She paused as though for an answer, but none came, for if Sir John had been frightened before, now he was terrified of this outraged young woman who, tall, commanding and stern-eyed, looked to him like an avenging angel.
"There doesn"t seem much more to say, does there?" she went on, "except that I think, Father, you had better telegraph to your guests that you are not well and cannot receive them, for I won"t. So good-bye, dearest G.o.dfrey. I shall remember all that you have said, and you will remember all that I have said, and as I believe, we shall live to meet again one day. Meanwhile, don"t think too bitterly of my father, or of your own, because they have acted according to their natures and lights, though where these will lead them I am sure I do not know. Good-bye, dearest, dearest G.o.dfrey. Do your best in the world and keep out of troubles if you can. Oh! what a lot we shall have to tell each other when we meet again."
Then before them both she kissed him, and he kissed her back, saying:
"I will remember. I am glad you think there was nothing else to be done. G.o.d bless you, Isobel. Make the best of your life, as I will try to do with mine. Good-bye."
"Good-bye, dear," she answered, "think of me always when you wake and before you go to sleep, as I will think of you."
Then she turned and went, never looking behind her.
G.o.dfrey watched her tall form vanish through the churchyard gate and over the slope of a little hill that lay between it and Hawk"s Hall, and that was the last sight he had of her for many a year. When she was quite lost to view, he spoke to the two men who still stood irresolute before him.
"Isobel I shall meet again," he said, "but not either of you, for I have done with you both. It is not for me to judge you. Judge yourself and be judged."
Then he turned, too, and went.
"It"s all right," said Sir John to Mr. Knight, "that is, he won"t marry her, at any rate at present, so I suppose that we should both be pleased, if anyone can be pleased with cut lips and two black eyes. And yet somehow we seem to have made a mess of it," and he glanced at the shattered marble statue of the Victorian angel of which both the wings were broken off.
"We have done our duty," replied Mr. Knight, pursing up his thin lips, "and at least G.o.dfrey is freed from your daughter."
"I"m not so sure of that, my reverend friend. But of one thing I am sure, that I am freed from her also, or rather that she is freed from me. Also you are freed from him. Don"t you understand, you vicious little viper, that you will never see that young man again, and that thanks to your cursed advice I shall never see my daughter again, at least not really? What devil was it that sent you to play upon my weaknesses and ambition? If you had left things alone and they had come to me in a natural way there would have been a row, of course, but I dare say it would have ended all right. But you told me how to work on him and I overdid the part. Now nothing can ever be all right for either of us, or for them either, until we are both dead. Do you understand also that we have made two young people who should have been the supports of our old age desire above everything our deaths because we have given them cause to hate us, and since they are of the sort that keep their word, only by our deaths can they become free, or, at any rate, by mine? Well, it doesn"t matter what you understand, you little bigot, but I know what I do."
"I have done my duty," repeated Mr. Knight sullenly, "and I don"t care what happens afterwards. "_Fiat just.i.ta ruat coelum_,"" he added in the Latin tag.
"Oh, yes. Justice may say fie and the sky may be rude, and anything else may happen, but we"ve dished our lives and theirs, my friend, and--d.a.m.n you! get out of my sight. Rows I am accustomed to with Isobel and others, but this isn"t a row, it"s an earthquake; it"s a catastrophe, for which I have to thank you. Lord! how my mouth hurts, and I can"t see out of my right eye. Talk of a mailed fist, that young beggar has one like a pole-axe. Now I must go to telegraph to all those people. Temporary indisposition, yes--temporary indisposition, that"s it. Good-bye, my holy friend. You won"t do as much mischief in one day again in a hurry, spy as hard as you like."
Then Sir John departed, nursing his cut lips with one hand and his broken umbrella with the other.
Mr. Knight watched him go, and said to himself:
"I thought that I disliked the daughter, but the father is worse.
Offensive, purse-proud, vulgar beast! How dare he speak to me like that! I"m glad, yes, I"m glad G.o.dfrey knocked him down, though I suppose there will be a scandal. Well, my hands are clean; I have done my duty, and I must not complain if it is unpleasant, since I have dragged G.o.dfrey back from the mouth of the pit. I think I"ll take a walk to steady my nerves; it may be as well not to meet G.o.dfrey again just now."
CHAPTER XVII
INDIA
On his road to the house to pack his portmanteau G.o.dfrey went a little way round to arrange with a blacksmith, generally known as Tom, who jobbed out a pony-trap, to drive him to the station to catch the 7.15 train. The blacksmith remarked that they would have to hurry, and set to work to put the pony in, while G.o.dfrey ran on to the Abbey House and hurriedly collected his clothes. He got them packed and down into the hall just as the trap arrived.
As he was entering it the servant put a letter into his hand which she said had come for him by the afternoon post. He thrust it into his pocket unlooked at, and off they went at the pony"s best pace.
"You are going away oncommon quick, Master G.o.dfrey. Coming back to these parts soon?" queried the blacksmith.
"No, not for a long while, Tom."
"I think there must have been lightning with that rain," went on Tom, after a pause, "although I heard no thunder. Else how ever did that marble angel over poor Lady Jane"s grave come down with such a smash?"
G.o.dfrey glanced at him, but Tom remained imperturbable and went on:
"They du say it wor a wunnerful smash, what broke off both the wings and nearly flattered out some as stood by. Rum thing, Master G.o.dfrey, that the lightning should have picked out the grave of so good a lady to hit; ondiscriminating thing, lightning is."
"Stop talking humbug, Tom. Were you there?" asked G.o.dfrey.
"Well, not exactly there, Master G.o.dfrey, but I and one or two others was nigh, having heard voices louder than the common, just looking over the churchyard wall, to tell truth."
"Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed G.o.dfrey, and Tom continued in a reflective voice.
"My! they were two beuties, what you gave that old fat devil of a squire. If he"d been a bull instead of only roaring like one, they"d have brought him down, to say nothing of parson and the angel."
"I couldn"t help it, Tom. I was mad."
"And no wonder, after being crumped on the nut with a tight umbrella.
Why, I"d have done the same myself, baronite or no baronite. Oh!
there"s no need to explain; I knows everything about it, and so does every babe in the village by now, not to mention the old women. Master G.o.dfrey, you take my advice, the next time you go a-courtin" shut the door behind you, which I always made a point o" doing when I was young.
Being pa.s.sing that way, I seed parson peeping in, and knowing you was there, guessed why. Truth is I came to warn you after he"d gone up to the Hall, but seein" how you was engaged, thought it a pity to interrupt, though now I wish I had."
G.o.dfrey groaned; there was nothing to say.
"Well, all the soot"s in the cooking-pot now, so to speak," proceeded Tom blandly, "and we"re downright sad about it, we are, for as my missus was saying, you"d make a pretty pair. But, Lord, Master G.o.dfrey, don"t you take it too much to heart, for she"s an upright young lady, she is, and steadfast. Or if she ain"t, there"s plenty of others; also one day follows another, as the saying goes, and the worst of old varmints don"t live for ever. But parson, he beats me, and you his son, so they tell, though I never could think it myself. If he ain"t the meanest ferret I ever clapped eyes on, may the old mare fall down and break my neck. Well, he"ll hear about it, I can promise him, especially if he meets my missus what"s got a tongue in her head, and is a chapel woman into the bargain. Lord! there comes the train. Don"t you fear, we"ll catch her. Hold tight, Master G.o.dfrey, and be ready to jump out.
No, no, there ain"t nothing to pay. I"ll stick it on to parson"s fare next time I"ve druve him. Good-bye, Master G.o.dfrey, and G.o.d bless you, if only for that there right and left which warmed my heart to see, and mind ye," he shouted after him, "there"s more young women in the world than ye meets in an afternoon"s walk, and one nail drives another out, as being a smith by trade I knows well."
G.o.dfrey bundled into an empty carriage with his portmanteau and his coat, and covered his face with his hands that he might see no more of that accursed station whence he seemed always to be departing in trouble. So everything had been overheard and seen, and doubtless the story would travel far and wide. Poor Isobel!
As a matter of fact it did, but it was not Isobel who suffered, since public sympathy was strong on the side of her and of her lover. The indignation of the neighbourhood concentrated itself upon the square and the parson, especially the latter. Indeed the village showed its sympathy with the victims and its wrath with the oppressors, by going on strike. Few beaters turned up at Sir John"s next shooting party, and on the following Sunday Mr. Knight preached to empty benches, a vacuum that continued from week to week. The end of it was he became so unpopular and his strained relations with Sir John grew so notorious that the bishop, who like everyone else knew the whole story, gently suggested to him that a change of livings would be to his advantage; also to that of the church in Monk"s Acre and its neighbourhood.
So Mr. Knight departed to another parish in a remote part of the diocese which, having been inundated by the sea, was almost devoid of inhabitants, and saw the Abbey and Hawk"s Hall no more.
In searching his pockets for matches, G.o.dfrey found the letter which had been given to him as he left the Abbey. He knew the writing on the envelope at once, and was minded not to open it, for this and the foreign stamp told him that it came from Madame Riennes. Still curiosity, or a desire to take his mind off the miseries by which it was beset, prevailed, and he did open the envelope and read. It ran thus:
"Ah! my little friend, my G.o.dson in the speerit, G.o.dfrey
"I daresay you thought that poor old Madame was dead, gone to join the Celestials, because you have not heard from her for so long a while. Not a bit, my little G.o.dfrey, though perhaps I should not call you little, since my crystal shows me that you have grown taller even than you were in the old days at Lucerne, and much broader, quite a good-made man and nice to look at. Well, my G.o.dfrey, I hear things about you sometimes, for the most part from the speerit called Eleanor who, I warn you, has a great bone to pick with you. Because, you see, people do not change so much as you think when they get to the other side. So a woman remains a woman, and being a woman she stays jealous, and does not like it when her affinity turns the back on her, as you have done on Eleanor. Therefore she will give you a bad trick if she can, just as a woman would upon the earth. Also I hear of you sometimes from Miss Ogilvy or, rather, her speerit, for she is as fond of you as ever, so fond that I think you must have mixed up together in a previous life, because otherwise there is nothing to account for it. She tries to protect you from Eleanor the indignant, with whom she has, I gather, much row.
"Now for my message, which come to me from all these speerits. I hear you have done very well in what they call examinations, and have before you a shining future. But do not think that you will be happy, my G.o.dfrey, for you will not get that girl you want for a long, long while, and then only for the shortest of time, just enough to kiss and say, "Oh! my pretty, how nice you are!" And then _au revoir_ to the world of speerits. Meanwhile, being a little fool, you will go empty and hungry, since you are not one of those who hate the woman, which, after all, is the best thing in life for the man while he is young, like, so the spirits tell me, does your dear papa. And oh! how plenty this woman fruit hang on every tree, so why not pluck and eat before the time come, when you cannot, because if you still have appet.i.te those nice plums turn your stomach? So you have a bad time before you, my G.o.dfrey, waiting for the big fat plum far away which you cannot see or touch and much less taste, while the other nice plums fall into different hands, or wither--wither, waiting to be eaten.
"At end, when you get your big, fat plum, just as you set your teeth in it, oh! something blow it out of your mouth, I know not what, the speerits will not say, perhaps because they do not know, for they have not prescience of all things. But of this be sure, my G.o.dfrey, when that happen, that it is your own fault, for had you trusted to your G.o.dmamma Riennes it never would have chanced, since she would have shown you how to get your plum and eat it to the stone and then throw away the stone and get other plums and be happy--happy and full instead of empty. Well, so it is, and as I must I tell you. There is but one hope for you, unless you would go sorrowful. To come back to your G.o.dmamma, who will teach you how to walk and be happy--happy and get all you want. Also, since she is now poor, you would do well to send her a little money to this address in Italy, since that old humbug of a Pasteur, whom she cannot harm because of the influences round him, still prevents her from returning to Switzerland, where she has friends.
Now that big plum, it is very nice and you desire it much. Come to your G.o.dmamma and she will show you how to get it off the tree quickly. Yes, within one year. Or do not come and it will hang there for many winters and shrivel as plums do, and at last one bite and it will be gone. And then, my G.o.dson, then, my dear G.o.dfrey--well, perhaps I will tell you the rest another time. You poor silly boy, who will not understand that the more you get the more you will always have.
"Your G.o.dmamma, "Who love you still although you treat her so badly, "The Countess of Riennes.