Vennie remained puzzled and silent. She felt a vague, remote dissatisfaction with her friend’s argument; but she found it difficult to answer. She glanced sadly up at the cone-shaped mount above them, and wished that in place of that heathen-looking tower, she could see her angel with the silver sword.
“It is all very confusing,” she murmured at last, “and I shall be glad when I am out of it.”
The theologian laid his hand—the hand that ought to have belonged to a prince of the church—upon his companion’s.
“You will be out of it soon, child,” he said, “and then you will help us by your prayers. We who are the temporal monks of the great struggle are bound to soil our hands in the dust of the arena. But your prayers, and the prayers of many like you, cleanse them continually from such unhappy stains.”
Even at the moment he was uttering these profound words, Mr. Taxater was wondering in his heart how far his friend’s inclination to a convent depended upon an impulse much more natural and feminine than the desire to avoid the Mr. Romers and Mr. Wones of this poor world. He made a second rather brutal experiment.
“We must renounce,” he said, “all these plausible poetic attempts to be wiser than God’s Holy Church. That is one of the faults into which our worthy Clavering falls.”
Once more the tell-tale scarlet rushed into the cheeks of Nevilton’s little nun.
“Yes,” she answered, stooping to pluck a spray of wild basil, “I know.”
They opened the gate, and very soon found themselves at the entrance to Athelston church. Late summer flowers, planted in rows on each side of the path, met them with a ravishing fragrance. Stocks and sweet-williams grew freely among the graves; and tall standard roses held up the wealth of their second blossoming, like chalices full of red and white wine. Heavy-winged brown butterflies fluttered over the grass, like the earth-drawn spirits, Vennie thought, of such among the dead as were loath to leave the scene of their earthly pleasures. Mounted upon a step-ladder in the porch was the figure of James Andersen, absorbed in removing the moss and lichen from the carving in the central arch.
He came down at once when he perceived their approach. “Look!” he said, with a wave of his hand, “you can see what it is now.”