She tried to make her tone arch rather than threatening; it was her habit to coax men ratherthan to coerce them. She might have known that no woman, not even Clare, could coax Lovel when he was in the opposite humour, but the manner was too habitual for her to discard. “Won’t you get off your horse,” she said, “and sit down on the grass beside me while I say what I have to say to you?”
She sighted the hay-stack, out of which a section had already been cut, and thought in her cheap and common mind that if only she could get him to rest there with her, leaning back against the warm dusty hay, she would find greater ease in bringing him round to her point of view, for she was a staunch believer in the influence of physical comfort upon the tempers of men. “See, here’s a nice place,” she invited him, but with a cold patience he surveyed her from the height of his horse and begged that she would say her say with the utmost possible brevity and allow him to pass on.
The corners of her mouth began to go down ugly and sulky, as the first obstacle thwarted her on the path which had hitherto been so surprisingly smooth, but she hastily lifted them again, for it would not do to let ill-humour creep into their relations.
“Oh, well, I’ll begin,” she said as brightly as she could, “and if you feel like coming down from your grandeur half-way through, just stop me and I’ll give you a breathing-space.”
Lovel waited gravely, the shadow of his hat heavy across his eyes.
Now that Daisy was face to face with him, she was at a loss how to begin; she could not just blurt out her story and ask him to marry her; and anyway, he made her feel so insignificant, sitting there on a great horse like an idol, or like one of those soldiers she’d seen pictures of, in a steel helmet and a leather jacket and an upright lance in his hand. She told him this, and he listened unbending, silhouetted for her against the sky, mollified neither by her archness nor by her genuine confusion. “Oh, well, if you will have it up there,” she said at last in despair, “I’ll have to shout it up to you, but surely a poor girl never told a story in such a gawk of a position.”
She began then, but, disconcerted, she began as she had not meant to begin, by saying “Do you recollect the Scouring this year?” and then hastily correcting herself, “No, no, I don’t mean that at all, what I mean is, your young brother Olver....”
“No, I don’t mean that either,” she said, seeing that his expression had become, if anything, a little sterner at the mention of Olver’s name. “It’s like this,” she said desperately, “I’m over to Starvecrow now, at Mr. Calladine’s, but it’s a question how long I’ll be able to remain in the place. And I thought that you, Nick Lovel, being a decent man in spite of all your pride, would be the last one not to help a poor girl when she had no one but you to turn to, and afraid to face her own parents, and not so muchas a married sister she could go to, or a penny of money saved, seeing Mr. Calladine’s is my first place and Dad never paid me for the work I did on the farm, but a bit now and then to buy myself a pair of new shoes or a ribbon, and anything I had went on muslin for a dress to the Scouring, which I made myself instead of taking it to the dressmaker in Marlborough same as Annabel Blagdon. And it isn’t for Mr. Calladine’s getting married that I do be afraid of leaving the place, but for my own trouble, and that’s a thing that Mrs. Quince is bound to find out sooner or later, and the only wonder is she hasn’t started asking questions already, but now every time she opens her mouth I’m feared it’s coming that I do feel my cheeks going all patchy, red and white, same as sometimes in the spring ’mong boys and girls. But I knew if I came to you, you would see it in the Christian light, and I could give in my notice and say I was leaving to get married, and ’twould be all envy and bless-you-Daisy, and Come-and-see-us-when-you’re-a-married-woman, instead of Out-you-go-you-wanton-sheltering-behind-a-proper-gentleman’s-name.”
“What in God’s name are you trying to tell me?” said Lovel.
“I’m trying to tell you I’m going to have a baby,” replied Daisy, beginning to cry in good earnest.
“Well, that’s no affair of mine; what is it you want of me?” said Lovel. “If it’s money youwant, you’re welcome to anything I can spare,—if you will only let me go my ways now,” he added inaudibly.
“What good would money be to me,” sobbed Daisy, “when I haven’t a home to go to or a man to give me his name? My father’d turn me out, I know he would,—he wouldn’t give me a corner of his barn or a truss of his hay for my baby to be born on, he wouldn’t, and my mother wouldn’t give me my own long-clothes to clothe its nakedness.”
“You must get the fellow to marry you,—is he a native of these parts?” asked Lovel, perfunctorily, aware only of the overwhelming oppression of his own spirit and his urgent longing for solitude.
A cunning look came into her eyes when he mentioned marriage, and for the first time she recovered a little of her direction, which she had lost in her floundering to and fro.
“Ah, so you think he ought to marry me? Well, so do I,” she said. “You’d think ill of a man who could let a girl go down and her child be nameless save for the name of a woman, which isn’t a name at all?”
“Yes, yes,” said Lovel, fretting to be at an end.
“Supposing I told you,” she proceeded, slowly now and with caution, “that he couldn’t marry? wasn’t fit to marry?”
“Not fit to marry? if he’s fit to be the fatherof your child he’s surely fit enough to marry,” said Lovel.
“Well, but there might be other reasons,—ill-health, mightn’t there? or he might be married already, let’s say....”
“In any case, it doesn’t concern me. I’m sorry,” said Lovel, “but you’re talking to me of things you’d better be talking of to another man.”
“Are you so sure of that?” she asked, coming up to him and putting her hand on the neck of his horse. She was aware that her eyes must be all puffy and blubbered after her recent crying, but the crisis being at hand now, for good or for bad, she was not going to delay it until another occasion when she should have had a better chance of setting herself to rights. “Are you so sure of that?” she asked, in a tone she tried to make impressive.
“Sure?” echoed Lovel, looking at her in disgust at the implication that he himself could ever have touched her. He even gathered up his reins as a sign that he definitely wanted her to release him now.
“Not so fast,” she said again. “There’s such a thing as responsibility for other’s actions, whether you like it or no. And it’s a responsibility I’m not in a position to let you off. I have to think of my baby as well as of myself, you see, and so long as he gets the name of Lovel I’m willing to overlook him not gettingit from the proper quarter. Though why I talk of my baby as he, I’m sure I don’t know,” she added with a giggle, “for it’s even chances it’ll be a girl.”
“What in the devil’s name are you saying?” ejaculated Lovel contemptuously. “Name of Lovel? is your trouble sending you out of your senses?”
“No, it’s brought me to them,” she said tartly. “I may have been a fool in the past, and taken my pleasures too light where I found them, but that’s over now, and for the future I’m going to look after myself and my baby. And if you don’t take the proper steps, and the only decent steps, and the steps I want, there’s not a soul in Wilts and Somerset but shall know the scandal of that daft beast you let roam about at his own free-will.”
“What ...” began Lovel, aghast.
“Yes,” she cried shrilly. “’Tis all very well for you to be sitting up there so grand on your horse, with your eyes looking out over your nose, while your brother Olver who ought to be in Marlborough lock-up—and so ought you too, you poacher, for that matter—skulks about in dark barns taking advantage like the beast he is of poor girls on a scatter of straw. And I saw you, yes, I saw you, not only coming home from Marlborough fair, but often, quite the gentleman with Miss Warrener, and where had you two been, I should like to know? and it made me so mad seeing you that I didn’t care whatany one done to me, whether it was Olver Lovel or another. I was crying after you all the time, if you want to know, so as I scarcely noticed a thing. And now, since evenyou’dscarcely see me married to that hoddy-doddy, you’ll just have to marry me yourself, and pass off your nephew as your son for the rest of our life, and have only yourself to thank. And you needn’t think you’ll be losing your Miss Warrener any the more, for she’s been promised to Mr. Calladine this many a week back.”
“Promised to Mr. Calladine?” said Lovel, starting. “How do you know that?”
“Every one in the village knows it but you,” she jeered, “and if you wasn’t too proud to consort with your equals a bit more you’d know it too. Ask Martha Sparrow or William Baskett or any of them. Ask Mrs. Quince over to Starvecrow. Ask her if the house isn’t being done up all grand against the lady coming. Ride over and see if Mr. Calladine isn’t picking up a patch of garden with his own hands, forsooth. Ask parson if he hasn’t had notice yet to call the banns. We’ll have ours called the same Sunday. ‘Richard Calladine and Clare Warrener, Nicholas Lovel and Margaret Morland, all of this parish.’ That’ll be a fine sit-up-and-take-notice for the congregation.”
“I must speak to Olver first,” said Lovel dully.
“Then you’ll do it?” urged Daisy. “If you find that what I’ve told you’s true, you’ll do it?”
“Oh, yes, I’ll marry you,” said Lovel, tonelessly. “But I’ll speak to Olver first,” he added, “and you’ll see the doctor.”
“Oh, there’s no mistake, you’ll find,” said Daisy, bursting into a hysterical laugh. “And I’m not so bad as you think me, Lovel. I’m thrifty in a house, and I’ll make you a good wife, and I’ve loved you truly this long time, as well you know.”
“For God’s sake, spare me that at least, for God’s sake spare me that,” said Lovel in a voice of such anguish that even Daisy in the midst of her relief and jubilation was struck silent and ashamed.
The gossip of Mrs. Quince and Martha Sparrow had not taken long to reach the Waggon of Hay through the medium of John Sparrow. Blowing his old frame out with importance, he had hastened off to this favourite resort with the intelligence as soon as his daughter had whispered it to him, fearful lest any might have forestalled him, and he be greeted with derision as a bringer of stale news. But he need not have feared: he was the first direct link between the Waggon of Hay and Starvecrow, and it was to a gratifying inquisitive audience that, after due mystification, he finally made his announcement. Mr. Calladine to marry Miss Clare! Well, here was good health to them both, and a strapping posterity, and a bumper went round. The topic took its place in popularity with thecontinuance of the dry weather (which was spoiling the roots), and the imminent arrival of a travelling circus, already advertised on hand-bills and posters all over the village. John Sparrow sat in the chimney corner with his pipe and his mug, and by recurrent reminders kept the fact green in the memory of his companions that, but for his connection with the Manor House, they would not yet have been in possession of the news. (And indeed, had they best known it, they were in possession of it even before the two persons chiefly concerned.) Every fresh arrival had to be told—“Well, now, Job, or Luke, or William, what sort of surprise do you think we have got for you?”—and laughter of the most elementary sort stirred the cobwebs about the rafters at every, “Well, to be sure, now, who would have thought it?” and the expressions of good-will to Miss Clare were many, though it was wished that she might have chosen a man who was a bit more of a man than Mr. Calladine.
One listener there was, who had received the information with anxiety, though without raising his voice in comment. Olver Lovel, for some days now, had haunted the Waggon of Hay, tolerated though not encouraged by the rustics. So long as he did no harm, made no noise, did not get drunk, and got in nobody’s way, they would not object to his slinking round, surreptitiously finishing up the dregs out of other people’s glasses. They were a little surprised to see him there, for they knew that in the pasthis brother (who, let them do him justice, saw to it that the zany gave as little annoyance as possible), had put the Waggon strictly out of bounds for Olver. Olver knew it too; he knew also, what they did not know, that the embargo had never been removed, and that the Waggon was as much out of bounds now as it had ever been; but Nicco had been in so strange a mood of late—so strange, inattentive, and lenient a mood—that Olver was ready to run the risk of taking advantage. He did not know what had come over Nicco. Money and food seemed plentiful, although Nicco rarely went out poaching now; he would break into the savings-box and not seem to mind; he had even given Olver, on a bare request, enough money to buy a new smock; and their mother was allowed the matches at night now, for all the world as though Nicco no longer cared whether the house was burnt down about their ears or not. Olver had rejoiced greatly in this new order of things. Day by day he had grown more daring; little acts of insubordination passing unnoticed, he had at last achieved the supreme defiance of creeping down to the Waggon one evening, and had stayed there drinking up the dregs and listening to the conversation, half of which was to him unintelligible and half a source of awe and admiration, until ten o’clock at night. Still Nicco said nothing; did not ask where he had been; did not even comment on his absence from supper. Olver was full of contempt for this new, lax Nicholas—fullof contempt, but determined to make hay while the sun shone. No doubt the day would come when Nicco would fly into a rage, recover the matches, give Olver a thrashing, take away his new smock, and the old redoubtable order would be re-established. Somewhere, perversely, secretly, Olver hoped for that day; at present he felt himself a little like a horse allowed his head down a slippery hill. But this small, perverse and secret hope he did not admit even to himself. What! deplore the new system which permitted him to go to the Waggon almost every evening, to beg a twist of tobacco, to sit on the floor near the fire in the chimney corner, to listen, and to look—to look through the tobacco smoke at all the different-coloured spirits in the range of shining bottles, which reflected the tap-room rather in the same distorted way as his own little round mirror; at the steel handles on the bar-counter; at the coloured picture of the Queen and the late Prince Consort; at the photograph of the landlord standing beside a giant eight foot high—how could he deplore a system which permitted these delights?
And now in this same tap-room he had picked up the one piece of information he wanted. He knew now what was the matter with Nicco: Miss Warrener was promised to Mr. Calladine.
His gratitude to Miss Warrener doubled: not only did he owe her the mirror, which was incomparably the dearest of his few possessions,but he also owed her, indirectly, his new smock and his visits to the Waggon of Hay. He owed her all Nicco’s sad indulgence. His mother owed her the matches placed beside her bed every night. What benefits had Miss Warrener not conferred upon Olver and his mother!
So for a long time his feeble mind played round his debt to Miss Warrener, before it dawned upon him that Nicholas, to be so changed, must be very unhappy. His involved but absolute devotion to his brother flared instantly; he might deceive Nicholas, he might have fretted once, not so very long ago, beneath his severity; but in his eyes Nicholas was nevertheless God. At the mere thought that Nicholas might be unhappy,—might even now be sitting over the hearth at home, not angry with Olver because he no longer had the spirit left in him to be angry with anything or any one,—at these thoughts, which reached Olver’s poor brain in a more or less confused form, he scrambled to his feet, much to the surprise of the company, which had been sitting quietly smoking and talking around him. He stood up by the bar, a wild and startling figure; ashes from the fire had blown into his hair, which moreover stood straight up on end as he ran his fingers despairingly through it. He burst into abuse, unmistakably directed against some woman. “Here, here: order!” cried authority, stepping hastily forward, but before it became necessaryto eject the disturber, he had vanished of his own accord out into the street.
Olver ran as fast as he could go down the street towards his own home. A light burnt behind the ill-fitting shutters both upstairs and down; that meant that his mother was not yet gone to bed, and that Nicco was at home. He irrupted violently into the kitchen; Nicco was sitting there, just as he had imagined him; doing nothing, staring into the fire. There was no sign of his having had any supper. Olver rushed up to his brother and threw his arms about him. “Nicco, I know it all now, the bitch, the baggage, but you shan’t lose her if you want her. I’ll get her for you,—trust Olver,—I’ll get her out on to the Downs with something she gave me,—or I’ll lend it to you to get her yourself if you like. I once told her you could if you were so minded. You shall have her. They said down at the Waggon that she was promised to Mr. Calladine. But she shan’t go to him, she shall go to you.”
“Olver,” said Lovel quietly, “why did you never tell me about yourself and Daisy Morland in the barn?”
Olver began to stammer; he said, “I did tell you,—I told you she had seen you with Miss Warrener,—I told you I held her down and tickled her till she squealed,—I did tell you, Nicco.”
“You told me half,” said Lovel. A hopepricked at his heart that Daisy’s story might be false. “She has told me herself,” he added.
Olver was quite sure now that his brother would kill him for this and for going to the Waggon of Hay,—for the two things together. He looked at Nicholas with his shifty blue eyes so oddly rimmed with black, and shuffled one foot over the other, but Nicholas’ eyes held him and asked for the truth.
“Well ...” he muttered.
“You had her?” said Lovel without mercy.
“And why not?” burst out Olver. “All the boys do,—yes, and brag about it. Look at Peg Lackland, going....”
“All right,” said Lovel, with the same quietness; “I’m not blaming you.” Not blaming him? had the world stopped going round? “Only if you ever tell any one this I shall kill you,—do you quite understand?”
Olver stared, but with Nicco’s threat stability and familiarity seemed to be returning in some degree to his world. He nodded his head.
“I’m going to marry Daisy Morland myself,” added Lovel, still fixing him with his eyes, “and I can’t have it said that she has ever gone with my brother. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Going to marry Daisy Morland? but Miss Warrener ...” began Olver.
“Miss Warrener is going to marry Mr. Calladine,” said Lovel steadily; “that has nothing to do with me, except that she was always civil to me when I met her on the Downs. I know mystanding, and Miss Warrener knows hers. She marries a gentleman, and I marry a farmer’s girl; that’s as it should be.”
“So Daisy will come to live here?” said Olver, completely amazed now.
“Yes,” said Lovel brutally, “she will come to live here. She will be useful looking after our mother and keeping the place a bit better than you and I can keep it. And if ever it gets out that she once went with you, I break your head.”
“Yes, Nicco,” said Olver humbly.
“You can tell all the village, if you like, down at the Waggon, that I am going to marry her,” said Lovel.
“Yes, Nicco,” said Olver again, not fully grasping the implied sanction. “I’m sorry I went with her,” he added out of his confusion.
“That doesn’t matter,” replied Lovel in his old weary voice. “Poor Olver, what does it matter? We’re all so greatly to be pitied, what’s that the more or the less?”
Calladine announced to Mrs. Quince that he was dining at the Manor House. Daisy rejoiced at this piece of news, for ever since her return to Starvecrow she had been nervous lest Lovel and Miss Warrener should meet and Lovel discover that she, Daisy, had in one particular exceeded the truth in her assertions. She hoped,—and would have prayed, but that her superstitious faith feared the possible blasphemy,—that Calladine would no longer delay his avowal,but would return after dinner that night a betrothed man. Indeed, for all she knew, he might be secretly betrothed even now, not merely contemplating betrothal, and she thus have spoken the truth after all, albeit inadvertently to Lovel. Luck had been so much upon her side, that perhaps it might have favoured her also in this instance.
Never did lover set out accompanied by more earnest wishes for his success than Calladine that evening accompanied by the wishes of his housemaid.
Calladine found Mr. Warrener alone.
“I don’t know what has become of Clare,” said the old gentleman after greeting his guest; “it’s unlike her to be late for dinner, especially when she knew you were coming. Perhaps I allow her too much liberty,” he added, peering into Calladine’s face to read whether he found any condemnation therein.
“Miss Clare,” said Calladine, speaking gently, for he knew Mr. Warrener’s occasional uneasiness, “is not a young lady whom it would be judicious to confine.”
“Um,—wild, you think her?” said Mr. Warrener, rubbing his chin.
“Not wild,—only free....” Calladine breathed.
“She is a very great responsibility,” said Mr. Warrener, perplexed.
Calladine smiled. Who were they, two cultured and scholarly men pacing a lamplit study,to be disposing of the freedom of that airy spirit?
But he was gentle to the old man, for in many ways he loved him.
“Your safeguard, sir, lies in her trustworthiness.”
“A happy word,” said Mr. Warrener, immensely relieved, and they continued to pace the room, talking of other things, until Martha summoned them to dinner.
The candles between them, they dined. They spoke the same language, and the suavity that reigned was not only the suavity of the room. Almost, Clare’s absence was a relief; always, her elusiveness was a slight trouble, like a breeze in the room. Even now, she was present in their minds; their eyes flickered towards the door; where was she? dancing after what Will-o’-the-Wisp?
She came, more vivacious than Calladine had ever seen her; so lively now, that he thought her feverish, now drooping silent and listless, rousing herself to Mr. Warrener’s “Clare! Clare, you don’t hear what I am saying,” with a startled smile,—Mr. Warrener, in excellent spirits and full of discourse. Calladine watched her covertly, between the candles on the dinner-table. He would speak to her to-night; speak, lest he should lose her for the sake of a fancy. He could not wait, until the garden which she had ordained should be finished.
Yet, what haunted her? What wild grief lay beneath her gaiety?
But there was Mr. Warrener to reckon with, eager and garrulous to-night, and oblivious to the fact that Calladine wanted to stray out into the garden through the French windows with Clare. Calladine was enraged with impatience against the old gentleman, in whose trained and scholarly mind he usually delighted. Having wondered whether Mr. Warrener realised that he came to the Manor House as a suitor for his daughter’s hand, to-night he crossly decided that the idea had never once entered Mr. Warrener’s head. Otherwise it was impossible that he should be so obtuse ... scrupulously courteous as he always was, and considerate the moment he recognised the need for any consideration. Calladine nearly laughed for his irritation, as Mr. Warrener, who was at work upon a new theme, brought out diagram after diagram, specimen after specimen, in his zeal to prove his point, dropping dates and facts into place like the cubes of a patterned mosaic. But to-night the facts and figures seemed to Calladine only brittle and dry, when life was waiting for him in the shadowed corner of the room. Clare sat there, in her rose-red dress, and now that she believed the eye of neither of the two men to be upon her, Calladine could furtively observe that she had relaxed the strain of her attention, and sat limp with her gaze fixed upon the dark garden through the window. The tight bodice moulded the extreme youth of her form; her hands lay idly clasped in her lap. His egoismvanished before the pathos of her attitude. She became a child in his eyes: a child broken by some unexplained sorrow,—yet what sorrow, what sorrow could have come upon her in her free yet sheltered life? And because, however genuine his sentiment, he must always attitudinise to himself, he saw himself a sage and tender protector, the guardian of this too-emotional child against the fancied ills,—for how should they be otherwise than fancied?—that beset her. He realised then that he had lost count, as much as Clare herself, of what Mr. Warrener was saying, and saw to his relief, as he tried to make a flurried return to archæology, that Mr. Warrener was no longer addressing him, but had drifted into a soliloquy, according to his wont, with the little flints and shards ranged upon his desk.
“May Clare and I go out, sir?” said Calladine softly.
They wandered into the garden, Calladine tall and grave, Clare with the rustle of her silks and the little crunch of her heels, racing beside him up and down the garden path. She had been afraid, for a moment, that he was about to ask her to play or sing: music, with him leaning towards her over the piano.... Reprieved from music, it was indifferent to her what she did. They paced the path; an owl whooped softly from the cedar; was answered, from afar off, out on the Downs.
Through the lighted windows they saw Mr.Warrener, his lips still mumbling, bent meticulously over his shards.
Clare, with the rustle of her silks and the tap of her heels, and the private knowledge of her mind, looked away from Calladine.
He examined the words that she flippantly threw out, looking for bitterness, but no bitterness escaped her, looking for cynicism, but her lips were innocent of it. And nothing came to him but matter-of-fact questions, “Where had you been, Miss Clare?” and the like, which she answered civilly, though he knew that where her body had been was of no import, the only thing of import was the adventure of her spirit, and that he could never seize or follow. She was a stranger to him, irrevocably, and he savoured all the full pain of that phrase. “Where had you been, Miss Clare?”—oh, empty enquiry! what could she tell him, that would bring him nearer to her? but at the same time in a sudden frustrated rage he thought that were she ever to be his he would not let her out of his sight for a moment. Revengeful, he was; petulant; snatching,—and she so detached, cool, tantalising.
He called himself back; Clare made him lose his sense; he could put out his hand now and touch her bare arm, touch her flesh; such contact would be reassuring, would chase from his mind all ideas of her elusiveness; he could handle her roughly, if he would; drag her up into his arms, mutter angrily against her lips,—but even so, would he hold her?—and the old despair cameback upon him. She made him angry; there was no happiness for him, even in winning her, yet win her he must, and was determined upon it, for he was an obstinate man, with room in his head only for one idea once it had taken hold of him.
But he must be gentle with her, or else she would blow away from him like thistledown.
And while he was wondering how he might least scare her, he was shaking with his rage and his desire and his anxiety.
It was quiet in the garden; he liked the security of gardens, he liked the gentleness of these little grey West-country manor-houses such as the Manor House of King’s Avon; they shut out the wild; they ignored the great pale Downs, and the rovings of such dark people as Gipsy Lovel. And he began to talk, murmuring much of what he had obscurely felt, “A pastoral country,” he said, “fair and straightforward, a stranger might think; and yet we who live in it know better, we know its dim hauntings, we know how present are the dead, we know the little countless tragedies,—the rabbit squealing beneath the stoat, the blackbird pecked by the sparrowhawk. We know the perpetual enmity that goes on under the apparent harmony.” And,—what possessed him?—he spoke also of Lovel. “That dark, supple fellow,—he knows as much as anybody of the secrets of the woods; he’s got a quick eye and a sure hand, and a glance like the glance of an animal ready to spring away; it’sa wild blood they have in them, the gipsies, whether they live in a house or move their hearth about with them,—a strong stain of blood, that never gets washed out. Look at that fellow, now,—he never takes a regular job,—he strays from farmer to farmer, when he isn’t sneaking on his own concerns. And it’s all the gipsy blood in him, Miss Clare,—untamed he lives, and untamed he’ll die. But he understands the country, I dare wager, as well as any hare or kestrel that hides or flies, taking its chance of life and death.”
It struck him as absurd that in this hour when all his faculty was bent upon so different a matter, he should be discoursing idly of the country and the vagrant fellow he was accustomed to sight sometimes upon a distant skyline; but he knew that some connection existed in his mind, and traced it down to his constant uneasiness about Clare. It was all very well for him to speak airily, confident now in the security of the Manor House garden,—outside the garden lay the Downs,—and where had Clare been? where did Clare spend all her days? Demure she paced beside him, and the black cedar spread its flat branches above the lawn, and within the lighted windows Mr. Warrener poked among the shards on his desk; secure! secure! but danger lay behind the pretence, danger in confederacy with Clare. Demure she paced beside him in the summer night, drawing her lace scarf close about her shoulders, so that one palegleaming hand lay against her breast, holding the lace, but she was silent, shut away with her uncommunicated thoughts.
He trusted himself abruptly to the direct question.
“Clare, what is the matter?”
She was too big, too simple, to defend herself with the ready-to-hand artifice of denial or evasion.
“Nothing is the matter which you can help, Mr. Calladine, thank you, and nothing that I shall not recover from.” She spoke the truth as far as she knew it. “I own that I have been vexed,—even hurt, perhaps,” she put her head up as she made the admission. “But I could scarcely hope to go through life, could I, without meeting some vexation by the way? and now that I have met it, I must take it, mustn’t I, without losing my sense of proportion?”
He smiled, in the darkness which secured his smile from her observation, at the phraseology of her piteous wisdom.
“But why not confide it to me?” he said, bending down towards her. “I am older than you, you know, and a trouble shared, they say, is a trouble halved.”
“My God, no,” she breathed.
He was shocked at such an expression on her lips. Had something or some one then really driven the child up to the bounds of her endurance? Was she too readily driven to such extremity of feeling? or was the provocation shehad received sufficient to justify it? alas, he had no experience of her capacity for emotion. But he thought, from what he knew of her, that she must be indeed profoundly troubled before she would betray her distress.
“If any man has hurt you,” he burst out, “only tell me his name.”
She opened her mouth and stared at him as though she were about to utter a name as he bade her, so strong was in her the habit of childish obedience, but with the name ringing, although not for expression, in her head, she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. He was appalled at the passion of her crying. She had sunk down upon a bench, and he knelt beside her, trying to pull her hands away from her face, but she shook her head and turned away from him, isolating herself in the grief she was not yet accustomed to and could not yet understand. She could not understand it, and, tormented, desired only an escape from its weight and astonishment. “I am crying because you made me cry,” she said, at last to Calladine; “I have not cried before,—I promise you I have not cried before,” and at the thought of Lovel, absent and unconscious that she was weeping, unconscious of the fruit his harshness had borne, she wept afresh.
“Clare, Clare,” said Calladine, pulling at her wet hands, “don’t you remember, up by the Grey Wethers, a promise you made me? that if ever trouble came upon you, you would come to mefor help? Don’t you remember,—the day of the Scouring? Where’s your promise gone now? I would have held my hand in a flame that you would never break your word. Perhaps you thought it was fancy on my part; I was never more deadly serious. Isn’t this the moment to give me my chance of serving you?”
She was so much surprised by the reminder that she took her hands away from before her face and gazed at him. Her tears over, the idea that she should go to Calladine for help against Lovel caused her to laugh mirthlessly. That Mr. Calladine should protect her against Lovel! well! well! She laughed again. “Clare,” he exclaimed, “don’t laugh so, you frighten me.”
“There is one thing which you can do,” she said slowly. He grasped at it; besought her to tell him what it was. Still she hesitated; yes, anything to get away from the pain of Lovel. And it would please Mr. Calladine; and if it pleased him what did it matter? perhaps she had often hurt him in the past as Lovel had hurt her now. “Marry me,” she said; and added candidly, “I know you want to.”
The arrival of the circus created an excitement in the village, poor affair though it was. It trailed in, one afternoon, trailed in through the gap in the earth-works; a couple of caravans, a merry-go-round, two or three cages on wheels, and some led horses; it trailed in with its air of perpetual perambulation and its poor pretenceof gaiety, and encamped itself, as it must have encamped countless times before, and would do countless times again, choosing this time the field of the sarsen stones, which by virtue of tradition was looked upon as common land, where any farmer might turn his beasts overnight before a market, or any fair or circus, as now, claim hospitality. The village boys came to stare at the preparations, at the gaudy yellow carts marooned among the grave ancient stones; they stared, vacantly chewing grass stalks, at the men who were getting up the tent, running with the ropes that were to fasten down the great, flapping thing, and heaving up the poles that transformed the amorphous folds into a shape and a transitory shelter. Of the animals there was not much to be seen; the cages were roped off behind the caravans, and nothing but a desultory roar betrayed the presence of these aliens among the English Downs.
Shortly after nightfall a man with red and yellow streamers pinned on to his coat and tied round the crown of his hat, passed down the village street beating a drum as a signal that the performance was about to begin. There proceeded already a stream of the population towards the fields, by twos or in families, and between the gate of the field and the tent the grass was already trampled into a track. Night was come; and within the opening of the tent the interior lighting glowed warm and fulvid; towards this square of light in the centre of thefield, thus inviting, the procession of villagers made its way, inwardly eager, outwardly sheepish, and drew together at the entrance, where a rude box-office had been erected, and another man with red and yellow streamers dispensed tickets in return for the coppers and six-pences paid across his little counter.
Inside the tent, the newcomers herded, uncertain. Most of the benches immediately around the central oval of grass were already filled up, and the rows of faces and hands were uniformly lit by the two gas-flares, one on either side of the supporting pole. The grass oval, under this light, appeared most brilliantly green. The roof and sides of the tent swept away into shadow,—shadow dimly peopled by the audience on the rising tiers of benches, of whom only the first two or three rows were illuminated, and the rest indistinguishable, save as vague rings of buff-coloured hands and faces, over which the light sometimes flickered fitfully. Over in one corner stood one of the yellow carts, its shafts propped up somewhat foolishly into the air, and its body, on which was painted in large black letters the single word,ORCHESTRA, filled by members of the company with bassoons and other wind instruments, the lower parts of their persons concealed by the sides of the cart, and the upper emerging like so many jacks in the box. Beside this cart was the opening for the entrance and exit of the performers.
Into this scene of flaming light, strong colours,and deep shadows, came Lovel and his brother, the former so scowling and dark,—for he detested this appearance in public,—that he might rather have been a member of the traveling mountebanks than of the yokel audience. As he stepped out into the light, followed by Olver, this defiance was almost absurdly evident in his manner. He knew that the light was full on his face and on the figure that shambled behind him, and that the eyes of the audience were turned with a mild curiosity towards the pair; he felt himself to be an incident of the show they had all come to see. He looked round for a place. A few kindly neighbours made room on one of the front benches, so that, although Lovel would have preferred a more retiring seat, he was obliged to take his place there with Olver, at his side. Olver was gazing all round with the fascination of a child. He had never seen so many people gathered all together before, and his neighbours, familiar to him as individuals, acquired a new impressiveness when seen thus together in their numbers; he had never seen a circus ring, or an illumination so strange or so effective as that cast by the gas-flares; and as for the performance itself, he had nothing but vague and fantastic ideas of what he was about to behold. Very furtively he brought out from his coat pocket the round mirror which Clare had given him, and bent over it; reflected in it, he saw the lights, and the ring of faces, the thin scarlet rope, the shadows, the green grass, theyellow cart, according as he turned it. Lovel sat stiff and erect beside him, staring straight ahead, his arms folded across his chest. Olver bent lower over his mirror. He chuckled softly over it. The orchestra now stood up in the cart and began to play, brassily, noisily, but to the great delight of the audience.
Olver was annoyed because he could not see reflected in his mirror the agreeable noise which the band was making, and the tiny reproduction of the scene was thus rendered incomplete. Still he peered into the mirror, where the picture was small and distant, as seen through the wrong end of field-glasses, and also with that slight distortion which never failed to enchant him: the supporting pole appeared slightly bent, the scarlet ropes curved round like serpents, and each face, as he examined it separately, was a tiny caricature of the face reflected.
With the blare of the band Lovel relaxed a little from his rigidity; he glanced round him, nodded briefly to a few acquaintances, and considered with an uninterested eye the scanty properties of the show standing prepared near the performers’ entrance. He heard the eager whispering going on in the audience, and, being himself scornful and unhappy, was possessed by a passing contempt. He saw Martha Sparrow there with her brother John, and a group of the cronies from the Waggon of Hay; he caught sight of Farmer Morland with his wife and daughter, and instantly looked away, for he hadseen Daisy’s eyes fixed upon him, and had no wish to respond to the smile she was holding in readiness. No doubt they considered that he ought to have escorted her. At that moment he saw Clare come in with Mr. Calladine.
He had not expected this, and remained transfixed, staring at them in complete dismay. Clare came in shyly, turning to speak to Calladine over her shoulder; she was wearing a dark blue cloak over her muslin dress, and no hat, only a dark blue ribbon in her hair. Coming, in her turn, into the light, she hesitated with a perceptible confusion that seized Lovel by the heart. Calladine came forward, competent and proprietary, found her a seat, and took his place beside her; they bent together over the leaflet of the programme. Still Lovel stared; she looked up, and their eyes met across the width of the ring. Her lips parted; for a full minute they stared at one another. He saw the blush rising, like a flame of reproach, in her cheeks. For that minute, as their heads swam, they had no thought of the pairs of eyes observing them: of Olver’s, of Daisy Morland’s, or of Calladine’s, respectively with a mischievous, a jealous, and a dismayed absorption. Then Clare came to her senses; she looked deliberately away, looked around, searching for faces she might greet, found Martha Sparrow, found some of the tradesmen, and smiled to them all with disproportionate alacrity. She spoke again to Calladine, whose pride in her had changed to a visiblemoodiness; he answered her indeed, but briefly, and sat angrily tapping the top of his walking-stick against his teeth. Lovel, having no knowledge of the world, but only his instincts, wondered whether he should leave the tent, or should remain to enjoy the atrocious pleasure of watching her once again. He knew that now he would have to fight out his renunciation afresh from the beginning; the dull resignation which had clouded over him of late had all melted away in a second before her restored presence. Merely to see her sent the heat and ecstasy of life back into his veins. Twenty-eight years of existence had not accustomed him to the rush of his own emotions. Such a reasonless joy as this which seized him even while he knew that she was promised to Calladine, still had the power to surprise him.
The beginning of the circus did not distract him; rather it favoured him, for under the cover of the general interest he was able to gloat his eyes upon her to his heart’s content. Olver, who had long ago made up his mind about his brother, had now little desire to watch for the manifestations of a passion he took for granted in spite of all Nicco’s denials, and devoted the whole of his rapt attention to the events of the ring. These were enough to transport his simple soul, easily pleased at best. Piebald horses, and fat thighs encased in pink tights, curvetted before him; while with flashing smiles young men and women performed apparently impossible featsof strength and balance. Olver presently conceived the idea of following the circus in his mirror, and alternated between the actual, which was already entrancing enough, and the reflected, which provided him with a world so indescribably and doubly queer. He hoped that the little, queer, brilliant pictures would be preserved forever in the depths of the glass. A fat woman in pink and spangles jumped through paper hoops off the back of a cantering horse, crying “Hop!” as she jumped and again as she landed, and the manager standing in the centre cracked his long whip at the horse’s fetlocks, but only hit the clown, whose whitened face, ghastly under the gas-jets, went bowling round in somersaults over the grass of the ring. There was also a snake-man, dressed from head to foot in emerald green, who contorted himself in the midst of a silence rendered more impressive by the sudden cessation of the braying band, into the knots common to all such performers; and the laughter which had accompanied the clown was stilled into a respectful awe. The snake-man, Olver found, was especially effective seen in the mirror.
The atmosphere in the tent by now was somewhat clouded by tobacco smoke, softening the hard, high glare of the gas, and through the smoke the faces appeared hazy, sitting round in their rows, likewise the hands, that periodically broke out into a beating of applause. But to Lovel, who had not taken his eyes off Clare, herface was distinct as ever; and his own face, to Daisy Morland, was distinct, and, above his red shirt, dark and proud.
In the ring now were three small bears, one dressed as a clergyman,—whose appearance had provoked roars of laughter,—one as a lady, with a poke bonnet and bustle, and the third as a clown, the buffoon and wag of the party. These three sad animals were at their tasks of travelling round the ring on large balls, pushing a perambulator, balancing on a tight rope, or whatever it might be; Lovel, in so far as he bestowed a passing interest in the show, was indignant at the pitiful degradation. The audience had no such niceness; they roared their hearty laughter, and some of those sitting immediately behind the scarlet ropes even thrust a foot towards the bears as they passed round in their drab monotony, provoking a dull turn of the head and a lack-lustre glance, too spiritless even for a snarl. Arm in arm the clergyman and the lady paraded the ring on their hind legs, stopping now and then to bow gravely; they stopped thus opposite to Clare and Calladine, recognised by the quick eye of the manager as the only gentry present. Clare and Lovel looked at one another once more when this occurred, a look in which their personal passion, for once, had no part, but only discomfort and sympathy with the indignity put upon the beasts. Yet that look, impersonal though it was, only tightened Lovel’s heart the more, for it had init all the intimacy of their understanding, in the same way as when they had been used to look across the Downs, and, seeing the bowling shadows of the clouds, had spoken no word, but sometimes smiled, knowing each so well the thoughts that were passing in the mind of the other.
He began to wonder what he should do when the show was over, and the moment came for every one to leave the tent. He was near the exit; should he hurry out and hasten home, shutting the door of his house behind him, before Clare and Calladine had so much as turned into the street? “Likely they’ll wander home by the fields, being lovers,” he said to himself. Or should he go boldly up to Daisy and invite her to walk home with him, in order to prove to Clare the extent of his indifference? He rejected this course, despising its cheapness. Or should he remain seated where he was, letting Clare and Calladine pass out of the tent before him? The one thing to be avoided was the jostle in the exit. He might get pushed up against her, or against Calladine,—if he felt Calladine jostle against him he would turn and hit him. But he had Olver to reckon with; Olver who would tug at his coat and bid him come, if he tried to remain behind; Olver who would in any case torment him afterwards with questions as whether he had seen Clare; and, half turning to look at Olver, he caught sight of the mirror held tilted, over which the boy stooped with suchabsorption, and he wondered idly where Olver had got this toy, that seemed so to fascinate him and to occupy so much of his time; but after that passing curiosity he returned to his own miserable concerns that gnawed like rodents at his brain, and his eyes perpetually sought the face of Clare, as though in her fairness lay simultaneously both the problem and the solution.
So turned inward upon himself was he, that a sudden shout was the first thing to rouse him. He raised his head; a sheet of flame shot upwards from the gas; all was confusion suddenly; the audience rose and stampeded into the ring, trying to get to the exits; benches were overturned; women screamed, men swore; overhead the flame tore a great hole in the darkness, and portions of the burning canvas floated, turning over and over, down to the ground.
Lovel fought his way through the striving mass of people like one possessed, caring nothing who he pushed aside or who he struck and elbowed. For one second he came upon the terrified face of Daisy; she tried to cling to him, but he threw her off. He was fighting against the tide of the crowd. By now the canvas was roaring overhead, the shouts increased, the panic surged wildly towards the narrow openings, all round was nothing but terror and a mad confusion. Lovel clove his way through the sea of limbs and faces; he tore a path by sheer fury. Reaching Calladine, he thrust him aside, and seized Clare by the hand. “Come,” he said,dragging her. He was obliged to put his arm round her shoulders and half carry her along as with the other arm he opened up a way for them both. The exit was hopelessly blocked; he took his knife from his pocket and ripped a long vertical slit in the side of the tent, through which he forced her first and then himself after her, and the crowd seeing this escape, streamed through after them. The night air was suddenly cool around them. He picked her up and carried her away to the top of the encircling embankment. The Downs were black behind them, and from the height of the ridge they gazed down upon the red leaping flames in the field below.
The field was wildly lit up, and around the blazing tent stood the crowd in a circle, watching the destruction they could not prevent. The flames reared to the height of trees, holding up the blackness; the light fell upon the shapes of the sarsen stones, that, unmoved, regarded this disaster as they might have regarded any other. Clare seized Lovel’s arm.
“Are they all safe?”
“They will be, by now,” Lovel replied mechanically.
“The animals,” cried Clare.
At that, Lovel returned to earth, and a slow smile of amusement crept over his mouth.
“Why, they will have escaped,” he said slowly; “escaped and be roaming about till morning.The village besieged by bears. Well, Miss Warrener, it will not be the first time that bears will have been loose among these stones or prowling on the Downs. Will we all turn out with sticks and staves to-morrow to drive ’em in? Come and ride them in, Miss Warrener, to-morrow morning before any one else is astir. Will you do that?”
“With you?” she asked.
“Why not?” he replied. “But I forgot,” he added, “Mr. Calladine has the disposal of your doings now, has he not? Many’s the pleasant hour you spend over books or in your garden; gentle and pleasant. There was a time when you rode rough as a boy; but that’s over now. Your finger nails are smooth,” he said, taking her hand and examining it critically by the vague light of the flames; “the hand of a lady,” and he lifted it up and sniffed it. “Scented too!” he said. “Scented for Calladine to kiss and fondle,” and gently he gave it back into her keeping, shaking his head. “Ah, Miss Warrener, it was a terrible mistake you made when you rode your pony in your little shepherd’s cap; ’twasn’t that you were cut out for. No, but for a lady’s life. ‘I shall want the carriage this afternoon, Mrs. Quince, to drive to Shrivenham.’” He minced the words. “‘And I shall want the rug put in the carriage lest it turn cold at sunset.’ No more catching your pony in the paddock when the fancy takes you for a gallop across the hills.I’ll come as your groom, if you’ll have me, and promise to keep away my brother, whose touch startles horses.”
“You must let me go home,” said Clare, who, white-faced, was holding her cloak about her.
“Remember, there are bears,” said Lovel. “A bear dressed as a lady, a bear dressed as a clergyman, and one, poor soul, as a clown. They are walking arm-in-arm, perhaps, as they did in the ring, but if they met you walking alone across the fields they might remember that they were born wild. They might forget that they had been tamed to civility. Cap off: ‘Good evening, miss,’ as I might meet you in the lane. Never trust the brute too far. But shouldn’t Mr. Calladine be here to protect you?”
“How can he see me up here?” said Clare. “The night is very dark, and the light down there must blind him.”
“You have on a light dress under that cloak,” mocked Lovel, “if you want him to see you.” But she did not throw aside her cloak, and he noted it.
At that moment came a cracking sound, as the central pole of the tent crashed down, bringing with it what was left of the flaming canvas. A loud cheer went up from the crowd, who, now that their own skins were safe, were irresponsibly quite ready to accept one form of entertainment in substitution for another. The fire died down for a moment, then flared up again, as some of the benches and trestles caught alight. Theproprietor of the circus raged round, clasping his head with his hands, but there was nothing to be done, and the few buckets of water brought from a neighbouring well made no difference at all.
“Mr. Calladine is not more prompt at finding you here that he was in getting you away from the tent,” said Lovel.
“Why do you gibe at Mr. Calladine?” Clare burst out. “He has had a great deal to suffer at my hands, and it ill becomes you to sneer,” she finished inconsequently.
The inconsequence did not trouble Lovel; his mind leapt the gap with the ellipsis.
“At all events he has nothing to complain of at present,” he remarked. “Nothing, except that he is not the man to take good care of what he has obtained. Born irresolute—there’s a disadvantage of birth as bad as any other. Yet, I’d exchange my own for it; I’d accept to have only myself to overcome. Yes, by God, I’ve no sympathy for him. Why doesn’t he carry away his conquest? Too uncertain of his own worth? Look at his face—haggard with doubt of himself. I scarcely envy Calladine. He’s a straw to be swept away by a strong current, safe only so long as he may lie in shelter. If I wanted to undo Calladine, I should say to him, ‘Are you sure that you are the man to hold so untamed a thing?’ As yourself, I mean, Miss Warrener. Or am I mistaken? Are you a lady at heart—a lady and not a woman? Mrs. Richard Calladine. The muslin dress, or the shepherd’s cap?If the muslin dress, then go to Calladine. If the shepherd’s cap, then....”
He paused.
“I should not listen to you, reducing Mr. Calladine to this insignificance,” murmured Clare in great distress.
Calladine had become a shadow; a poor grey wisp drained of blood. Only Lovel and herself seemed alive, so terribly alive that the wraith which was Calladine faded between them. So far, no one had noticed them standing up on the ridge of the embankment; the night was, as Clare had said, very dark, and furthermore a few sparse trees helped to conceal them. They stood, not very far from one another, very much isolated, detached from the glow and excitement of the fire down in the field below, as though they were two travellers come to a brief surveying pause on the road which they pursued together.
“Mr. Calladine is not the poor creature you think him,” said Clare on an impulse. “Years ago he loved a woman, still unforgotten. That is not the fidelity of a weak man. I tell you this, in order that you should think better of him, and knowing that you will keep it to yourself.”
“A woman he never got?” said Lovel. “And brooded over her ever since? Do not doubt—Miss Warrener, he coaxed himself into loving her more, during all those years of brooding, than ever he did when he had her before his eyes. Be very sure, she made a proper fool of him, toembitter him so for a lifetime—until he found you. Don’t be too sorry for him. He has enjoyed living upon that memory.”
“Oh, you are hard and cynical,” said Clare, vexed, because she saw suddenly the whole of that episode, which, in her eyes, had always thrown so picturesque a colour over Calladine’s melancholy—saw it now in a cruel, naked light, Calladine duped first, and then retiring in sulky discomfiture, to build upon a silly, sordid, mismanaged story an erection of wordy romance: “I wish I had not told you; you take every opportunity, to-night, of belittling Mr. Calladine.”
“I? Oh, no,” said Lovel, carelessly, “and in any case, why do we talk about him so much? he is not here, but to-morrow you will again be with him, and the day after that, and the day after that. Even now he is probably arrived breathless at the Manor House, where he will tell your father that that gipsy fellow snatched you away, and that he has lost you altogether. He has never given me anything but black looks, ever since he came to live here. How much have you told him about yourself and me?”
“There was nothing to tell,” said Clare.
“True,” said Lovel. “There was nothing to tell.”
They were silent. She felt that he was in a highly dangerous mood. Calladine was not dangerous; violent, but not dangerous; not as Lovel’s contained quietness was dangerous. Lovel, at any moment, might suddenly leap upon her;he was so lithe and quick. Moreover, she felt now, in his company, that she was alone with him on a hill or a wide heath, for the people down in the field below had no significance whatever, no more than had Calladine, to whom she was promised.
“I ought to go home now,” she said presently.
“Oh, yes,” said Lovel, turning on her, “you ought to go home. Go home and tell them that the gipsy fellow took you out, rudely enough, but still into safety. Go and tell them that once or twice on the Downs you gave him a few kind words and that he presumed upon them to get you out of that tent to-night. Tell them that once he rejected your kindness,—which you offered out of your pity for him,—and drove you away with harsh words.”
“We have not spoken since,” she said.
“No,” he replied without comment.
Suddenly they began talking quite naturally and gently with one another.
“Who would have thought,” said Lovel, “that you would be coming to the circus. Not that I should have come, nor you, I fancy, either, had we known what we were to see. Yet we might have thought. Wild beasts turned to buffoons. I would have liked to let a tiger out of its cage, loose among the crowd. Did you see their eyes? yes, even the little pig-eyes of the bears. I wouldn’t like to look into the eyes of the tigers in their cages, when they stare through the bars. Trundled about over England in thosecages.... Why did you come? I came to please poor Olver.”
“And I because Mr. Calladine was dining at the Manor House, and I ... oh, there is nothing to do after dinner,” she finished lamely.
“What do you do as a rule?” he inquired, with a passing curiosity.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Sometimes he talks to my father, sometimes we walk in the garden, sometimes I sing.”
“You sing,” he repeated. “You sing.”
“Sometimes he and my father go over the things in my father’s cases, and they forget me, and I sit in a corner with some stitching.”
“Yes,” said Lovel, “and the windows are open down to the floor, and the moths and cockchafters fly in from the garden towards the lamps, and you let your stitching fall into your lap while you watch them.”
Clare was utterly startled.
“How do you know?” she murmured.
“Oh, I know,” he replied. His vision of the room, and of the three, was so sifted and precise. “Sometimes you sing?” he prompted her.
“Mr. Calladine leans over the piano, when I sing,” she said, looking at him big-eyed.
“That frightens you?” he said, more as a statement than as a question.
“A little,” she said, telling him what she had thought she could never tell to a soul. “He seems so soft, and yet so hungry.” Her voice sank.
Lovel understood; he nodded.
“If he would sit away in the corner,” continued Clare, “I should not be afraid of him. It is his leaning over me like that. It makes me look at him all the while I sing. But he likes my singing; he asks me to do it, and he will not let me refuse.”
“And sometimes you walk in the garden,” he said, still in the same voice, as though he were looking at a tiny picture seen down the end of a long vista; “does he frighten you then?”
“Less out of doors; less when we are not shut in. I avoid the trees; being under them is more like having a ceiling over our heads. I keep to the lawn.—He is more in his place, within doors,” she said, making a discovery which answered many of her problems.
“Lamplight suits him,” said Lovel, his perceptions very clear and malicious.
She saw Calladine leaning over the piano; she saw his greying hair and his fine hands lying loosely clasped on the ebony lid. She heard the notes under her own fingers playing a slow gavotte; it was the music he liked. She felt her eyes coming round again and again in fascination drawn towards his face. A breeze fanned her cheek; and she saw herself standing with Lovel on the earthwork, the stars above their heads, and the red glow of the dying flames deepening the shadow of his brow.
“We have always been in the open together,” she murmured involuntarily.
“I have never seen you in a room,” Lovel corroborated.
“The day that I found you on the Downs,” she said painfully, “the day when I last saw you,—you tried to hide from me among the beeches. Why was that? Did you hope that they would protect you? Did the sense of enclosure give you strength? Would the Downs have compelled you to be more honest? I believe it was that. One can lie better,—can’t one?—in a room; and as you had no room you took the shelter of the trees. You couldn’t tell me lies out on the Downs?”
“Is that why Calladine prefers a room?” he enquired.
“Mr. Calladine tells me no lies,” she said, with a small flicker of pride.
“Oh, no,” said Lovel easily; “he only tells lies to himself. Through and through. Or are they lies? Romances, perhaps. Only romances. And you are part of them. But they couldn’t thrive in sunshine.”
“We are not in sunshine now,” she said; “only in star-shine, and losing our heads a little. I am going to marry Mr. Calladine, you know, Lovel. So perhaps I should not talk about him to you as I have been talking, or ... or indulge myself in these fancies. You asked me what I had told him about yourself and me; I answered that there was nothing to tell; nor is there.”
“But if I had not gone into thebeech-clump ...” began Lovel. He was suddenly Puckish, mischievous; or so she thought.
“But you did go into it!” she cried out.
“And stayed in it till you were out of sight. But Calladine,” he resumed, disregarding her effort to restore the balance of their conversation, “Calladine will get you into a room for the rest of your life. It will be a dim room, with the light shrouded from it. He will talk in it, and you will listen, and his talk will seem to you less and less unconvincing. Presently you will accept it as natural talk; you will answer in the same key. You will play sad old tunes, and Calladine will lean over the piano. But he will grow less graceful and more ungainly, and his joints will crack when he stoops over your hand to kiss it. And always you will be in the house,—in the room.”
“Lovel!” she cried.
“The dimness of the room will bleach your spirit,” he said finally and remorselessly.
What strange mood possessed him? Were the legends true? had he the gift of prophecy? His very language had a sonorous, almost a Biblical, ring. It was true that the occasion fostered it, and that he might be taken for a prophet, standing there on the elevation, ringed with darkness, and with that pool of dying fire at his feet.
“Is it kind, Lovel, is it kind to put these thoughts into my head?” she cried, distressed.
“Kind,” he said scornfully. “When did everyou want kindness from me? I haven’t given you kindness, or romance like Calladine’s. I keep kindness for Olver.”
“And for animals,” she interjected, remembering. The remembrance softened her marvellously towards him.
“And for animals. But for you....” He scanned her from head to foot, as though the term for what he had given her were inexpressible. “Not kindness for you,” he finished up.
A great uproar arose in the field below; the crowd scattered, and down the pathway thus cleft they saw, by the light of the flames, a small black shape bundling helter-skelter along, till a ring of shouting men closed round it and hid it from view.
“Rounding up the wild beasts,” said Lovel, amused. “They won’t sacrifice them on the stones,—not they. They’ll all be chivvied back into their cages after a few louts have got a nip on the ankle. I wonder how many will remain at large? All the old women of the village will be going about to-morrow with umbrellas and pokers. See, now, they are beating out the fire.”
The last sparks flew large and red in the darkness.
“Fire and wild beasts and the stones,” murmured Lovel dreamily. “How many centuries is it, do you think, since those three things have met together here? The place will get a bad name among owners of circuses. They will saythat it clamours for its natural prey; that the circle is under a curse; that it scents blood; and a hundred such fabulous things.” He laughed as he spoke, but Clare, looking at him, thought that the fantastic creature half believed it himself. “What will you say, when they want to know where you have been?” he asked. “You won’t dare own up to the gipsy fellow. You’ll say you watched the fire, and let it be understood that you were alone,—isn’t that so?”
“Of course I shall say I have been with you; why not?” said Clare.
“Ah, but I’d rather you didn’t,” he said earnestly. “Keep it a secret,—that we stood and talked unseen while the rest beat the fire out down below. I had not thought that I should see you again, and now I know that I shall not see you again,—in the distance, perhaps,—and hear the bells for your wedding,—and see you driving by,—Mrs. Richard Calladine,—but I shall never stand again with you alone as in this hour. Let us keep it a secret. I don’t care what you think of me. Look, the fire has gone out now, and it is quite dark, but the time I spent with you was lit by the fire. I will walk round with you to the Manor House, and let you go.”
In silence they started off to walk round the top of the earthwork towards the Manor House. The village lay below them in its strange cup, and around outside the circle lay the Downs hunched in the starlight. Where the road intersected the circle they ran down the slope andcrossed it, their footsteps briefly crunching on the gravel, but on the opposite side they scrambled up again and silenced steps on the turf and continued side by side along the high ridge above the ditch. A breeze from the Downs blew cool against their cheeks; they knew it well, it was a friend pleading with them, calling them back to the open. They both knew the Downs so well that in their consciousness they were all the time aware of the country’s geography, stretching before them like a foreshortened map; the long roads, the little English towns with their broad main-street that was only a section of the Roman highway, the ancient green tracks over the hills, and the angular spatchcock landmark of the White Horse, straddling on the hillside. Neither of them had thought sufficiently beyond these things to be tormented by the further world. But, on the other hand, they had attained a degree of familiarity and concentration undiminished by any scattering of their faculties. They had not sprinkled their interest over other lands and other folk. They had dwelt only on their country and on themselves, so that the breeze came to them direct as a messenger from the Grey Wethers lying out derelict on the hills, and the sickness of the desire of each to respond to the call found an echo in the soul of the other.