Thus to any ordinary glance, cast upon the field of events as they were now arranging themselves, it would have looked as though the Italian’s escape from the fate hanging over her were as improbable as it would be for a miracle to intervene to save her.
In spite of the wild threat flung out by Mr. Clavering in his sudden anger as he waited with Luke in the Yeoborough street, the vicar of Nevilton made no attempt to interfere. Whether he really managed to persuade his conscience that all was well, or whether he came to the conclusion that without some initiative from the Italian it would be useless to meddle, not the most subtle psychologist could say. The fact remained that the only step he took in the matter was to assure himself that the girl’s nominal Catholicism had so far lapsed into indifference, that she was likely to raise no objection to a ceremony according to Anglican ritual.
The whole pitiful situation, indeed, offered only one more terrible and branding indictment, against the supine passivity of average human nature in the presence of unspeakable wrongs. The power and authority of the domestic system, according to which the real battle-field of wills takes place out of sight of the public eye, renders it possible for this inertia of the ordinary human crowd to cloak itself under a moral dread of scandal, and under the fear of any drastic breach of the uniformity of social usage.
A visitor from Mars or Saturn might have supposed, that in circumstances of this kind, every decent-thinking person in the village would have rushed headlong to the episcopal throne, and called loudly for spiritual mandates to stop the outrage. Where was the delegated Power of God — so the forlorn shadows of the long-evicted Cistercians might be imagined crying — whose absolute authority could be appealed to in face of every worldly force? What was the tender-souled St. Catharine doing, in her Paradisiac rest, that she could remain so passively indifferent to such monstrous and sacrilegious use of her sacred building? Was it that such transactions as this, should be carried through, under its very shelter, that the gentle spirits who guarded the Holy Rood had made of Nevilton Mount their sacred resting-place? Must the whole fair tradition of the spot remain dull, dormant, dumb, while the devotees of tyranny worked their arbitrary will—“and nothing said”?
Such imaginary appeals, so fantastic in the utterance, were indeed, as that large August-moon rose night by night upon the stubble-fields, far too remote from Nevilton’s common routine to enter the heads of any of that simple flock. The morning mists that diffused themselves, like filmy dream-figures, over the watchful promontory of Leo’s Hill, were as capable as any of these villagers of crying aloud that wrong was being done.
The loneliness in the midst of which Lacrima moved on her way — groping, as her enemy had taunted her with doing, so helplessly with her wistful hands — was a loneliness so absolute that it sometimes seemed to her as if she were already literally dead and buried. Now and then, with a pallid phosphorescent glimmer like the gleam of a corpse-light, the mortal dissolution of all the ties that bound her to earthly interests, itself threw a fitful illumination over her consciousness.
But Mr. Romer had over-reached himself in his main purpose. The moral disintegration which he looked for, and which the cynical apathy of Mr. Quincunx encouraged, had, by extending itself to every nerve of her spirit, rounded itself off, as it were, full circle, and left her in a mental state rather beyond both good and evil, than delivered up to the latter as opposed to the former. The infernal power might be said to have triumphed; but it could scarcely be said to have triumphed over a living soul. It had rather driven her soul far off, far away from all these contests, into some mysterious translunar region, where all these distinctions lapsed and merged.
Leo’s Hill itself had never crouched in more taciturn intentness than it did under that sweltering August sunshine, which seemed to desire, in the gradual scorching of the green slopes, to reduce even the outward skin of the monster to an approximate conformity with its tawny entrails.
Mr. Taxater’s departure from the scene at this juncture was not only, little as she knew it, a loss of support to Lacrima, it was also a very serious blow to Vennie Seldom.
The priest in Yeoborough, who at her repeated request had already begun to give her surreptitious lessons in the Faith, was not in any sense fitted to be a young neophyte’s spiritual adviser. He was fat. He was gross. He was lethargic. He was indifferent. He also absolutely refused to receive her into the Church without her mother’s sanction. This refusal was especially troublesome to Vennie. She knew enough of her mother to know that while it was her nature to resist blindly and obstinately any deviation from her will, when once a revolt was an established fact she would resign herself to it with a surprising equanimity. To ask Valentia for permission to be received into the Church would mean a most violent and distressing scene. To announce to her that she had been so received, would mean nothing but melancholy and weary acquiesence.
She felt deeply hurt at Mr. Taxater’s desertion of her at this moment of all moments. It was incredible that it was really necessary for him to be so long in town. As a rule he never left the Gables during the month of August. His conduct puzzled and troubled her. Did he care nothing whether she became a Catholic or not? Were his lessons mere casual by-play, to fill up his spare hours in an interesting and pleasant diversion? Was he really the faithful friend he called himself? Not only had he absented himself, but he had done so without sending her a single word.
As a matter of fact it was extremely rare for Mr. Taxater to write a letter, even to his nearest friends, except under the stress of theological controversy. But Vennie knew nothing of this. She simply felt hurt and injured; as though the one human being, upon whom she had reposed her trust, had deserted and betrayed her. He had spoken so tenderly, so affectionately to her, too, during their last walk together, before the unfortunate encounter with James Andersen in the Athelston porch!
It is true that his attitude over that matter of Andersen’s insanity, and also in the affair of Lacrima’s marriage, had a little shocked and disconcerted her. He had bluntly refused to take her into his confidence, and she felt instinctively that the conversation with Luke, from which she had been so curtly dismissed, was of a kind that would have hurt and surprised her.
It seemed unworthy of him to absent himself from Nevilton, just at the moment when, as she felt certain in her heart, some grievous outrage was being committed. She had learned quickly enough of Andersen’s recovery; but nothing she could learn either lessened her terrible apprehension about Lacrima, or gave her the least hint of a path she could follow to do anything on the Italian’s behalf.
She made a struggle once to see the girl and to talk to her. But she came away from the hurried interview as perplexed and troubled in her mind as ever. Lacrima had maintained an obstinate and impenetrable reserve. Vennie made up her mind that she would postpone for the present her own religious revolt, and devote herself to keeping a close and careful watch upon events in Nevilton.