Wood and Stone (14 page)

Men differ curiously from one another in this respect. To some among them the influences of what we call Nature are in harmony with all that is good in them, and have a soothing and mystical effect. Others seem to disentangle themselves from every natural surrounding, and to stand out, against the background of their own spiritual horizons,
clear-edged
, opaque, and resistant.

Clavering was entirely of this latter type. Nature to him was always full of hidden dangers and secret perils. He found her power a magical, not a mystical, one. He resented the spell she cast over him. It seemed to lend itself, all too willingly, to the vicious demons that delighted to waylay his unguarded hours. His instinctive attitude to these enchanting natural forces was that of a mediæval monk. Their
bewitching
shapes, their lovely colours, their penetrating odours, were all permeated for him by a subtle
diffusion
of something evil there; something capable of leading one’s spirit desperately, miserably far—if one allowed it the smallest welcome. Against all these
siren-voices rumouring and whispering so
treacherously
around us, against all this shifting and flitting wizardry, one defence alone availed;—the clear-cut, absolute authority of Him who makes the clouds his chariot and the earth his footstool.

As Clavering sat crouching there under his tent of larches, the spirit of the Christ he served seemed to pass surging through him like a passionate flood. He drew deep breaths of exquisite relief and comfort. The problem was solved,—was indeed no problem at all; for he had nothing to do but to obey the absolute authority, the soul-piercing word. Who was he to question results? The same God who
commanded
him to flee from temptation was able—
beyond
the mystery of his own divine method—to save her who tempted him, whether baptized or unbaptized!

He leapt to his feet, and no more like one pursued, but rather like one pursuing, pushed his way to the summit of the Mount. The space at the top was flat and circular; not unlike, in its smooth level surface, the top of the mountain in that very
Transfiguration
picture which was now overshadowing his letter to his enchantress. In the centre of this open space rose the thin Thyrsus-shaped tower. He advanced to the eastern edge of the hill and looked down over the wide-spread landscape.

The flat elm-fringed meadows of the great
mid-Somerset
plain stretched softly away, till they lost themselves in a purple mist. Never had the
formidable
outline of the Leonian promontory looked more emphatic and sinister than it looked in this deepening twilight. The sky above it was of a pale green tint,
flecked here and there by feathery streaks of carmine. The whole sky-dome was still lit by the pallid
reflection
of the dead sunset; and on the far northern horizon, where the Mendip hills rise above the plain, a livid whitish glimmer touched the rim of an
enormous
range of sombre clouds.

The priest stood, hushed, and motionless as a statue, contemplating this suggestive panorama. But little of its transparent beauty passed the surface of his consciousness. He was absorbed, rapt, intent. But the cause of his abstraction was not the diaphanous air-spaces above him or the dark earth beneath him; it was the pouring of the waves of divine love through his inmost being; it was his fusion with that great Spirit of the Beyond which renders its votaries
independent
of space and time.

After long exquisite moments of this high
exultation
, his mind gradually resumed its normal
functioning
. A cynical interpreter of this sublime experience would doubtless have attributed the whole
phenomenon
to a natural reaction of the priest, back to his habitual moral temper, from the turbulent
perturbations
of the recent days. Would such a one have found it a mere coincidence that at the moment of regaining his natural vision the clergyman’s attention was arrested by the slow passage of a huge white cloud towards the Leonian promontory, a cloud that assumed, as it moved, gigantic and almost human lineaments?

Coincidence or not, Clavering’s attention was not allowed to remain fixed upon this interesting spectacle. It seemed as though his return to ordinary human consciousness was destined to be attended by the
reappearance of ordinary humanity. He perceived in the great sloping field on the eastern side of the mount the white figure of a woman, walking alone. For the moment his heart stood still; but a second glance reassured him. He knew that figure, even in the dying light. It was little Vennie Seldom.
Simultaneously
with this discovery he was suddenly aware that he was no longer the only frequenter of the woody solitudes of Nevilton Hill. On a sort of terrace, about a hundred yards below him, there suddenly moved into sight a boy and a girl, walking closely interlinked and whispering softly. Acting mechanically, and as if impelled by an impulse from an external power, he sank down upon his knees and spied upon them. They too slipped into a
semi-recumbent
posture, apparently upon the branches of a fallen tree, and proceeded, in blissful
unconsciousness
of any spectator, to indulge in a long and
passionate
embrace. From where he crouched Clavering could actually discern these innocents’ kisses, and catch the little pathetic murmurings of their amorous happiness. His heart beat wildly and strangely. In his fingers he clutched great handfuls of earth. His thoughts played him satyrish and fantastic tricks. Suddenly he leapt to his feet and stumbled away, like an animal that has been wounded. He encountered the Thyrsus-shaped tower—that queer fancy of eighteenth century leisure—and beat with his hands upon its hard smooth surface. After a second or two, however, he recovered his self-control; and to afford some excuse to his own mind for his mad behaviour, he walked deliberately round the edifice, looking for its entrance. This he presently found,
and stood observing it, with scowling interest, in the growing darkness. He had recognized the lovers down there. They were both youngsters of his parish. He made a detached mental resolve to talk tomorrow to the girl’s mother. These flirtations during the hay-harvest often led to trouble.

There was just enough light left for him to remark some obscure lettering above the little locked door of this fanciful erection. It annoyed him that he could not read it. With trembling hand he fumbled in his pocket—produced a match-box and lit a match. There was no difficulty now in reading what it had been the humour of some eighteenth century Seldom to have carved on this site of the discovery of the Holy Rood. “Carpe Diem” he spelt out, before the flutterings of an agitated moth extinguished the light he held. This then was the oracle he had climbed the sacred Mount to hear!

With quick steps, steps over which his mind seemed no longer to have control, he returned to his point of observation. The boy and girl had disappeared, but Vennie Seldom was still visible in her white dress, pacing up and down the meadow. What was she doing there?—he wondered. Did she often slip away, after the little formal dinner with her mother, and wander at large through the evening shadows? An unaccountable rage against her beseiged his heart. He felt he should soon begin to hate her if he watched her much longer; so, with a more collected and calm step and a sigh that rose from the depths of his soul he moved away to where the path descended.

As it happened, however, the path he had to follow now, for it was too dark to return as he had come,
emerged, after many windings round the circle of the hill, precisely into the very field, in which Vennie was walking. He moved straight towards her. She gave a little start when she saw him, but waited passively, in that patient drooping pose so natural to her, till he was by her side.

“You too,” she said, touching his hand, “feel the necessity of being alone a little while before the day ends. I always do. Mother sometimes protests. But it is no good. There are certain little pleasures that we have a right to enjoy—haven’t we?”

They moved together along the base of the hill following its circuit in the northerly direction. Clavering felt as though, after a backward plunge into the Inferno, he had encountered a reproachful angel of light. He half expected her to say to him, in the crushing austerity of Beatrice, “Lift up your chin and answer me face to face.” The gentle power of her pure spirit over him was so persuasive that in the after-ebb of this second turbulent reaction he could not refrain from striking the confessional note.

“I wish I were as good as you, Miss Seldom,” he said. “I fear the power of evil in me goes beyond anything you could possibly conceive.”

“There are few things I cannot conceive, Mr. Clavering,” the girl answered, with that helpless droop of her little head that had so winning a pathos. “We people who live such secluded lives are not as ignorant of the great storms as you may imagine.”

Clavering’s voice shook as he responded to this.

“I wish I could talk quite freely to you. This convention that forbids friends such as we are from
being frank with one another, seems to me sometimes an invention of the devil.”

The girl lifted her head. He could not see in the darkness that had now fallen upon them, how her mouth quivered and her cheeks grew scarlet.

“I think I can guess at what is worrying you, my friend,” she murmured gently.

He trembled from head to foot with a curious shame. “You think it is about Gladys Romer,” he burst out. “Well it is! I find her one of the greatest difficulties I have ever had in my life.”

“I am afraid,” said Vennie timidly, “she intends to be a difficulty to you. It is wrong to say so, but I have always been suspicious of her motives in this desire to enter our church,”

“God knows what her motives are!” sighed the priest, “I only know she makes it as hard for me as she can.”

As soon as he had uttered these words a queer observing sense of having been treacherous to Gladys rose in his heart. Once more he had to suppress an emotion of hatred for the little saint by his side.

“I know,” murmured Vennie, “I know. She tries to play upon your good-nature. She tries to make you over-fond of her. I suppose”—she paused for a moment—“I suppose she is like that. It is not her fault. It is her—her character. She has a mad craving for admiration and is ready to play it off on anybody.”

“It makes it very difficult to help her,” said the priest evasively.

Vennie peered anxiously at his face. “It is not as though she really was fond of
you
” she boldly added.
“I doubt whether she is fond of anyone. She loves troubling people’s minds and making them unhappy.”

“Don’t mistake me, Miss Seldom,” cried Clavering. “I am not in the least sentimental about her—it is only—only”—Vennie smoothed his path for him.

“It is only that she makes it impossible for you to teach her,” she hazarded, following his lead. “I know something of that difficulty myself. These wayward pleasure-loving people make it very hard for us all sometimes.”

Mr. Clavering shook his stick defiantly into the darkness, whether as a movement directed against the powers of evil or against the powers of good, he would himself have found it hard to say. Queer thoughts of a humorous frivolity passed through his mind. Something in the girl’s grave tone had an irritating effect upon him. It is always a little
annoying
, even to the best of men, to feel themselves being guided and directed by women, unless they are in love with them. Clavering was certainly not in love with Vennie; and though in his emotional agitation he had gone so far in confiding in her, he was by no means unconscious of something incongruous and even ridiculous in the situation. This queer new frivolity in him, which now peered forth from some twisted corner of his nature, like a rat out of a hole, found this whole interview intolerably absurd. He suddenly experienced the sensation of being led along at Vennie’s side like a convicted school-boy. He found himself rebelling against all women in his heart, both good and bad, and recalling, humorously and sadly, the old sweet scandalous attitude of contempt for the whole sex, of his irresponsible Cambridge days.
Perhaps, dimly and unconsciously, he was reacting now, after all this interval, to the subtle influence of Mr. Taxater. He knew perfectly well that the very idea of a man—not to speak of a priest—
confiding
his amorous weaknesses to a woman, would have excited that epicurean sage to voluble fury.
Everything
that was mediæval and monkish in him rose up too, in support of this interior outburst of Rabelaisean spleen.

It would be interesting to know if Vennie had any inkling, as she walked in the darkness by his side, of this new and unexpected veering of his mood. Certainly she refrained from pressing him for any further confessions. Perhaps with the genuine
clairvoyance
of a saint she was conscious of her danger. At any rate she began speaking to him of herself, of her difficulties with her mother and her mother’s friends, of her desire to be of more use to Lacrima Traffio, and of the obstacles in the way of that.

Conversing with friendly familiarity on these less poignant topics they arrived at last at the gates of the Priory farm and the entrance to the church. Mr. Clavering was proceeding to escort her home, when she suddenly stopped in the road, and said in a quick hurried whisper, “I should dearly love to walk once round the churchyard before I go back.”

The cheerful light from the windows of the Goat and Boy showed, as it shone upon his face, his surprise as well as his disinclination. The truth is, that by a subtle reversion of logic he had now reached the idea that it was at once absurd and unkind to send that letter to Gladys. He was trembling to tear it in pieces, and burn the pieces in his
kitchen-fire
!
Vennie however, did not look at his face. She looked at the solemn tower of St. Catharine’s church.

“Please get the key,” she said, “and let us walk once round.”