In her secret heart Gladys hardly understood a single word. The phrase “immersion,” whenever it occurred, gave her an irresistible desire to laugh. She could not help thinking of her favourite round pond. The pond set her thinking of Lacrima and how amusing it was to frighten her. But this lesson with the young clergyman was even more amusing. She felt instinctively that it was upon herself his attention rested, whatever mysterious words might pass his lips.
Once, as they were leaning together over the “Development of Christian Doctrine,” and he was enlarging upon the gradual evolution of one sacred implication after another, she let her arm slide lightly over the back of his hand; and a savage thrill of triumph rose in her heart, as she felt an answering magnetic shiver run through his whole frame.
“The worship of the Body of our Saviour,” he said — using his own words as a shield against her—“allows no subterfuges, no reserves. It gathers to itself, as it sweeps down the ages, every emotion, every ardour, every passion of man. It appropriates all that is noble in these things to its own high purpose, and it makes even of the evil in them a means to yet more subtle good.”
As he spoke, with an imperceptible gesture of liberation he rose from his seat by her side and set himself to pace the room. The struggle he was making caused his fingers to clench and re-clench themselves in the palms of his hands, as though he were squeezing the perfume from handfuls of scented leaves.
The high-spirited girl knew by instinct the suffering she was causing, but she did not yield to any ridiculous pity. She only felt the necessity of holding him yet more firmly. So she too rose from her chair, and, slipping softly to the window, seated herself sideways upon its ledge. Balanced charmingly here — like some wood-nymph stolen from the forest to tease the solitude of some luckless hermit — she stretched one arm out of the window, and pulling towards her a delicate branch of yellow roses, pressed it against her breast.
The pose of her figure, as she balanced herself thus, was one of provoking attractiveness, and with a furtive look of feline patience in her half-shut eyes she waited while it threw its spell over him.
The scent of burning weeds floated into the room. Clavering’s thoughts whirled to and fro in his head like whipped chaff. “I must go on speaking,” he thought; “and I must not look at her. If I look at her I am lost.” He paced the room like a caged animal. His soul cried out within him to be liberated from the body of this death. He thought of the strange tombstone of Gideon Andersen, and wished he too were buried under it, and free forever!
“Yet is it not my duty to look at her?” the devil in his heart whispered. “How can I teach her, how can I influence her for good, if I do not see the effect of my words? Is it not an insult to the Master Himself, and His Divine power, to be thus cowardly and afraid?”
His steps faltered and he leant against the table.
“Christ,” he found his lips repeating, “is the explanation of all mysteries. He is the secret root of all natural impulses in us. All emerge from Him and all return to Him. He is to us what their ancient god Pan was to the Greeks. He is in a true sense our All—for in him is all we are, all we have, and all we hope. All our passions are His. Touched by Him, their true originator, they lose their dross, are purged of their evil, and give forth sweet-smelling, sweet-breathing — yellow roses!”
He had not intended to say “yellow roses.” The sentence had rounded itself off so, apart from his conscious will.
The girl gravely indicated that she heard him; and then smiled dreamily, acquiescingly — the sort of smile that yields to a spiritual idea, as if it were a physical caress.
The scent of burning weeds continued to float in through the window. “Oh, it has gone!” she cried suddenly, as, released from her fingers, the branch swung back to its place against the sand-stone wall.
“I must have it again,” she added, bending her supple body backwards. She made one or two ineffectual efforts and then gave up, panting. “I can’t reach it,” she said. “But go on, Mr. Clavering. I can listen to you like this. It is so nice out here.”
Strange unfathomable thoughts surged up in the depths of Clavering’s soul. He found himself wishing that he had authority over her, that he might tame her wilful spirit, and lay her under the yoke of some austere penance. Why was she free to provoke him thus, with her merciless fragility? The madness she was arousing grew steadily upon him. He stumbled awkwardly round the edge of the table and approached her. The scent of burning weeds became yet more emphatic. To make his nearness to her less obvious, and out of a queer mechanical instinct to allay his own conscience, he continued his spiritual admonitions, even when he was quite close — even when he could have touched her with his hand. And it would be so easy to touch her! The playful perilousness of her position in the window made such a movement natural, justifiable, almost conventional.
“The true doctrine of the Incarnation,” his lips repeated, “is not that something contrary to nature has happened; it is that the innermost secret of Nature has been revealed. And this secret,”—here his fingers closed feverishly on the casement-latch—“is identical with the force that swings the furthest star, and drives the sap through the veins of all living things.”
It would have been of considerable interest to a student of religious psychology — like Mr. Taxater for example — to observe how the phrases that mechanically passed Clavering’s lips at this juncture were all phrases drawn from the works of rationalistic modernists. He had recently been reading the charming and subtle essays of Father Mervyn; and the soft and melodious harmonies of that clever theologian’s thought had accumulated in some hidden corner of his brain. The authentic religious emotion in him being superseded by a more powerful impulse, his mind mechanically reverted to the large, dim regions of mystical speculation. A certain instinct in him — the instinct of his clamorous senses — made him careful to blur, confuse, and keep far back, that lovely and terrible “Power from Outside,” the hem of Whose garments he had clung to, the night before. “Christ,” he went on, “is, as it were, the centre and pivot of the whole universe, and every revelation granted to us of His nature is a revelation from the system of things itself. I want you to understand that our true attitude towards this great mystery, ought to be the attitude of scientific explorers, who in searching for hidden causes have come upon the one, the unique Cause.”
The girl’s only indication that she embraced the significance of these solemn words was to make a sudden gliding serpentine movement which brought her into a position more easy to be retained, and yet one that made it still more unnatural that he should refuse her some kind of playful and affectionate support.
The poor priest’s heart beat tumultuously. He began to lose all consciousness of everything except his propinquity to his provoker. He was aware with appalling distinctness of the precise texture of the light frock that she wore. It was of a soft fawn colour, crossed by wavy lines of a darker tint. He watched the way these wavy lines followed the curves of her figure. They began at her side, and ended where her skirt hung loose over her little swinging ankles. He wished these lines had sloped upwards, instead of downwards; then it would have been so much easier for him to follow the argument of the “Development of Christian Doctrine.”
Still that scent of burning weeds! Why must his neighbours set fire to their rubbish, on this particular afternoon?
With a fierce mental effort he tried to suppress the thought that those voluptuous lips only waited for him to overcome his ridiculous scruples. Why must she wait like this so pitilessly passive, laying all the burden of the struggle upon him? If she would only make a little — a very little — movement, his conscience would be able to recover its equilibrium, whatever happened. He tried to unmagnetize her attraction, by visualizing the fact that under this desirable form — so near his touch — lurked nothing but that bleak, bare, last outline of mortality, to which all flesh must come. He tried to see her forehead, her closed eyes, her parted lips, as they would look if resting in a coffin. Like his monkish predecessors in the world-old struggle against Satan, he sought to save himself by clutching fast to the grinning skull.