LOVE ETERNAL
Godfrey awoke and looked about him. He was lying in a small room
opposite to an open window that had thin gauze shutters which, as an
old Indian, he knew at once were to keep out mosquitoes. Through this
window he could see the mighty, towering shapes of the Pyramids, and
reflected that after all there must have been some truth in those
wonderful dreams. He lifted his hand; it was so thin that the strong
sunlight shone through it. He touched his head and felt that it was
wrapped in bandages, also that it seemed benumbed upon one side.
A little dark woman wearing a nurse’s uniform, entered the room and he
asked her where he was, as once before he had done in France and under
very similar conditions. She stared and answered with an Irish accent:
“Where else but at Mena House Hospital. Don’t the Pyramids tell you
that?”
“I thought so,” he replied. “How long have I been here?”
“Oh! two months, or more. I can’t tell you, Colonel, unless I look
at the books, with so many sick men coming and going. Shure! it’s a
pleasure to see you yourself again. We thought that perhaps you’d
never wake up reasonably.”
“Did you? I always knew that I should.”
“And how did you know that?”
“Because someone whom I am very fond of, came and told me so.”
She glanced at him sharply.
“Then it’s myself that should be flattered,” she answered,
“or the night nurse, seeing that it is we who have cared for you with
no visitors admitted except the doctors, and they didn’t talk that
way. Now, Colonel, just you drink this and have a nap, for you
mustn’t speak too much all at once. If you keep wagging your jaw
you’ll upset the bandages.”
When he woke again it was night and now the full moon, such a moon as
one sees in Egypt, shone upon the side of the Great Pyramid and made it
silver. He could hear voices talking outside his door, one that of the
Irish nurse which he recognised, and the other of a man, for although
they spoke low, this sense of hearing seemed to be peculiarly acute to
him.
“It is so, Major,” said the nurse. “I tell you that except
for a little matter about someone whom he thought had been visiting him,
he is as reasonable as I am, and much more than you are, saving your
presence.”
“Well,” answered the doctor, “as you speak the truth
sometimes, Sister, I’m inclined to believe you, but all I have to say
is that I could have staked my professional reputation that the poor
chap would never get his wits again. He has had an awful blow and on
the top of an old wound, too. After all these months, it’s strange,
very strange, and I hope it will continue.”
“Well, of course, Major, there is the delusion about the lady.”
“Lady! How do you know it was a lady? Just like a woman making up a
romance out of nothing. Yes, there’s the delusion, which is bad. Keep
his mind off it as much as possible, and tell him some of your own in
your best brogue. I’ll come and examine him to-morrow morning.”
Then the voices died away and Godfrey almost laughed because they had
talked of his “delusion,” when he knew so well that it was none.
Isobel had been with him. Yes, although he could neither hear nor see
her, Isobel was with him now for he felt her presence. And yet how
could this be if he was in Egypt and she was in England? So wondering,
he fell asleep again.
By degrees as he gathered strength, Godfrey learned all the story of
what had happened to him, or rather so much of it as those in charge of
the hospital knew. It appeared, according to Sister Elizabeth, as his
nurse was named, that when he was struck down in the church,
“somewhere in Africa” as she said vaguely, the guards whom he had
with him, rushed in, firing on the native murderers who fled away
except those who were killed.
Believing that, with the missionary, they had murdered the King’s
Officer, a great man, they fled fast and far into German East Africa and
were no more seen. The Chief, Jaga, who had escaped, caused him to be
carried out of the burning church to the missionary’s house, and sent
runners to the nearest magistracy many miles away, where there was a
doctor. So there he lay in the house. A native servant who once acted
as a hospital orderly, had washed his wounds and bound them up. One of
these, that on the head, was caused by a kerry or some blunt
instrument, and the other was a spear-stab in the lung. Also from time
to time this servant poured milk down his throat.
At length the doctor came with an armed escort and, greatly daring,
performed some operation which relieved the pressure on the brain and
saved his life. In that house he lay for a month or more and then, in a
semi-comatose condition, was carried by slow stages in a litter back to
Mombasa. Here he lay another month or so and as his mind showed no
signs of returning, was at length put on board a ship and brought to
Egypt.
Meanwhile, as Godfrey learned afterwards, he was believed to have been
murdered with the missionary, and a report to that effect was sent to
England, which, in the general muddle that prevailed at the beginning
of the war, had never been corrected. For be it remembered it was not
until he was carried to Mombasa, nearly two months after he was hurt,
that he reached any place where there was a telegraph. By this time
also, those at Mombasa had plenty of fresh casualties to report, and
indeed were not aware, or had forgotten what exact story had been sent
home concerning Godfrey who could not speak for himself. So it came
about through a series of mischances, that at home he was believed to be
dead as happened to many other men in the course of the great war.
After he came to himself at the Mena House Hospital, Godfrey inquired
whether there were not some letters for him, but none could be found.
He had arranged with the only person likely to write to him, namely
Isobel, to do so through the War Office, and evidently that plan had
not succeeded, for her letters had gone astray. The truth was, of
course, that some had been lost and after definite news of his death
was received, the rest had not been forwarded. Now he bethought him
that he would cable home to Isobel to tell her that he was recovering,
though somehow he imagined that she would know this already through the
authorities. With great difficulty, for the hurt to his side made it
hard for him to use his arm, he wrote the telegram and gave it to
Sister Elizabeth to send, remarking that he would pay the cost as soon
as he could draw some money.
“That won’t matter,” she replied as she took the cable. Then
with an odd look at him she went away as though to arrange for its
despatch.
After she had gone, two orderlies helped Godfrey downstairs to sit on
the broad verandah of the hospital. Here still stood many of the little
tables which used to serve for pleasant tea-parties when the building
was an hotel in the days before the war. On these lay some old English
newspapers. Godfrey picked up one of them with his left hand, and began
to read idly enough. Almost the first paragraph that his eye fell on
was headed:
“Heroic Death of a V.A.D. Commandant.”
Something made him read on quickly, and this was what he saw:
“At the inquest on the late Mrs. Knight, the wife of Colonel Knight
who was reported murdered by natives in East Africa some little
time ago, some interesting evidence was given. It appeared from
the testimony of Mrs. Parsons, a nurse in the Hawk’s Hall
Hospital, that when warning was given of the approach of Zeppelins
during last week’s raid on the Eastern Counties and London, the
patients in the upper rooms of the hospital were removed to its
lower floors. Finding that one young man, a private in the
Suffolk Regiment who has lost both his feet, had been overlooked,
Mrs. Knight, followed by Mrs. Parsons, went upstairs to help him
down. When Mrs. Parsons, whom she outran, reached the door of the
ward there was a great explosion, apparently on the roof. She
waited till the dust had cleared off and groped her way down the
ward with the help of an electric torch. Reaching Private
Thompson’s bed, she saw lying on it Mrs. Knight who had been
killed by the fallen masonry. Private Thompson, who was unhurt
beneath the body, said that when the bricks began to come down
Mrs. Knight called to him to lie still and threw herself on him to
protect him. Then something heavy, he believed the stone coping of
a chimney, fell on her back and she uttered one word, he thought
it was a name, and was silent. Mrs. Knight, who was the only child
of the late Sir John Blake, Bart., the well-known shipowner, is
said to have been one of the richest women in England. She married
the late Colonel Knight some months ago, immediately before he was
sent to East Africa. Under the provisions of her will the cremated
remains of Mrs. Knight will be interred in the chancel of the
Abbey Church at Monk’s Acre.”
Godfrey read this awful paragraph twice and looked at the date of the
paper. It was nearly two months old.
“So she was dead when she came to me. Oh! now I understand,” he
muttered to himself, and then, had not a passing native servant caught
him, he would have fallen to the ground. It was one of the ten thousand
minor tragedies of the world war, that is all.
Three months later, still very crippled and coughing badly, because of
the injury to his lung, he reported himself in London, and once more
saw the Under-Secretary who had sent him out to East Africa. There he
sat in the same room, at the same desk, looking precisely the same.
“I am sorry, Sir, that my mission has failed through circumstances
beyond my control. I can only add that I did my best,” he said
briefly.
“I know,” answered the official; “it was no fault of yours if
those black brutes tried to murder you. Everything goes wrong in that
cursed East Africa. Now go home and get yourself fit again, my dear
fellow,” he went on very kindly, adding, “Your services will not be
overlooked.”
“I have no home, and I shall never be fit again,” replied Godfrey,
and left the room.
“I forgot,” thought the Under-Secretary. “His wife was killed
in a Zeppelin raid. Odd that she should have been taken and he left.”
Then, with a sigh and a shrug of the shoulders he turned to his
business.
Godfrey went to the little house at Hampstead where he used to live
while he was studying as a lad, for here Mrs. Parsons was waiting for
him. Then for the first time he gave way and they wept in each
other’s arms.
“We were too happy, Nurse,” he said.
“Yes,” she answered, “love like hers wasn’t for this
world, and more than once she said to me that she never expected to see
you again in the flesh, though I thought she meant it was you who would
go, as might have been expected. Stop, I have something for you.”
Going to a desk she produced from it a ring, that with the turquoise
hearts; also a canvas-covered book.
“That’s her diary,” she said, “she used to write in it
every day.”
That night Godfrey read many beautiful and sacred things in this diary.
From it he learned that the shock of his supposed death had caused
Isobel to miscarry and made her ill for some time, though underneath
the entries about her illness and the false news of his death she had
written:
“He is not dead. I _know_ that he is not dead.”
Afterwards there were some curious sentences in which she spoke joyfully
of having seen him in her sleep, ill, but living and going to recover,
“at any rate for a while,” she had added.
On the very day of her death she had made this curious note:
“I feel as though Godfrey and I were about to be separated for a
while, and yet that this separation will really bring us closer
together. I am strangely happy. Great vistas seem to open to my
soul and down them I walk with Godfrey for ever and a day, and
over them broods the Love of God in which are embodied and
expressed all other loves. Oh! how wrong and foolish was I, who
for so many years rejected that Love, which yet will not be turned
away and in mercy gave me sight and wisdom and with these Godfrey,
from whose soul my soul can never more be parted. For as I told
you, my darling, ours is the Love Eternal. Remember it always,
Godfrey, if ever your eyes should see these words upon the earth.
Afterwards there will be no need for memory.”
So the diary ended.
They invalided Godfrey out of the service and because of his lung
trouble, he went to the house that Miss Ogilvy had left him in Lucerne,
taking Mrs. Parsons with him. There too he found the Pasteur, grown an
old man but otherwise much the same as ever, and him also he brought to
live in the Villa Ogilvy.
The winter went on and Godfrey grew, not better, but worse, till at last
he knew that he was dying, and rejoiced to die. One evening a letter
was brought to him. It was from Madame Riennes, written in a shaky
hand, and ran thus:
“I am going to pass to the World of Speerits, and so are you, my
Godfrey, for I know all about you and everything that has
happened. The plum is eaten, but the stone—ah! it is growing
already, and soon you will be sitting with another under that
beautiful Tree of Life of which I told you in the English church.
And I, where shall I be sitting? Ah! I do not know, but there is
this difference between us that whereas I am afraid, you have no
cause for fear. You, you rejoice, yes, and shall rejoice—for
though sometimes I hate you I must tell it. Yet I am sorry if I
have harmed you, and should you be able, I pray you, say a good
word in the World of Speerits for your sinful old godmamma
Riennes. So fare you well, who thinking that you have lost, have
gained all. It is I, I who have lost. Again farewell, and bid that
old Pasteur to pray for me, which he, who is good, will do,
although I was his enemy and cursed him.”
“See that she lacks for nothing till the end, and comfort her if you
can,” said Godfrey to the Pasteur.
That night a shape of glory seemed to stand by Godfrey’s bed and to
whisper wonderful things into his ears. He saw it, ah, clearly, and knew
that informing its changeful loveliness was all which had been Isobel
upon the earth.
“Fear nothing,” he thought it said, “for I am with you and
others greater than I. Know, Godfrey, that everything has a meaning and
that all joy must be won through pain. Our lives seem to have been
short and sad, but these are not the real life, they are but its black
and ugly door, whereof the threshold must be watered with our tears and
the locks turned by the winds of Faith and Prayer. Do not be afraid
then of the blackness of the passage, for beyond it shines the immortal
light in that land where there is understanding and all forgiveness.
Therefore be glad, Godfrey, for the night of sorrows is at an end and
the dawn breaks of peace that passes understanding.”
Godfrey woke and spoke to the old Pasteur who was watching by his bed
while Mrs. Parsons wept at its foot.
“Did you see anything?” he asked.
“No, my son,” he answered, “but I felt something. It was as
though an angel stood at my side.”
Then Godfrey told him all his vision, and much else besides, of which
before he had never spoken to living man.
“It well may be, my son,” answered the Pasteur, “since to
those who have suffered greatly, the good God gives the great reward. He
Who endured pain can understand our pains, and He Who redeemed sin can
understand and be gentle to our sins, for His is the true Love Eternal.
So go forward with faith and gladness, and in the joy of that new world
and of the lost which is found again, think sometimes of the old
Pasteur who hopes soon to join you there.”
Then he shrove and blessed him.
After this Godfrey slept awhile to wake elsewhere in the Land of that
Love Eternal which the soul of Isobel foreknew.