“O he is with us—heart and soul with us!” repeated the triumphant Nonconformist. “I am glad I went to him. Many of us would have been too narrow-minded to enter his house, seeing he is a papist. But I am free from such bigotry.”
“And you hope to convert Mr. Clavering, too?”
“Certainly; that is what I intend. But I believe our excellent vicar needs no conversion. I have often heard him speak—at the Social Meeting, you know—and I assure you he is a true friend of the working-classes. I only wish more of his kind were like him.”
“Mr. Clavering is too changeable,” remarked Vennie, hardly knowing what she said. “His moods alter from day to day.”
“But you yourself, dear Miss Seldom,” the candidate went on. “You yourself are, I think, entirely with us?”
“I really don’t know,” she answered. “My interests do not lie in these directions. I sometimes doubt whether it greatly matters, one way or the other.”
“Whether it matters?” cried Mr. Wone, inhaling the night-air with a sigh of protestation. “Surely, you do not take that indifferent and thoughtless attitude? A young lady of your education—of your religious feeling! Surely, you must feel that it matters profoundly! As we walk here together, through this embalmed air, full of so many agreeable scents, surely you must feel that a good and great God is making his power known at last, known and respected, through the poor means of our consecrated efforts? Forgive my speaking so freely to one of your position; but it seems to me that you must—you at least—be on our side, simply because what we are aiming at is in such complete harmony with this wonderful Love of God, diffused through all things.”
It is impossible to describe the shrinking aversion which these words produced upon the agitated nerves of Vennie. Something about the Christian candidate seemed to affect her with an actual sense of physical nausea. She could have screamed, to feel the man so near her—the dragging sound of his feet on the road, the way he breathed and cleared his throat, the manner in which his hat was tilted, all combined to irritate her unendurably. She found herself fantastically thinking how much sooner she would have married even the egregious John Goring—as Lacrima was going to do—than such a one as this. What a pass Nevilton had brought itself to—when the choice lay between a Mr. Romer and a Mr. Wone!
An overpowering wave of disgust with the whole human race swept over her—what wretched creatures they all were—every one of them! She mentally resolved that nothing—nothing on earth—should stop her entering a convent. The man talked of agreeable odours on the air. The air was poisoned, tainted, infected! It choked her to breathe it.