As he reached the actual beginning of the woody eminence and turned for a moment to inhale the magical softness of the invading twilight, it occurred to him that from a logically ecclesiastical standpoint it was a monstrous thing that he should be serenely and coldly debating the cutting off of his spiritual assistance from this poor thirsty flower of the heathen desert. She was unbaptized — and to be unbaptized, according to true doctrine, meant, with all our Christian opportunities, a definite peril, a grave and assured peril, to her immortal soul. Who was he that he should play with such a formidable risk — such a risk to such a lamb of the Great Shepherd? It was quite probable — he knew it was probable — that, angry with him for deserting her so causelessly and unreasonably, she would refuse to go further in the sacred business. She would say, and say justly, that since the affair seemed of so little importance to him she would make it of little importance to herself. Suppose he were to call in some colleague from Yeoborough, and make over this too exciting neophyte to some other pastor of souls — would she agree to such a casual transference? He knew well enough that she would not.
How unfortunate it was that the peculiar constitution of his English Church made these things so difficult! The individual personality of the priest mattered so much in Anglican circles! The nobler self in him envied bitterly at that moment the stricter and yet more malleable organization of the Mother Church. How easy it would be were he a Roman priest. A word to his superior in office, and all would arrange itself! It was impossible to imagine himself speaking such a word to the Right Reverend the Bishop of Glastonbury. The mere idea of such a thing, in our England of discreet propriety, made him smile in the midst of his distress.
The thought of the Roman Church brought into his mind the plausible figure of Mr. Taxater. How that profound and subtle humanist would chuckle over his present dilemma! He would probably regard it as a proper and ironical punishment upon him for his heretical assumption of this traditional office.
Tradition! That was the thing. Tradition and organization. After all, it was only to Hugh Clavering, as a nameless impersonal priest of God, that this lovely outcast lamb came begging to be enfolded. He had no right to dally with the question at all. There was no question. As the priest of Nevilton it was his clear pastoral duty to give every possible spiritual assistance to every person in his flock. What if the pursuit of this duty did throw temptation — intolerable temptation — in his way? His business was not to try and escape from such a struggle; but to face it, to wrestle with it, to overcome it! He was like a sentinel at his post in a great war. Was he to leave his post and retreat to the rear because the shells were bursting so thickly round him?
He sat down on the grass with his back to an ancient thorn-tree and gazed upon the tower of his beloved church. Would he not be false to that Church — false to his vows of ordination — if he were now to draw back from the firing-line of the battle and give up the struggle by a cowardly retreat? Even supposing the temptation were more than he could endure — even supposing that he fell — would not God prefer his suffering such a fall with his face to the foe, sword in hand, rather than that he should be saved, his consecrated weapon dropped from his fingers, in squalid ignoble flight?
So much for the arguments whispered in his ear by the angel of darkness! But he had lately been visited by another angel — surely not of darkness — and he recalled the plausible reasonings of the great champion of the papacy, as he sat in that pleasant window sipping his wine. Why should he agitate himself so furiously over this little matter? After all, why not enjoy the pleasure of this exquisite being’s society? He was in no danger of doing her any harm — he knew Gladys at least well enough by now to know that! — and what harm could she do him? There was no harm in being attracted irresistibly to something so surpassingly attractive! Suppose he fell really in love with her? Well! There was no religious rule — certainly none in the church he belonged to — against falling in love with a lovable and desirable girl. But it was not a matter of falling in love. He knew that well enough. There was very little of the romantic or the sentimental about the feelings she aroused in him. It was just a simple, sensuous, amorous attraction to a provocative and alluring daughter of Eve. Just a simple sensuous attraction — so simple, so natural, as to be almost “innocent,” as Mr. Taxater would put it.
So he argued with himself; but the Tower of the Church opposite seemed to invade the mists of these subtle reasonings with a stern emphasis of clear-cut protest. He knew well enough that his peculiar nature was not of the kind that might be called “sensuous” or “amorous,” but of quite a different sort. The feelings that had lately been excited in him were as concentrated and passionate as his feelings for the altar he served. They were indeed a sort of temporal inversion of this sacred ardour; or, as the cynical Mr. Quincunx in his blunt manner would have expressed it, this sacred fire itself was only a form taken by the more earthly flame. But a “flame” it was, — not any gentle toying with soft sensation, — a flame, a madness, a vice, an obsession.
In no ideal sense could he be said to be “in love” with Gladys. He was intoxicated with her. His senses craved for her as they might have craved for some sort of maddening drug. In his heart of hearts he knew well that the emotion he felt was closely allied to a curious kind of antagonism. He thought of her with little tenderness, with no gentle, responsible consideration. Her warm insidious charm maddened and perturbed him. It did not diffuse itself through his senses like a tender fragrance. It provoked, disturbed, and tantalized. She was no Rose of Sharon, to be worshipped forever. She was a Rose of Shiraz, to be seized, pressed against his face, and flung aside! The appeal she made to him was an appeal to what was perverse, vicious, dangerous devastating, in his nature. To call his attraction to her beauty “innocent”—in Mr. Taxater’s phrase — was a mere hypocritical white-washing of the brutal fact.
His mind, in its whirling agitation, conjured up the image of himself as married to her, as legally and absolutely possessed of her. The image was like fuel to his flame, but it brought no solution of the problem. Marriage, though permitted by his church, was as directly contrary to his own interpretation of his duty as a priest, as any mortal sin might be. To him it would have been a mortal sin — the betrayal of his profoundest ideal. In the perversity — if you will — of his ecclesiastical conscience, he felt towards such a solution the feeling a man might have if the selling of his soul were to be a thing transacted in cold blood, rather than in the tempest of the moment. To marry Gladys would be to summon the very sacraments of his church to bless with a blasphemous consecration his treachery to their appeal.
Rent and torn by all these conflicting thoughts, the poor clergyman scrambled once more to his feet, pushed his way recklessly through the intervening fence, and began ascending the steep side of the pyramidal hill. As he struggled upward, through burdocks, nettles, tall grasses, red-campion, and newly planted firs, his soul felt within him as if it were something fleeing from an invincible pursuer. The rank aromatic smell of torn elder-boughs and the pungent odour of trodden ground-ivy filled his nostrils. His clothes were sprinkled with feathery seed-dust. Closely-sticking burs clung to his legs and arms. Outstretched branches switched his face with their leaves. His feet stumbled over young fern-fronds, bent earthwards in their elaborate unsheathing.