She rose from her seat and collected her knitting. “I must go and see where Gladys is,” she said.
Mr. Romer followed her to the door, and went out again upon the terrace. The little nun-like Lady-in-Waiting looked steadily out across the room, her pinched attenuated features expressing nothing but patient weariness of all the ways of this mortal world.
It was approaching the moment consecrated to the close of the day’s labour in the stone-works by Nevilton railway-station. The sky was cloudless; the air windless. It was one of those magical arrests of the gliding feet of time, which afternoons in June sometimes bring with them, holding back, as it were, all living processes of life, in sweet and lingering suspense. The steel tracks of the railway-line glittered in the sun. In the fields, that sloped away beyond them, the browsing cattle wore that unruffled air of abysmal indifference, which seems to make one day in their sight to be as a thousand years. To these placid earth-children, drawing the centuries together in solemn continuity, the tribes of men and their turbulent drama were but as vapours that came and went. The high elms in the hedges had already assumed that dark monotonous foliage which gives to their patient stillness on such a day an atmosphere of monumental expectancy. A flock of newly-sheared sheep, clean and shining in the hot sun, drifted in crowded procession down the narrow road, leaving a cloud of white dust behind them that remained stationary in the air long after they had passed. In the open stone-yard close to the road the brothers Andersen were working together, chipping and hammering with bare arms at an enormous Leonianslab, carving its edges into delicate mouldings. The younger of the two wore no hat, and his closely clipped fair curls and loose shirt open at the throat, lent him, as he moved about his work with easy gestures, a grace and charm well adapted to that auspicious hour.
A more sombre form by his brother’s side, his broad brimmed hat low down over his forehead, the elder Andersen went on with his carving, in imperturbable morose absorption.
Watching them with languid interest, their arms linked together, stood the figures of two girls. The yellow dust from the sandstone rose intermittently into the air, mingling with the white dust from the road and settling, as it sank earthward, upon the leaves of the yet unbudded knapweed and scabious which grew in the thin dusty grass.
Between Gladys and her cousin—for the girls had wandered as far as this in search of distraction after their lazy tea on the great lawn—a curious contrast was now displayed.
Gladys, with slow provocative interest, was intent on every movement of Luke’s graceful figure. Lacrima’s attention wandered wistfully away, to the cattle and the orchards, and then to the sheep, which now were being penned in a low line of spacious railway trucks.
Luke himself was by no means unaware of the condescending interest of his master’s daughter. He paused in his work once or twice. He turned up his shirt-sleeves still higher. He bent down, to blow away the dust from the moulding he had made. Something very like a flash of amorous admirationpassed across his blue eyes as he permitted them slyly to wander from Gladys’ head to her waist, and from her waist to her shoes. She certainly was an alluring figure as she stood there in her thin white dress. The hand which pulled her skirt away from the dust showed as soft and warm as if it were pleading for a caress, and the rounded contours of her bosom looked as if they had ripened with the early peaches, under the walls of her stately garden. She presently unlinked her arm from her companion’s, and sliding it softly round Lacrima’s side drew the girl close against her. As she did this she permitted a slow amorous glance of deliberate tantalization to play upon the young carver. How well Luke Andersen knew that especial device of maidens when they are together—that way they have of making their playful, innocent caresses such a teasing incentive! And Luke knew well how to answer all this. Nothing could have surpassed in subtle diplomacy the manner in which he responded, without responding, to the amorous girl’s overtures. He let her realize that he himself understood precisely the limits of the situation; that she was perfectly at liberty to enter a mock-flirtation with him, without the remotest risk of any “faux pas” on his part spoiling the delicacy of their relations.
What was indeed obvious to her, without the necessity of any such unspoken protestation, was the fact that he found her eminently desirable. Nor did her pride as “the girl up at the house” quarrel with her vanity as the simple object of Luke’s admiration. She wanted him to desire her as a girl;—to desire her to madness. And then she wanted to flout him, with her pretensions as a lady. This particularoccasion was by no means the first time she had drifted casually down the vicarage hill and lingered beside the stone-cutters. It was, however, an epoch in their curious relations. For the first time since she had been attracted to him, she deliberately moved close up to the stone he worked at, and entered into conversation. While this occurred, Lacrima, released from her rôle as the accomplice of amorous teasing, wandered away, picking listlessly the first red poppies of the year, which though less flaunting in their bold splendour than those of her childhood’s memories, were at least the same immortal classical flowers.
As she bent down in this assuaging pastime, letting her thoughts wander so far from Nevilton and its tyrants, Lacrima became suddenly conscious that James Andersen had laid down his tools, resumed his coat, and was standing by her side.
“A beautiful evening, Miss”; he said respectfully, holding his hat in his hand and regarding her with grave gentleness.
“Yes, isn’t it?” she answered at once; and then was silent; while a sigh she could not suppress rose from the depths of her heart. For her thoughts reverted to another fair evening, in the days when England was no more than a name; and a sudden overpowering longing for kind voices, and the shadows of olives on warm hill-sides, rushed, like a wave, over her.
“This must be near the Angelus-hour,” she thought; and somehow the dark grave eyes of the man beside her and his swarthy complexion made her think of those familiar forms that used to pass drivingtheir goats before them up the rocky paths of the Apennine range.
“You are unhappy, Miss,” said James in a low voice; and these words, the only ones of genuine personal tenderness, except for poor Maurice’s, that had struck her sense for the last twelve months, brought tears to her eyes. Vennie Seldom had spoken kindly to her; but—God knows—there is a difference between the kindness even of the gentlest saint and this direct spontaneous outflow of one heart to another. She smiled; a little mournful smile.
“Yes; I was thinking of my own country,” she murmured.
“You are an Italian, Miss; I know it”; continued Andersen, instinctively leading her further away from the two golden heads that now were bending so close together over the Leonian stone.
“I often think of Italy,” he went on; “I think I should be at home in Italy. I love everything I hear of it, everything I read of it. It comes from my mother, this feeling. She was a lady, you know Miss, as well born as any and with a passionate love of books. She used to read Dante in that little ‘Temple’ Series, which perhaps you have seen, with the Italian on one side and the English on the other. I never look at that book without thinking of her.”
“You have many books yourself, I expect,—Mr.—Andersen. You see I know your name.” And Lacrima smiled, the first perfectly happy smile she had been betrayed into for many months.
“It is not a very nice name,” said James, a little plaintively. “I wish I had a name like yours Miss—Traffio.”
“Why, I think yours is quite as nice,” she answered gravely. “It makes me think of the man who wrote the fairy stories.”
James Andersen frowned, “I don’t like fairy stories,” he said almost gruffly. “They tease and fret me. I like Thomas Hardy’s books. Do you know Thomas Hardy?” Lacrima made a little involuntary gesture of depreciation. As a matter of fact her reading, until very lately, had been as conventual as that of a young nun. Vennie Seldom or the demure Reynolds girl could not have been more innocent of the darker side of literature. Hardy’s books she had seen in the hands of Gladys, and the association repelled her. Pathetically anxious to brush away this little cloud, she began hurriedly talking to her new friend of Italy; of its cities, its sea-coasts, its monasteries, its churches. James Andersen listened with reverential attention, every now and then asking a question which showed how deeply his mother’s love of the classical country had sunk into his nature.
By this time they had wandered along the road as far as a little stone bridge with low parapets which crosses there a muddy Somersetshire stream. From this point the road rises quite steeply to the beginning of the vicarage garden. Leaning against the parapet of the little bridge, and looking back, they saw to their surprise that Gladys and Luke had not only not followed them but had completely disappeared.
The last of the unskilled workmen from the sheds, trailing up the road together laughing and chatting, turned when they passed, and gazed back, as our two companions were doing, at the work-shops they had left, acknowledging Lacrima’s gentle “good-night”with a rather shifty salutation.—This girl was after all only a dependent like themselves.—They had hardly gone many steps before they burst into a loud rough guffaw of rustic impertinence.
Lacrima struck the ground nervously with her parasol. “What has happened?” she asked; “where has Gladys gone?”
James Andersen shrugged his shoulders, “I expect they have wandered into the shed,” he rejoined, “to look at my brother’s work there.”
She glanced nervously up and down the road; gave a quaint little sigh and made an expressive gesture with her hands as if disclaiming all responsibility for her cousin’s doings. Then, quite suddenly, she smiled at Andersen with a delicious childish smile that transfigured her face.
“Well, I am glad I am not left alone at any rate,” she said.
“I have a presentiment,” the stone-cutter answered, “that this is not the last time you will be thrown upon my poor company.”
The girl blushed, and smiled confidingly. Her manner was the manner of a child, who has at last found a safe protector. Then all of a sudden she became very grave. “I hope,” she said, “that you are one of the people who are kind to Mr. Quincunx. He is agreatfriend of mine.”
Never had the melancholy intimation, that one could not hope to hold anything but the second place in a woman’s heart, been more tenderly or more directly conveyed!
James Andersen bowed his head.
“Mr. Quincunx has always been very kind tome,” he said, “and certainly, after what you say, I shall do all in my power to help him. But I can do very little. I believe Mrs. Seldom understands him better than anyone else.”
He had hardly finished speaking when the figures of two men made themselves visible opposite the back entrance of the vicarage. They were leisurely strolling down the road, and every now and then they would pause, as if the interest of their conversation was more than the interest of the way.
“Why! ThereisMr. Quincunx,” cried the Italian; and she made an instinctive movement as if to put a little further space between herself and her companion. “Who is that person with him?” she added.
“It looks like George Wone,” answered the stone-cutter. “Yes, it is George; and he is talking as usual at the top of his voice. You’d suppose he wanted to be heard by all Nevilton.”
Lacrima hesitated and looked very embarrassed. She evidently did not know whether to advance in the direction of the new-comers or to remain where she was. Andersen came to her rescue.
“Perhaps,” said he, “it would be better if I went back and told Miss Romer you are waiting for her.” Lacrima gave him a quick glance of responsive gratitude.
“O, that would be really kind of you, Mr. Andersen,” she said.
The moment he had gone, however, she felt annoyed that she had let him go. It looked so odd, she thought, his leaving her so suddenly, directly Maurice came on the scene. Besides, what would Gladys say at this interruption of her pleasure? She wouldsuppose she had done it out of pure spitefulness! The moments seemed very long to her as she waited at the little bridge, tracing indecipherable hieroglyphics in the dust with the end of her parasol. She kept her eyes steadily fixed on the tall retreating figure of the stone-cutter as he slouched with his long shambling stride towards the work-shop. The two men were not, however, really long in approaching. Maurice had seen her from the beginning, and his replies to Mr. Wone’s oratory had grown proportionally brief.
When they reached her, the girl shook hands with Maurice and bowed rather coldly to Mr. Wone. That gentleman was not however in the least quelled or suppressed. It was one of his most marked characteristics to have absolutely no consciousness of season or situation. When less clever people would have wished the earth to swallow them up, Mr. Wone remained imperviously self-satisfied. Having exchanged greetings, Lacrima hastened to explain that she was waiting at this spot till Miss Romer should rejoin her. “Luke Andersen is showing her his work,” she said, “and James has gone to tell her I am waiting.”
Mr. Wone became voluble at this. “It is a shame to keep a young lady like yourself waiting in the middle of the road.” He turned to Mr. Quincunx.“We must not say all we think, must we? But begging this young lady’s pardon, it is just like the family. No consideration! No consideration for anyone! It is the same with his treatment of the poor. I am talking of Mr. Romer, you know, Miss. I would say the same thing to his face. Why is it that hard-working clever fellows, like these Andersens for instance, should do all the labour, and he get all the profits? It isn’t fair. It’s unjust. It’s an insult to God’s beautiful earth, which is free to all.” He paused to take breath, and looked to Maurice for confirmation of his words.
“You are quite right, Wone; you are quite right,” muttered the recluse in his beard, furtively glancing at Lacrima.
Mr. Wone continued his discourse, making large and eloquent allusion to the general relations in England between employer and employed, and implying plainly enough his full knowledge that at least one of his hearers belonged to the latter class. His air, as he spoke, betrayed a certain disordered fanaticism, quite genuine and deeply felt, but queerly mingled with an indescribable element of complacent self-conceit. Lacrima, in spite of considerable sympathy with much that he said, felt that there was, in the man himself, something so slipshod, so limp, so vague, and so patently vulgar, that both her respect for his sincerity and her interest in his opinions were reduced to nothing. Not only was he narrow-minded and ignorant; but there was also about him, in spite of the aggressive violence of his expressions, an odd sort of deprecatory, apologetic air, as though he were perpetually endeavouring to cajole his audience, by tacit references to his deferential respect for them. There was indeed more than a little in him of the sleek unction of the nonconformist preacher; and one could well understand how he might combine, precisely as Mr. Lickwit suspected, the divergent functions of the politician and the evangelist.
“I tell you,” he was saying, “the country will not long put up with this sort of thing. There is a movement, a tendency, a volcanic upheaval, a stirring of waters, which these plutocrats do not realize. There is a surging up from the depths of—of—” He paused for a word.
“Of mud,” murmured Mr. Quincunx.
“—Of righteous revolt against these atrocious inequalities! The working people are asleep no longer. They’re roused. The movement’s begun. The thunder’s gathering on the horizon. The armies of the exploited are feeling the impulse of their own strength, of that noble, that splendid anger, which, when it is conceived, will bring forth—will bring forth—”
“Damnation,” murmured Mr. Quincunx.
The three figures as they stood, thus consorted, on the little stone bridge, made up a dramatic group. The sinking sun threw their shadows in long wavering lines upon the white road, distorting them to so grotesque a length that they nearly reached the open gates of the station.
Human shadows! What a queer half-mocking commentary they make upon the vanity of our passionate excitements, roused by anything, quieted by nothing, as the world moves round!
Lacrima, in her shadow, was not beautiful at all. She was an elongated wisp of darkness. The beard of Mr. Quincunx looked as if it belonged to a mammoth goat, and the neck of Mr. Wone seemed to support, not a human cranium at all, but a round, wagging mushroom.
The hushed fields on each side of the way began to assume that magical softness which renders them,at such an hour, insubstantial, unreal, remote, transformed. One felt as though the earth might indeed be worthy of better destinies than those that traced their fantastic trails up and down its peaceful surface. Something deeply withheld, seemed as though it only needed the coming of one god-like spirit to set it free forever, and, with it, all the troubled hearts of men. It was one of those moments which, whether the participants in them recognize them or not, at the actual time, are bound to recur, long afterwards, to their memory.
Lacrima, half-listening to Mr. Wone, kept her head anxiously turned in the direction of the sheds, into one of which she had observed James Andersen enter.
Maurice Quincunx, his mood clogged and clotted by jealousy, watched her with great melancholy grey eyes, while with his nervous fingers he plucked at his beard.
“The time is coming—the time is coming”; cried Mr. Wone, striking with the back of his fist, the parapet against which he leaned, “when this exploitation of the poor by the rich will end once for all!” The warmth of his feeling was so great, that large drops of sweat trickled down his sallow cheeks, and hanging for a moment at the end of his narrow chin, fell into the dust. The man was genuinely moved; though in his watery blue eyes no trace of any fire was visible. He looked, in his emotion, like an hypnotized sick person, talking in the stress of a morbid fever. It was the revolt of one who carried the obsequious slavery of generations in his blood, and could only rebel in galvanized moribund spasms. The fellow was unpleasing, uninspiring: not thesavage leader of a race of stern revolutionary devotees fired by the iron logic of their cause, but the inchoate inarticulate voice of clumsy protest, apologizing and propitiating, even while it protested. The vulgarity and meanness of the candidate’s tone made one wonder how such a one as he could ever have been selected by the obscure working of the Spirit of Sacrifice, to undertake this titanic struggle against the Spirit of Power. One turned away instinctively from his febrile rhetoric, to cast involuntary incense at the feet of the masterful enemy he opposed. He had no reticence in his enthusiasm, no reserve, no decency.
“You may perhaps not know,” he blundered on; “that the General Election is much nearer than people think. Mr. Romer will find this out; he will find it out; he will find it out! I have good authority for what I say. I speak of what I know, young lady.” This was said rather severely, for Lacrima’s attention was so obviously wandering.—“Of course you will not breathe a word of this, up there,”—he nodded in the direction of the House. “It would not do. But the truth is, he is making a great mistake. I am prepared for this campaign, and he is not. He is even thinking of reducing the men’s wages still further. The fool—the fool—the fool! For heisa fool, you know, though he thinks he is so clever.”
Even Mr. Wone would scarcely have dared to utter these bold asseverations in the ear of Gladys Romer’s cousin, if Maurice’s innate indiscretion had not made it the gossip of the village that the Italian was ill-treated “among those people.” To the pathetic man’s poor vulgar turn of mind there wassomething soothing in this confidential abuse of the lord of Nevilton Manor to his own relation. It had a squalid piquancy. It was itself a sort of revenge.
Once more he began his spasmodic enunciation of those sad economic platitudes that are the refuge of the oppressed; but Mr. Quincunx had crossed the road, in the pursuit of a decrepit tiger-moth, and was listening no more. Lacrima’s attention was completely withdrawn.
“Well, dear friends,” he concluded, “I must really be getting back to my supper. Mrs. Wone will be unbearable if I am late.” He hesitated a moment as if wondering whether the occasion called for any further domestic jocosity, to let these high matters lightly down to earth; but he contented himself with shaking hands with Mr. Quincunx and removing his hat to Lacrima.
“Good night, dear friends,” he repeated, drifting off, up the road, humming a hymn tune.
“Poor man!” whispered the girl, “he means well.”
“He ought to be shot!” was the unexpected response of the hermit of Dead Man’s Cottage, as he let the tiger-moth flutter down into the edge of the field. “He is no better than the rest. He is an idiot. He ought to learn Latin.”
They moved together towards the station.
“I don’t like the way you agree with people to their face,” said Lacrima, “and abuse them behind their backs.”
“I don’t like the way you hang about the roads with handsome stone-cutters,” was Mr. Quincunx’s surly retort.
Meanwhile, a quite interesting little drama hadbeen unfolding itself in the neighbourhood of the half-carved block of sandstone. Instructed, by a swift flash of perception, into what the situation implied, Luke’s quick magnetic fingers soon drew from his companion’s an electric responsive clasp, as they leant together over the mouldings. The warmth and pliable softness of the girl’s body seemed to challenge the man with intimations of how quickly it would yield. He pointed to the shed-door, wide open behind them.
“I will show you my work, in there, in a moment,” he murmured, “as soon as they have gone.”
Her breast rose and fell under the increased excitement of her breathing. Violent quivers ran up and down her frame and communicated themselves to him. Their hearts beat fiercely in reciprocal agitation. Luke’s voice, as he continued his conventional summary of the quality and destination of the stone, shook a little, and sounded queer and detached.
“It is for Shaftesbury church,” he said, “for the base of the column that supports the arch. This particular moulding is one which my father designed. You must remember that upon it will rest a great deal of the weight of the roof.”
His fellow workmen had now collected their tools and were shuffling nervously past them. It required all Gladys’ sang-froid to give them the casual nod due from the daughter of the House to those who laboured in its service. As soon as they were well upon their way, with a quick glance at the distant figures of Lacrima and James, Gladys turned rapidly to her companion.
“Show me,” she said.
He went before her and stood in the entrance of the work-shop. When she had passed him into its interior, he casually closed behind them one of the rough folding doors. The contrast from the horizontal sun outside, turning the sandstone blocks into ruddy gold, to the shadowy twilight within, was strangely emphatic. He began to speak; saying he hardly knew what—some kind of stammered nonsense about the bases and capitals and carved mouldings that lay around them. But Gladys, true to her feminine prerogative, swept all this aside. With a bold audacity she began at once.
“How nice to be alone and free, for a little while!”
Then, moving still further into the shadow, and standing, as if absorbed in interest, before the rough beginnings of a fluted pillar which reached as high as the roof—
“What kind of top are you going to put on to that thing?”
As she spoke she leant against the pillar with a soft, weary relaxation of her whole form.
“Come near and tell me about it,” she whispered, as if her breath caught in her throat.
Luke recognized the tone—the tone that said, so much more distinctly than words, “I am ready. Why are you so slow?” He came behind her, and as gently and lightly as he could, though his arms trembled, let his fingers slide caressingly round her flexible figure. Her breath came in quick gasps, and one hot small hand met his own and pressed it against her side. Encouraged by this response, he boldly drew her towards him. She struggled a little; a shy girlish struggle, more than half conventional—andthen, sliding round in his arms with a quick feline movement, she abandoned herself to her craving, and embraced him shamelessly and passionately. When at last in sheer weariness her arms relaxed and she sank down, with her hands pressed to her burning cheeks, upon an unfinished font, Luke Andersen thought that never to his dying day would he forget the serpentine clinging of that supple form and the pressure of those insatiable lips. He turned, a little foolishly, towards the door and kicked with his foot a fragment of a carved reredos. Then he went back to her and half-playfully, half-amorously, tried to remove her hands from her face.
“Don’t touch me! I hate you!” she said.
“Please,” he whispered, “please don’t be unkind now. I shall never, never forget how sweet you’ve been.”
“Tell me more about this work of yours,” she suddenly remarked, in a completely changed voice, rising to her feet. “I have always understood that you were one of our best workmen. I shall tell my father how highly I think of what you’re doing—you and your brother. I am sure he will be glad to know what artists he has among his men.”
She gave her head a proud little toss and raised negligent deliberate hands to her disarranged fair hair, smoothing it down and readjusting her wide-brimmed hat. She had become the grand lady again and Luke had become the ordinary young stone-mason. Superficially, and with a charming grace, he adapted himself to this change, continuing his conventional remarks about fonts, pillars, crosses, and capitals; and calling her “Miss” or “Miss Gladys,” with scrupulous discretion. But in his heart, all thewhile, he was registering a deep and vindictive vow—a vow that, at whatever risk and at whatever cost, he would make this fair young despot suffer for her caprice. Gladys had indeed, quite unwittingly, entered into a struggle with a nature as remorseless and unscrupulous as her own. She had dreamed, in her imperial way, of using this boy for her amusement, and then throwing him aside. She did not for a moment intend to get entangled in any sentimental relations with him. A passing “amour,” leading to nothing, and in no way committing her, was what she had instinctively counted on. For the rest, in snatching fiercely at any pleasure her fervent senses craved, she was as conscienceless and antinomian, as a young tiger out of the jungle. Nor had she the remotest sense of danger in this exciting sport. Corrupt and insensitive as any amorous courtezan of a pagan age, she trusted to her freedom from innocence to assure her of freedom from disaster. Vaguely enough in her own mind she had assumed, as these masterful “blond beasts” are inclined to assume, that in pouncing on this new prey she was only dealing once more with that malleable and timorous humanity she had found so easy to mould to her purpose in other quarters. She reckoned, with a pathetic simplicity, that Luke would be clay in her hands. As a matter of fact this spoiled child of the wealth produced by the Leonian stone had audaciously flung down her challenge to one who had as much in him as herself of that stone’s tenacity and imperviousness. The daughter of sandstone met the carver of sandstone; and none, who knew the two, would have dared to predict the issue of such an encounter.
The young man was still urbanely and discreetly discoursing to his lady-visitor upon the contents of the work-shop, when the tall figure of James Andersen darkened the door.
“Excuse me, Miss,” he said to Gladys, “but Miss Lacrima asked me to tell you that she was waiting for you on the bridge.”
“Thank you, James,” answered the girl simply, “I will come. I am afraid my interest in all the things your brother has been so kindly showing me has made you both late. I am sorry.” Here she actually went so far as to fumble in her skirt for her purse. After an awkward pause, during which the two men waited at either side of the door, she found what she sought, and tripping lightly by, turned as she passed Luke and placed in his hand, the hand that so recently had been clasped about her person, the insolent recompense of a piece of silver. Bidding them both good-night, she hurried away to rejoin Lacrima, who, having by this time got rid of Mr. Quincunx, moved down the road to meet her.
Luke closed and locked the door of the shed without a word. Then to the astonishment of James Andersen he proceeded to dance a kind of grotesque war-dance, ending it with a suppressed half-mocking howl, as he leant exhausted against the wall of the building.
“I’ve got her, I’ve got her, I’ve got her!” he repeated. “James, my darling Daddy James, I’ve got this girl in the palm of my hand!” He humorously proceeded to toss the coin she had given him high in the air. “Heads or tails?” he cried, as the thing fellamong the weeds. “Heads! It’s heads, my boy! That means that Miss Gladys Romer will be sorry she ever stepped inside this work-shop of ours. Come, let’s wash and eat, my brother; for the gods have been good to us today.”
The day following the one whose persuasive influence we have just recorded was not less auspicious. The weather seemed to have effected a transference of its accustomed quality, bringing to the banks of the Yeo and the Parret the atmospheric conditions belonging to those of the Loire or the Arno.
Having finished her tea Valentia Seldom was strolling meditatively up and down the vicarage terrace, alternately stopping to pick off the petals of a dead flower, or to gaze, with a little gloomy frown, upon the grass of the orchard.
Her slender upright figure, in her black silk dress, made a fine contrast to the rich green foliage about her, set on one side with ruby-coloured roses and on the other with yellow buttercups. But the old lady was in no peaceful frame of mind. Every now and then she tapped the gravel impatiently with her ebony stick; and the hand that toyed with the trinkets at her side mechanically closed and unclosed its fingers under the wrist-band of Mechlin lace. It was with something of an irritable start, that she turned round to greet Francis Taxater, as led by the little servant he presented himself to her attention. He moved to greet her with his usual imperturbable gravity, walking sedately along the edge of the floweryborder; with one shoulder a little higher than the other and his eyes on the ground.
His formidable prelatical chin seemed more than ever firmly set that afternoon, and his grey waistcoat, under his shabby black coat, was tightly drawn across his emphatic stomach. His coal-black eyes, darkened yet further by the shadow of his hat, glanced furtively to right and left of him as he advanced. In the manner peculiar to persons disciplined by Catholic self-control, his head never followed, by the least movement, the shrewd explorations of these diplomatic eyes.
One would have taken him for a French bishop, of aristocratic race, masquerading, for purposes of discretion, in the dress of a secular scholar.
Everything about Francis Taxater, from the noble intellectual contours of his forehead, down to his small satyr-like feet, smacked of the courtier and the priest; of the learned student, and the urbane frequenter of sacred conclaves. His small white hand, plump and exquisitely shaped, rested heavily on his cane. He carried with him in every movement and gesture that curious air of dramatic weight and importance which men of diplomatic experience are alone able to use without letting it degenerate into mannerism. It was obvious that he, at any rate, according to Mr. Quincunx’s favourite discrimination, “knew Latin.” He seemed to have slid, as it were, into this commercial modern world, from among the contemporaries of Bossuet. One felt that his authors were not Ibsen or Tolstoy, but Horace and Cicero.
One felt also, however, that in sheer psychological astuteness not even Mr. Romer himself would be amatch for him. Between those two, the man of modern wisdom and the man of ancient wisdom, any struggle that might chance to occur would be a singularly curious one. If Mr. Taxater really was “on the side of the angels,” he was certainly there with the full weight of organized hierarchies. If he did exert his strength upon the side of “meekness,” it would be a strength of no feverish, spasmodic eruption.
If Satan threw a Borgia in Mr. Taxater’s path, that Borgia, it appeared, would find his Machiavel.
“Yes, it is a lovely day again,” said the old lady, leading her visitor to a seat and placing herself by his side. “But what is our naughty Monsignor doing, playing truant from his consistory? I thought you would be in London this week—at the Eucharist Conference your people are holding? Is it to the loveliness of the weather that we owe this pleasant surprise?”
One almost expected—so formal and old-fashioned were the two interlocutors—that Mr. Taxater would have replied, in the tone of Ivanhoe or the Talisman, “A truce to such jesting, Madam!” No doubt if he had, the lady would hardly have discerned any anachronism. As a matter of fact he did not answer her question at all, but substituted one of his own.
“I met Vennie in the village,” he said. “Do you think she is happier now, in her new English circle?”
“Ah! my friend,” cried the old lady, in a nervous voice, “it is of Vennie that I have been thinking all this afternoon. No, I cannot say I think she is happier. I wonder if it is one thing; and then I wonder if it is another. I cannot get to the bottom of it and it worries me.”
“I expect it is her nerves,” said the diplomatist. “Though the sun is so warm, there has been a constant east wind lately; and, as you know, I put down most of our agitations to the presence of east wind.”
“It will not do, Mr. Taxater; it will not do! It may be the east wind with you and me. It is not the east wind with Vennie. Something is troubling her. I wish I could discern what it is?”
“She isn’t by any chance being vexed by some theological dispute with the Vicar, is she? I know how seriously she takes all his views. And his views are, if I may say so, decidedly confusing. Don’t misunderstand me, dear lady. I respect Mr. Clavering and admire him. I like the shape of his head; especially when he wears his beretta. But I cannot feel much confidence in his wisdom in dealing with a sensitive child like your daughter. He is too impulsive. He is too dogmatic. He lives too entirely in the world of doctrinal controversy. It is dangerous”; here Mr. Taxater luxuriously stretched out his legs and lit a cigarette; “it is dangerous to live only for theology. We have to learn to live for Religion; and that is a much more elaborate affair.Thatextends very far, Mrs. Seldom.” The old lady let her stick slide to the ground and clasped her hands together. “I want to ask you one thing, Mr. Taxater. And I implore you to be quite direct with me. You do not think, do you, that my girl is tending towardsyourchurch—towards Rome? I confess it would be a heavy blow to me, one of the heaviest I have ever had, if anything of that kind happened. I know you are tolerant enough to let me speak like this without scruple. I likeyou, my dear friend—”Here a soft flush spread over Valentia’s ivory-coloured cheeks and she made a little movement as if to put her hand on her companion’s arm. “I like you yourself, and have the utmost confidence in you. But Oh, it would be a terrible shock to me if Vennie became a Roman Catholic. She would enter a convent; Iknowshe would enter a convent and that would be more than I could bear.” The accumulated distress of many years was in the old lady’s voice and tears stood in her eyes. “I know it is silly,” she went on as Mr. Taxater steadily regarded the landscape. “But I cannot help it. I do so hope—Oh, I can’t tell you how much—that Vennie will marry and have children. It is the secret burden of my life, the thought that, with this frail little thing, our ancient race should disappear. I feel it my deepest duty—my duty to the Past and my duty to the Future—to arrange a happy marriage for her. If only that could be achieved, I should be able to die content.”
“You have no evidence, no authority for thinking,” said Mr. Taxater gravely, “that she is meditating any approach tomychurch, as you call it, have you?”
“Oh no!” cried the old lady, “quite the contrary. She seems absorbed in the services here. She works with Mr. Clavering, she discusses everything with Mr. Clavering, she helps Mr. Clavering with the poor. I believe”—here Valentia lowered her voice; “I believe she confesses to Mr. Clavering.”
Francis Taxater smiled—the smile of the heir of Christendom’s classic faith at these pathetic fumblings of heresy—and carefully knocked the ashes from his cigarette against the handle of his cane.
“You don’t think, dear lady,” he said, “that byany chance—girls are curiously subtle in these little things—she is ‘in love,’ as they call it, with our nice handsome Vicar?”
Valentia gave an involuntary little start. In her heart there rose up the shadow of a shadow of questioning, whether in this last remark the great secular diplomatist had not lapsed into something approaching a “faux pas.”
“Certainly not,” she answered. “Vennie is not a girl to mix up her religion with things of that sort.”
Francis Taxater permitted the flicker of a smile to cross his face. He slightly protruded his lower lip which gave his countenance a rather sinister expression. His look said, more clearly than words, that in his opinion there was no woman on earth who did not “mix up these things” with her religion.
“I have not yet made my request to you,” continued the old lady, with a certain nervous hesitation. “I am so afraid lest you should think it an evidence of a lack of confidence. It isn’t so! It really isn’t so. I only do it to relieve my mind;—to make my food taste better, if you understand?—and to stop this throbbing in my head.” She paused for a moment, and picking up her stick, prodded the gravel with it, with lowered face. The voices of not less than three wood-pigeons were audible from the apple-orchard. And this soft accompaniment to her words seemed to give her courage. Fate could not, surely, altogether betray her prayers, in a place so brooded over by “the wings of the dove.” In the exquisite hush of the afternoon the birds’ rich voices seemed to take an almost liturgical tone—as though they were the ministers of a great natural temple.To make a solemn request of a dear friend under such conditions was almost as though one were exacting a sacred vow under the very shadow of the altar.
So at least Valentia felt, as she uttered her serious petition; though it may well be that Mr. Taxater, skilled in the mental discipline of Saint Ignatius, knew better how to keep the distracting influences of mere “Nature,” in their proper secondary place.
“I want you faithfully to promise me,” she said, “that you will in no way—in no way at all—use your influence over Vennie to draw her from her English faith.” The old lady’s voice became quite husky in her emotion. “It would be dreadful to me to think,—I could not bear to think”—she went on, “that you should in the smallest degree use your great powers of mind to disturb the child’s present attitude. If she is not happy, it is not—Oh, I assure you, it is not—in any sense due to her being dissatisfied with her religion. It must be something quite different. What it is, I cannot guess; but it must be something quite different fromthat. Well, dear friend,” and she did now, quite definitely, lay her hand on his arm, “will you promise this for me? You will? I know you will.”
Francis Taxater rose from his seat and stood over her very gravely, leaning upon his cane.
“You have done well to tell me this, Mrs. Seldom,” he said. “Most certainly I shall make no attempt to influence Vennie. It would be indeed contrary to all that I regard as wise and suitable in the relations between us. I never convert people. I believe you will find that very few of those who are born Catholics ever interfere in that way. It is the impetuosityof new-comers into the church that gives us this bad name. They often carry into their new faith the turbulent theological zeal which distinguished them in their old one. I, at any rate, am not like that. I leave people alone. I prefer to watch them develop on their own lines. The last thing I should wish to do would be to meddle with Vennie’s religious taste. It would be a blunder as well as an impertinence. Vennie would be the first to resist any such proceeding. It would destroy her respect for me. It might even destroy her affection for me. It certainly would not move her. Indeed, dear lady, if I wished to plant the child’s soul irrevocably in the soil prepared by our good vicar I could not do anything more effective than try to persuade her of its deficiencies. No, no! You may rely upon me to stand completely aside in this matter. If Venniewereled to join us—which for your sake, dear Mrs. Seldom, I hope will never happen,—you may accept my word of honour it will be from her own spontaneous impulse. I shall make not the least movement in the direction you fear.ThatI can devoutly promise.”
He turned away his head and regarded with calm, placid detachment the rich, shadowy orchard and the golden buttercups.
The contours of his profile were so noble, and the pose of his head so majestic, that the agitated mother was soothed and awed into complete confidence.
“Thank God!” she exclaimed. “Thatfear, at any rate, has passed. I shall be grateful to you forever, dear friend, for what you have just now said. It is a direct answer to my prayers.”
“May I, in my turn,” said Mr. Taxater, resuming his seat by her side, “ask you a bold and uncalled for question? What would you do, if in the changes and chances of this life, Venniedidcome to regard Mr. Clavering with favour? Would you for a moment consider their union as a possible one?”
Valentia looked not a little embarrassed. Once more, in her heart, she accused the urbane scholar of a lack of delicacy and discretion. These little questions are not the ones to put to a perturbed mother.
However, she answered him plainly enough. “I should not like it, I confess. It would disappoint me. I am not ambitious, but sometimes I catch myself desiring, for my beloved child, a marriage that would give her the position she deserves, the position—pardon a woman’s weakness, sir!—that her ancestors held in this place. But then, again, I am only anxious for her happiness. No, Mr. Taxater. If such a thing did occur I should not oppose it, Mr. Clavering is a gentleman, though a poor one and, in a sense, an eccentric one. But I have no prejudice against the marriage of our clergy. In fact I think they ought to marry. It is so suitable, you know, to have a sensible woman endowed with such opportunities for making her influence felt. I would not wish Vennie to marry beneath her, but sooner than not see her married—well!—That is the kind of feeling I have about it, Mr. Taxater.”
“Thank you—thank you. I fear my question was impertinent; but in return for the solemn oath you exacted from me, I think I deserved some reward, don’t you? But seriously, Mrs. Seldom, I do not think that any of these less desirable fates will befall our dear child. I think she will marry a pillar of the aristocracy, and remain herself a pillar of the Anglican Church! I trust she will not, whatever happens, lose her regard for her old Catholic friend.”
He rose as he spoke and held out his hand. Mrs. Seldom took it in her own and held it for a moment with some emotion. Had he been a real Monsignor, he could not have looked more calm, more tolerant, more kind, than he looked at that moment. He wore the expression that high ecclesiastics must come to wear, when devoted but somewhat troublesome daughters of the church press close to kiss the amethystine ring.
A few minutes later he was passing out of the vicarage gate. The new brood of warblers that flitted about the tall bushes at that spot heard—with perfect unconcern—a mysterious Latin quotation issue from that restrained mouth. They could hardly be blamed for not understanding, even though they had migrated to these fields of heresy from more classic places, that the plain English interpretation of the dark saying was that all things are lawful to him whose motive is the “Potestas Civitatis Dei!”
He crossed the dusty road and was proceeding towards his own house, which was hardly more than a hundred yards away, when he saw through a wide gap in the hedge a pleasant and familiar sight. It was a hay-field, in the final stage of its “making,” surrendering to a great loose stack, built up beneath enormous elm-trees, the last windrows of its sweet-scented harvest.
Pausing for a moment to observe more closely this pleasant scene—for hay-making in Dorsal Field amounted to a village ritual—Mr. Taxater became aware that among the figures scattered in groups about the meadow were the very two whose relation to one another he had just been discussing. Vennie and the young clergyman were engaged in an animated conversation with three of the farm-boys.
Mr. Taxater at once climbed through the gap, and crossing the field approached the group unobserved. It was not till he was quite close that Vennie caught sight of him. Her pale, pinched little face, under its large hat, flushed slightly as she held out her hand; but her great steady grey eyes were full of friendly welcome.
Mr. Clavering too was effusive and demonstrative in his greeting. They chatted a little of indifferent matters, and the theologian was introduced to the shy farm-boys, who stared at him in rustic wonder.
Then Hugh Clavering said, “If you’ll pardon me for a moment, I think I ought to go across and speak to John Goring,” and he indicated the farmer’s figure bending over a new gleaning-machine, at the opposite end of the field. “Don’t go away, please, Mr. Taxater, till I come back. You will keep him, won’t you, Miss Seldom?”
He strode off; and the boys drifted away after him, leaving Mr. Taxater and the girl together, under the unfinished hay-stack. “I was so much wanting to speak to you,” began Vennie at once.“I very nearly ran in to the Gables; but I saw Mrs. Wotnot over the wall, and she told me you were out. I am in serious need of advice upon a thing that is troubling me, and you are the only person who can really help.”
The expression of Mr. Taxater’s face at that moment was so sympathetic, and yet so grave, that one would hardly have been surprised to hear him utter the conventional formula of a priest awaiting confession. Though unuttered, the sacred formula must have been telepathically communicated, for Vennie continued without a pause, holding her hands behind her back, and looking on the ground. “Ever since our last serious conversation—do you remember?—after Easter, I have been thinking so much about that phrase of yours, referring to the Pope, as the eternal living defender of the idea of Love as the secret of the universe. Mr. Clavering talks to me about love—you know what I mean,” she smiled and blushed prettily, with a quick lifting of her head, “but he never gives me the feeling of something real and actual which we can approach on earth—something personal, I mean. And I have been feeling so much lately that this is what I want. Mr. Clavering is very gentle with me when I try to explain my difficulties to him; but I don’t think he really understands. The way he talks is beautiful and inspiring—but it somehow sounds like poetry. It does not give me anything to lay hands on.” And she looked into Mr. Taxater’s face with a pathetic wide-eyed appeal, as if he were able to call down angels from heaven.
“Dear child,” said the diplomatist, “I know only too well what you mean. Yes, that is the unfortunate and necessary limitation of a heretical church. It can only offer mystic and poetic consolations. Ithas lost touch with the one true Vine, and consequently the full stream of life-giving sap cannot flow through its veins.”
“But I have felt so strengthened,” said Vennie mournfully, “by the sacrament in our Church; so strengthened and inspired! It seems dreadful that it should all be a sort of mockery.”
“Do not speak like that, dear child,” said Mr. Taxater. “God is good; and in his knowledge of our weakness he permits us to taste of his mystery even in forbidden cups. The motive in your heart, the faith in your soul, have been pure; and God has given to them some measure, though but an imperfect one, of what he will grant to your complete obedience.”
Vennie bent down and picking up a swathe of sweet-scented hay twisted it thoughtfully in her fingers. “God has indeed been working miracles on your behalf,” continued Mr. Taxater. “It must have been your guardian angel that led me to speak to you as I did at that time. For in future, I regret to say, I shall be less free. But the good work has been done. The seed has been sown. What follows must be at your own initiative.”
Vennie looked at him, puzzled, and rather alarmed. “Why do you say you will be less free? Are we going to have no more lovely conversations at the bottom of our orchard? Are you going to be too busy to see me at all?”
Mr. Taxater smiled. “Oh no, it isn’t as bad as that,” he said. “It is only that I have just faithfully promised your mother not to convert you to Catholicism.”
“Mother had no right to make you give any such promise,” cried the girl indignantly.
“No,” responded the diplomatist, “she had no such right. No one has a right to demand promises of that kind. It is one of the worst and subtlest forms of persecution.”
“But you did not promise? You surely did not promise?”
“There was no escaping it,” replied Mr. Taxater. “If I had not done so she would have given you no peace, and your future movements would have been mercilessly watched. However,” he went on, smilingly, “a promise exacted under that kind of compulsion must be interpreted in a very large and liberal way. Relatively I must avoid discussing these things with you. In a higher and more absolute sense we will combine our thoughts about them, day and night, until we worship at the same altar.”
Vennie was silent. The noble and exalted sophistry of the subtle scholar puzzled and bewildered her. “But I have no idea of what to do next,” she protested. “I know no Catholics but you. I should feel very nervous on going to the priest in Yeoborough. Besides, I don’t at all like the look of him. And the people here say he is often drunk. You wouldn’t send me to a man like that, would you? Oh, I feel so angry with mother! She had no right to go to you behind my back.”
Francis Taxater laid his hand gently on the girl’s shoulder. “There is no reason for haste,” he said.“There is no cause to agitate yourself. Just remain quietly as you are. Say nothing to your mother. It would only cause her unnecessary distress. I never promised not to lend you books. All my shelves are at your service. Read, my dear Vennie, read and think. My books will supply the place of my words. Indeed, they will serve the purpose much better. In this way we shall at once be obeying your earthly mother, and not disobeying your heavenly mother, who is now—Ave Maria gratiæ plena!—drawing you so strongly towards her.”
“Shall I say anything to Mr. Clavering?”
“Not a word! not a word! And enter as little as possible into argument with him. If he fancies, from your silence, that he has quelled your doubts, let him fancy so. The mistake will be due to his own pride and not to any deception. It is wrong to lie—but we are not called upon to dispel illusions arising from the self-conceit of others.”
“But you—will—think—of me?” pleaded little Vennie. “I may know that you have not deserted me? That you are always ready—always there?”
Mr. Taxater smiled benignly. “Of course I shall be ready, dear child. And you must be ready. That is why I only ask you to read and think. God will answer your prayers if you show patience. He has taught his church never to clamour for hurried conversions. But to wait, with all her reservoirs of mysteries, till they come to her of their own accord. You will come, Vennie, you will come! But it will be in God’s hour and not in ours.”
Vennie Seldom thanked him with a timid glance of infinite gratitude and confidence. A soft luminous happiness suffused her being, into which the scents and sounds of that felicitous hour poured their offerings of subtle contentment. In after years, in strangeand remote places, she never forgot the high thrilling exultation, calm, yet passionate as an indrawn wave, of that unrecurring moment.
The security that filled her passed, indeed, only too quickly away. Her face clouded and a little anxious frown puckered her narrow white forehead.
“There is something else I wanted to ask you,” she said hurriedly, “and I must say it quickly because I am afraid of Mr. Clavering coming back. It has to do with Mr. Clavering. I do not think you realize what influence you have over people, what powerful influence! Mr. Clavering adores you. He would do anything for you. He respects you as a thinker. He venerates you as a good man. Now, Mr. Taxater, please, please, use your influence with him to save him—to save him—” She stopped abruptly, and a flood of colour rushed to her cheeks.
“To save him from what, dear child? I am afraid there is no hope of Mr. Clavering coming to our way of thinking.”
“It isn’t that, Mr. Taxater! It’s something else;—something to do with his own happiness, with his own life. Oh, it is so hard for me to tell you!” She clenched her hands tightly together and looked steadily away from him as she spoke. “It is that that dreadful Gladys Romer has been plaguing him so—tempting him to flirt with her, to be silly about her, and all that sort of thing. He does not really like her at all. That Iknow. But he is passionate and excitable, and easily led away by a girl like that. Oh, it all sounds so absurd, as I say it,” cried poor Vennie, with cheeks that were by this time flaming,“but it’s much, much more serious than it sounds. You see, I know Mr. Clavering very well. I know how simple and pure-minded he is. And I know how desperately he prays against being led away—like this. Gladys does not care for him really a bit. She only does it to amuse herself; to satisfy her wicked, wicked nature! She would like to lead him as far as she possibly could, and then to turn upon him and make him thoroughly miserable. She is the kind of girl—Oh what am I saying to you, Mr. Taxater?—that men always are attracted by. Some men I believe would even call her beautiful. I don’t think she’s that at all. I think she is gross, fleshly, and horrid! But I know what a danger she is to Mr. Clavering. I know the dreadful struggle that goes on in his mind; and the horrible temptation she is to him. I know that after seeing her he always suffers the most cruel remorse. Now, Mr. Taxater, use your influence to strengthen him against this girl’s treachery. She only means him harm, I know she does! And if a person like you, whom he loves and admires so much, talked to him seriously about it, it would be such a help to him. He is so young. He is a mere boy, and absolutely ignorant of the world. He does not even realize that the village has already begun its horrid gossip about them. Do—do, do something, Mr. Taxater. It is like that young Parsifal, in the play, being tempted by the enchantress.”
“But how do they meet?” asked the diplomatist, with unchanged gravity. “I do not see how they are ever alone together.”
“She has arranged it. She is so clever; the bad, bad girl! She goes to him for confirmation lessons. He teaches her in his study twice a week—separately from the others.”
“But her father is a Unitarian.”
“That does not interfere. She does what she likes with Mr. Romer. Her game now is to want to be baptized into our church. She is going to be baptized first, and then confirmed.”
“And the preparation for baptism is as dangerous as the preparation for confirmation,” remarked the scholar; straightening the muscles of his mouth, after the discipline of St. Ignatius.
“The whole thing is horrible—dreadful! It frets me every hour of the day. He is so good and so innocent. He has no idea where she is leading him.”
“But I cannot prevent her wanting to be baptized,” said Mr. Taxater.
“You can talk to him,” answered Vennie, with intense conviction. “You can talk to him and he will listen to you. You can tell him the danger he is in of being made miserable for life.” She drew her breath deeply. “Oh the remorse he will feel; the horrible, horrible remorse!”
Mr. Taxater glanced across the hay-field. The sun, a red globe of fire, was resting on the extreme edge of Leo’s Hill, and seemed like a great blood-shot eye regarding them with lurid interest. Long cool shadows, thrown across the field by the elms in the hedge and by the stack beside them, melted magically into one another, and made the hillocks of still ungathered grass soft and intangible as fairy graves.
“I will do my best,” said the scholar. “I will do my best.” And indicating to Vennie, who was absorbed in her nervous gratitude, the near approachof the object of their saintly conspiracy, he led her forward to meet the young clergyman with an appropriate air of friendly and casual nonchalance.
“I am sorry to have to say it,” was Mr. Clavering’s greeting, “but that farmer-fellow is the only person in my parish for whom I have a complete detestation. I wish to goodness Mr. Romer had never brought him into the place!”
“I don’t like the look of his back, I must say,” answered the theologian, following with his eyes the retreating figure of Mr. John Goring.
“He is,” said the young priest, “without exception the most repulsive human being I have ever met in my life. Our worthy Romer is an angel of light compared with him.”
With Mr. Goring still as their topic, they strolled amicably together towards the same gap in the hedge, through which the apologist of the papacy had emerged an hour before. There they separated; Vennie returning to the vicarage, and the young clergyman carrying off Mr. Taxater to supper with him in his house by the church.
Clavering’s establishment consisted of a middle-aged woman of inordinate volubility, and the woman’s daughter, a girl of twelve.
The supper offered by the priest to his guest was “light and choice”—nor did it lack its mellow accompaniment of carefully selected, if not “Attic,” wine. Of this wine Mr. Taxater did not hesitate to partake freely, sitting, when the meal was over, opposite his host at the open window, through which the pleasant murmurs of the evening, and the voices of the village-street, soothingly and harmoniously floated.
The famous theologian was in an excellent temper. Rich recondite jests pursued one another from his smiling lips, and his white hands folded themselves complacently above the cross on his watch-chain.
Lottie Fringe, the child of Clavering’s servant, tripped sportively in and out of the room, encouraged in her girlish coquetries by the amiable scholar. She was not yet too old to be the kittenish plaything of the lighter moments of a wise and scholarly man, and it was pleasant to watch the zest with which the vicar’s visitor entered into her sportive audacities. Mr. Taxater made her fill and refill his glass, and taking her playfully on his knee, kissed her and fondled her many times. It was the vicar himself, who finally, a little embarrassed by these levities, sent the girl off to the kitchen, apologizing to his guest for the freedom she displayed.
“Do not apologize, dear Mr. Clavering,” said the theologian. “I love all children, especially when they are girls. There is something about the kisses of a young girl—at once amorous and innocent—which reconciles one to the universe, and keeps death at a distance. Could one for a moment think of death, when holding a young thing, so full of life and beauty, on one’s knee?”
The young priest’s face clouded. “To be quite honest with you, Mr. Taxater,” he murmured, in a troubled voice, “I cannot say that I altogether agree. We are both unconventional people, so I may speak freely. I do not think that one does a child any good by encouraging her to be playful and forward, in that particular way. You live with your books; but I live with my people, and I haveknown so many sad cases of girls being completely ruined by getting a premature taste for coquetry of that kind.”
“I am afraid, my friend,” answered Mr. Taxater, “that the worst of all heresies is lodged deep in your heart.”
“Heresies? God knows,” sighed the priest, “I have enough evil in my heart—but heresies? I am at a loss to catch your meaning.”
In the absence of his playful Clerica—to use the Pantagruelian allusion—the great Homenas of Nevilton was compelled to fill his “tall-boy of extravagant wine” with his own hand. He did so, and continued his explanation.
“By the worst of all heresies I mean the dangerous Puritan idea that pleasure itself is evil and a thing detestable to God. The Catholic doctrine, as I understand it, is that all these things are entirely relative to the persons concerned. Pleasure in itself is, in the Aristotelian sense, a supreme good. Everyone has a right to it. Everyone must have it. The whole thing is a matter of proportion and expediency. If an innocent playful game, of the kind you have just witnessed, was likely in this definite particular case to lead to harm, then you would be justified in your anxiety. But there must be no laying down of hard general rules. There must be no making a virtue of the mere denying ourselves pleasure.”
Mr. Clavering could hardly wait for his guest to finish.
“Then, according to your theory,” he exclaimed,“it would be right for you, or whoever you will,—pardon my making the thing so personal—to indulge in casual levities with any pretty barmaid, as long as you vaguely surmised that she was a sensible girl and would not be harmed?”
“Certainly it would be right,” replied the papal apologist, sipping his wine and inhaling the perfume of the garden, “and not only right, but a plain duty. It is our duty, Mr. Clavering, to make the world happier while we live in it; and the way to make girls happier, especially when their occupations are laborious, is to kiss them; to give them innocent and admiring embraces.”
“I am afraid you are not quite serious, Mr. Taxater,” said the clergyman. “I have an absurd way of being direct and literal in these discussions.”
“Certainly, I am serious. Do you not know—young puritan—that some of the noblest spirits in history have not hesitated to increase the pleasure of girls’ lives by giving them frequent kisses? In the Greek days he who could give the most charming kiss was awarded a public prize. In the Elizabethan days all the great and heroic souls, whose exquisite wit and passionate imagination put us still to shame, held large and liberal views on this matter. In the eighteenth century the courtly and moral Joseph Addison used never to leave a coffee-house, however humble and poor, without bestowing a friendly embrace upon every woman in it. The religious Doctor Johnson—a man of your own faith—was notoriously in the habit of taking his prettier visitors upon his knee, and tenderly kissing them. It is no doubt due to this fact, that the great lexicographer was so frequently visited;—especially by young Quakers. When we come to our own age, it is wellknown that the late Archbishop Taraton, the refuter of Darwin, was never so happy as when romping round the raspberry-canes in his garden with a crowd of playful girls.
“These great and wise men have all recognized the fact that pleasure is not an evil but a good. A good, however, that must be used discreetly and according to the Christian self-control of which God has given his Church the secret. The senses are not under a curse, Mr. Clavering. They are not given us simply to tempt and perplex us. They are given for our wise and moderate enjoyment.”
Francis Taxater once more lifted his glass to his lips.
“To the devil with this Protestant Puritanism of yours! It has darkened the sun in heaven. It is the cause of all the squalid vice and gross excesses of our forlorn England. It is the cause of the deplorable perversities that one sees around one. It is the cause of that odious hypocrisy that makes us the laughing-stock of the great civilized nations of France, Italy and Spain.” The theologian drew a deep breath, and continued. “I notice, Mr. Clavering, that you have by your side, still unfinished, your second glass of wine. That is a mistake. That is an insult to Providence. Whatever may be your attitude towards these butterfly-wenches, it cannot, as a matter of poetic economy, be right to leave a wine, as delicate, as delicious as this, to spoil in the glass.
“I suppose it has never occurred to you, Mr. Clavering, to go and sit, with the more interesting of your flock, at the Seldom Arms? It never has? So Iimagined from my knowledge of your uncivilized English ways.
“The European café, sir, is the universal school of refined and intellectual pleasure. It was from his seat in a Roman café—a place not unknown to me myself—that the great Gibbon was accustomed to survey the summer moon, rising above the Pantheon.
“It is the same in the matter of wine as in the other matter. It is your hypocritical and puritanical fear of pleasure that leads to the gross imbibing of villainous spirits and the subterranean slavery of prostitution. If you allowed yourselves, freely, naturally, and with Christian moderation, to enjoy the admirable gifts of the supreme giver, there would no longer be any need for this deplorable plunging into insane vice. As it is—in this appalling country of yours—one can understand every form of debauchery.”