The champion of the papacy smiled. “You are too hard on our poor Candidate, Vennie. There’s more of the sheep than the wolf about our worthy Wone, after all. But you touch upon a large question, my dear; a large question. That great circle, whose centre is everywhere and its circumference nowhere, as St. Thomas says, must needs include many ways to the fulfilment of His ends, which are mysterious to us. God is sometimes pleased to use the machinations of the most evil men, even their sensual passions, and their abominable vices, to bring about the fulfilment of His will. And we, dear child,” he added after a pause, “must follow God’s methods. That is why the church has always condemned as a dangerous heresy that Tolstoyan doctrine of submission to evil. We must never submit to evil! Our duty is to use against it every weapon the world offers. Weapons that in themselves are unholy, become holy — nay! even sacred — when used in the cause of God and His church.”
Vennie remained puzzled and silent. She felt a vague, remote dissatisfaction with her friend’s argument; but she found it difficult to answer. She glanced sadly up at the cone-shaped mount above them, and wished that in place of that heathen-looking tower, she could see her angel with the silver sword.
“It is all very confusing,” she murmured at last, “and I shall be glad when I am out of it.”
The theologian laid his hand — the hand that ought to have belonged to a prince of the church — upon his companion’s.
“You will be out of it soon, child,” he said, “and then you will help us by your prayers. We who are the temporal monks of the great struggle are bound to soil our hands in the dust of the arena. But your prayers, and the prayers of many like you, cleanse them continually from such unhappy stains.”
Even at the moment he was uttering these profound words, Mr. Taxater was wondering in his heart how far his friend’s inclination to a convent depended upon an impulse much more natural and feminine than the desire to avoid the Mr. Romers and Mr. Wones of this poor world. He made a second rather brutal experiment.
“We must renounce,” he said, “all these plausible poetic attempts to be wiser than God’s Holy Church. That is one of the faults into which our worthy Clavering falls.”
Once more the tell-tale scarlet rushed into the cheeks of Nevilton’s little nun.
“Yes,” she answered, stooping to pluck a spray of wild basil, “I know.”
They opened the gate, and very soon found themselves at the entrance to Athelston church. Late summer flowers, planted in rows on each side of the path, met them with a ravishing fragrance. Stocks and sweet-williams grew freely among the graves; and tall standard roses held up the wealth of their second blossoming, like chalices full of red and white wine. Heavy-winged brown butterflies fluttered over the grass, like the earth-drawn spirits, Vennie thought, of such among the dead as were loath to leave the scene of their earthly pleasures. Mounted upon a step-ladder in the porch wars the figure of James Andersen, absorbed in removing the moss and lichen from the carving in the central arch.
He came down at once when he perceived their approach. “Look!” he said, with a wave of his hand, “you can see what it is now.”
Obedient to his words they both gazed curiously at the quaint early Norman relief. It represented a centaur, with a drawn bow and arrow, aiming at a retreating lion, which was sneaking off in humorously depicted terror.
“That is King Stephen,” said the stone-carver, pointing to the centaur. “And the beast he is aiming at is Queen Maud. Stephen’s zodiacal sign was Sagittarius, and the woman’s was Leo. Hence the arrow he is aiming.”
Vennie’s mind, reverting to her fanciful distinction between the two eminences, and woman-like, associating everything she saw with the persons of her own drama, at once began to discern, between the retreating animal and the fair-haired daughter of the owner of Leo’s Hill, a queer and grotesque resemblance.
She heaved a deep sigh. What would she not give to see her poor priest-centaur aim such an arrow of triumph at the heart of his insidious temptress!
“I think you have made them stand out wonderfully clear,” she said gently. “Hasn’t he, Mr. Taxater?”
The stone-carver threw down the instrument he was using, and folded his arms. His dark, foreign-looking countenance wore a very curious expression.
“I wanted to finish this job,” he remarked, in a slow deep voice, “before I turn into stone myself.”
“Come, come, my friend,” said Mr. Taxater, while Vennie stared in speechless alarm at the carver’s face. “You mustn’t talk like that! You people get a wrong perspective in things. Remember, this is no longer the Stone Age. The power of stone was broken once for all, when certain women of Palestine found that stone, which we’ve all heard of, lifted out of its place! Since then it is to wood — the wood out of which His cross was made — not to stone, that we must look.”
The carver raised his long arm and pointed in the direction of Leo’s Hill. “Twenty years,” he said, “have I been working on this stone. I used to despise such work. Then I grew to care for it. Then there came a change. I loved the work! It was the only thing I loved. I loved to feel the stone under my hands, and to watch it yielding to my tools. I think the soul of it must have passed into my soul. It seemed to know me; to respond to me. We became like lovers, the stone and I!” He laughed an uneasy, disconcerting laugh; and went on.
“But that is not all. Another change came. She came into my life. I needn’t tell you, Miss Seldom, who I mean. You know well enough. These things cannot be hidden. Nothing can be hidden that happens here! She came and was kind to me. She is kind to me still. But they have got hold of her. She can’t resist them. Why she can’t, I cannot say; but it seems impossible. She talks to me like a person in a dream. They’re going to marry her to that brute Goring. You’ve heard that I suppose? But of course it’s nothing to you! Why should it be?”
He paused, and Vennie interrupted him sharply. “It is a great deal to us, Mr. Andersen! Every cruel thing that is done in a place affects everyone who lives in the place. If Mr. Taxater and — and Mr. Clavering — thought that Miss Traffio was being driven into this marriage, I’m sure they would not allow it! They would do something — everything — to stop such an outrage. Wouldn’t you, Mr. Taxater?”
“But surely, Vennie,” said the theologian, “you have heard something of this? You can’t be quite so oblivious, as all that, to the village scandal?”
He spoke with a certain annoyance as people are apt to do, when some disagreeable abuse, which they have sought to forget, is brought vividly before them.
Vennie, too, became irritable. The question of Lacrima’s marriage had more than once given her conscience a sharp stab. “I think it is a shame to us all,” she cried vehemently, “that this should be allowed. It is only lately that I’ve heard rumours of it, and I took them for mere gossip. It’s been on my mind.” She looked almost sternly at the theologian. “I meant to talk to you about it. But other things came between. I haven’t seen Lacrima for several weeks. Surely, if it is as Mr. Andersen says, something ought to be done! It is a horrible, perfectly horrible idea!” She covered her face with her hands as if to shut out some unbearable vision.
James Andersen watched them both intently, leaning against the wood-work of the church-door.