /you/ will have to give it back."

"I don't know what I meant," she answered, colouring; "but having said /we/, I think I will be like the Government and stick to it. That is, unless you object very much, my dear."

"Object! /I/ object!" and taking the hand that was nearest to him, he covered it with kisses. As he did so he noted that for the first time she wore the little ring with turquoise hearts upon her third finger, the ring that so many years before he had bought at Lucerne, the ring that through Mrs. Parsons he had sent her in the pill-box on the evening of their separation.

This was the only form of engagement that ever passed between them, the truth being that from the moment he entered the place it was all taken for granted, not only by themselves, but by everyone in the house, including the wounded. With this development of an intelligent instinct, it is possible that Mrs. Parsons had something to do.

 

CHAPTER XIX(MARRIAGE)

 

In that atmosphere of perfect bliss Godfrey's cure was quick. For bliss it was, save only that there was another bliss beyond to be attained. Remember that this man, now approaching middle life, had never drunk of the cup of what is known as love upon the earth.

Some might answer that such is the universal experience; that true, complete love has no existence, except it be that love of God to which a few at last attain, since in what we know as God completeness and absolute unity can be found alone. Other loves all have their flaws, with one exception perhaps, that of the love of the dead which fondly we imagine to be unchangeable. For the rest passion, however exalted, passes or at least becomes dull with years; the most cherished children grow up, and in so doing, by the law of Nature, grow away; friends are estranged and lost in their own lives.

Upon the earth there is no perfect love; it must be sought elsewhere, since having the changeful shadows, we know there is a sky wherein shines the sun that casts them.

Godfrey, as it chanced, omitting Isobel, had walked little even in these sweet shadows. There were but three others for whom he had felt devotion in all his days, Mrs. Parsons, his tutor, Monsieur Boiset, and his friend, Arthur Thorburn, who was gone. Therefore to him Isobel was everything. As a child he had adored her; as a woman she was his desire, his faith and his worship.

If this were so with him, still more was it the case with Isobel, who in truth cared for no other human being. Something in her nature prevented her from contracting violent female friendships, and to all men, except a few of ability, each of them old enough to be her father, she was totally indifferent; indeed most of them repelled her. On Godfrey, and Godfrey alone, from the first moment she saw him as a child she had poured all the deep treasure of her heart. He was at once her divinity and her other self, the segment that completed her life's circle, without which it was nothing but a useless, broken ring.

So much did this seem to her to be so, that notwithstanding her lack of faith in matters beyond proof and knowledge, she never conceived of this passion of hers as having had a beginning, or of being capable of an end. This contradictory woman would argue against the possibility of any future existence, yet she was quite certain that her love for Godfrey /had/ a future existence, and indeed one that was endless. When at length he put it to her that her attitude was most illogical, since that which was dead and dissolved could not exist in any place or shape, she thought for a while and replied quietly:

"Then I must be wrong."

"Wrong in what?" asked Godfrey.

"In supposing that we do not live after death. The continuance of our love I /know/ to be beyond any doubt, and if it involves our continuance as individual entities--well, then we continue, that is all."

"We might continue as a single entity," he suggested.

"Perhaps," she answered, "and if so this would be better still, for it must be impossible to lose one another while that remained alive, comprising both."

Thus, and in these few words, although she never became altogether orthodox, or took quite the same view of such mysteries as did Godfrey, Isobel made her great recantation, for which probably there would never have been any need had she been born in different surroundings and found some other spiritual guide in youth than Mr. Knight. As the cruelties and the narrow bitterness of the world had bred unfaith in her, so did supreme love breed faith, if of an unusual sort, since she learned that without the faith her love must die, and the love she knew to be immortal. Therefore the existence of that living love presupposed all the rest, and convinced her, which in one of her obstinate nature nothing else could possibly have done, no, not if she had seen a miracle. Also this love of hers was so profound and beautiful that she felt its true origin and ultimate home must be elsewhere than on the earth.

That was why she consented to be married in church, somewhat to Godfrey's surprise.

 

In due course, having practically recovered his health, Godfrey appeared before a Board in London which passed him as fit for service, but gave him a month's leave. With this document he returned to Hawk's Hall, and there showed it to Isobel.

"And when the month is up?" she asked, looking at him.

"Then I suppose I shall have to join my