Love Eternal, H. Rider Haggard [amazing books to read txt] 📗

his watch, a seven-and-sixpenny article that he had been given off a Christmas tree at Hawk's Hall, and observed, with horror, that he had just ten minutes in which to dress, pack, and catch the train. Somehow he did it, for fortunately his bill had been paid. Always in after days a tumultuous vision remained in his mind of himself, a long, lank youth with unbrushed hair and unbuttoned waistcoat, carrying a bag and a coat, followed by an hotel porter with his luggage, rushing wildly down an interminable platform with his ticket in his teeth towards an already moving train. At an open carriage door stood a lady in whom he recognized Miss Ogilvy, who was imploring the guard to hold the train.

"Can't do it, ma'am, any longer," said the guard, between blasts of his whistle and wavings of his green flag. "It's all my place is worth to delay the Continental Express for more than a minute. Thank you kindly, ma'am. Here he comes," and the flag paused for a few seconds. "In you go, young gentleman."

A heave, a struggle, an avalanche of baggage, and Godfrey found himself in the arms of Miss Ogilvy in a reserved first-class carriage. From those kind supporting arms he slid gently and slowly to the floor.

"Well," said that lady, contemplating him with his back resting against a portmanteau, "you cut things rather fine."

Still seated on the floor, Godfrey pulled out his watch and looked at it, then remarked that eleven minutes before he was fast asleep in bed.

"I thought as much," she said severely, "and that's why I told the maid to see if you had been called, which I daresay you forgot to arrange for yourself."

"I did," admitted Godfrey, rising and buttoning his waistcoat. "I have had a very troubled night; all sorts of things happened to me."

"What have you been doing?" asked Miss Ogilvy, whose interest was excited.

Then Godfrey, whose bosom was bursting, told her all, and the story lasted most of the way to Dover.

"You poor boy," she said, when he had finished, "you poor boy!"

"I left the basket with the food behind, and I am so hungry," remarked Godfrey presently.

"There's a restaurant car on the train, come and have some breakfast," said Miss Ogilvy, "for on the boat you may not wish to eat. I shall at any rate."

This was untrue for she had breakfasted already, but that did not matter.

"My father said I was not to take meals on the trains," explained Godfrey, awkwardly, "because of the expense."

"Oh! I'm your father, or rather your mother, now. Besides, I have a table," she added in a nebulous manner.

So Godfrey followed her to the dining car, where he made an excellent meal.

"You don't seem to eat much," he said at length. "You have only had a cup of tea and half a bit of toast."

"I never can when I am going on the sea," she explained. "I expect I shall be very ill, and you will have to look after me, and you know the less you eat, well--the less you can be ill."

"Why did you not tell me that before?" he remarked, contemplating his empty plate with a gloomy eye. "Besides I expect we shall be in different parts of the ship."

"Oh! I daresay it can be arranged," she answered.

And as a matter of fact, it was "arranged," all the way to Lucerne. At Dover station Miss Ogilvy had a hurried interview at the ticket office. Godfrey did not in the least understand what she was doing, but as a result he was her companion throughout the long journey. The crossing was very rough, and it was Godfrey who was ill, excessively ill, not Miss Ogilvy who, with the assistance of her maid and the steward, attended assiduously to him in his agonies.

"And to think," he moaned faintly as they moored alongside of the French pier, "that once I wished to be a sailor."

"Nelson was always sick," said Miss Ogilvy, wiping his damp brow with a scented pocket-handkerchief, while the maid held the smelling-salts to his nose.

"Then he must have been a fool to go to sea," muttered Godfrey, and relapsed into a torpor, from which he awoke only to find himself stretched at length on the cushions of a first-class carriage.

Later on, the journey became very agreeable. Godfrey was interested in everything, being of a quick and receptive mind, and Miss Ogilvy proved a fund of information. When they had exhausted the scenery they conversed on other topics. Soon she knew everything there was to know about him and Isobel, whom it was evident she could not understand.

"Tell me," she said, looking at his dark and rather unusual eyes, "do you ever have dreams, Godfrey?" for now she called him by his Christian name.

"Not at night, when I sleep very soundly, except after that poor cabman was killed. I have seen lots of dead people, because my father always takes me to look at them in the parish, to remind me of my own latter end, as he says, but they never made me dream before."

"Then do you have them at all?"

He hesitated a little.

"Sometimes, at least visions of a sort, when I am walking alone, especially in the evening, or wondering about things. But always when I am alone."

"What are they?" she asked eagerly.

"I can't quite explain," he replied in a slow voice. "They come and they go, and I forget them, because they fade out, just like a dream does, you know."

"You must remember something; try to tell me about them."

"Well, I seem to be among a great many people whom I have never met. Yet I know them and they know me, and talk to me about all sorts of things. For instance, if I am puzzling over anything they will explain it quite clearly, but afterwards I always forget the explanation and am no wiser than I was before. A hand holding a cloth seems to wipe it out of my mind, just as one cleans a slate."

"Is that all?"

"Not quite. Occasionally I meet the people afterwards. For instance, Thomas Sims, the cabman, was one of them, and," he added colouring, "forgive me for saying so, but you are another. I knew it at once, the moment I saw you, and that is what made me feel so friendly."

"How very odd!" she exclaimed, "and how delightful. Because, you see-- well never mind----"

He looked at her expectantly, but as she said no more, went on.

"Then now and again I see places before I really do see them. For example, I think that presently we shall pass along a hillside with great mountain slopes above and below us covered with dark trees. Opposite to us also, running up to three peaks with a patch of snow on the centre peak, but not quite at the top." He closed his eyes, and added, "Yes, and there is a village at the bottom of the valley by a swift-running stream, and in it a small white church with a spire and a gilt weathercock with a bird on it. Then," he continued rapidly, "I can see the house where I am going to live, with the Pasteur Boiset, an old white house with woods above and all about it, and the beautiful lake beneath, and beyond, a great mountain. There is a tree in the garden opposite the front door, like a big cherry tree, only the fruit looks larger than cherries," he added with confidence.

"I suppose that no one showed you a photograph of the place?" she asked doubtfully, "for as it happens I know it. It is only about two miles from Lucerne by the short way through the woods. What is more, there is a tree with a delicious fruit, either a big cherry or a small plum, for I have eaten some of it several years ago."

"No," he answered, "no one. My father only told me that the name of the little village is Kleindorf. He wrote it on the label for my bag."

Just then the line went round a bend. "Look," he said, "there is the place I told you we were coming to, with the dark trees, the three peaks, and the stream, and the white church with the cock on top of the spire."

She let down the carriage window, and stared at the scene.

"Yes," she exclaimed, "it is just as you described. Oh! at last I have found what I have been seeking for years. Godfrey, I believe that you have the true gift."

"What gift, Miss Ogilvy?"

"Clairvoyance, of course, and perhaps clairaudience as well."

The lad burst out laughing, and said that he wished it were something more useful.

 

From all of which it will be guessed that Ethel Ogilvy was a mystic of the first water.

 

CHAPTER V(MADAME RIENNES)

 

About 11 o'clock on the day following this conversation, Godfrey found himself standing on the platform in the big station of Lucerne.

"How are you going to get to Kleindorf?" Miss Ogilvy asked of him. "It's five miles away by the road. I think you had better come to my house and have some /déjeuner/. Afterwards I will send you there in the carriage."

As she spoke a tall gaunt man in ultra-clerical attire, with a very large hooked nose and wearing a pair of blue spectacles, came shuffling towards them.

"Madame is Engleesh?" he said, peering at her through the blue glasses. "Oh! it is easy to know it, though I am so blind. Has Madame by chance seen a leetle, leetle Engleesh boy, who should arrive out of this train? I look everywhere and I cannot find him, and the conducteur, he says he not there. No leetle boy in the second class. His name it is Godfrey, the son of an English pasteur, a man who fear God in the right way."

There was something so absurd in the old gentleman's appearance and method of address, that Miss Ogilvy, who had a sense of humour, was obliged to turn away to hide her mirth. Recovering, she answered:

"I think this is your little boy, Monsieur le Pasteur," and she indicated the tall and handsome Godfrey, who stood gazing at his future instructor open-mouthed. Whoever he had met in his visions, the Pasteur Boiset was not one of them. Never, asleep or waking, had he seen anyone in the least like him.

The clergyman peered at Godfrey, studying him from head to foot.

"Mon Dieu!" he exclaimed, "I understood he was quite, quite leetle, not a big young man who will eat much and want many things. Well, he will be /bon compagnon/ for Juliette, and Madame too, she like the big better than the leetle. /Il est beau et il a l'air intelligent, n'est ce pas, Madame?/" he added confidentially.

"/Bien beau et très intelligent/," she replied, observing that Godfrey was engaged in retrieving his overcoat which he had left in the carriage. Then she explained that she had become friendly with this young gentleman, and hoped that he would be allowed to visit her whenever he wished. Also she gave her name and address.

"Oh! yes, Mademoiselle Ogilvee, the rich English lady who live in the fine house. I have heard of her. /Mais voyons!/ Mademoiselle is not Catholic, is she, for I promise