Love Eternal

by H. Rider Haggard

So within less than an hour Godfrey’s future career was settled. He came out of the office feeling rather dazed but happier than when he went in, and inquired his way to Garrick Street, where he was informed that Mr. Scoones had his establishment. He found the place and, by good luck, found Mr. Scoones also, a kindly, keen, white-haired man, who read the letter, made a few inquiries and put him through a brief examination.

“Your information is varied and peculiar,” he said, “and not of the sort that generally appeals to Her Majesty’s examiners. Still, I see that you have intelligence and, of course, the French is an asset; also the literature to some extent, and the Latin, though these would have counted more had you been going up for the Indian Civil. I think we can get you through in three months if you will work; it all depends on that. You will find a lot of young men here of whom quite seventy per cent. do nothing, except see life. Very nice fellows in their way, but if you want to get into Sandhurst, keep clear of them. Now, my term opens next Monday. I will write to General Cubitte and tell him what I think of you, also that the fees are payable in advance. Good-bye, glad you happened to catch me, which you would not have done half an hour later, as I am going out of town. At ten o’clock next Monday, please.”

After this, not knowing what to do, Godfrey returned to the Great Eastern Hotel and wrote a letter to his father, in which, baldly enough, he explained what had happened.

Having posted it in the box in the hall, he bethought him that he must find some place to live in, as the hotel was too expensive for a permanence, and was making inquiries of the porter as to how he should set about the matter when a telegram was handed to him. It ran: “All up as I expected. Meet me Liverpool Street 4.30.—Nurse.”

So Godfrey postponed his search for lodgings, and at the appointed hour kept the assignation on the platform. The train arrived, and out of it, looking much more like her old self than she had on the previous day, emerged Mrs. Parsons with the most extraordinary collection of bundles, he counted nine of them, to say nothing of a jackdaw in a cage. She embraced him with enthusiasm, dropping the heaviest of the parcels, which seemed to contain bricks, upon his toe, and in a flood of language told him of the peculiar awfulness of the row between his father and herself which had ensued upon his departure.

“Yes,” she ended, “he flung my money at my head and I flung it back at his, though afterwards I picked it up again, for it is no use wasting good gold and silver. And so here I am, beginning life again, like you, and feeling thirty years younger for it. Now, tell me what you are going to do?”

Then they went and had tea in the refreshment room, leaving the jackdaw and the other impediments in charge of a porter, and he told her.

“That’s first-rate,” she said. “I always hated the idea of seeing you with a black coat on your back. The Queen’s uniform looks much better, and I want you to be a man. Now you help me into a cab and by dinner time to-morrow I’ll be ready for you at my house at Hampstead, if I have to work all night to do it. Terms—drat the terms. Well, if you must have them, Master Godfrey, ten shillings a week will be more than you will cost me, and I ought to give you five back for your company. Now I’ll make a start, for there will be a lot to do before the place is fit for a young gentleman. I’ve never seen it but twice, you know.”

So she departed, packed into a four-wheeled cab, with the jackdaw on her lap, and Godfrey went to Madame Tussaud’s, where he studied the guillotine and the Chamber of Horrors.

On the following morning, having further improved his mind at the Tower, he took a cab also, and in due course arrived at Hampstead with his belongings. The place took some finding, for it was on the top of a hill in an old-fashioned, out of the way part of the suburb, but when found proved to be delightful. It was a little square house, built of stone, on which the old builder had lavished all his skill and care, so that in it everything was perfect, with a garden both in front and behind. The floors were laid in oak, the little hall was oak-panelled, there were hot and cold water in every room, and so forth. Moreover, an odd man was waiting to carry in his things, and in one of the front sitting-rooms, which was excellently furnished, sat Mrs. Parsons knitting as though she had been there for years.