Wood and Stone (59 page)

She was still in sight, having got no further than
the entrance to Splash Lane, when Clavering, who had changed his surplice with lightning rapidity, issued forth into the street. In a flash he remarked the direction of her steps, and impelled by an impulse of mad jealousy, began blindly following her.

Not a few heads were inquisitively turned, and not a few whispering comments were exchanged, as first the squire’s daughter, and then the young
clergyman
, made their way through the street.

As soon as Gladys had crossed the railroad and struck out at a sharp pace up the slope of the meadow Clavering realized that wherever she intended to go it was not to the house in which lay James Andersen. Torn with intolerable jealousy, and anxious, at all risks, to satisfy his mind, one way or the other, as to her relations with Luke, he deliberately decided to follow the girl to whatever hoped-for encounter, or carefully plotted assignation, she was now directing her steps. How true, how exactly true, to his
interpretation
of Luke’s character, was this astutely
arranged
meeting, on the very day after his brother’s death!

At the top of the station-field Gladys paused for a moment, and, turning round, contemplated the little dwelling which was now a house of the dead.

Luckily for Mr. Clavering, this movement of hers coincided with his arrival at the thick-set hedge
separating
the field from the metal track. He waited at the turn-stile until, her abstraction over, she passed into the lane.

All the way to Hullaway Mr. Clavering followed her, hurriedly concealing himself when there seemed the least danger of discovery, and at certain critical
moments making slight deviations from the direct pursuit.

As she drew near the churchyard the girl showed evident signs of nervousness and apprehension, walking more slowly, and looking about her, and
sometimes
even pausing as if to take breath and collect, her thoughts.

It was fortunate for her pursuer at this final
moment
of the chase that the row of colossal elms, of which mention has been made, interposed themselves between the two. Clavering was thus able to approach quite close to the girl before she reached her
destination
, for, making use of these rugged trunks, as an Indian scout might have done, he was almost within touch of her by the time she clambered over the railings.

The savage bite of insane jealousy drove from the poor priest’s head any thought of how grotesque he must have appeared,—could any eyes but those of field-mice and starlings have observed him,—with his shiny black frock-coat and broad-brimmed hat,
peeping
and spying in the track of this fair young person.

With a countenance convulsed with helpless fury he watched the girl walk slowly and timidly up to Luke’s side, and saw the stone-carver recognize her and rise to greet her. He could not catch their words, though he strained his ears to do so, but their gestures and attitudes were quite distinguishable.

It was, indeed, little wonder that the agitated priest could not overhear what Gladys said, for the extreme nervousness under which she laboured made her first utterances so broken and low that even her interlocutor could scarcely follow them.

She laid a pleading hand on Luke’s arm. “I was unhappy,” she murmured, “I was unhappy, and I wanted to tell you. I’ve been thinking about you all day. I heard of his death quite early in the morning. Luke,—you’re not angry with me any more, are you? I’d have done anything that this shouldn’t have happened!”

Luke looked at her searchingly, but made, at the same time, an impatient movement of his arm, so that the hand she had placed upon his sleeve fell to her side.

“Let’s get away from here, Luke,” she implored; “anywhere,—across the fields,—I told them at home I might go for a walk after church. It’ll be all right. No one will know.”

“Across the fields—eh?” replied the stone-carver. “Well—I don’t mind. What do you say to a walk to Rogerstown? I haven’t been there since I went with James, and there’ll be a moon to get home by.” He looked at her intently, with a certain bitter
humour
lurking in the curve of his lips.

Under ordinary circumstances it was with the utmost difficulty that Gladys could be persuaded to walk anywhere. Her lethargic nature detested that kind of exercise. He was amazed at the alacrity with which she accepted the offer.

Her eyes quite lit up. “I’d love that, Luke, I’d simply love it!” she cried eagerly. “Let’s start! I’ll walk as fast as you like—and I don’t care how late we are!”

They moved out of the churchyard together, by the gate opening on the green.

Luke was interested, but not in the least touched,
by the girl’s chastened and submissive manner. His suggestion about Rogerstown was really more of a sort of test than anything else, to see just how far this clinging passivity of hers would really go.

As they followed the lane leading out of one of the side-alleys of the village towards the Roman Road, the stone-carver could not help indulging in a certain amount of silent psychological analysis in regard to this change of heart in his fair mistress. He seemed to get a vision of the great world-passions, sweeping at random through the universe, and bending the most obsinate wills to their caprice.

On the one hand, he thought, there is that absurd Mr. Clavering,—simple, pure-minded, a veritable monk of God,—driven almost insane with Desire, and on the other, here is Gladys,—naturally as selfish and frivolous a young pagan as one could wish to amuse oneself with,—driven almost insane with self-oblivious love! They were like earthquakes and avalanches, like whirlpools and water-spouts, he thought, these great world-passions! They could overwhelm all the good in one person, and all the evil in another, with the same sublime indifference, and in themselves—remain non-moral, superhuman, elemental!

In the light of this vision, Luke could not resist a hurried mental survey of the various figures in his personal drama. He wondered how far his own love for James could be said to belong to this formidable category. No! He supposed that both he and Mr. Quincunx were too self-possessed, or too epicurean, ever to be thus swept out of their path. His brother was clearly a victim of these erotic Valkyries, so was
Ninsy Lintot, and in a lesser degree, he shrewdly surmised, young Philip Wone. He himself, he
supposed
, was, in these things, amourous and vicious rather than passionate. So he had always imagined Gladys to have been. But Gladys had been as
completely
swept out of the shallows of her viciousness, by this overpowering obsession, as Mr. Clavering had been swept out of the shallows of his puritanism, by the same power. If that fantastic theory of Vennie Seldom’s about the age-long struggle between the two Hills—between the stone of the one and the wood of the other—had any germ of truth in it, it was clear that these elemental passions belonged to a region of activity remote from either, and as indifferent to both, as the great zodiacal signs were indifferent to the solar planets.

Luke had just arrived at this philosophical, or, if the reader pleases, mystical conclusion, when they emerged upon the Roman Road.

Ascending an abrupt hill, the last eminence between Hullaway and far-distant ranges, they found
themselves
looking down over an immense melancholy plain, in the centre of which, on the banks of a muddy river, stood the ancient Roman stronghold of
Rogerstown
, the birth-place, so Luke always loved to
remind
himself, of the famous monkish scientist Roger Bacon.

The sun had already disappeared, and the dark line of the Mendip Hills on the northern horizon were wrapped in a thick, purple haze.

The plain they looked down upon was cut into two equal segments by the straight white road they were to follow,—if Luke was serious in his intention,—
and all along the edges of the road, and spreading in transverse lines across the level fields, were deep, reedy ditches, bordered in places by pollard
willows
.

The whole plain, subject, in autumn and winter, to devastating floods, was really a sort of inlet or estuary of the great Somersetshire marshes, lying further west, which are collectively known as Sedgemoor.

Gladys could not refrain from giving vent to a slight movement of instinctive reluctance, when she saw how close the night was upon them, and how long the road seemed, but she submissively suppressed any word of protest, when, with a silent touch upon her arm, her companion led her forward, down the shadowy incline.

Their figures were still visible—two dark isolated forms upon the pale roadway—when, hot and panting, Mr. Clavering arrived at the same hill-top. With a sigh of profound relief he recognized that he had not lost his fugitives. The only question was, where were they going, and for what purpose? He remained for several minutes gloomy and watchful at his post of observation.

They were now nearly half a mile across the plain, and their receding figures had already begun to grow indistinct in the twilight, when Mr. Clavering saw them suddenly leave the road and debouch to the left. “Ah!” he muttered to himself, “They’re going home by Hullaway Chase!”

This Hullaway Chase was a rough tract of
pasturage
a little to the east of the level flats, and raised slightly above them. From its southern extremity a
long narrow lane, skirting the outlying cottages of the village, led straight across the intervening uplands to Nevilton Park. It was clearly towards this lane, by a not much frequented foot-path over the ditches, that Gladys and Luke were proceeding.

To anyone as well acquainted as Clavering was with the general outline of the country the route that the lovers—or whatever their curious relation justifies us in calling them—must needs take, to return to Nevilton, was now as clearly marked as if it were indicated on a map.

“Curse him!” muttered the priest, “I hope he’s not going to drown her in those brooks!”

He let his gaze wander across the level expanse at his feet. How could he get close to them, he
wondered
, so as to catch even a stray sentence or two of what they were saying.

His passion had reached such a point of insanity that he longed to be transformed into one of those dark-winged rooks that now in a thin melancholy line were flying over their heads, so that he might swoop down above them and follow them—follow them—every step of the way! He was like a man drawn to the edge of a precipice and magnetized by the very danger of the abyss. To be near them, to listen to what they said,—the craving for that possessed him with a fixed and obstinate hunger!

Suddenly he shook his cane in the air and almost leaped for joy. He remembered the existence, at the spot where the lane they were seeking began, of a large dilapidated barn, used, by the yeoman-farmer to whom the Chase belonged, as a rough store-house for cattle-food. The spot was so attractive a
resting-place 
for persons tired with walking, that it seemed as though it would be a strange chance indeed if the two wanderers did not take advantage of it. The point was, could he forestall them and arrive there first?

He surveyed the landscape around him with an anxious eye. It seemed as though by following the ridge of the hill upon which he stood, and crossing every obstacle that intervened, he ought to be able to do so—and to do so without losing sight of the two companions, as they unsuspiciously threaded their way over the flats.

Having made his resolution, he lost no time in putting it into action. He clambered without
difficulty
into the meadow on his right, and breaking, in his excitement, into a run, he forced his way through three successive bramble-hedges, and as many dew-drenched turnip-fields, without the least regard to the effect of this procedure upon his Sunday attire.

Every now and then, as the contours of the ground served, he caught a glimpse of the figures in the valley below, and the sight hastened the impetuosity of his speed. Once he felt sure he observed them pause and exchange an embrace, but this may have been an illusive mirage created by the mad fumes of the tempestuous jealousy which kept mounting higher and higher into his head. Recklessly and blindly he rushed on, performing feats of agility and endurance, such as in normal hours would have been utterly impossible.

From the moment he decided upon this desperate undertaking, to the moment, when, hot, breathless
and dishevelled, he reached his destination, only a brief quarter of an hour had elapsed.

He entered the barn leaving the door wide-open behind him. In its interior tightly packed bundles of dark-coloured hay rose up almost to the roof. The floor was littered with straw and newly-cut clover.

On one side of the barn, beneath the piled-up hay, was a large shelving heap of threshed oats. Here,
obviously
, was the sort of place, if the lovers paused at this spot at all, where they would be tempted to recline.

Directly opposite these oats, in the portion of the shed that was most in shadow, Clavering observed a narrow slit between the hay-bundles. He
approached
this aperture and tried to wedge himself into it. The protruding stalks of the hay pricked his hands and face, and the dust choked him.

With angry coughs and splutters, and with sundry savage expletives by no means suitable to a priest of the church, he at length succeeded in firmly imbedding himself in this impenetrable retreat. He worked
himself
so far into the shadow, that not the most cautious eye could have discerned his presence. His sole danger lay in the fact that the dust might very easily give him an irresistible fit of sneezing. With the cessation of his violent struggles, however, this danger seemed to diminish; for the dust subsided as quickly as it had been raised, and otherwise, as he leant luxuriously back upon his warm-scented support, his position was by no means uncomfortable.

Meanwhile Luke and Gladys were slowly and
deliberately
crossing the darkening water-meadows.