There was just enough light left for him to remark some obscure lettering above the little locked door of this fanciful erection. It annoyed him that he could not read it. With trembling hand he fumbled in his pocket — produced a match-box and lit a match. There was no difficulty now in reading what it had been the humour of some eighteenth century Seldom to have carved on this site of the discovery of the Holy Rood. “Carpe Diem” he spelt out, before the flutterings of an agitated moth extinguished the light he held. This then was the oracle he had climbed the sacred Mount to hear!
With quick steps, steps over which his mind seemed no longer to have control, he returned to his point of observation. The boy and girl had disappeared, but Vennie Seldom was still visible in her white dress, pacing up and down the meadow. What was she doing there? — he wondered. Did she often slip away, after the little formal dinner with her mother, and wander at large through the evening shadows? An unaccountable rage against her beseiged his heart. He felt he should soon begin to hate her if he watched her much longer; so, with a more collected and calm step and a sigh that rose from the depths of his soul he moved away to where the path descended.
As it happened, however, the path he had to follow now, for it was too dark to return as he had come, emerged, after many windings round the circle of the hill, precisely into the very field, in which Vennie was walking. He moved straight towards her. She gave a little start when she saw him, but waited passively, in that patient drooping pose so natural to her, till he was by her side.
“You too,” she said, touching his hand, “feel the necessity of being alone a little while before the day ends. I always do. Mother sometimes protests. But it is no good. There are certain little pleasures that we have a right to enjoy — haven’t we?”
They moved together along the base of the hill following its circuit in the northerly direction. Clavering felt as though, after a backward plunge into the Inferno, he had encountered a reproachful angel of light. He half expected her to say to him, in the crushing austerity of Beatrice, “Lift up your chin and answer me face to face.” The gentle power of her pure spirit over him was so persuasive that in the after-ebb of this second turbulent reaction he could not refrain from striking the confessional note.
“I wish I were as good as you, Miss Seldom,” he said. “I fear the power of evil in me goes beyond anything you could possibly conceive.”
“There are few things I cannot conceive, Mr. Clavering,” the girl answered, with that helpless droop of her little head that had so winning a pathos. “We people who live such secluded lives are not as ignorant of the great storms as you may imagine.”
Clavering’s voice shook as he responded to this.
“I wish I could talk quite freely to you. This convention that forbids friends such as we are from being frank with one another, seems to me sometimes an invention of the devil.”
The girl lifted her head. He could not see in the darkness that had now fallen upon them, how her mouth quivered and her cheeks grew scarlet.
“I think I can guess at what is worrying you, my friend,” she murmured gently.
He trembled from head to foot with a curious shame. “You think it is about Gladys Romer,” he burst out. “Well it is! I find her one of the greatest difficulties I have ever had in my life.”
“I am afraid,” said Vennie timidly, “she intends to be a difficulty to you. It is wrong to say so, but I have always been suspicious of her motives in this desire to enter our church,”
“God knows what her motives are!” sighed the priest, “I only know she makes it as hard for me as she can.”
As soon as he had uttered these words a queer observing sense of having been treacherous to Gladys rose in his heart. Once more he had to suppress an emotion of hatred for the little saint by his side.
“I know,” murmured Vennie, “I know. She tries to play upon your good-nature. She tries to make you over-fond of her. I suppose”—she paused for a moment—“I suppose she is like that. It is not her fault. It is her — her character. She has a mad craving for admiration and is ready to play it off on anybody.”
“It makes it very difficult to help her,” said the priest evasively.
Vennie peered anxiously at his face. “It is not as though she really was fond of you” she boldly added. “I doubt whether she is fond of anyone. She loves troubling people’s minds and making them unhappy.”
“Don’t mistake me, Miss Seldom,” cried Clavering. “I am not in the least sentimental about her — it is only — only”—Vennie smoothed his path for him.
“It is only that she makes it impossible for you to teach her,” she hazarded, following his lead. “I know something of that difficulty myself. These wayward pleasure-loving people make it very hard for us all sometimes.”
Mr. Clavering shook his stick defiantly into the darkness, whether as a movement directed against the powers of evil or against the powers of good, he would himself have found it hard to say. Queer thoughts of a humorous frivolity passed through his mind. Something in the girl’s grave tone had an irritating effect upon him. It is always a little annoying, even to the best of men, to feel themselves being guided and directed by women, unless they are in love with them. Clavering was certainly not in love with Vennie; and though in his emotional agitation he had gone so far in confiding in her, he was by no means unconscious of something incongruous and even ridiculous in the situation. This queer new frivolity in him, which now peered forth from some twisted corner of his nature, like a rat out of a hole, found this whole interview intolerably absurd. He suddenly experienced the sensation of being led along at Vennie’s side like a convicted school-boy. He found himself rebelling against all women in his heart, both good and bad, and recalling, humorously and sadly, the old sweet scandalous attitude of contempt for the whole sex, of his irresponsible Cambridge days. Perhaps, dimly and unconsciously, he was reacting now, after all this interval, to the subtle influence of Mr. Taxater. He knew perfectly well that the very idea of a man — not to speak of a priest — confiding his amorous weaknesses to a woman, would have excited that epicurean sage to voluble fury. Everything that was mediæval and monkish in him rose up too, in support of this interior outburst of Rabelaisean spleen.
It would be interesting to know if Vennie had any inkling, as she walked in the darkness by his side, of this new and unexpected veering of his mood. Certainly she refrained from pressing him for any further confessions. Perhaps with the genuine clairvoyance of a saint she was conscious of her danger. At any rate she began speaking to him of herself, of her difficulties with her mother and her mother’s friends, of her desire to be of more use to Lacrima Traffio, and of the obstacles in the way of that.
Conversing with friendly familiarity on these less poignant topics they arrived at last at the gates of the Priory farm and the entrance to the church. Mr. Clavering was proceeding to escort her home, when she suddenly stopped in the road, and said in a quick hurried whisper, “I should dearly love to walk once round the churchyard before I go back.”
The cheerful light from the windows of the Goat and Boy showed, as it shone upon his face, his surprise as well as his disinclination. The truth is, that by a subtle reversion of logic he had now reached the idea that it was at once absurd and unkind to send that letter to Gladys. He was trembling to tear it in pieces, and burn the pieces in his kitchen-fire! Vennie however, did not look at his face. She looked at the solemn tower of St. Catharine’s church.