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

swallows, far out of reach. Only he took comfort in the remembrance that swallows, however near, are evasive birds, not easy to seize unless you can find them sleeping. Next she began to tell him all about the Mexican gods, whether he wanted to listen or not, and he sat there in the glory of his new clothes and brilliantined hair, and gazed at her till she asked him to desist as she felt as though she were being mesmerised.

This led him to his spiritualistic experiences of which he told her all the story, and by the time it was finished, behold! it was the luncheon hour.

"It is very interesting," she said as they entered the Hall, "and I can't laugh at it all as I should have done once, I don't quite know why. But I hope, Godfrey, that you will have no more to do with spirits."

"No, not while----" and he looked at her.

"While what?"

"While--there are such nice bodies in the world," he stammered, colouring.

She coloured also, tossed her head, and went to wash her hands.

The afternoon they spent in hunting for imaginary young jackdaws in a totally nebulous tree. Isobel grew rather cross over its non- discovery, swearing that she remembered it well years ago, and that there were always young jackdaws there.

"Perhaps it has been cut down," suggested Godfrey. "I am told that your father has been improving the place a great deal in that kind of way, so as to make it up to date and scientific and profitable, and all the rest of it. Also if it hasn't, there would have been no young jackdaws, since they must have flown quite six weeks ago."

"Then why couldn't you say that at once, instead of making us waste all this time?" asked Isobel with indignation.

"I don't know," replied Godfrey in a somewhat vacuous fashion. "It was all the same to me if we were hunting for young jackdaws or the man in the moon, as long as we were together."

"Godfrey, it is evident that you have been overworking and are growing foolish. I make excuses for you, since anybody who passed first out of Sandhurst must have overworked, but it does not alter the fact. Now I must go home and see about that house, for as yet I have arranged nothing at all, and the place is in an awful state. Remember that my father is coming down presently with either six or eight terrible people, I forget which. All I know about them is that they are extremely rich and expect to be what is called 'done well.'"

"Must you?" remarked Godfrey, looking disappointed.

"Yes, I must. And so must you. /Your/ father is coming back by the five o'clock train, and I advise you to be there to meet him. Perhaps I shall see you to-morrow some time."

"I can't," exclaimed Godfrey in a kind of wail. "I am to be taken off to a school in some town or other, I forget which, that my father has been examining. I suppose it is the speech day, and he proposes to introduce me as a kind of object lesson because I have passed first in an examination."

"Yes, as a shining example and--an advertisement. Well, perhaps we shall meet later," and without giving him an opportunity of saying more she vanished away.

CHAPTER XV(FOR EVER)

 

Godfrey managed to be late again, and only reached home five minutes after his father, who had bicycled instead of walking from the station as he supposed that he would do.

"I forgot to give orders about your lunch," said Mr. Knight tentatively. "I hope that you managed to get some."

"Oh, yes, Father; that is, I lunched out, at the Hall."

"Indeed! I did not know that Sir John had arrived."

"No, he hasn't; at least I have not seen him. I lunched with Isobel."

"Indeed!" remarked Mr. Knight again, and the subject dropped.

Next day, Godfrey, once more arrayed in his best clothes, attended the prize-giving and duly was made to look foolish, only getting home just in time for dinner, after which his father requested him to check certain examination papers. Then came Sunday and church at which Isobel did not appear; two churches in fact, and after these a tea party to the churchwardens and their wives, to whom Godfrey was expected to explain the wonders of the Alps. Before it was over, if he could have managed it, these stolid farmers with their families would have lain at the bottom of the deepest moraine that exists amid those famous mountains. But there they were, swallowing tea and munching cake while they gazed on him with ox-like eyes, and he plunged into wild explanations as to the movements of glaciers.

"Something like one of them new-fangled machines what carry hay up on to the top of stacks," said Churchwarden No. 1 at length.

"Did you ever sit on a glacier while it slided from the top to the bottom of a mountain, Master Godfrey, and if so, however did you get up again?" asked Churchwarden No. 2.

"Is a glacier so called after the tradesman what cuts glass, because glass and ice are both clear-like?" inquired Churchwarden No. 1, filled with sudden inspiration.

Then Godfrey, in despair, said that he thought it was and fled away, only to be reproached afterwards by his father for having tried to puzzle those excellent and pious men.

On Monday his luck was better, since Mr. Knight was called away immediately after lunch to take a funeral in a distant parish of which the incumbent was absent at the seaside. Godfrey, by a kind of instinct, sped at once to the willow log by the stream, where, through an outreaching of the long arm of coincidence, he found Isobel seated. After casually remarking that the swallows were flying neither high nor low that day, but as it were in mid-air, she added that she had not seen him for a long while.

"No, you haven't--say for three years," he answered, and detailed his tribulations.

"Ah!" said Isobel, "that's always the way; one is never left at leisure to follow one's own fancies in this world. To-morrow, for instance, my father and all his horrible friends--I don't know any of them, except one, but from past experience I presume them to be horrible--are coming down to lunch, and are going to stop for three days' partridge shooting. Their female belongings are going to stop also, or some of them are, which means that I shall have to look after them."

"It's all bad news to-day," remarked Godfrey, shaking his head. "I've just had a telegram saying that I must report myself on Wednesday, goodness knows why, for I expected to get a month's leave."

"Oh!" said Isobel, looking a little dismayed. "Then let us make the best of to-day, for who knows what to-morrow may bring forth?"

Who indeed? Certainly not either of these young people.

They talked awhile seated by the river; then began to walk through certain ancient grazing grounds where the monks used to run their cattle. Their conversation, fluent enough at first, grew somewhat constrained and artificial, since both of them were thinking of matters different from those that they were trying to dress out in words; intimate, pressing, burning matters that seemed to devour their intelligences of everyday with a kind of eating fire. They grew almost silent, talking only at random and listening to the beating of their own hearts rather than to the words that fell from each other's lips.

The sky clouded over, and some heavy drops of rain began to fall.

"I suppose that we must go in," said Isobel, "we shall be soaked presently," and she glanced at her light summer attire.

"Where?" exclaimed Godfrey. "The Abbey? No, my father will be back by now; it must be the Hall."

"Very well, but I dare say /my/ father is there by now, for I understand that he is coming down this afternoon to arrange about the shooting."

"Great heavens!" groaned Godfrey, "and I wanted to--tell you a story which I thought perhaps might interest you, and I don't know when I shall get another chance--now."

"Then why did you not tell your story before?" she inquired with some irritation.

"Oh! because I have only just thought of it," he replied rather wildly.

At this moment they were passing the church, and the rain began to fall in earnest. By some mutual impulse they entered through the chancel door which was always unlocked, and by some mutual folly, left it open.

Advancing instinctively to the tombs of the unknown Plantagenet lady and her knight which were so intimately connected with the little events of their little lives, they listened for a while to the rush of the rain upon the leaden roof, saying nothing, till the silence grew irksome indeed. Each waited for the other to break it, but with a woman's infinite patience Isobel waited the longer. There she stood, staring at the brass of the Plantagenet lady, still as the bones of that lady which lay beneath.

"My story," said Godfrey at last with a gasp, and stopped.

"Yes," said Isobel. "What is it?"

"Oh!" he exclaimed in an agony, "a very short one. I love you, that's all."

A little quiver ran through her, causing her dress to shake and the gold Mexican gods on her necklace to tinkle against each other. Then she grew still as a stone, and raising those large and steady eyes of hers, looked him up and down, finally fixing them upon his own.

"Is that true?" she asked.

"True! It is as true as life and death, or as Heaven and Hell."

"I don't know anything about Heaven and Hell; they are hypothetical, are they not? Life and death are enough for me," and she stopped.

"Then by life and death, for life and death, and for ever, I love you, Isobel."

"Thank you," she said, and stopped once more.

"You don't help one much. Have you nothing to say?"

"What is there to say? You made a statement for which I thanked you. You asked no question."

"It is a question," he exclaimed indignantly. "If I love you, of course I want to know if you love me."

"Then why did you not say so? But," she added very deliberately, "since you want to know, I do and always have and always shall, in life or death--and for ever--if that means anything."

He stared at her, tried to utter something and failed. Then he fell back upon another very primitive and ancient expedient. Flinging his arms about her, he pressed her to his heart and kissed her again and again and again; nor, in her moment of complete surrender, did she scruple to kiss him back.

It was while they were thus engaged, offering a wonderful spectacle of love triumphant and rejoicing in its triumph, that another person who was passing the church bethought him of its shelter as a refuge from the pouring rain. Seeing the open door, Mr. Knight, for it was he, slipped into the great building in his quiet, rather cat-like fashion, but on its threshold saw, and stopped. Notwithstanding the shadows, he recognised them in a moment. More, the sight of this pair, the son whom he disliked and the woman whom he hated, thus embraced, thus lost in a sea of passion, moved him to white