Love Eternal | Page 9

should have been valuable, but the great
tithes were alienated with the landed property of the Abbey by Henry
VIII, and now belonged to the lay rector, Mr. Blake, who showed no
signs of using them to increase the incumbent's stipend.
Still there was a good house with an excellent garden, too good indeed,
with its beautiful and ancient rooms which a former rector of
archæological knowledge and means had in part restored to their
pristine state, while for the rest his tastes were simple and his needs few,
for, of course, he neither drank wine nor smoked. Therefore, as has
been said, he took the living with thankfulness and determined to make
the best of it on a total income of about £350 a year.

CHAPTER II
ISOBEL KISSES GODFREY
On the whole Monk's Acre suited Mr. Knight fairly well. It is true that
he did not like the Abbey, as it was still called, of which the
associations and architectural beauty made no appeal to him, and

thought often with affection of the lodging-house-like abode in which
he had dwelt in his southern seaport town amid the Victorian
surroundings that were suited to his Victorian nature. The glorious
church, too, irritated him, partly because it was so glorious, and
notwithstanding all that the Reformation had done to mar it, so
suggestive of papistical practice and errors, and partly because the
congregation was so scanty in that great expanse of nave and aisle, to
say nothing of the chancel and sundry chapels, that they looked like a
few wandering sheep left by themselves in a vast and almost emptied
fold. Nor was this strange, seeing that the total population of the parish
was but one hundred and forty-seven souls.
Of his squire and patron he saw but little. Occasionally Mr. Blake
attended church and as lay-rector was accommodated in an ugly oak
box in the chancel, where his big body and florid countenance
reminded Godfrey of Farmer Johnson's prize polled ox in its stall.
These state visits were not however very frequent and depended largely
upon the guests who were staying for the week-end at the Hall. If Mr.
Blake discovered that these gentlemen were religiously inclined, he
went to church. If otherwise, and this was more common, acting on his
principle of being all things to all men, he stopped away.
Personally he did not bother his head about the matter which, in secret,
he looked upon as one of the ramifications of the great edifice of
British cant. The vast majority of people in his view went to church,
not because they believed in anything or wished for instruction or
spiritual consolation, but because it looked respectable, which was
exactly why he did so himself. Even then nearly always he sat alone in
the oak box, his visitors generally preferring to occupy the pew in the
nave which was frequented by Lady Jane and Isobel.
Nor did the two often meet socially since their natures were antipathetic.
In the bosom of his family Mr. Blake would refer to Mr. Knight as the
"little parson rat," while in his bosom Mr. Knight would think of Mr.
Blake as "that bull of Bashan." Further, after some troubles had arisen
about a question of tithe, also about the upkeep of the chancel, Blake
discovered that beneath his meek exterior the clergyman had a strong

will and very clear ideas of the difference between right and wrong, in
short, that he was not a man to be trifled with, and less still one of
whom he could make a tool. Having ascertained these things he left
him alone as much as possible.
Mr. Knight very soon became aware first that his income was
insufficient to his needs, and secondly, especially now when his health
was much improved, that after a busy and hard-working life, time at
Monk's Acre hung heavily upon his hands. The latter trouble to some
extent he palliated by beginning the great work that he had planned
ever since he became a deacon, for which his undoubted scholarship
gave him certain qualifications. Its provisional title was, "Babylon
Unveiled" (he would have liked to substitute "The Scarlet Woman" for
Babylon) and its apparent object an elaborate attack upon the Roman
Church, which in fact was but a cover for the real onslaught. With the
Romans, although perhaps he did not know it himself, he had certain
sympathies, for instance, in the matter of celibacy. Nor did he entirely
disapprove of the monastic orders. Then he found nothing shocking in
the tenets and methods of the Jesuits working for what they conceived
to be a good end. The real targets of his animosity were his high-church
brethren of the Church of England, wretches who, whilst retaining all
the privileges of the