"(Ah! you did not know I had that t.i.tle, did you, but in the speerit world I have others which are much higher.)"
G.o.dfrey thrust this precious epistle back into his pocket with a feeling of physical and mental sickness. How did this horrible woman know so much about him and his affairs, and why did she prophesy such dreadful things? Further, if her knowledge was so accurate, although veiled in her foreign metaphor, why should not her prophecies be accurate also? And if they were, why should he be called upon to suffer so many things?
He could find no answer to these questions, but afterwards he sent her letter to the Pasteur, who in due course returned it with some upright and manly comments both upon the epistle itself and the story of his troubles, which G.o.dfrey had detailed to him. Amongst much else he wrote in French:
"You suffer and cannot understand why, my dear boy. Nor do I, but it is truth that all who are worth anything are called upon to suffer, to what end we do not know. Nothing of value is gained except by suffering. Why, again we do not know. This wretched woman is right in a way when she refers all solutions to another world, only her other world is one that is bad, and her solutions are very base. Be sure that there are other and better ones that we shall learn in due time, when this little sun has set for us. For it will rise elsewhere, G.o.dfrey, in a brighter sky.
Meanwhile, do not be frightened by her threats, for even if they should all be true, to those evils which she prophesies there is, be sure, another interpretation. As I think one of your poets has said, we add our figures until they come even. So go your way and keep as upright as you can, and have no fear since G.o.d is over all, not the devil."
Thus preached the Pasteur, and what he said gave G.o.dfrey the greatest comfort. Still, being young, he made one mistake. He did send Madame Riennes some money, partly out of pity--ten pounds in a postal order without any covering letter, a folly that did not tend to a cessation of her epistolatory efforts.
On reaching town G.o.dfrey went straight to Hampstead. There to his surprise he found all prepared for his reception.
"I was expecting you, my dear," said Mrs. Parsons, "and even have a little bit extra in the house in case you should come."
"Why, when I told you I had gone home for a month?" asked G.o.dfrey.
"Why? For the same reason as I knows that oil and vinegar won"t abide mixed in the same bottle. I was sure enough that being a man grown, you and your father could never get on together in one house. But perhaps there is something else in it too," she added doubtfully.
Then G.o.dfrey told her that there was something else, and indeed all about the business.
"Well, there you are, and there"s nothing to be said, or at least so much that it comes to the same thing," remarked Mrs. Parsons, in a reflective tone, when he had finished his story. "But what I want to know," she went on, "is why these kind of things happen. You two--I mean you and Miss Isobel--are just fitted to each other, appointed together by Nature, so to speak, and fond as a couple of doves upon a perch. So why shouldn"t you take each other and have done? What is there to come between a young man and a young woman such as you are?"
"I don"t know," groaned G.o.dfrey.
"No, nor don"t I; and yet something does come between. What"s the meaning of it all? Why do things always go cussed in this "ere world?
Is there a devil about what manages it, or is it just chance? Why shouldn"t people have what they want and when it"s wanted, instead of being forced to wait until perhaps it isn"t, or can"t be enjoyed, or often enough to lose it altogether? You can"t answer, and nor can"t I; only at times I do think, notwithstanding all my Christian teachings and hundreds and hundreds of your father"s sermons, that the devil, he"s top-dog here. And as for that there foreign woman whose letter you"ve read to me, she"s his housemaid. Not but what I"m sure it will all come right at last," she added, with an attempt at cheerfulness.
"I hope so," replied G.o.dfrey, without conviction, and went to bed.
Presently he descended from his room again, bearing a pill-box in which was enclosed a certain ring that years before he had bought at Lucerne, a ring set with two hearts of turquoise.
"I promised not to write," he said, "but you might address this to her.
She"ll know what it is, for I told her about it."
"Yes," said Mrs. Parsons, "the young lady shall have that box of pills.
Being upset, it may do her good."
In due course Isobel did have it; also the box came back addressed to Mrs. Parsons. In it was another ring, a simple band of ancient gold--as a matter of fact, it was Roman, a betrothal ring of two thousand years ago. Round it was a sc.r.a.p of paper on which was written:
"This was dug up in a grave. My great-grandmother gave it to my great-grandfather when they became engaged about a hundred years ago, and he wore it all his life, as in a bygone age someone else had done. Now the great-granddaughter gives it to another. Let him wear it all his life, whatever happens to her, or to him. Then let it go to the grave again, perhaps to be worn by others far centuries hence."
G.o.dfrey understood and set it on the third finger of his left hand, where it remained night and day, and year by year.
So that matter ended, and afterwards came silence and darkness which endured for ten years or more. From his father he heard nothing, nor on his part did he ever write to him again. Indeed the first news concerning him which reached G.o.dfrey was that of his death which happened some seven years later, apparently after a brief illness. Even of this he would not have learned, since no one took the trouble to put it in any paper that he saw, had it not chanced that the Rev. Mr.
Knight died intestate, and that therefore his small belongings descended to G.o.dfrey as his natural heir. With them were a number of papers, among which in the after days G.o.dfrey found the very letter that Isobel wrote to him which his father "posted" in his desk.
For his son there was no word, a circ.u.mstance that showed the implacability of this man"s character. Notwithstanding his continual profession of the highest Christian principles he could never forget or forgive, and this although it was he who was in fault. For what wrong had G.o.dfrey done to him in loving a woman whom he did not chance to like? So he died silent, bearing his resentment to the grave. And yet some odd sense of justice prevented him from robbing G.o.dfrey of his little inheritance, something under two thousand pounds, that came on a policy of insurance and certain savings, a sum which in after years when money was plentiful with him G.o.dfrey appointed to the repair and beautifying of the Abbey Church at Monk"s Acre.
Strangely enough, although from his childhood they had been always estranged, G.o.dfrey felt this conduct of his father very much indeed. It seemed dreadful to him that he should vanish thus into the darkness, taking his wrath with him; and often he wondered if it still animated him there. Also he wondered what could be the possible purpose of it all, and indeed why his father was so fashioned that he could grow venomous over such a matter. To all of which questions no answer came, although one suggested itself to him--namely, that he was the victim of some hereditary taint, and therefore not in fact to blame.
In the case of Isobel the darkness was equally dense, for both of them kept their word, and with the single exception of the episode of the exchange of rings, neither attempted to communicate with the other directly or indirectly. From Mrs. Parsons he heard that Hawk"s Hall was shut up, and that Sir John and his daughter lived mostly in London or at a place that the former had bought in Scotland. Once indeed Mrs.
Parsons did write, or got someone else to write, to him that she had seen Isobel drive past her in the street, and that she looked well, though rather "stern and quiet-like."
That was all the news G.o.dfrey had of Isobel during those ten years, since she was not a person who advertised her movements in the papers, although for her sake he became a great student of society gossip. Also he read with care all announcements of engagements and marriages in _The Times_, and the deaths, too, for the matter of that, but happily quite without result. Indeed in view of her declaration he ought to have been, and, in fact, was, ashamed of his research; but then, who could be quite sure of anything in this world?
Sir John, he knew, was living, because from time to time he saw his name in lists of subscriptions of a sort that appear under royal patronage and are largely advertised.
So between these two swung a veil of darkness, although, had he but known it, this was not nearly so impenetrable to Isobel as to himself.
Somehow--possibly Arthur Thorburn had friends with whom he corresponded in England who knew Isobel--she acquired information as to every detail of his career. Indeed when he came to learn everything he was absolutely amazed at the particulars with which she was acquainted, whereof there were certain that he would have preferred to have kept to himself. But she had them all, with dates and surrounding circ.u.mstances and the rest; thousands of miles of ocean had been no bar to her searching gaze.
For his part he was not without consolations, since, strangely enough, he never felt as if she were lost to him, or indeed far away; it was always as though she were in the next room, or at any rate in the next street. There are individuals of sensitive mind, and he was one of them, who know well enough when such a total loss has occurred. It has been well said that the dead are never really dead to us until they are forgotten, and the same applies to the living. While they remember us, they are never so very far away, and what is more we, or some of us, are quite aware if they have ceased to remember, for then the door is shut and the doorway built up and our hearts tell us that this has been done.
In G.o.dfrey"s case with Isobel, not only did the doorway remained unfilled--the door itself was always ajar. Although seas divided them and over these no whisper came, yet he felt her thought leaping to him across the world. Especially did this happen at night when he laid himself down to sleep, perhaps because then his mind was most receptive, and since their hours of going to rest must have been different, he being in India and she in England, she could scarcely have been reflecting on him as he fondly believed, at the moment when she, too, entered into the world called sleep.
Therefore, either it was all imagination or he caught her waking thoughts, or perhaps those that haunted her upon this border land were delayed until his subtler being could interpret them. Who knows? At least, unless something had happened to disturb him, those nights were rare when as he was shutting his eyes, G.o.dfrey did not seem to be sensible of Isobel"s presence. At any rate, he knew that she had not forgotten; he knew that somewhere in the vast world she was ever thinking of him with more intensity than she thought of any other man or thing. And during all those lonely years this knowledge or belief was his greatest comfort.
Not that G.o.dfrey"s life in India was in any way unhappy. On the contrary it was a full and active life. He worked hard at his profession and succeeded in it to a limited extent, and he had his friends, especially his great friend Arthur Thorburn, who always clung to him. He had his flirtations also; being a man of susceptibility who was popular with women, how could they be avoided? For above all things G.o.dfrey was a man, not a hermit or a saint or an aesthete, but just a man with more gifts of a sort than have some others. He lived the life of the rest, he hunted, he shot tigers, doing those things that the Anglo-Indian officer does, but all the same he studied. Whether it were of his trade of soldiering, or of the natives, or of Eastern thought and law, he was always learning something, till at last he knew a great deal, often he wondered to what end.
And yet, with all his friends and acquaintances, in a way he remained a very lonely man, as those who are a little out of the ordinary often do. In the common groove we rub against the other marbles running down it, but once we leap over its edge, then where are we? We cannot wander off into s.p.a.ce because of the attraction of the earth that is so near to us, and yet we are alone in the air until with a b.u.mp we meet our native ground. Therefore for the most of us the groove is much better.
And yet some who leave it have been carried elsewhere, if only for a little while, like St. Paul into the third heaven.
CHAPTER XVIII
FRANCE--AND AFTER
Nothing so very remarkable happened to G.o.dfrey during those ten years of his life in India, or at least only one or two things. Thus once he got into a sc.r.a.pe for which he was not really responsible, and got out of it again, as he imagined, without remark, until Isobel showed her common and rather painful intimacy with its details, of which she appeared to take a somewhat uncharitable view, at any rate so far as the lady was concerned.
The other matter was more serious, since it involved the loss of his greatest friend, Arthur Thorburn. Briefly, what happened was this.
There was a frontier disturbance. G.o.dfrey, who by now was a staff officer, had been sent to a far outpost held by Thorburn with a certain number of men, and there took command. A reconnaissance was necessary, and Thorburn went out for that purpose with over half of the available garrison of the post, having received written orders that he was not to engage the enemy unless he found himself absolutely surrounded. In the end Thorburn did engage the enemy with the result that practically he and his force were exterminated, but not before they had inflicted such a lesson on the said enemy that it sued for peace and has been great friends with the British power ever since.
First however a feeble attack was made on G.o.dfrey"s camp that he beat off without the loss of a single man, exaggerated accounts of which were telegraphed home representing it as a "Rorke"s Drift defence."
G.o.dfrey was heartbroken; he had loved this man as a brother, more indeed than brothers often love. And now Thorburn, his only friend, was dead. The Darkness had taken him, that impenetrable, devouring darkness out of which we come and into which we go. Religion told him he should not grieve, that Thorburn doubtless was much better off whither he had gone than he could ever have been on earth, although it was true the same religion said that he might be much worse off, since thither his failings would have followed him. Dismissing the latter possibility, how could he be happy in a new world, G.o.dfrey wondered, having left all he cared for behind him and without possibility of communication with them?
In short, all the old problems of which he had not thought much since Miss Ogilvy died, came back to G.o.dfrey with added force and left him wretched. Nor was he consoled by the sequel of the affair of which he was bound to report the facts. The gallant man who was dead was blamed unjustly for what had happened, as perhaps he deserved who had not succeeded, since those who set their blind eye to the telescope as Nelson did must justify their action by success.
G.o.dfrey, on the other hand, who had done little but defeat an attack made by exhausted and dispirited men, was praised to the skies and found himself figuring as a kind of hero in the English Press, which after a long period of peace having lost all sense of proportion in such matters, was glad of anything that could be made to serve the purposes of sensation. Ultimately he was thanked by the Government of India, made a brevet-Major and decorated with the D.S.O., of all of which it may be said with truth that never were such honours received with less pleasure.
So much did he grieve over this unhappy business that his health was affected and being run down, in the end he took some sort of fever and was very ill indeed. When at length he recovered more or less he went before a Medical Board who ordered him promptly to England on six months" leave.
Most men would have rejoiced, but G.o.dfrey did not. He had little wish to return to England, where, except Mrs. Parsons, there were none he desired to see, save one whom he was sworn not to see. This he could bear while they were thousands of miles apart, but to be in the same country with Isobel, in the same town perhaps, and forbidden to hear her voice or to touch her hand, how could he bear that? Still he had no choice in this matter, arranged by the hand of Fate, and went, reflecting that he would go to Lucerne and spent the time with the Pasteur. Perhaps even he would live in the beautiful house that Miss Ogilvy had left to him, or a corner of it, seeing that it was empty, for the tenants to whom it had been let had gone away.
So he started at the end of the first week in July, 1914.