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 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 suggested that he wanted to run after your
daughter’s money.”
“Well, it wasn’t a very nice thing to say, was it? But I think I
see light. He’s proud, is he, and don’t like allusions to
fortune-hunting. All right; I’ll rub his nose in the dirt and make him
good. I’m just the boy for a job of that sort, as perhaps you will
agree, my reverend friend; and if he shows his airs to me, I’ll kick
him off the premises. Come on! I dare say we shall find them still in
the church, where they think themselves so snug, although the rain has
stopped.”
So this precious pair started, each of them bent, though for different
reasons, upon as evil a mission as the mind of man can conceive. For
what is there more wicked than to wish to bring about the separation
and subsequent misery of two young people who, as they guessed well
enough, loved each other body and soul, and thereby to spoil their
lives? Yet, so strange is human nature, that neither of them thought
that they were committing any sin. Mr. Knight, now and afterwards,
justified himself with the reflection that he was parting his son from
a “pernicious” young woman of strong character, who would probably
lead him away from religion as it was understood by him. One also whom
he looked upon as the worst of outcasts, who deserved and doubtless was
destined to inhabit hell, because hastily she had rejected his form of
faith, as the young are apt to do, for reasons, however hollow, that
seemed to her sufficient.
He took no account of his bitter, secret jealousy of this girl, who, as
he thought, had estranged his son from him, and prevented him from
carrying out his cherished plans of making of him a clergyman like
himself, or of his innate physical hatred of women which caused him to
desire that Godfrey should remain celibate. These motives, although he
was well aware of them, he set down as naught, being quite sure, in
view of the goodness of his aims, that they would be overlooked or even
commended by the Power above Whom he pictured in his mind’s eye as a
furious old man, animated chiefly by jealousy and a desire to wreak
vengeance on and torture the helpless. For it is the lessons of the Old
Testament that sink most deeply into the souls of Mr. Knight and his
kind.
Sir John’s ends were quite different. He was the very vulgarest of
self-made men, coarse and brutal by nature, a sensualist of the type
that is untouched by imagination; a man who would crush anyone who
stood in his path without compunction, just because that person did
stand in his path. But he was extremely shrewd—witness the way he saw
through Mr. Knight—and in his own fashion very able—witness his
success in life.
Moreover, since a man of his type has generally some object beyond the
mere acquiring of money, particularly after it has been acquired, he
had his, to rise high, for he was very ambitious. His natural
discernment set all his own failings before him in the clearest light;
also their consequences. He knew that he was vulgar and brutal, and
that as a result all persons of real gentility looked down upon him,
however much they might seem to cringe before his money and power, yes,
though they chanced to be but labouring men.
For instance, his wife had done so, which was one of the reasons why he
hated her, as indeed had all her distinguished relatives, after they
came to know him, although he lent them money. He knew that even if he
became a peer, as he fully expected to do, it would be the same story;
outward deference and lip service, but inward dislike and contempt. In
short, there were limits which he could never hope to pass, and
therefore so far as he was concerned, his ambitious thirst must remain
unslaked.
But he had a daughter whom Nature, perhaps because of her mother’s
blood, had set in quite a different class. She had his ability, but she
was gentle-born, which he was not, one who could mix with and be
welcomed by the highest in the world, and this without the slightest
question. If not beautiful, she was very distinguished; she had
presence and what the French call “the air.” Further, she would be
one of the richest women in England. Considered from his point of view,
therefore, it was but natural that he should desire her to make a
brilliant marriage and found a great family, which he would thus have
originated—at any rate, to some extent. Night and day he longed that
this should come about, and it was the reason why the young Lord
Mounteroy was visiting Hawk’s Hall.
Mounteroy had met Isobel at a dinner-party in London the other day and
admired her. He had told an old lady—a kind of society tout—who had
repeated it to Sir John, that he wished to get married, and that Isobel
Blake was the sort of girl he would like to marry. He was a clever man,
also ambitious, one who had hopes of some day ruling the country, but
to do this he needed behind him great and assured fortune in addition
to his ancient but somewhat impoverished rank. In short, she suited his
book, and he suited that of Sir John. Now, the thing to do was to bring
it about that he should also suit Isobel’s book. And just at the
critical moment this accursed accident had happened. Oh! it was too
much.
No wonder that Sir John was filled with righteous wrath and a stern
determination to “make things hot” for the cause of the
“accident” as, led to the attack by the active but dripping Mr.
Knight whom he designated in his heart as that “little cur of a
parson,” much as an overfed and bloated bloodhound might be by some
black and vicious mongrel, he tramped heavily towards the church.
Indeed they made a queer contrast, this small, active but fierce-faced
man in his sombre, shiny garments and dingy white tie, and the huge,
ample-paunched baronet with his red, flat face, heavy lips and
projecting but intelligent eyes, clothed in a new suit, wearing an
enormous black pearl in his necktie and a diamond ring on his finger;
the very ideal of Mammon in every detail of his person and of his
carefully advertised opulence.
Isobel, whose humour had its sardonic side, and who was the first to
catch sight of them when they reached the church, Mr. Knight tripping
ahead, and Sir John hot with the exercise in the close, moist air,
lumbering after him with his mouth open, compared them in her mind to a
fierce little pilot fish conducting an overfed shark to some helpless
prey which it had discovered battling with the waters of circumstance;
that after all, was only another version of the mongrel and the
bloodhound. Also she compared them to other things, even less
complimentary.
Yet none of these, perhaps, was really adequate, either to the evil
intentions or the repellent appearance of this pair as they advanced
upon their wicked mission of jealousy and hate.