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

the umbrella-stand. In due course the tea was produced, though for it he seemed to have little appetite. While he made pretence to eat the thick bread and butter, Mrs. Parsons told him the news, such as it was. Sir John was living in town and "flinging the money about, so it was said, not but what he had got lots to fling and plenty to catch it," she added meaningly. His poor, dear lady was dead, and "happy for her on the whole." Miss Isobel had "gone foreign," having, it was told, quarrelled with her father, and nothing had been heard of her since she went. She, too, had grown into a fine young lady.

That was all he gathered before Mrs. Parsons was obliged to depart to see to her business--except that she was exceedingly glad to see him.

Godfrey went up to his bedroom, which he found unprepared, for somebody else seemed to be sleeping there. While he was surveying it and wondering who this occupant might be, he heard his father in the hall asking the parlour-maid which of the young gentlemen had left that "ridiculous stick" in the stand. She replied that she did not know, whereupon the hard voice of his parent told her to take it away. Afterwards Godfrey found it thrown into the wood-house to be chopped up for firewood, though luckily before this happened.

By this time a kind of anger had seized him. It was true that he had not said by what train he was coming, for the reason that until he reached London he could not tell, but he had written that he was to arrive that afternoon, and surely some note might have been taken of the fact.

He went downstairs and confronted his father, who alone amid so much change seemed to be exactly the same. Mr. Knight shook him by the hand without any particular cordiality, and at once attacked him for not having intimated the hour of his arrival, saying that it was too late to advise the carrier to call at the station for his baggage and that a trap would have to be sent, which cost money.

"Very well, Father, I will pay for it myself," answered Godfrey.

"Oh, yes, I forgot!" exclaimed Mr. Knight, with a sneer, "you have come into money somehow, have you not, and doubtless consider yourself independent?"

"Yes, and I am glad of it, Father, as now I hope I shall not be any more expense to you."

"As you have begun to talk business, Godfrey," replied his father in an acid manner, "we may as well go into things and get it over. You have, I presume, made up your mind to go into the Church in accordance with my wish?"

"No, Father; I do not intend to become a clergyman."

"Indeed. You seem to me to have fallen under very bad influences in Switzerland. However, it does not much matter, as I intend that you shall."

"I am sorry, but I cannot, Father."

Then, within such limits as his piety permitted, which were sufficiently wide, Mr. Knight lost his temper very badly indeed. He attacked his son, suggesting that he had been leading an evil life in Lucerne, as he had learned "from outside sources," and declared that either he should obey him or be cast off. Godfrey, whose temper by this time was also rising, intimated that he preferred the latter alternative.

"What, then, do you intend to do, young man?" asked Mr. Knight.

"I do not know yet, Father." Then an inspiration came to him, and he added, "I shall go to London to-morrow to consult my trustees under Miss Ogilvy's will."

"Really," said Mr. Knight in a rage. "You are after that ill-gotten money, are you? Well, as we seem to agree so badly, why not go to- night instead of to-morrow; there is a late train? Perhaps it would be pleasanter for both of us, and then I need not send for your luggage. Also it would save my shifting the new boy from your room."

"Do you really mean that, Father?"

"I am not in the habit of saying what I do not mean. Only please understand that if you reject my plans for your career, which have been formed after much thought, and, I may add, prayer, I wash my hands of you who are now too old to be argued with in any other way."

Godfrey looked at his father and considered the iron mouth cut straight like a slit across the face, the hard, insignificant countenance and the small, cold, grey eyes. He realised the intensity of the petty anger based, for the most part, on jealousy because he was now independent and could not be ordered about and bullied like the rest of the little boys, and knew that behind it there was not affection, but dislike. Summing up all this in his quick mind, he became aware that father or not, he regarded this man with great aversion. Their natures, their outlook, all about them were antagonistic, and, in fact, had been so from the beginning. The less that they saw of each other the better it would be for both. Although still so young, he had ripened early, and was now almost a man who knew that these things were so without possibility of doubt.

"Very well, Father," he said, "I will go. It is better than stopping here to quarrel."

"I thought you would, now that your friend, Isobel, who did you so much harm with her bad influence, has departed to Mexico, where, I have no doubt, she has forgotten all about you. You won't be able to run after her money as you did after Miss Ogilvy's," replied Mr. Knight with another sneer.

"You insult me," said Godfrey. "It is a lie that I ran after Miss Ogilvy's money, and I will never forgive you for saying such a thing of me in connection with Isobel," and turning he left the room.

So did his father, for Godfrey heard him go to his study and lock the door, doubtless as a sign and a token.

Then Godfrey sought out Mrs. Parsons and told her everything. The old woman was much disturbed, and wept.

"I have been thinking of late, Master Godfrey," she said, "that your father's heart is made of that kind of stone which Hell is paved with, only with the good intentions left out--it's that hard. Here you are come back as fine a young man as a body can wish to see, of whom his begetter might well be proud, though, for the matter of that, there is precious little of him in you--and he shuts the door in your face just because you won't be a parson and have come into fortune--that's what rankles. I say that your mother, if she was a fool when she married him, was a wise woman when she died. Parson or not, he will never go where she is. Well, it's sad, but you'll be well out of this cold house, where there's so much praying but not a spark of love."

"I think so," said Godfrey with a sigh.

"I think so, too, for myself, I mean. But, look here, my boy, I only stopped on looking after this dratted pack of young gentlemen because you were coming home again. But, as you ain't, I'm out of it; yes, when the door shuts on you I give my month's notice, which perhaps will mean that I leave to-morrow, for he won't be able to abide the sight of me after that."

"But how will you live, Nurse, till I can help you?"

"Lord bless you, dear, that's all right. I've been a careful woman all my life, and have hard on £500 put away in the Savings Bank, to say nothing of a bit of Stock. Also, my old brother, who was a builder, died last year and left me with a nice little house down in Hampstead, which he built to live in himself, but never did, poor man, bit by bit when he was short of business, very comfortable and in a good neighbourhood, with first-rate furniture and real silver plate, to say nothing of some more Stock, yes, for £1,000 or more. I let it furnished by the month, but the tenant is going away, so I shall just move into it myself, and perhaps take in a lodger or two to keep me from being idle."

"That's capital!" said Godfrey, delighted.

"Yes, and I tell you what would be capitaller. Mayhap you will have to live in London for a bit, and, if so, you are just the kind of lodger I should like, and I don't think we should quarrel about terms. I'll write you down the address of that house, the Grove as it is called, though why, I don't know, seeing there isn't a tree within half a mile, which I don't mind, as there are too many about here, making so much damp. And you'll write and let me know what you are going to do, won't you?"

"Of course I will."

"And now, look here. Likely you will want a little money till you square up things with your trustee people that the master hates so much."

"Well, I had forgotten it, but, as a matter of fact, I have only ten shillings left, and that isn't much when one is going to London," confessed Godfrey.

"I thought so; you never were one to think much of such things, and so it's probable that you'll get plenty of them, for it's what we care about we are starved in, just to make it hot for us poor humans. Take your father, for instance; he loves power, he does; he'd like to be a bishop of the old Roman sort what could torture people who didn't agree with them. And what is he? The parson of a potty parish of a couple of hundred people, counting the babies and the softies, and half of them Dissenters or Salvation Army. Moreover, they can't be bullied, because if they were they'd just walk into the next chapel door. Of course, there's the young gentlemen, and he takes it out of them, but, Lord bless us! that's like kicking a wool sack, of which any man of spirit soon gets tired. So, you see, he is sick-hearted, and will be more so now that you have stood up to him; and, in this way or that, it's the same with everyone, none of us gets what we want, while of what we don't want there's always plenty."

While the old lady held forth thus in her little room which, although she did not know it, had once been the penitential cell of the Abbey, wherein for hundreds of years many unhappy ones had reflected in a very similar vein, she was engaged in trying key after key upon a stout oak chest. It was part of the ancient furniture of the place, that indeed in former days had served as the receptacle for hair shirts, scourges and other physical inducements to repentance and piety.

Now it had a different purpose and held Mrs. Parsons' best dresses, also, in a bandbox, an ornament preserved from her wedding-cake, for once in the far past she was married to a sailor, a very great black- guard, who came to his end by tumbling from a gangway when he was drunk. Among these articles was a tin tea-canister which, when opened, proved to be full of money; gold, silver and even humble copper, to say nothing of several banknotes.

"Now, there you are, my dear, take what you like," she said, "and pay it back if you wish, but if you don't, it might have been worse spent." And she pushed the receptacle, labelled "Imperial Pekoe," towards him across the table, adding, "Drat those moths! There's another on my best silk."

Godfrey burst out laughing and enjoyed that laugh, for it was his first happy moment since his return to England.

"Give me what you like," he said.

So