He vaguely associated with his thoughts, as he struggled on, certain queer purple markings which he noticed on the stalks of the thickly-grown hemlocks, and the bind-weed, which entwined itself round many of the slenderer tree-stems, became a symbol of the power that assailed him. To escape — to be free! This was the burden of his soul’s crying as he plunged forward through all these dim leafy obstructions.
Gradually, as he drew nearer the hill’s summit, there formed in his mind the only real sanctuary of refuge, the only genuine deliverance. He must obey his innate conscience; and let the result be as God willed. At all costs he must shake himself clear of this hot, sweet, luscious bind-weed, that was choking the growth of his soul. His own soul — that, after all, was his first care, his predominant concern. To keep that, pure and undefiled, and let all else go! Confused by the subtle arguments of the serpent, he would cling only the more passionately to the actual figure of the God-Man, and obey his profound command in its literal simplicity. Ecclesiastical casuistry might say what it pleased about the danger he plunged Gladys into, in thus neglecting her. The matter had gone deeper than casuistry, deeper, far deeper, than points of doctrine. It had become a direct personal struggle between his own soul and Satan; a struggle in which, as he well knew, the only victory lay in flight. On other fields he might be commanded by his celestial Captain to hold his post to the last; but in the arena of this temptation, to hold the field was to desert the field; to escape from it, to win it.
He paused breathlessly under a clump of larches, and stretching out his arms, seized — like Samson in the temple of Dagon — two of the slender-growing trunks. “Let all this insidious growth of Nature,” he thought, “all this teeming and prolific exuberance of godless life, be thrust into oblivion, as long as the great translunar Secret be kept inviolable! Exhausted by the struggle within him he sank down in the green twilight of that leafy security, and crossed his hands over his knees. Through a gap in the foliage he could perceive the valley below; he could even perceive the outline of the roof of Nevilton House. But against the magic of those carved pinnacles he had found a counter-charm. In the hushed stillness about him, he seemed conscious of the power of all these entangled growing things as a sinister heathen influence pulling him earthward.
Men differ curiously from one another in this respect. To some among them the influences of what we call Nature are in harmony with all that is good in them, and have a soothing and mystical effect. Others seem to disentangle themselves from every natural surrounding, and to stand out, against the background of their own spiritual horizons, clear-edged, opaque, and resistant.
Clavering was entirely of this latter type. Nature to him was always full of hidden dangers and secret perils. He found her power a magical, not a mystical, one. He resented the spell she cast over him. It seemed to lend itself, all too willingly, to the vicious demons that delighted to waylay his unguarded hours. His instinctive attitude to these enchanting natural forces was that of a mediæval monk. Their bewitching shapes, their lovely colours, their penetrating odours, were all permeated for him by a subtle diffusion of something evil there; something capable of leading one’s spirit desperately, miserably far — if one allowed it the smallest welcome. Against all these siren-voices rumouring and whispering so treacherously around us, against all this shifting and flitting wizardry, one defence alone availed;—the clear-cut, absolute authority of Him who makes the clouds his chariot and the earth his footstool.
As Clavering sat crouching there under his tent of larches, the spirit of the Christ he served seemed to pass surging through him like a passionate flood. He drew deep breaths of exquisite relief and comfort. The problem was solved, — was indeed no problem at all; for he had nothing to do but to obey the absolute authority, the soul-piercing word. Who was he to question results? The same God who commanded him to flee from temptation was able — beyond the mystery of his own divine method — to save her who tempted him, whether baptized or unbaptized!
He leapt to his feet, and no more like one pursued, but rather like one pursuing, pushed his way to the summit of the Mount. The space at the top was flat and circular; not unlike, in its smooth level surface, the top of the mountain in that very Transfiguration picture which was now overshadowing his letter to his enchantress. In the centre of this open space rose the thin Thyrsus-shaped tower. He advanced to the eastern edge of the hill and looked down over the wide-spread landscape.
The flat elm-fringed meadows of the great mid-Somerset plain stretched softly away, till they lost themselves in a purple mist. Never had the formidable outline of the Leonian promontory looked more emphatic and sinister than it looked in this deepening twilight. The sky above it was of a pale green tint, flecked here and there by feathery streaks of carmine. The whole sky-dome was still lit by the pallid reflection of the dead sunset; and on the far northern horizon, where the Mendip hills rise above the plain, a livid whitish glimmer touched the rim of an enormous range of sombre clouds.
The priest stood, hushed, and motionless as a statue, contemplating this suggestive panorama. But little of its transparent beauty passed the surface of his consciousness. He was absorbed, rapt, intent. But the cause of his abstraction was not the diaphanous air-spaces above him or the dark earth beneath him; it was the pouring of the waves of divine love through his inmost being; it was his fusion with that great Spirit of the Beyond which renders its votaries independent of space and time.
After long exquisite moments of this high exultation, his mind gradually resumed its normal functioning. A cynical interpreter of this sublime experience would doubtless have attributed the whole phenomenon to a natural reaction of the priest, back to his habitual moral temper, from the turbulent perturbations of the recent days. Would such a one have found it a mere coincidence that at the moment of regaining his natural vision the clergyman’s attention was arrested by the slow passage of a huge white cloud towards the Leonian promontory, a cloud that assumed, as it moved, gigantic and almost human lineaments?
Coincidence or not, Clavering’s attention was not allowed to remain fixed upon this interesting spectacle. It seemed as though his return to ordinary human consciousness was destined to be attended by the reappearance of ordinary humanity. He perceived in the great sloping field on the eastern side of the mount the white figure of a woman, walking alone. For the moment his heart stood still; but a second glance reassured him. He knew that figure, even in the dying light. It was little Vennie Seldom. Simultaneously with this discovery he was suddenly aware that he was no longer the only frequenter of the woody solitudes of Nevilton Hill. On a sort of terrace, about a hundred yards below him, there suddenly moved into sight a boy and a girl, walking closely interlinked and whispering softly. Acting mechanically, and as if impelled by an impulse from an external power, he sank down upon his knees and spied upon them. They too slipped into a semi-recumbent posture, apparently upon the branches of a fallen tree, and proceeded, in blissful unconsciousness of any spectator, to indulge in a long and passionate embrace. From where he crouched Clavering could actually discern these innocents’ kisses, and catch the little pathetic murmurings of their amorous happiness. His heart beat wildly and strangely. In his fingers he clutched great handfuls of earth. His thoughts played him satyrish and fantastic tricks. Suddenly he leapt to his feet and stumbled away, like an animal that has been wounded. He encountered the Thyrsus-shaped tower — that queer fancy of eighteenth century leisure — and beat with his hands upon its hard smooth surface. After a second or two, however, he recovered his self-control; and to afford some excuse to his own mind for his mad behaviour, he walked deliberately round the edifice, looking for its entrance. This he presently found, and stood observing it, with scowling interest, in the growing darkness. He had recognized the lovers down there. They were both youngsters of his parish. He made a detached mental resolve to talk tomorrow to the girl’s mother. These flirtations during the hay-harvest often led to trouble.