“I know, because I saw them!” shouted Clavering, closing the door with irritable violence.
“Goodness me!” muttered Mrs. Fringe, returning to her kitchen, “if the poor young man knew what this parish was really like, he wouldn’t talk so freely about ‘seeing’ people!”
Left to himself, Clavering moved uneasily round his room, taking down first one book and then another, and looking anxiously at his shelves as if seeking something from them more efficient than eloquent words.
“As soon as she comes,” he said to himself, “I shall take her across to the church.”
He had not long to wait. The door at the end of the garden-path clicked. Light-tripping steps followed, and Gladys Romer’s well-known figure made itself visible through the open window. He hastened out to meet her, hoping to forestall the hospitable Mrs. Fringe. In this, however, he was unsuccessful. His housekeeper was already in the porch, taking from the girl her parasol and gloves. How these little things, these chance-thrown little things, always intervene between our good resolutions and their accomplishment! He ought to have been ready in his garden, on the watch for her. Surely he had not intentionally remained in his room? No, it was the fault of Mrs. Fringe; of Mrs. Fringe and her stories about Jimmy Pringle and God. He wished that “a roaring cloud of fire” would rise between him and this voluptuous temptress. But probably, priest though he was, he lacked the faith of that ancient reprobate. He stood aside to let her enter. The words “I think it would be better if we went over to the church,” stuck, unuttered, to the roof of his mouth. She held out her white ungloved hand, and then, as soon as the door was closed, began very deliberately removing her hat.
He stood before her smiling, that rather inept smile, which indicates the complete paralysis of every faculty, except the faculty of admiration. He could hardly now suggest a move to the church. He could not trouble her to re-assume that charming hat. Besides, what reason could he give? He did, however, give a somewhat ambiguous reason for following out Vennie’s heroic plan on another—a different—occasion. In the tone we use when allaying the pricks of conscience by tacitly treating that sacred monitor as if its intelligence were of an inferior order: “One of these days,” he said, “we must have our lesson in the church. It would be so nice and cool there, wouldn’t it?”
There was a scent of burning weeds in the front-room of the old Vicarage, when master and neophyte sat down together, at the round oak table, before the extended works of Pusey and Newman. Sombre were the bindings of these repositories of orthodoxy, but the pleasant afternoon sun streamed wantonly over them and illumined their gloom.
Gladys had seated herself so that the light fell caressingly upon her yellow hair and deepened into exquisite attractiveness the soft shadows of her throat and neck. Her arms were sleeveless; and as she leaned them against the table, their whiteness and roundness were enhanced by the warm glow.
The priest spoke in a low monotonous voice, explaining doctrines, elucidating mysteries, and emphasizing moral lessons. He spoke of baptism. He described the manner in which the Church had appropriated to her own purpose so many ancient pagan customs. He showed how the immemorial heathen usages of “immersion” and “ablution” had become, in her hands, wonderful and suggestive symbols of the purifying power of the nobler elements. He used words that he had come, by frequent repetition, to know by heart. In order that he might point out to her passages in his authors which lent themselves to the subject, he brought his chair round to her side.