“Shall you be in to lunch?” she asked, as they parted on the roadside.
“No; not till evening. I think I shall walk over to Lewstone, to see about some books. I will make inquiries on the way, in case Edith has gone in that direction.”
Lewstone was a small county town, seven miles off, where there was a library, a newspaper, and a great brewery. The way to it lay past Foxglove Manor. Santley did not care to tell his sister that he had an appointment with Mrs. Haldane for that morning. He knew that Miss Santley regarded with some anxiety her brother’s relations with the handsome lady of the Manor. Much as she admired him, and great as was her faith in his spiritual purity, she knew him sufficiently well to be aware that his weak point was his admiration for beauty in the opposite sex. Not for a moment did she dream—indeed, she would have supposed the idea as almost blasphemous—that that admiration was not perfectly harmless and honourable; but it led him, she thought, to take delight in feminine society generally, and to overlook the attractions of the woman she wanted him to marry. He would marry some day—it was inevitable; and she had made up her mind that he was to marry Edith, who was her friend, and would doubtless allow her to keep her place at the Vicarage, whereas another woman a stranger, might take possession of him and resent all sisterly interference.
“Shall you call at the Manor as you pass?” she inquired.
“I think so; I am not quite sure.”
“Perhaps it will be better,” she said, thoughtfully. “They may know something about Edith.”
The sun was now high up in the heavens, but deeply veiled in wintry cloud. It was a dark, dismal day-darkness in the sky and whiteness on the ground. The road which led to the Manor was unusually cheerless and dismal, and few people were abroad. Before long Santley came into the shadow of the Manor woods, which skirted one side of the highway for several miles. It was a gloomy walk.
Nevertheless, Santley soon forgot his anxiety, in the prospect of a meeting with Ellen Haldane. He had been greatly troubled the previous Christmas Day, by the fact that she had not put in an appearance at church; but her message, making the appointment, which had been duly conveyed to him by Baptisto had filled him with eager expectation. It was the first time she had actually desired him to come to her, and his hopes rose high. Perhaps his devotion had at last moved her heart; perhaps she had at last discovered that true happiness was only to be found, not with her heretic husband, but with the man whom she had loved when a girl. In the eyes of the world, there might be wickedness in tempting her from her wifely duty; but surely, in the eyes of heaven, there was no great sin. By living on with an unbeliever, she was in danger of losing her soul alive. The man was admittedly an atheist, an enemy of the Church, and she was wretched in his society, without sympathy, without conservation, without religion. And on one point the clergyman’s mind was now made up. If Ellen was willing, he would take her with him to some foreign land, where he might labour in some way useful to the Lord, and forget all the petty humiliations of an English village. There might be, there would be, a scandal; but what need they care, when they were far away? In any case, scandal was likely to come, now that Edith Dove was in so sad a predicament. No; after all, he would not marry Edith. She was a foolish girl, and would soon find a more suitable husband; and whether or not, he had long ago discovered that they were not at all suited to each other.
Thus musing, Santley drew nearer and nearer to the Manor gates.
From the glimpse we have given of his thoughts, it may be gathered that the man’s moral deterioration was at last complete. What had been at first a mere religious amorousness, a soft sensuous delight in female sympathy and female beauty, much the same as that which filled him when the organ played, and the scented incense rose, and the dainty congregation fluttered and flushed beneath him, had gradually developed, through self-indulgence, into a determined and uncontrollable sensuality. The devil, with a bait of warm nakedness, had hooked him fast. And already, in his own heart, he knew that he was lost; and so long as he reached the summit of his desires, he did not care. One sign of his degeneration was unmistakable: he had lost for ever his old faith in the chastity and purity of women. He could remember the time, not long past, when a beautiful woman was to him a spiritual thing, something sanctified, to be approached with awe—such as fills the worshipper who gazes on the Madonna of some great painter. Now he often found himself gazing on the Madonnas in his own study, with a satyr’s delight in their plumpness, their naked arms, their swelling breasts. His nature was subdued to what it worked in, like the dyer’s hand. His easy conquest over Edith Dove, whose sin was in loving so madly and so much, had degraded his whole nature. Once having snapped the chain of conventional morality, which is the only band to bind such men as this, he was reckless and exultant; and to possess Ellen Haldane, in her superb beauty and glowing womanhood, was his daily thought and his nightly dream.