Wood and Stone (52 page)

She made a struggle once to see the girl and to talk to her. But she came away from the hurried
interview as perplexed and troubled in her mind as ever. Lacrima had maintained an obstinate and
impenetrable
reserve. Vennie made up her mind that she would postpone for the present her own religious revolt, and devote herself to keeping a close and
careful
watch upon events in Nevilton.

Mr. Clavering's present attitude rendered her
profoundly
unhappy. The pathetic overtures she had made to him recently, with a desperate hope of
renewing
their friendship on a basis that would be unaffected even by her change of creed, had seemed entirely unremarked by the absorbed clergyman. She could not help brooding sometimes, with a feeling of wretched humiliation, over the brusqueness and rudeness which characterized his manner towards her.

She recalled, more often than the priest would have cared to have known, that pursuit of theirs, of the demented Andersen, and how in his annoyance and confusion he had behaved to her in a fashion not only rough but positively unkind.

It was clear that he was growing more and more slavishly infatuated with Gladys; and Vennie could only pray that the days might pass quickly and the grotesque blasphemy of the confirmation service be carried through and done with, so that the evil spell of her presence should be lifted and broken.

Prayer indeed—poor little forlorn saint!—was all that was left to her, outside her mother's exacting affection, and she made a constant and desperate use of it. Only the little painted wooden image, in her white-washed room, a pathetic reproduction of the famous Nuremburg Madonna, could have betrayed how long were the hours in which she gave herself
up to these passionate appeals. She prayed for Clavering in that shy heart-breaking manner—never whispering his name, even to the ears of Our Lady, but always calling him “he” and “him”—in which girls are inclined to pray for the man to whom they have sacrificed their peace. She prayed desperately for Lacrima, that at the last moment, contrary to all hope, some intervention might arrive.

Thus it came about, that beneath the roofs of Nevilton—for neither James Andersen nor Mr. Quincunx were “praying men”—only one voice was lifted up, the voice of the last of the old race of the place's rulers, to protest against the flowing forward to its fatal end, of this evil tide.

Nevertheless, things moved steadily and irresistibly on; and it seemed as though it were as improbable that those shimmering mists which every evening crept up the sides of Leo's Hill should endure the heat of the August noons, as that the prayers of this frail child should change the course of ordained destiny.

If none but her little painted Madonna knew how passionate were Vennie's spiritual struggles; not even that other Vennie, of the long-buried royal court, whose mournful nun's eyes looked out upon the great entrance-hall, knew what turbulent thoughts and anxieties possessed the soul of Gladys Romer.

Was Mr. Taxater right in the formidable hint he had given the young stone-carver, as to the result of his amour with his employer's daughter? Was Gladys not only the actual mistress of Luke, but the prospective mother of a child of their strange love?

Whatever were the fair-haired girl's thoughts and
apprehensions, she kept them rigidly to herself; and not even Lacrima, in her wildest imagination, ever dreamed that things had gone as far as that. If it had chanced to be, as Mr. Taxater supposed, and as Luke seemed willing to admit, Gladys was
apparently
relying upon some vague accident in the course of events, or upon some hidden scheme of her own, to escape the exposure which the truth of such a supposition seemed to render inevitable.

The fact remained that she let matters drift on, and continued to prepare—in her own fashion—not only for her reception into the Church of England, but for her marriage to the wealthy American.

Dangelis was continually engaged now in running backwards and forwards to town on business connected with his marriage; and with a view to making these trips more pleasantly and conveniently he had
acquired
a smart touring-car of his own, which he soon found himself able to drive without assistance. The pleasure of these excursions, leading him, in delicious solitude, through so many unvisited country places and along such historic roads, had for the moment distracted his attention from his art.

He rarely took Gladys with him; partly because he regarded himself as still but a learner in the science of driving, but more because he felt, at this critical moment of his life, an extraordinary desire to be alone with his own thoughts. Most of these thoughts, it is true, were such as it would not have hurt the feelings of his fiancée to have surprised in their passage through his mind; but not quite all of them. Ever since the incident of Auber Lake, an incident which threw the character of his betrothed into no very
charming light, Dangelis had had his moments of uneasiness and misgiving. He could not altogether conceal from himself that his attraction to Gladys was rather of a physical than of a spiritual, or even of a psychic nature.

Once or twice, while the noble expanses of
Salisbury
Plain or the New Forest thrilled him with a pure dilation of soul, as he swept along in the clear air, he was on the verge of turning his car straight to the harbour of Southampton and taking the first boat that offered itself, bound East, West, North or South—it mattered nothing the direction!—so that an impassable gulf of free sea-water should separate him forever from the hot fields and woods of Nevilton.

Once, when reaching a cross-road point, where the name of the famous harbour stared at him from a sign-post, he had even gone so far as to deviate to the extent of several miles from his normal road. But that intolerable craving for the girl's soft-clinging arms and supple body, with which she had at last succeeded in poisoning the freedom of his mind, drew him back with the force of a magnet.

The day at length approached, when, on the festival of his favorite saint, Mr. Clavering was to perform the ceremony, to which he had looked
forward
so long and with such varied feelings. It was Saturday, and on the following morning, in a service especially arranged to take place privately, between early celebration and ordinary matins, Gladys was to be baptized.

Dangelis had suddenly declared his intention of making his escape from a proceeding which to his American mind seemed entirely uncalled for, and to
his pagan humour seemed not a little grotesque. He had decided to start, immediately after breakfast, and motor to London, this time by way of
Trowbridge
and Westbury.

The confirmation ceremony, for reasons connected with the convenience of the Lord Bishop, had been finally fixed for the ensuing Wednesday, so that only two days were destined to elapse between the girl's reception into the Church, and her admission to its most sacred rites. Dangelis was sufficiently a heathen to desire to be absent from this event also, though he had promised Mr. Clavering to support his
betrothed
on the occasion of her first Communion on the following Sunday, which would be their last Sunday together as unwedded lovers.

On this occasion, Gladys persuaded him to let her ride by his side a few miles along the Yeoborough road. They had just reached the bridge across the railway-line, about a mile and a half from the village, when they caught sight of Mr. John Goring, returning from an early visit to the local market.

Gladys made the artist stop the car, and she got out to speak to her uncle. After a minute or two's conversation, she informed Dangelis that she would return with Mr. Goring by the field-path, which left the road at that point and followed the track of the railway. The American, obedient to her wish,. set his car in motion, and waving her a gay good-bye,
disappeared
swiftly round an adjacent corner.

Gladys and her uncle proceeded to walk slowly homeward, across the meadows; neither of them, however, paying much attention to the charm of the way. In vain from the marshy hollows between their
path and the metal track, certain brilliant clumps of ragged robin and red rattle signalled to them to pause and admire. Gladys and Mr. Goring strolled forward, past these allurements, with a superb
absorption
in their own interests.

“I can't think, uncle,” Gladys was saying, “how it is that you can go on in the way you're doing; you, a properly engaged person, and not seeing
anything
of your young lady?”

The farmer laughed. “Ah! my dear, but what matter? I shall see her soon enough; all I want to, maybe.”

“But most engaged people like to see a little of one another before they're married, don't they, uncle? I know Ralph would be quite mad if he couldn't
see
me
.”

“But, my pretty, this is quite a different case. When Bert and I”—he spoke of the idiot as if they had been comrades, instead of master and servant—“have bought a new load of lop-ears, we never tease 'em or fret 'em before we get 'em home.”

“But Lacrima isn't a rabbit!” cried Gladys
impatiently
; “she's a girl like me, and wants what all girls want, to be petted and spoilt a little before she's plunged into marriage.”

“She didn't strike me as wanting anything of that kind, when I made up to her in our parlour,” replied Mr. Goring.

“Oh you dear old stupid!” cried his niece, “can't you understand that's what we're all like? We all put on airs, and have fancies, and look cross; but we want to be petted all the same. We want it all the more!”

“I reckon I'd better leave well alone all the same, just at present,” observed the farmer. “If I was to go stroking her and making up to her, while she's on the road, maybe when we got her into the hutch she'd bite like a weasel.”

“She'd never really bite!” retorted his companion. “You don't know her as well as I do. I tell you, uncle, she's got no more spirit than a tame pigeon.”

“I'm not so sure of that,” said the farmer.

Gladys flicked the grass impatiently with the end of her parasol.

“You may take my word for it, uncle,” she
continued
. “The whole thing's put on. It's all
affectation
and nonsense. Do you think she'd have agreed to marry you if she wasn't ready for a little fun? Of course she's ready! She's only waiting for you to begin. It makes it more exciting for her, when she cries out and looks injured. That's the only reason why she does it. Lots of girls are like that, you know!”

“Are they, my pretty, are they?' Tis difficult to tell that kind, maybe, from the other kind. But I'm not a man for too much of these fancy ways.”

“You're not drawing back, uncle, are you?” cried Gladys, in considerable alarm.

“God darn me, no!” replied the farmer. “I'm going to carry this business through. Don't you fuss yourself. Only I like doing these things in my own way—dost understand me, my dear?—in my own way; and then, if so be they go wrong, I can't put the blame on no one else.”

“I wonder you aren't more keen, uncle,” began Gladys insinuatingly, following another track, “to
see more of a pretty girl you're just going to marry. I don't believe you half know how pretty she is! I wish you could see her doing her hair in the morning.”

“I shall see her, soon enough, my lass; don't worry,” replied the farmer.

“I should so love to see you give her one kiss,” murmured Gladys. “Of course, she'd struggle and make a fuss, but she'd really be enjoying it all the time.”

“Maybe she would, my pretty, and maybe she wouldn't. I'm not one that likes hearing either rabbits or maidens start the squealing game. It fair gives me the shivers. Bert, he can stand it, but I never could. It's nature, I suppose. A man can't change his nature no more than a cow nor a horse.”

“I can't understand you, uncle,” observed Gladys. “If I were in your place, I'm sure I shouldn't be satisfied without at least kissing the girl I was going to marry. I'd find some way of getting round her, however sulky she was. Oh, I'm sure you don't half know how nice Lacrima is to kiss!”

“I suppose she isn't so mighty different, come to that,” replied the farmer, “than any other maid. I don't mind if I give
you
a kiss, my beauty!” he added, encircling his niece with an affectionate
embrace
and kissing her flushed cheek. “There—there! Best let well alone, sweetheart, and leave your old uncle to manage his own little affairs according to his own fashion!”

But Gladys was not so easily put off. She had recourse to her fertile imagination.

“You should have heard what she said to me the
other night, uncle. You know the way girls talk—or you ought to, anyhow! She said she hoped you'd go on being the same simple fool, after you were married. She said she'd find it mighty easy to twist you round her finger. ‘Why,' she said, ‘I can do what I like with him now. He treats me as if I were a high-born lady and he were a mere common man. I believe he's downright afraid of me!' That's the sort of things she says about you, uncle. She thinks in her heart that you're just a fool, a simple frightened fool!”

“Darn her! she does, does she?” cried Mr. Goring, touched at last by the serpent's tongue. “She thinks I'm a fool, does she? Well! Let her have her laugh. Them laughs best as laughs last, in my thinking!”

“Yes, she thinks you're a great big silly fool, uncle. Of course its all pretence, her talk about wanting you to be like that; but that's what she thinks you are. What she'd really like—only she doesn't say so, even to me—would be for you to catch her suddenly round the waist and kiss her on the mouth, and laugh at her pretendings. I expect she's waiting to give you a chance to do something of that sort; only you don't come near her. Oh, she must think you're a monstrous fool! She must chuckle to herself to think what a fool you are.”