THE MYTHOLOGY OF POWER
It 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 edge-ways, 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 housekeeper 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 emphasizing 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 sandstone 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.
“The true doctrine of the Incarnation,” his lips repeated, “is not that
something contrary to nature has happened; it is that the innermost
secret of Nature has been revealed. And this secret,”--here his fingers
closed feverishly on the casement-latch--“is identical with the force
that swings the furthest star, and drives the sap through the veins of
all living things.”
It would have been of considerable interest to a student of religious
psychology--like Mr. Taxater for example--to observe how the phrases
that mechanically passed Clavering’s lips at this juncture were all
phrases drawn from the works of rationalistic modernists. He had
recently been reading the charming and subtle essays of Father Mervyn;
and the soft and melodious harmonies of that clever theologian’s
thought had accumulated in some hidden corner of his brain. The
authentic religious emotion in him being superseded by a more powerful
impulse, his mind mechanically reverted to the large, dim regions of
mystical speculation. A certain instinct in him--the instinct of his
clamorous senses--made him careful to blur, confuse, and keep far
back, that lovely and terrible “Power from Outside,” the hem of Whose
garments he had clung to, the night before. “Christ,” he went on, “is,
as it were, the centre and pivot of the whole universe, and every
revelation granted to us of His nature is a revelation from the system
of things itself. I want you to understand that our true attitude
towards this great mystery, ought to be the attitude of scientific
explorers, who in searching for hidden causes have come upon the one,
the unique Cause.”
The girl’s only indication that she embraced the significance of these
solemn words was to make a sudden gliding serpentine movement which
brought her into a position more easy to be retained, and yet one that
made it still more unnatural that he should refuse her some kind of
playful and affectionate support.
The poor priest’s heart beat tumultuously. He began to lose all
consciousness of everything except his propinquity to his provoker.
He was aware with appalling distinctness of the precise texture of
the light frock that she wore. It was of a soft fawn colour, crossed
by wavy lines of a darker tint. He watched the way these wavy lines
followed the curves of her figure. They began at her side, and ended
where her skirt hung loose over her little swinging ankles. He
wished these lines had sloped upwards, instead of downwards; then it
would have been so much easier for him to follow the argument of the
“Development of Christian Doctrine.”
Still that scent of burning weeds! Why must his neighbours set fire to
their rubbish, on this particular afternoon?
With a fierce mental effort he tried to suppress the thought that
those voluptuous lips only waited for him to overcome his ridiculous
scruples. Why must she wait like this so pitilessly passive, laying all
the burden of the struggle upon him? If she would only make a little--a
very little--movement, his conscience would be able to recover its
equilibrium, whatever happened. He tried to unmagnetize her attraction,
by visualizing the fact that under this desirable form--so near his
touch--lurked nothing but that bleak, bare, last outline of mortality,
to which all flesh must come. He tried to see her forehead, her closed
eyes, her parted lips, as they would look if resting in a coffin. Like
his monkish predecessors in the world-old struggle against Satan, he
sought to save himself by clutching fast to the grinning skull.
All this while his lips went on repeating their liturgical formula.
“We must learn to look upon the Redemption, as a natural, not a
supernatural fact. We must learn to see in it the motive-force of the
whole stream of evolution. We must remember that things _are_ what
they have it in them to _become_. It is the purpose, the end, which is
the true truth--not the process or the method. Christ is the end of
all things. He is therefore the beginning of all things. All things
find their meaning, their place, their explanation, only in relation
to Him. He is the reality of the illusion which we call Nature, and
of the illusion which we call Life. In Him the universe becomes real
and living--which else were a mere engine of destruction.” How much
longer he would have continued in this strain--conquered yet still
resisting--it were impossible to say. All these noble words, into the
rhythm of which so much passionate modern thought had been poured, fell
from his lips like sand out of a sieve.
The girl herself interrupted him. With a quick movement she suddenly
jerked herself from her recumbent position; jumped, without his help,
lightly down upon the floor, and resumed her former place at the table.
The explanation of this virtuous retreat soon made itself known in
the person of a visitor advancing up the garden. Clavering, who had
stumbled foolishly aside as she changed her place, now opened the door
and went to meet the new-comer.
It was Romer’s manager, Mr. Thomas Lickwit, discreet, obsequious,
fawning, as ever,--but with a covert malignity in his hurried words.
“Sorry to disturb you, sir. I see it is Miss Gladys’ lesson. I hope the
young lady is getting on nicely, sir. I won’t detain you for more than
a moment. I have just a little matter that couldn’t wait. Business is
business, you know.”
Clavering felt as though he had heard this last observation repeated
“ad nauseam” by all the disgusting sycophants in all the sensational
novels he had ever read. It occurred to him how closely Mr. Lickwit
really did resemble all these monotonously unpleasant people.
“Yes,” went on the amiable man, “business is business--even with
reverend gentlemen like yourself who have better things to attend to.”
Clavering forced himself to smile in genial appreciation of this airy
wit, and beckoned the manager into his study. He then returned to the
front room. “I am afraid our lesson must end for tonight, Miss Romer,”
he said. “You know enough of this lieutenant of your father’s to guess
that he will not be easy to get rid of. The worst of a parson’s life
are these interruptions.”
There was no smile upon his face as he said this, but the girl laughed
merrily. She adjusted her hat with a deliciously coquettish glance at
him through the permissible medium of the gilt-framed mirror. Then she
turned and held out her hand. “Till next week, then, Mr. Clavering.
And I will read all those books you sent up for me--even the great big
black one!”
He gravely opened the door for her, and with a sigh from a heart
“sorely charged,” returned to face Mr. Lickwit.
He found that gentleman comfortably ensconced in the only arm-chair.
“It is like this, sir,” said the man, when Clavering had taken a seat
opposite him. “Mr. Romer thinks it would be a good thing if this
Social Meeting were put a stop to. There has been talk, sir. I will
not conceal it from you. There has been talk. The people say that you
have allied yourself with that troublesome agitator. You know the man I
refer to, sir, that wretched Wone.
“Mr. Romer doesn’t approve of what he hears of these meetings. He
doesn’t see as how they serve any good purpose. He thinks they promote
discord in the place, and set one class against another. He does not
like the way, neither, that Mr. Quincunx has been going on down there;
nor to say the truth, sir, do _I_ like that gentleman’s doings very
well. He speaks too free, does Mr. Quincunx, much too free, considering
how he is situated as you might say.”
Clavering leapt to his feet, trembling with anger. “I cannot understand
this,” he said, “Someone has been misleading Mr. Romer. The Social
Meeting is an old institution of this village; and though it is not
exactly a church affair, I believe it is almost entirely frequented by
church-goers. I have always felt that it served an invaluable purpose
in this place. It is indeed the only occasion when priest and people
can meet on equal terms and discuss these great questions man to man.
No--no, Lickwit, I cannot for a moment consent to the closing of the
Social Meeting. It would undo the work of years. It would be utterly
unwise. In fact it would be wrong. I cannot think how you can come to
me with such a proposal.”
Mr. Lickwit made no movement beyond causing his hat to twirl round on
the top of the stick he held between his knees.
“You will think better of it, sir. You will think better of it,” he
said. “The election is coming on, and Mr. Romer expects all supporters
of Church and State to help him in his campaign. You have heard he is
standing, sir, I suppose?”
Mr. Lickwit uttered the word “standing” in a tone which suggested to
Clavering’s mind a grotesque image of the British Constitution resting
like an enormous cornucopia on the head of the owner of Leo’s Hill. He
nodded and resumed his seat. The manager continued. “That old Methodist
chapel where those meetings are held, belongs, as you know, to Mr.
Romer. He is thinking of having it pulled down--not only because of
Wone’s and Quincunx’s goings on there, but because he wants the ground.
He’s thinking of building an estate-office on that corner. We are
pressed for room, up at the Hill, sir.”
Once more Clavering rose to his feet. “This is too much!” he cried. “I
wonder you have the impertinence to come here and tell me such things.
I am not to be bullied, Lickwit. Understand that! I am not to be
bullied.”
“Then I may tell the master,” said the man sneeringly, rising in his
turn and making for the door, “that Mr. Parson won’t have nothing to do
with our little plan?”
“You may tell him what you please, Lickwit. I shall go over myself at
once to the House and see Mr. Romer.” He glanced at his watch. “It is
not seven yet, and I know he does not dine till eight.”
“By all means, sir, by all means! He’ll be extremely glad to see you.
You couldn’t do better, sir. You’ll excuse me if I don’t walk up with
you. I have to run across and speak to Mr. Goring.”
He bowed himself out and hurried off. Clavering seized his hat and
followed him, turning, however, when once in the street, in the
direction of the south drive. It took him scarcely a couple of minutes
to reach the village square where the drive emerged. In the centre
of the square stood a solid erection of Leonian stone adapted to the
double purpose of a horse-trough and a drinking fountain. Here the
girls came to draw water, and here the lads came to chat and flirt
with the girls. Mr. Clavering could not help pausing in his determined
march to watch a group of young people engaged in animated and laughing
frivolity at this spot. It was a man and two girls. He recognized the
man at once by his slight figure and lively gestures. It was Luke
Andersen. “That fellow has a bad influence in this place,” he said to
himself. “He takes advantage of his superior education to unsettle
these children’s minds. I must stop this.” He moved slowly towards
the fountain. Luke Andersen looked indeed as reckless and engaging
as a young faun out of a heathen story. He was making a cup of his
two hands and whimsically holding up the water to the lips of the
younger of his companions, while the other one giggled and fluttered
round them. Had the priest been in a poetic humour at that moment,
he might have been reminded of those queer mediæval legends of the
wanderings of the old dispossessed divinities. The young stone-carver,
with his classic profile and fair curly hair, might have passed for
a disguised Dionysus seducing to his perilous service the women of
some rustic Thessalian hamlet. No pleasing image of this kind crossed
Hugh Clavering’s vision. All he saw, as he approached the fountain,
was another youthful incarnation of the dangerous Power he had been
wrestling with all the afternoon. He advanced towards the engaging
Luke, much as Christian might have advanced towards Apollyon. “Good
evening, Andersen,” he said, with a certain professional severity.
“Using the fountain, I see? We must be careful, though, not to waste
the water this hot summer.”
The girl who was drinking rose up with a little start, and stood
blushing and embarrassed. Luke appeared entirely at his ease. He leant
negligently against the edge of the stone trough, and pushed his hat
to the back of his head. In this particular pose he resembled to an
extraordinary degree the famous Capitolian statue.
“It is hardly wasting the water, Mr. Clavering,” he said with a smile,
“offering it to a beautiful mouth. Why don’t you curtsey to Mr.
Clavering, Annie? I thought all you girls curtsied when clergymen spoke
to you.”
The priest frowned. The audacious aplomb of the young man unnerved and
disconcerted him.
“Water in a stone fountain like this,” went on the shameless youth,
“has a peculiar charm these hot evenings. It makes you almost fancy you
are in Seville. Seville is a place in Spain, Annie. Mr. Clavering will
tell you all about it.”
“I think Annie had better run in to her mother now,” said the priest
severely.
“Oh, that’s all right,” replied the youth with unruffled urbanity. “Her
mother has gone shopping in Yeoborough and I have to see that Annie
behaves properly till she comes back.”
Clavering looked reproachfully at the girl. Something about him--his
very inability perhaps to cope with this seductive Dionysus--struck
her simple intelligence as pathetic. She made a movement as if to join
her companion, who remained roguishly giggling a few paces off. But
Luke boldly restrained her. Putting his hand on her shoulder he said
laughingly to the priest, “She will be a heart-breaker one of these
days, Mr. Clavering, will our Annie here! You wouldn’t think she was
eighteen, would you, sir?”
Under other circumstances the young clergyman would have unhesitatingly
commanded the girl to go home. But his recent experiences had loosened
the fibre of his moral courage. Besides, what was there to prevent this
incorrigible young man from walking off after her? One could hardly--at
least in Protestant England--make one’s flock moral by sheer force.
“Well--good-night to you all,” he said, and moved away, thinking to
himself that at any rate there was safety in publicity. “But what a
dangerous person that Andersen is! One never knows how to deal with
these half-and-half people. If he were a village-boy it would be
different. And it would be different if he were a gentleman. But he is
neither one thing or the other. Seville! Who would have thought to have
heard Seville referred to, in the middle of Nevilton Square?”
He reached the carved entrance of the House with its deeply-cut
armorial bearings--the Seldom falcon with the arrow in its beak. “No
more will _that_ bird fly,” he thought, as he waited for the door to
open.
He was ushered into the spacious entrance hall, the usual place of
reception for Mr. Romer’s less favoured guests. The quarry-owner was
alone. He shook hands affably with his visitor and motioned him to a
seat.
“I have come about that question of the Social Meeting--” he began.
Mr. Romer cut him short. “It is no longer a question,” he said. “It is
a ‘fait accompli.’ I have given orders to have the place pulled down
next week. I want the space for building purposes.”
Clavering turned white with anger. “We shall have to find another room
then,” he said. “I cannot have those meetings dropping out from our
village life. They keep the thoughtful people together as nothing else
can.”
Mr. Romer smiled grimly. “You will find it difficult to discover
another place,” he remarked.
“Then I shall have them in my own house,” said the vicar of Nevilton.
Mr. Romer crossed his hands and threw back his head; looking, with the
air of one who watches the development of precisely foreseen events,
straight into the sad eyes of the little Royal Servant on the wall.
“Pardon such a question, my friend,” said he, “but may I ask you what
your personal income is, at this moment?”
“You know that well enough,” returned the other. “I have nothing beyond
the hundred and fifty pounds I receive as vicar of this place.”
“And what,” pursued the Quarry-owner, “may your expenditure amount to?”
“That, also, you know well,” replied Clavering. “I give away about
eighty pounds, every year, to the poor of this village.”
“And where does this eighty pounds come from?” went on the Squire. The
priest was silent.
“I will tell you where it comes from,” pronounced the other. “It comes
from me. It is my contribution, out of the tithes which I receive as
lay-rector. And it is the larger part of them.”
The priest was still silent.
“When I first came here,” his interlocutor continued, “I gave up these
tithes as an offering to our village necessities; and I have not yet
withdrawn them. If this Social Meeting, Mr. Clavering, is not brought
to an end, I shall withdraw them. And no one will be able to blame me.”
Hugh jumped up on his feet with a gesture of fury. “I call this,” he
shouted, “nothing short of sacrilege! Yes, sacrilege and tyranny! I
shall proclaim it abroad. I shall write to the papers. I shall appeal
to the bishop--to the country!”
“As you please,” said Mr. Romer quietly, “as you please. I should
only like to point out that any action of this kind will tie up my
purse-strings forever. You will not be popular with your flock, my
friend. I know something of our dear Nevilton people; and I shall have
only to make it plain to them that it is their vicar who has reduced
this charity; and you will not find yourself greatly loved!”
Clavering fell back into his chair with a groan. He knew too well the
truth of the man’s words. He knew also the straits into which this lack
of money would plunge half his benevolent activities in the parish. He
hung his head gloomily and stared at the floor. What would he not have
given, at that moment, to have been able to meet this despot, man to
man, unencumbered by his duty to his people!
“Let me assure you, my dear sir,” said Mr. Romer quietly, “that you
are not by any means fighting the cause of your church, in supporting
this wretched Meeting. If I were bidding you interrupt your services or
your sacraments, it would be another matter. This Social Meeting has
strong anti-clerical prejudices. You know that, as well as I. It is
conducted entirely on nonconformist lines. I happen to be aware,” he
added, “since you talk of appealing to the bishop, that the good man
has already, on more than one occasion, protested vigorously against
the association of his clergy with this kind of organization. I do not
know whether you ever glance at that excellent paper the Guardian; but
if so you will find, in this last week’s issue, a very interesting
case, quite parallel to ours, in which the bishop’s sympathies were by
no means on the side you are advocating.”
The young priest rose and bowed. “There is, at any rate, no necessity
for me to trouble you any further,” he said. “So I will bid you
good-night.”
He left the hall hastily, picked up his hat, and let himself out,
before his host had time to reply. All the way down the drive his
thoughts reverted to the seductive wiles of this despot’s daughter.
“The saints are deserting me,” he thought, “by reason of my sin.”
He was not, even then, destined to escape his temptress. Gladys, who
doubtless had been expecting this sudden retreat, emerged from the
shadow of the trees and intercepted him. “I will walk to the gate
with you,” she said. The power of feminine attraction is never more
insidious than at the moment of bitter remorse. The mind reverts so
easily, so willingly, then, back to the dangerous way. The mere fact of
its having lost its pride of resistance, its vanity of virtue, makes it
yield to a new assault with terrible facility. She drew him into the
dusky twilight of the scented exotic cedars which bordered the way, on
the excuse of inhaling their fragrance more closely.
She made him pull down a great perfumed cypress-bough, of some unusual
species, so that they might press their faces against it. They stood
so closely together that she could feel through her thin evening-gown
the furious trembling that seized him. She knew that he had completely
lost his self-control, and was quite at her mercy. But Gladys had not
the least intention of yielding herself to the emotion she had excited.
What she intended was that he should desire her to desperation, not
that, by the least touch, his desire should be gratified. In another
half-second, as she well knew, the poor priest would have seized her in
his arms. In place of permitting this, what she did was to imprint a
fleeting kiss with her warm lips upon the back of his hand, and then to
leap out of danger with a ringing laugh. “Good-bye!” she called back
at him, as she ran off. “I’ll come in good time next week.”
It may be imagined in what a turbulence of miserable feelings Hugh
Clavering repassed the village square. He glanced quickly at the
fountain. Yes! Luke Andersen was still loitering in the same place, and
the little bursts of suppressed screams and laughter, and the little
fluttering struggles, of the group around him, indicated that he was
still, in his manner, corrupting the maidens of Nevilton. The priest
longed to put his hands to his ears and run down the street, even as
Christian ran from the city of Destruction. What was this power--this
invincible, all-pervasive power--against which he had committed himself
to contend? He felt as though he were trying, with his poor human
strength, to hold back the sea-tide, so that it should not cover the
sands.
Could it be that, after all, the whole theory of the church was wrong,
and that the great Life-Force was against her, and punishing her, for
seeking, with her vain superstitions, to alter the stars in their
courses?
Could it be that this fierce pleasure-lust, which he felt so fatally
in Gladys, and saw in Luke, and was seduced by in his own veins, was
after all the true secret of Nature, and, to contend against it,
madness and impossible folly? Was he, and not they, the really morbid
and infatuated one--morbid with the arbitrary pride of a desperate
tradition of perverted heroic souls? He moved along the pavement under
the church wall and looked up at its grand immovable tower. “Are you,
too,” he thought, “but the symbol of an insane caprice in the mad
human race, seeking, in fond recklessness, to alter the basic laws of
the great World?”
The casuistical philosophy of Mr. Taxater returned to his mind. What
would the papal apologist say to him now, thus torn and tugged at by
all the forces of hell? He felt a curious doubt in his heart as to
the side on which, in this mad struggle, the astute theologian really
stood. Perhaps, for all his learning, the man was no more Christian in
his true soul, than had been many of those historic popes whose office
he defended. In his desperate mood Clavering longed to get as near as
possible to the altar of this God of his, who thus bade him confront
the whole power of nature and all the wisdom of the world. He looked up
and down the street. Two men were talking outside The Goat and Boy, but
their backs were turned. With a quick sudden movement he put his hands
on the top of the wall and scrambled hastily over, scraping his shins
as he did so on a sharp stone at the top. He moved rapidly to the place
where rose the strange tombstone designed by the atheist carver. It was
here that Vennie and he had entered into their heroic covenant only
twenty-four hours before. He looked at the enormous skull so powerfully
carved and at the encircled cross beneath it. He laid his hand upon the
skull, precisely as he had done the night before; only this time there
were no little cold fingers to instil pure devotion into him. Instead
of the touch of such fingers he felt the burning contact of Gladys’
soft lips.
No! it was an impossible task that his God had laid upon him. Why not
give up the struggle? Why not throw over this mad idol of purity he
had raised for his worship, and yield himself to the great stream? The
blood rushed to his head with the alluring images that this thought
evoked. Perhaps, after all, Gladys would marry him, and then--why,
then, he could revert to the humourous wisdom of Mr. Taxater, and
cultivate the sweet mystical speculations of modernism; reconciling,
pleasantly and easily, the natural pleasures of the senses, with the
natural exigencies of the soul!
He left Gideon’s grave and walked back to the church-porch. It was now
nearly dark and without fear of being observed by any one through the
iron bars of the outer gate, he entered the porch and stood before the
closed door. He wished he had brought the key with him. How he longed,
at that moment, to fling himself down before the altar and cry aloud to
his God!
By his side stood the wheeled parish bier, ornamented by a gilt
inscription, informing the casual intruder that it had been presented
to the place in honour of the accession of King George the Fifth. There
was not light enough to read these touching words, but the gilt plate
containing them gave forth a faint scintillating glimmer.
Worn out by the day-long struggle in his heart, Clavering sat down
upon this grim “memento mori”; and then, after a minute or two,
finding that position uncomfortable, deliberately stretched himself
out at full length upon the thing’s bare surface. Lying here, with
the bats flitting in and out above his head, the struggle in his mind
continued. Supposing he did yield,--not altogether, of course; his
whole nature was against that, and his public position stood in the
way,--but just a little, just a hair’s breadth, could he not enjoy a
light playful flirtation with Gladys, such as she was so obviously
prepared for, even if it were impossible to marry her? The worst of
it was that his imagination so enlarged upon the pleasures of this
“playful flirtation,” that it very quickly became an obsessing desire.
He propped himself up upon his strange couch and looked forth into the
night. The stars were just beginning to appear, and he could see one
or two constellations whose names he knew. How indifferent they were,
those far-off lights! What did it matter to them whether he yielded or
did not yield? He had the curious sensation that the whole conflict
in which he was entangled belonged to a terrestrial sphere infinitely
below those heavenly luminaries. Not only the Power against which he
contended, but the Power on whose side he fought, seemed out-distanced
and derided by those calm watchers.
He sank back again and gazed up at the carved stone roof above him. A
dull inert weariness stole over his brain; a sick disgust of the whole
mad business of a man’s life upon earth. Why was he born into the
world with passions that he must not satisfy and ideals that he could
not hold? Better not to have been born at all; or, being born, better
to lie quiet and untroubled, with all these placid churchyard people,
under the heavy clay! The mental weariness that assailed him gradually
changed into sheer physical drowsiness. His head sought instinctively
a more easy position and soon found what it sought. His eyes
closed; and there, upon the parish bier, worn out with his struggle
against Apollyon, the vicar of Nevilton slept. When he returned to
consciousness he found himself cramped, cold and miserable. Hurriedly
he scrambled to his feet, stretched his stiff limbs and listened. The
clock in the Tower above him began to strike. It struck one--two--and
then stopped. He had slept for nearly five hours.