Mr. Clavering’s present attitude rendered her profoundly unhappy. The pathetic overtures she had made to him recently, with a desperate hope of renewing their friendship on a basis that would be unaffected even by her change of creed, had seemed entirely unremarked by the absorbed clergyman. She could not help brooding sometimes, with a feeling of wretched humiliation, over the brusqueness and rudeness which characterized his manner towards her.
She recalled, more often than the priest would have cared to have known, that pursuit of theirs, of the demented Andersen, and how in his annoyance and confusion he had behaved to her in a fashion not only rough but positively unkind.
It was clear that he was growing more and more slavishly infatuated with Gladys; and Vennie could only pray that the days might pass quickly and the grotesque blasphemy of the confirmation service be carried through and done with, so that the evil spell of her presence should be lifted and broken.
Prayer indeed — poor little forlorn saint! — was all that was left to her, outside her mother’s exacting affection, and she made a constant and desperate use of it. Only the little painted wooden image, in her white-washed room, a pathetic reproduction of the famous Nuremburg Madonna, could have betrayed how long were the hours in which she gave herself up to these passionate appeals. She prayed for Clavering in that shy heart-breaking manner — never whispering his name, even to the ears of Our Lady, but always calling him “he” and “him”—in which girls are inclined to pray for the man to whom they have sacrificed their peace. She prayed desperately for Lacrima, that at the last moment, contrary to all hope, some intervention might arrive.
Thus it came about, that beneath the roofs of Nevilton — for neither James Andersen nor Mr. Quincunx were “praying men”—only one voice was lifted up, the voice of the last of the old race of the place’s rulers, to protest against the flowing forward to its fatal end, of this evil tide.
Nevertheless, things moved steadily and irresistibly on; and it seemed as though it were as improbable that those shimmering mists which every evening crept up the sides of Leo’s Hill should endure the heat of the August noons, as that the prayers of this frail child should change the course of ordained destiny.
If none but her little painted Madonna knew how passionate were Vennie’s spiritual struggles; not even that other Vennie, of the long-buried royal court, whose mournful nun’s eyes looked out upon the great entrance-hall, knew what turbulent thoughts and anxieties possessed the soul of Gladys Romer.
Was Mr. Taxater right in the formidable hint he had given the young stone-carver, as to the result of his amour with his employer’s daughter? Was Gladys not only the actual mistress of Luke, but the prospective mother of a child of their strange love?
Whatever were the fair-haired girl’s thoughts and apprehensions, she kept them rigidly to herself; and not even Lacrima, in her wildest imagination, ever dreamed that things had gone as far as that. If it had chanced to be, as Mr. Taxater supposed, and as Luke seemed willing to admit, Gladys was apparently relying upon some vague accident in the course of events, or upon some hidden scheme of her own, to escape the exposure which the truth of such a supposition seemed to render inevitable.
The fact remained that she let matters drift on, and continued to prepare — in her own fashion — not only for her reception into the Church of England, but for her marriage to the wealthy American.
Dangelis was continually engaged now in running backwards and forwards to town on business connected with his marriage; and with a view to making these trips more pleasantly and conveniently he had acquired a smart touring-car of his own, which he soon found himself able to drive without assistance. The pleasure of these excursions, leading him, in delicious solitude, through so many unvisited country places and along such historic roads, had for the moment distracted his attention from his art.
He rarely took Gladys with him; partly because he regarded himself as still but a learner in the science of driving, but more because he felt, at this critical moment of his life, an extraordinary desire to be alone with his own thoughts. Most of these thoughts, it is true, were such as it would not have hurt the feelings of his fiancée to have surprised in their passage through his mind; but not quite all of them. Ever since the incident of Auber Lake, an incident which threw the character of his betrothed into no very charming light, Dangelis had had his moments of uneasiness and misgiving. He could not altogether conceal from himself that his attraction to Gladys was rather of a physical than of a spiritual, or even of a psychic nature.
Once or twice, while the noble expanses of Salisbury Plain or the New Forest thrilled him with a pure dilation of soul, as he swept along in the clear air, he was on the verge of turning his car straight to the harbour of Southampton and taking the first boat that offered itself, bound East, West, North or South — it mattered nothing the direction! — so that an impassable gulf of free sea-water should separate him forever from the hot fields and woods of Nevilton.
Once, when reaching a cross-road point, where the name of the famous harbour stared at him from a sign-post, he had even gone so far as to deviate to the extent of several miles from his normal road. But that intolerable craving for the girl’s soft-clinging arms and supple body, with which she had at last succeeded in poisoning the freedom of his mind, drew him back with the force of a magnet.
The day at length approached, when, on the festival of his favorite saint, Mr. Clavering was to perform the ceremony, to which he had looked forward so long and with such varied feelings. It was Saturday, and on the following morning, in a service especially arranged to take place privately, between early celebration and ordinary matins, Gladys was to be baptized.
Dangelis had suddenly declared his intention of making his escape from a proceeding which to his American mind seemed entirely uncalled for, and to his pagan humour seemed not a little grotesque. He had decided to start, immediately after breakfast, and motor to London, this time by way of Trowbridge and Westbury.
The confirmation ceremony, for reasons connected with the convenience of the Lord Bishop, had been finally fixed for the ensuing Wednesday, so that only two days were destined to elapse between the girl’s reception into the Church, and her admission to its most sacred rites. Dangelis was sufficiently a heathen to desire to be absent from this event also, though he had promised Mr. Clavering to support his betrothed on the occasion of her first Communion on the following Sunday, which would be their last Sunday together as unwedded lovers.
On this occasion, Gladys persuaded him to let her ride by his side a few miles along the Yeoborough road. They had just reached the bridge across the railway-line, about a mile and a half from the village, when they caught sight of Mr. John Goring, returning from an early visit to the local market.
Gladys made the artist stop the car, and she got out to speak to her uncle. After a minute or two’s conversation, she informed Dangelis that she would return with Mr. Goring by the field-path, which left the road at that point and followed the track of the railway. The American, obedient to her wish, set his car in motion, and waving her a gay good-bye, disappeared swiftly round an adjacent corner.
Gladys and her uncle proceeded to walk slowly homeward, across the meadows; neither of them, however, paying much attention to the charm of the way. In vain from the marshy hollows between their path and the metal track, certain brilliant clumps of ragged robin and red rattle signalled to them to pause and admire. Gladys and Mr. Goring strolled forward, past these allurements, with a superb absorption in their own interests.
“I can’t think, uncle,” Gladys was saying, “how it is that you can go on in the way you’re doing; you, a properly engaged person, and not seeing anything of your young lady?”