Wood and Stone (15 page)

He was compelled to obey her, and knocking at the door of the clerk’s cottage aroused that
astonished
and scandalized official into throwing the object required out of his bedroom window. Once inside the churchyard however, the strange and mystical power of the spot brought his mood into nearer conformity with his companion’s.

They stopped, as everyone who visits Nevilton churchyard is induced to stop, before the
extraordinary
tomb of Gideon and Naomi Andersen. The thing had been constructed from the eccentric old carver’s own design, and had proved one of the keenest pleasures of his last hours.

Like the whimsical poet Donne, he had derived a sardonic and not altogether holy delight in
contemplating
before his end the actual slab of earthly consistence that was to make his bodily resurrection so emphatically miraculous. Clavering and Vennie stood for several minutes in mute contemplation before this strange monument. It was composed of a huge, solid block of Leonian stone, carved at the top into the likeness of an enormous human skull, and ornamented, below the skull, by a deeply cut cross surrounded by a circle. This last addition gave to the sacred symbol within it a certain heathen and ungodly look, making it seem as though it were no cross at all, but a pagan hieroglyph from some remote unconsecrated antiquity. The girl laid her fragile hand on the monstrous image
of death, which the gloom around them made all the more threatening.

“It is wonderful,” she said, “how the power of Christ can change even the darkest objects into beauty. I like to think of Him striking His hand straight through the clumsy half-laws of Man and Nature, and holding out to us the promise of things far beyond all this morbid dissolution.”

“You are right, my friend,” answered the priest.

“I think the world is really a dark and dreadful place,” she went on. “I cannot help saying so. I know there are people who only see its beauty and joy. I cannot feel like that. If it wasn’t for Him I should be utterly miserable. I think I should go mad. There is too much unhappiness—too much to be borne! But this strong hand of His, struck clean down to us from outside the whole wretched
confusion
,—I cling to that; and it saves me. I know there are lots of happy people, but I cannot forget the others! I think of them in the night. I think of them always. They are so many—so many!”

“Dear child!” murmured the priest, his interlude of casual frivolity melting away like mist under the flame of her conviction.

“Do you think,” she continued, “that if we were able to hear the weeping of all those who suffer and have suffered since the beginning of the world, we could endure the idea of going on living? It would be too much! The burden of those tears would darken the sun and hide the moon. It is only His presence in the midst of us,—His presence, coming in from outside, that makes it possible for us to endure and have patience.”

“Yes, He must come in from
outside
,” murmured the priest, “or He cannot help us. He must be able to break every law and custom and rule of nature and man. He must strike at the whole miserable entanglement from outside it—from outside it!”

Clavering’s voice rose almost to a shout as he uttered these last words. He felt as though he were refuting in one tremendous cry of passionate certainty all those “modernistic” theories with which he loved
sometimes
to play. He was completely under Vennie’s influence now.

“And we must help Him,” said the girl, “by entering into His Sacrifice. Only by sacrifice—by the sacrifice of everything—can we enable Him to work the miracle which He would accomplish!”

Clavering could do nothing but echo her words.

“The sacrifice of everything,” he whispered, and abstractedly laid
his
hand upon the image of death carved by the old artist. Moved apparently by an unexpected impulse, Vennie seized, with her own, the hand thus extended.

“I have thought,” she cried, “of a way out of your difficulty. Give her her lessons in the church! That will not hurt her feelings, and it will save you. It will prevent her from distracting your mind, and it will concentrate her attention upon your teaching. It will save you both!”

Clavering held the little hand, thus innocently given him, tenderly and solemnly in both of his.

“You are right, my friend,” he said, and then, gravely and emphatically as if repeating a vow,—“I will take her in the church. That will settle everything.”

Vennie seemed thrilled with spiritual joy at his acquiescence in her happy inspiration. She walked so rapidly as they recrossed the churchyard that he could hardly keep pace with her. She seemed to long to escape, to the solitude of her own home, of her own room, in order to give full vent to her feelings. He locked the gate of the porch behind them, and put the key in his pocket. Very quickly and in complete silence they made their way up the road to the entrance of the vicarage garden.

Here they separated, with one more significant and solemn hand-clasp. It was as if the spirit of St. Catharine herself was in the girl, so ethereal did she look, so transported by unearthly emotion, as the gate swung behind her.

As for the vicar of Nevilton, he strode back
impetuously
to his own house, and there, from its place beneath the print of the transfiguration, he took the letter, and tore it into many pieces; but he tore it with a different intention from that which, an hour before, had ruled his brain; and the sleep which awaited him, as soon as his head touched his pillow, was the soundest and sweetest he had known since first he came to the village.

I
T was late in the afternoon of the day following the events just described. Mrs. Fringe was passing in and out of Clavering’s sitting-room making the removal of his tea an opportunity for interminable discourse.

“They say Eliza Wotnot’s had a bad week of it with one thing and another. They say she be as yellow as a lemon-pip in her body, as you might call it, and grey as ash-heaps in her old face. I never cared for the woman myself, and I don’t gather as she was desperate liked in the village, but a
Christian’s
a Christian when they be laid low in the Lord’s pleasure, though they be as surly-tongued as Satan.”

“I know, I know,” said the clergyman impatiently.

“They say Mr. Taxater sits up with her night after night as if he was a trained nurse. Why he don’t have a nurse I can’t think, ’cept it be some papist practice. The poor gentleman will be getting woeful thin, if this goes on. He’s not one for losing his sleep and his regular meals.”

“Sally Birch is doing all that for him, Mrs. Fringe,” said Clavering. “I have seen to it myself.”

“Sally Birch knows as much about cooking a gentleman’s meals as my Lottie, and that’s not saying a great deal.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Fringe, thank you,” said
Clavering
. “You need not move the table.”

“Oh, of course,’ tis Miss Gladys’ lesson-day. They say she’s given young Mr. Ilminster the go-by, sir. ’Tis strange and wonderful how some people be made by the holy Lord to have their whole blessed pleasure in this world. Providence do love the ones as loves themselves, and those that seeks what they want shall find it! I expect, between ourselves, sir, the young lady have got someone else in her eye. They tell me some great thundering swell from London is staying in the House.”

“That’ll do, Mrs. Fringe, that’ll do. You can leave those flowers a little longer.”

“I ought to let you know, sir, that old Jimmy Pringle has gone off wandering again. I saw
Witch-Bessie
at his door when I went to the shop this morning and she told me he was talking and talking, as badly as ever he did. Far gone, poor old sinner, Witch-Bessie said he was.”

“He is a religious minded man, I believe, at bottom,” said the clergyman.

“He be stark mad, sir, if that’s what you mean! As to the rest, they say his carryings on with that
harlotry
down in Yeoborough was a disgrace to a
Christian
country.”

“I know,” said Clavering, “I know, but we all have our temptations, Mrs. Fringe.”

“Temptations, sir?” and the sandy complexioned female snorted with contempt. “And is those as takes no drop of liquor, and looks at no man
edgeways
, though their own lawful partner be a stiff corpse of seven years’ burying, to be put in the
same class with them as goes rampaging with harlotries?”

“He has repented, Mrs. Fringe, he has repented. He told me so himself when I met him last week.”

“Repented!” groaned the indignant woman; “he repents well who repents when he can’t sin no more. His talk, if you ask me, sir, is more scandalous than religious. Witch-Bessie told me she heard him say that he had seen the Lord Himself. I am not a learned scholar like you, sir, but I know this, that when the Lord does go about the earth he doesn’t visit hoary old villains like Jimmy Pringle—except to tell them they be damned.”

“Did he really say that?” asked the clergyman, feeling a growing interest in Mr. Pringle’s revelations.

“Yes, sir, he did, sir! Said he met God,—those were his very words, and indecent enough words I call them!—out along by Captain Whiffley’s
drive-gate
. You should have heard Witch-Bessie tell me. He frightened her, he did, the wicked old man! God, he said, came to him, as I might come to you, sir, quite ordinary and familiar-like.’ Jimmy,’ said God, all sudden, as if he were a person passing the time of day, ‘I have come to see you, Jimmy.’

‘“And who may you be, Mister?’ said the wicked old man, just as though the Lord above were a casual decent-dressed gentleman.

‘“I am God, Jimmy,’ said the Vision. ‘And I be come to tell ’ee how dearly I loves ’ee, spite of Satan and all his works.’ Witch-Bessie told me,” Mrs. Fringe continued, “how as the old man said things to her as she never thought to hear from human lips, so dreadful they were.”

“And what happened then?” asked Clavering eagerly.

“What happened then? Why God went away, he said, in a great cloud of roaring fire, and he was left alone, all dazed-like. Did you ever hear such a scimble-scamble story in your life, sir? And all by Captain Whiffley’s drive-gate!”

“Well, Mrs. Fringe,” said the clergyman, “I think we must postpone the rest of this interesting
conversation
till supper-time. I have several things I want to do.”

“I know you have, sir, I know you have. It isn’t easy to find out from all them books ways and means of keeping young ladies like Miss Gladys in the path of salvation. How does she get on, sir, if I might be so bold? I fear she don’t learn her catechism as quiet and patient as I used to learn mine, under old Mr. Ravelin, God forgive him!”

“Oh, I think Miss Romer is quite as good a pupil as you used to be, Mrs. Fringe,” said
Clavering
, rising and gently ushering her out of the door.

“She’s as good as some of these new-fangled
village
hussies, anyway,” retorted the irrepressible lady, turning on the threshold. “They tell me that Lucy Vare was off again last night with that rascally Tom Mooring. She’ll be in trouble, that young girl, before she wants to be.”

“I know, I know,” sighed the clergyman sadly, fumbling with the door handle.

“You don’t know all you
ought
to know, sir, if you’ll pardon my boldness,” returned the woman, making a step backwards.

“I know, because I saw them!” shouted Clavering, closing the door with irritable violence.

“Goodness me!” muttered Mrs. Fringe, returning to her kitchen, “if the poor young man knew what this parish was really like, he wouldn’t talk so freely about ‘seeing’ people!”

Left to himself, Clavering moved uneasily round his room, taking down first one book and then, another, and looking anxiously at his shelves as if seeking something from them more efficient than eloquent words.

“As soon as she comes,” he said to himself, “I shall take her across to the church.”

He had not long to wait. The door at the end of the garden-path clicked. Light-tripping steps
followed
, and Gladys Romer’s well-known figure made itself visible through the open window. He hastened out to meet her, hoping to forestall the hospitable Mrs. Fringe. In this, however, he was unsuccessful. His house-keeper was already in the porch, taking from the girl her parasol and gloves. How these little things, these chance-thrown little things, always intervene between our good resolutions and their accomplishment! He ought to have been ready in his garden, on the watch for her. Surely he had not
intentionally
remained in his room? No, it was the fault of Mrs. Fringe; of Mrs. Fringe and her stories about Jimmy Pringle and God. He wished that “a roaring cloud of fire” would rise between him and this voluptuous temptress. But probably, priest though he was, he lacked the faith of that ancient reprobate. He stood aside to let her enter. The words “I think it would be better if we went over
to the church,” stuck, unuttered, to the roof of his mouth. She held out her white ungloved hand, and then, as soon as the door was closed, began very deliberately removing her hat.

He stood before her smiling, that rather inept smile, which indicates the complete paralysis of every faculty, except the faculty of admiration. He could hardly now suggest a move to the church. He could not trouble her to re-assume that charming hat. Besides, what reason could he give? He did, however, give a somewhat ambiguous reason for following out Vennie’s heroic plan on another—a different—occasion. In the tone we use when
allaying
the pricks of conscience by tacitly treating that sacred monitor as if its intelligence were of an
inferior
order: “One of these days,” he said, “we must have our lesson in the church. It would be so nice and cool there, wouldn’t it?”

There was a scent of burning weeds in the
front-room
of the old vicarage, when master and neophyte sat down together, at the round oak table, before the extended works of Pusey and Newman. Sombre were the bindings of these repositories of orthodoxy, but the pleasant afternoon sun streamed wantonly over them and illumined their gloom.

Gladys had seated herself so that the light fell caressingly upon her yellow hair and deepened into exquisite attractiveness the soft shadows of her throat and neck. Her arms were sleeveless; and as she leaned them against the table, their whiteness and
roundness
were enhanced by the warm glow.

The priest spoke in a low monotonous voice, explaining doctrines, elucidating mysteries, and
emphasizin
g
moral lessons. He spoke of baptism. He described the manner in which the Church had
appropriated
to her own purpose so many ancient pagan customs. He showed how the immemorial heathen usages of “immersion” and “ablution” had become, in her hands, wonderful and suggestive symbols of the purifying power of the nobler elements. He used words that he had come, by frequent repetition, to know by heart. In order that he might point out to her passages in his authors which lent themselves to the subject, he brought his chair round to her side.

The sound of her gentle breathing, and the
terrible
attraction of her whole figure, as she leant forward, in sweet girlish attention to what he was saying, maddened the poor priest.

In her secret heart Gladys hardly understood a single word. The phrase “immersion,” whenever it occurred, gave her an irresistible desire to laugh. She could not help thinking of her favourite round pond. The pond set her thinking of Lacrima and how amusing it was to frighten her. But this lesson with the young clergyman was even more amusing. She felt instinctively that it was upon herself his
attention
rested, whatever mysterious words might pass his lips.

Once, as they were leaning together over the “Development of Christian Doctrine,” and he was enlarging upon the gradual evolution of one sacred implication after another, she let her arm slide lightly over the back of his hand; and a savage thrill of triumph rose in her heart, as she felt an answering magnetic shiver run through his whole frame.

“The worship of the Body of our Saviour,” he said—using his own words as a shield against her—“allows no subterfuges, no reserves. It gathers to itself, as it sweeps down the ages, every emotion, every ardour, every passion of man. It appropriates all that is noble in these things to its own high
purpose
, and it makes even of the evil in them a means to yet more subtle good.”

As he spoke, with an imperceptible gesture of liberation he rose from his seat by her side and set himself to pace the room. The struggle he was making caused his fingers to clench and re-clench themselves in the palms of his hands, as though he were squeezing the perfume from handfuls of scented leaves.

The high-spirited girl knew by instinct the
suffering
she was causing, but she did not yield to any ridiculous pity. She only felt the necessity of holding him yet more firmly. So she too rose from her chair, and, slipping softly to the window, seated herself sideways upon its ledge. Balanced charmingly here—like some wood-nymph stolen from the forest to tease the solitude of some luckless hermit—she stretched one arm out of the window, and pulling towards her a delicate branch of yellow roses, pressed it against her breast.

The pose of her figure, as she balanced herself thus, was one of provoking attractiveness, and with a furtive look of feline patience in her half-shut eyes she waited while it threw its spell over him.

The scent of burning weeds floated into the room. Clavering’s thoughts whirled to and fro in his head like whipped chaff. “I must go on speaking,” he
thought; “and I must not look at her. If I look at her I am lost.” He paced the room like a caged animal. His soul cried out within him to be
liberated
from the body of this death. He thought of the strange tombstone of Gideon Andersen, and wished he too were buried under it, and free forever!

“Yet is it not my duty to look at her?” the devil in his heart whispered. “How can I teach her, how can I influence her for good, if I do not see the effect of my words? Is it not an insult to the Master Himself, and His Divine power, to be thus cowardly and afraid?”

His steps faltered and he leant against the table.

“Christ,” he found his lips repeating, “is the
explanation
of all mysteries. He is the secret root of all natural impulses in us. All emerge from Him and all return to Him. He is to us what their ancient god Pan was to the Greeks. He is in a true sense our
All
—for in him is all we are, all we have, and all we hope. All our passions are His. Touched by Him, their true originator, they lose their dross, are purged of their evil, and give forth sweet-smelling, sweet-breathing—yellow roses!”

He had not intended to say “yellow roses.” The sentence had rounded itself off so, apart from his conscious will.

The girl gravely indicated that she heard him; and then smiled dreamily, acquiescingly—the sort of smile that yields to a spiritual idea, as if it were a physical caress.

The scent of burning weeds continued to float in through the window. “Oh, it has gone!” she cried suddenly, as, released from her fingers, the branch
swung back to its place against the sand-stone wall.

“I must have it again,” she added, bending her supple body backwards. She made one or two
ineffectual
efforts and then gave up, panting. “I can’t reach it,” she said. “But go on, Mr. Clavering. I can listen to you like this. It is so nice out here.”

Strange unfathomable thoughts surged up in the depths of Clavering’s soul. He found himself wishing that he had authority over her, that he might tame her wilful spirit, and lay her under the yoke of some austere penance. Why was she free to provoke him thus, with her merciless fragility? The madness she was arousing grew steadily upon him. He stumbled awkwardly round the edge of the table and
approached
her. The scent of burning weeds became yet more emphatic. To make his nearness to her less obvious, and out of a queer mechanical instinct to allay his own conscience, he continued his spiritual admonitions, even when he was quite close—even when he could have touched her with his hand. And it would be so easy to touch her! The playful perilousness of her position in the window made such a movement natural, justifiable, almost conventional.