Wood and Stone. John Cowper Powys
the top was flat and circular; not unlike, in its smooth level surface, the top of the mountain in that very Transfiguration picture which was now overshadowing his letter to his enchantress. In the centre of this open space rose the thin Thyrsus-shaped tower. He advanced to the eastern edge of the hill and looked down over the wide-spread landscape.
The flat elm-fringed meadows of the great mid-Somerset plain stretched softly away, till they lost themselves in a purple mist. Never had the formidable outline of the Leonian promontory looked more emphatic and sinister than it looked in this deepening twilight. The sky above it was of a pale green tint, flecked here and there by feathery streaks of carmine. The whole sky-dome was still lit by the pallid reflection of the dead sunset; and on the far northern horizon, where the Mendip hills rise above the plain, a livid whitish glimmer touched the rim of an enormous range of sombre clouds.
The priest stood, hushed, and motionless as a statue, contemplating this suggestive panorama. But little of its transparent beauty passed the surface of his consciousness. He was absorbed, rapt, intent. But the cause of his abstraction was not the diaphanous air-spaces above him or the dark earth beneath him; it was the pouring of the waves of divine love through his inmost being; it was his fusion with that great Spirit of the Beyond which renders its votaries independent of space and time.
After long exquisite moments of this high exultation, his mind gradually resumed its normal functioning. A cynical interpreter of this sublime experience would doubtless have attributed the whole phenomenon to a natural reaction of the priest, back to his habitual moral temper, from the turbulent perturbations of the recent days. Would such a one have found it a mere coincidence that at the moment of regaining his natural vision the clergyman’s attention was arrested by the slow passage of a huge white cloud towards the Leonian promontory, a cloud that assumed, as it moved, gigantic and almost human lineaments?
Coincidence or not, Clavering’s attention was not allowed to remain fixed upon this interesting spectacle. It seemed as though his return to ordinary human consciousness was destined to be attended by the reappearance of ordinary humanity. He perceived in the great sloping field on the eastern side of the mount the white figure of a woman, walking alone. For the moment his heart stood still; but a second glance reassured him. He knew that figure, even in the dying light. It was little Vennie Seldom. Simultaneously with this discovery he was suddenly aware that he was no longer the only frequenter of the woody solitudes of Nevilton Hill. On a sort of terrace, about a hundred yards below him, there suddenly moved into sight a boy and a girl, walking closely interlinked and whispering softly. Acting mechanically, and as if impelled by an impulse from an external power, he sank down upon his knees and spied upon them. They too slipped into a semi-recumbent posture, apparently upon the branches of a fallen tree, and proceeded, in blissful unconsciousness of any spectator, to indulge in a long and passionate embrace. From where he crouched Clavering could actually discern these innocents’ kisses, and catch the little pathetic murmurings of their amorous happiness. His heart beat wildly and strangely. In his fingers he clutched great handfuls of earth. His thoughts played him satyrish and fantastic tricks. Suddenly he leapt to his feet and stumbled away, like an animal that has been wounded. He encountered the Thyrsus-shaped tower—that queer fancy of eighteenth century leisure—and beat with his hands upon its hard smooth surface. After a second or two, however, he recovered his self-control; and to afford some excuse to his own mind for his mad behaviour, he walked deliberately round the edifice, looking for its entrance. This he presently found, and stood observing it, with scowling interest, in the growing darkness. He had recognized the lovers down there. They were both youngsters of his parish. He made a detached mental resolve to talk tomorrow to the girl’s mother. These flirtations during the hay-harvest often led to trouble.
There was just enough light left for him to remark some obscure lettering above the little locked door of this fanciful erection. It annoyed him that he could not read it. With trembling hand he fumbled in his pocket—produced a match-box and lit a match. There was no difficulty now in reading what it had been the humour of some eighteenth century Seldom to have carved on this site of the discovery of the Holy Rood. “Carpe Diem” he spelt out, before the flutterings of an agitated moth extinguished the light he held. This then was the oracle he had climbed the sacred Mount to hear!
With quick steps, steps over which his mind seemed no longer to have control, he returned to his point of observation. The boy and girl had disappeared, but Vennie Seldom was still visible in her white dress, pacing up and down the meadow. What was she doing there?—he wondered. Did she often slip away, after the little formal dinner with her mother, and wander at large through the evening shadows? An unaccountable rage against her besieged his heart. He felt he should soon begin to hate her if he watched her much longer; so, with a more collected and calm step and a sigh that rose from the depths of his soul he moved away to where the path descended.
As it happened, however, the path he had to follow now, for it was too dark to return as he had come, emerged, after many windings round the circle of the hill, precisely into the very field, in which Vennie was walking. He moved straight towards her. She gave a little start when she saw him, but waited passively, in that patient drooping pose so natural to her, till he was by her side.
“You too,” she said, touching his hand, “feel the necessity of being alone a little while before the day ends. I always do. Mother sometimes protests. But it is no good. There are certain little pleasures that we have a right to enjoy—haven’t we?”
They moved together along the base of the hill following its circuit in the northerly direction. Clavering felt as though, after a backward plunge into the Inferno, he had encountered a reproachful angel of light. He half expected her to say to him, in the crushing austerity of Beatrice, “Lift up your chin and answer me face to face.” The gentle power of her pure spirit over him was so persuasive that in the after-ebb of this second turbulent reaction he could not refrain from striking the confessional note.
“I wish I were as good as you, Miss Seldom,” he said. “I fear the power of evil in me goes beyond anything you could possibly conceive.”
“There are few things I cannot conceive, Mr. Clavering,” the girl answered, with that helpless droop of her little head that had so winning a pathos. “We people who live such secluded lives are not as ignorant of the great storms as you may imagine.”
Clavering’s voice shook as he responded to this.
“I wish I could talk quite freely to you. This convention that forbids friends such as we are from being frank with one another, seems to me sometimes an invention of the devil.”
The girl lifted her head. He could not see in the darkness that had now fallen upon them, how her mouth quivered and her cheeks grew scarlet.
“I think I can guess at what is worrying you, my friend,” she murmured gently.
He trembled from head to foot with a curious shame. “You think it is about Gladys Romer,” he burst out. “Well it is! I find her one of the greatest difficulties I have ever had in my life.”
“I am afraid,” said Vennie timidly, “she intends to be a difficulty to you. It is wrong to say so, but I have always been suspicious of her motives in this desire to enter our church.”
“God knows what her motives are!” sighed the priest, “I only know she makes it as hard for me as she can.”
As soon as he had uttered these words a queer observing sense of having been treacherous to Gladys rose in his heart. Once more he had to suppress an emotion of hatred for the little saint by his side.
“I know,” murmured Vennie, “I know. She tries to play upon your good-nature. She tries to make you over-fond of her. I suppose”—she paused for a moment—“I suppose she is like that. It is not her fault. It is her—her character. She has a mad craving for admiration and is ready to play it off on anybody.”
“It makes it very difficult to help her,” said the priest evasively.
Vennie peered anxiously at his face. “It is not as though she really was fond of you,” she boldly added. “I doubt whether she is fond of anyone. She loves