The candidate placed a carefully selected piece of fruit in his mouth, and called to his little boy, who was scratching his initials with a knife upon the base of the tower.
“He will be beaten all the same,” he said. “He is bound to be beaten. The stars in their courses must fight against a man like that. I feel it in the air; in the earth; in these beautiful trees. I feel it everywhere. He has challenged stronger powers than you or me. He has challenged the majesty of God Himself. I’ll give you the right”—he went on in a voice that mechanically assumed a preacher’s tone—“to call me a liar and a false prophet, if by this time, in ten days, the oppressor of the poor does not find himself crushed and beaten!”
“I am afraid right and wrong are more strangely mixed in this world than all that, Mr. Wone,” Vennie found herself saying, with a little weary glance over the wide sun-bathed valleys extended at their feet.
“Pardon me, pardon me, young lady,” cried the Candidate. “In this great cause there can be no doubt, no question, no ambiguity. The evolution of the human race has reached a point when the will of God must reveal itself in the triumph of love and liberty. Nothing else matters. All turns upon this. That is why I feel that my campaign is more than a political struggle. It is a religious struggle, and on our side are the great moral forces that uphold the world!”
Vennie’s exhausted nerves completely broke down upon this.
“Shall we go?” she said, touching her companion on the sleeve.
Clavering nodded, and bade the melon-eater “good afternoon,” with a brusque gesture.
As they went off, he turned on his heel. “The will of God, Mr. Wone, is only to be found in the obedient reception of His sacraments.”
The Christian candidate opened his mouth with amazement. “Those young people,” he thought to himself, “are up to no good. They’ll end by becoming papists, if they go on like this. It’s extraordinary that the human mind should actually prefer slavery to freedom!”
Meanwhile the man whose mysterious evasion of his pursuers had resulted in this disconcerting encounter was already well-advanced on his way towards the Wild Pine ridge. He had, as a matter of fact, crossed the field between the West drive and the Vicarage-garden, and skirting the orchards below Nevilton House, had plunged into the park.