Love Eternal | Page 4

the feeble knees of many, may perhaps care to
read of one whose human love led her from darkness into light and on
to the gates of the Love Eternal.

LOVE ETERNAL

CHAPTER I
HONEST JOHN
More than thirty years ago two atoms of the eternal Energy sped forth
from the heart of it which we call God, and incarnated themselves in
the human shapes that were destined to hold them for a while, as vases
hold perfumes, or goblets wine, or as sparks of everlasting radium
inhabit the bowels of the rock. Perhaps these two atoms, or essences, or
monads indestructible, did but repeat an adventure, or many, many
adventures. Perhaps again and again they had proceeded from that
Home august and imperishable on certain mornings of the days of Time,
to return thither at noon or nightfall, laden with the fruits of gained
experience. So at least one of them seemed to tell the other before all
was done and that other came to believe. If so, over what fields did they
roam throughout the æons, they who having no end, could have no
beginning? Not those of this world only, we may be sure. It is so small
and there are so many others, millions upon millions of them, and such
an infinite variety of knowledge is needed to shape the soul of man,
even though it remain as yet imperfect and but a shadow of what it
shall be.
Godfrey Knight was born the first, six months later she followed (her
name was Isobel Blake), as though to search for him, or because
whither he went, thither she must come, that being her doom and his.
Their circumstances, or rather those of their parents, were very
different but, as it chanced, the houses in which they dwelt stood
scarcely three hundred yards apart.
Between the rivers Blackwater and Crouch in Essex, is a great stretch

of land, flat for the most part and rather dreary, which, however, to
judge from what they have left us, our ancestors thought of much
importance because of its situation, its trade and the corn it grew. So it
came about that they built great houses there and reared beautiful
abbeys and churches for the welfare of their souls. Amongst these, not
very far from the coast, is that of Monk's Acre, still a beautiful fane
though they be but few that worship there to-day. The old Abbey house
adjacent is now the rectory. It has been greatly altered, and the
outbuildings are shut up or used as granaries and so forth by
arrangement with a neighbouring farmer. Still its grey walls contain
some fine but rather unfurnished chambers, reputed by the vulgar to be
haunted. It was for this reason, so says tradition, that the son of the
original grantee of Monk's Acre Abbey, who bought it for a small sum
from Henry VIII at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, turned the
Abbey house into a rectory and went himself to dwell in another known
as Hawk's Hall, situate on the bank of the little stream of that name,
Hawk's Creek it is called, which finds its way to the Blackwater.
Parsons, he said, were better fitted to deal with ghosts than laymen,
especially if the said laymen had dispossessed the originals of the
ghosts of their earthly heritage.
The ancient Hawk's Hall, a timber building of the sort common in
Essex as some of its premises still show, has long since disappeared.
About the beginning of the Victorian era a fish-merchant of the name
of Brown, erected on its site a commodious, comfortable, but
particularly hideous mansion of white brick, where he dwelt in
affluence in the midst of the large estate that had once belonged to the
monks. An attempt to corner herrings, or something of the sort, brought
this worthy, or unworthy tradesman to disaster, and the Hall was leased
to a Harwich smack-owner of the name of Blake, a shrewd person,
whose origin was humble. He had one son named John, of whom he
was determined to "make a gentleman." With this view John was sent
to a good public school, and to college. But of him nothing could make
a gentleman, because true gentility and his nature were far apart. He
remained, notwithstanding all his advantages, a cunning, and in his way
an able man of business, like his father before him. For the rest, he was

big, florid and presentable, with the bluff and hearty manner which
sometimes distinguishes a /faux bonhomme/. "Honest John" they called
him in the neighbourhood, a soubriquet which was of service to him in
many ways.
Suddenly Honest John's father died, leaving him well off, though not so
rich as he would have liked to be. At first he