“Please get the key,” she said, “and let us walk once round.”
He was compelled to obey her, and knocking at the door of the clerk’s cottage aroused that astonished and scandalized official into throwing the object required out of his bedroom window. Once inside the churchyard however, the strange and mystical power of the spot brought his mood into nearer conformity with his companion’s.
They stopped, as everyone who visits Nevilton churchyard is induced to stop, before the extraordinary tomb of Gideon and Naomi Andersen. The thing had been constructed from the eccentric old carver’s own design, and had proved one of the keenest pleasures of his last hours.
Like the whimsical poet Donne, he had derived a sardonic and not altogether holy delight in contemplating before his end the actual slab of earthly consistence that was to make his bodily resurrection so emphatically miraculous. Clavering and Vennie stood for several minutes in mute contemplation before this strange monument. It was composed of a huge, solid block of Leonian stone, carved at the top into the likeness of an enormous human skull, and ornamented, below the skull, by a deeply cut cross surrounded by a circle. This last addition gave to the sacred symbol within it a certain heathen and ungodly look, making it seem as though it were no cross at all, but a pagan hieroglyph from some remote unconsecrated antiquity. The girl laid her fragile hand on the monstrous image of death, which the gloom around them made all the more threatening.
“It is wonderful,” she said, “how the power of Christ can change even the darkest objects into beauty. I like to think of Him striking His hand straight through the clumsy half-laws of Man and Nature, and holding out to us the promise of things far beyond all this morbid dissolution.”
“You are right, my friend,” answered the priest.
“I think the world is really a dark and dreadful place,” she went on. “I cannot help saying so. I know there are people who only see its beauty and joy. I cannot feel like that. If it wasn’t for Him I should be utterly miserable. I think I should go mad. There is too much unhappiness — too much to be borne! But this strong hand of His, struck clean down to us from outside the whole wretched confusion, — I cling to that; and it saves me. I know there are lots of happy people, but I cannot forget the others! I think of them in the night. I think of them always. They are so many — so many!”
“Dear child!” murmured the priest, his interlude of casual frivolity melting away like mist under the flame of her conviction.
“Do you think,” she continued, “that if we were able to hear the weeping of all those who suffer and have suffered since the beginning of the world, we could endure the idea of going on living? It would be too much! The burden of those tears would darken the sun and hide the moon. It is only His presence in the midst of us, — His presence, coming in from outside, that makes it possible for us to endure and have patience.”
“Yes, He must come in from outside,” murmured the priest, “or He cannot help us. He must be able to break every law and custom and rule of nature and man. He must strike at the whole miserable entanglement from outside it — from outside it!”
Clavering’s voice rose almost to a shout as he uttered these last words. He felt as though he were refuting in one tremendous cry of passionate certainty all those “modernistic” theories with which he loved sometimes to play. He was completely under Vennie’s influence now.
“And we must help Him,” said the girl, “by entering into His Sacrifice. Only by sacrifice — by the sacrifice of everything — can we enable Him to work the miracle which He would accomplish!”
Clavering could do nothing but echo her words.
“The sacrifice of everything,” he whispered, and abstractedly laid his hand upon the image of death carved by the old artist. Moved apparently by an unexpected impulse, Vennie seized, with her own, the hand thus extended.
“I have thought,” she cried, “of a way out of your difficulty. Give her her lessons in the church! That will not hurt her feelings, and it will save you. It will prevent her from distracting your mind, and it will concentrate her attention upon your teaching. It will save you both!”
Clavering held the little hand, thus innocently given him, tenderly and solemnly in both of his.
“You are right, my friend,” he said, and then, gravely and emphatically as if repeating a vow, — “I will take her in the church. That will settle everything.”
Vennie seemed thrilled with spiritual joy at his acquiescence in her happy inspiration. She walked so rapidly as they recrossed the churchyard that he could hardly keep pace with her. She seemed to long to escape, to the solitude of her own home, of her own room, in order to give full vent to her feelings. He locked the gate of the porch behind them, and put the key in his pocket. Very quickly and in complete silence they made their way up the road to the entrance of the vicarage garden.
Here they separated, with one more significant and solemn hand-clasp. It was as if the spirit of St. Catharine herself was in the girl, so ethereal did she look, so transported by unearthly emotion, as the gate swung behind her.
As for the vicar of Nevilton, he strode back impetuously to his own house, and there, from its place beneath the print of the transfiguration, he took the letter, and tore it into many pieces; but he tore it with a different intention from that which, an hour before, had ruled his brain; and the sleep which awaited him, as soon as his head touched his pillow, was the soundest and sweetest he had known since first he came to the village.
CHAPTER IX THE MYTHOLOGY OF POWER
IT was late in the afternoon of the day following the events just described. Mrs. Fringe was passing in and out of Clavering’s sitting-room making the removal of his tea an opportunity for interminable discourse.
“They say Eliza Wotnot’s had a bad week of it with one thing and another. They say she be as yellow as a lemon-pip in her body, as you might call it, and grey as ash-heaps in her old face. I never cared for the woman myself, and I don’t gather as she was desperate liked in the village, but a Christian’s a Christian when they be laid low in the Lord’s pleasure, though they be as surly-tongued as Satan.”
“I know, I know,” said the clergyman impatiently.
“They say Mr. Taxater sits up with her night after night as if he was a trained nurse. Why he don’t have a nurse I can’t think, ’cept it be some papist practice. The poor gentleman will be getting woeful thin, if this goes on. He’s not one for losing his sleep and his regular meals.”
“Sally Birch is doing all that for him, Mrs. Fringe,” said Clavering. “I have seen to it myself.”
“Sally Birch knows as much about cooking a gentleman’s meals as my Lottie, and that’s not saying a great deal.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Fringe, thank you,” said Clavering. “You need not move the table.”
“Oh, of course,’ tis Miss Gladys’ lesson-day. They say she’s given young Mr. Ilminster the go-by, sir. ’Tis strange and wonderful how some people be made by the holy Lord to have their whole blessed pleasure in this world. Providence do love the ones as loves themselves, and those that seeks what they want shall find it! I expect, between ourselves, sir, the young lady have got someone else in her eye. They tell me some great thundering swell from London is staying in the House.”