Young Gorwyn lounged gracefully round the house-door.
“Then you’ve fallen soft,” he observed in his drawling voice, surveying Daisy from head to foot as she stood just within the entrance to the dark passage.
“I’ve fallen soft,” she echoed, full of sarcasm.
This was in October, and in the blue early dusk people were gossiping at their house-doors, up and down the street. Young Gorwyn felt a spice of adventure in philandering thus openly with the newly-wedded wife of the redoubtable Lovel,—advertising to the whole street his disregard of Lovel. Not that there was any glory in passing the time of day with Daisy; everybody knew that Daisy was cheap and easy, giving impudence for impudence, a joke for a joke. But in making free with Lovel’s property there was glory, in being so near to Lovel’s house; almost inside it, one might say; in dawdling there, treating it as any ordinary house. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his breeches, and lounged, and stared at Daisy. She was a goodsort, and he had got off cheap, were his dominant reflections; and was quite sure,—with a grin,—that she read his thoughts and wholly sympathised with them; would not have been shocked, in fact, had he voiced them and held out his hand, thanking her for the escape she had allowed him. He did not credit her perhaps with very much respect for him, but then he had equally little for her.
“Let’s see our kid now and then,” he said.
“What?” she said sharply.
“Let’s see the kid now and then,” he repeated, so that she wondered whether she had heard him right the first time.
“Oh,—maybe,” she replied, trying to show herself nonchalant about it as he, being a woman who readily took her cue from men.
She remembered the wink in the porch of the church, and that small, all-compromising word, so slily slipped into his phrase, seemed to her a first cousin of the wink; they had the same family air of innuendo, of confederacy. The impertinence! she thought, in her heart of hearts frightened rather than indignant, and she had a good mind to have the question out with him then and there, but, giving him a preliminary look, she decided to hold her tongue; an admission, once made, could not be recalled, whereas silence committed one to nothing. She was far, however, from trusting young Gorwyn now that she came to examine him more closely; he was strong and sleepy and graceful, lounging againstthe door-post, but there was something of the cat in his face with the broad cheek-bones, and the fair-lashed blue eyes so deep-set that when he smiled they almost disappeared into two little slits, and the way his fair hair grew so thick and low on his forehead; and she knew from experience,—all too well,—how caressing were his hands, caressing and heavy, when he reached them out towards a girl. A return of the passing attraction he had had for her came upon her, and she had a moment of queer disloyalty to Lovel, contrasting his slim darkness with the square Saxon strength of Gorwyn, to whom she was really so suitably mated. Their glances crossed; they understood one another too well, and looked away. “I must be getting on,” said Gorwyn after a pause which lasted a perceptible moment.
But that was in October, and she had not seen him again for any private conversation, however evasive. Autumn had gone, winter had come, with the violence and completeness to which dwellers on those uplands were accustomed. Snow blocked the roads. Communication with Marlborough was cut off, the inhabitants of King’s Avon resigned themselves to rely upon their own store of provisions, the Downs lay around them, white and enormous. They did not resent their isolation, but accepted it, almost yearly, as coming in its turn in the nature of things. It imprisoned them, more than ever self-contained, in their cup within theearthwork, with their pagan stones, their Christian church, their shops, and their Manor House, where Mr. Warrener was now their only representative of gentry; snugly a homogenous community. Lovel alone saw in the snow something more than a mere barrier against the outside world, a barrier that was almost a defence; he saw the stones standing up black out of a white field, the black trees powdered and spangled; he knew that he could go up on to the Downs without the fear of meeting any stranger riding there for pleasure. He could look from the crest of the White Horse Hill out over the country, without seeing the roads of civilisation, without seeing the White Horse itself, and his shepherd’s hut was as rough a shelter as primitive man would have devised. He took a certain pleasure in the discomfort and severity of his winter life. Often he would be the only man to leave the village of a morning, passing out on his way to the uplands while a few isolated figures trudged up the draughty street against the blizzard with sacks thrown round their shoulders, going to their cowsheds or to clear a space for their poultry; but Lovel passed them, leaving them to such domestic occupations, and sought the high lands, where wind and sleet swept across like aerial cavalry, and the driven snow was banked deep in drifts against the scars and scoops of the hillsides. Here, as he stood alone with the spears of the weather driving through him, he had a sense of triumph: he had got the betterof the Downs, he had got the better of his own soul. His physical and mental endurance were alike strong enough to cope with the utmost rigours that Nature and fate were able to devise for his trial. This grim satisfaction, he felt, was the last luxury he permitted himself to indulge. For the rest, he had stripped himself bare of soft superfluities as a man could be; down to bone and sinew he had stripped himself. At times, in his moments of strange, harsh exaltation, when the gale screamed most piteously around him, he wished he might divest himself of his clothing, outward symbol of protection, and stand naked to support the lashings of the wind and the frozen hail; he thought proudly that no harm would come of it to his lean body. But although he never allowed himself to exploit the desires of this fanatical folly, he knew that he had touched the apex of his conquest over himself and his country, and, relaxing, he considered with a grin the superstitious amazement of his fellow-villagers should they, passing below, chance to see upon the skyline the naked figure of Lovel (whom they had always known for a wizard) crucified against elements where horse and man might scarcely hope to live.
He had his reward when the storm ceased, and, again alone upon the heights, he surveyed, as though his will alone had imposed the calm, the thick smooth quilt of snow and the blood-red sun descending towards the beech-clump through the perfect stillness.
But in the direction of Starvecrow he never wandered, where Calladine edged with some rare book closer to the fire, and Clare stood with her face against the panes staring out of the window over the snowy Downs.
Daisy began now to cling to him more and more. Her child was nearly due, but since she alone knew this,—and perhaps young Gorwyn, if he took the trouble to reckon up the dates,—every one believed the birth to be distant yet another month. Daisy was frightened; she dared not tell Lovel that the child might now be born any day; but she dreaded his long absences, for she feared that she might die without making her confession or obtaining his forgiveness. If all went well, she had no intention of confessing; but if she saw her life in any danger she had made up her mind to barter the security of this life against that of the next. Superstitious, she imagined that she would run more danger through bearing this child that she had carried during the months of deception and fraud, than she would through bearing a child honestly conceived and carried. She was mortally afraid of death, and mortally afraid of losing Lovel. She tried to sound him, “You’d be sorry if anything happened to me, Nicco?”
Lovel had heard this a dozen times already.
“Why should anything happen to you?” he replied.
“I shouldn’t have gone with Olver,” she mumbled, twisting the corner of her skirt.
“That’s a long time ago,—that’s over and done with,” he replied patiently and cheerfully, feeling sorry for what he thought was her genuine repentance.
“But this is the result,” she said, not consoled.
“Don’t distress yourself,” he said.
“Supposing I was tooken bad,” she began again.
“’Tisn’t for a month yet,” said Lovel.
“One doesn’t know always, with such things.”
“Will you see the midwife?” he asked, perceiving that she was worried. But the whole subject, and Daisy’s very existence, though he spoke with solicitude and bent a kindly gaze on her to discover what were the poor creature’s real wishes,—the whole subject to him was utterly remote and meaningless.
“The midwife over to Marlborough by this snow-fall!” she cried disdainfully.
“I’ll ride over and get her if you like,—I’ll bring her out on a pillion.”
“No, no, Lovel,” she said, shaking her head, “neither now nor when the child is born,—I’ll die without midwife, or doctor, more likely.”
“You’re determined to see it in its blackest light,” said Lovel, but he spoke good-humouredly, without losing his patience.
“Well, it isn’t of me or my baby you think, when you sit silent by the hour, is it?” said Daisy, suddenly losing her temper, pulling herself up with the help of the table, and wandering aimlessly around. “’Tisn’t your baby, so whyshould you think of it? and if I come to die, well, good riddance for you, and you’ll be able to think you did your duty by me. But much you care now, when you go out into the snow like the crazed gipsy you are,—to meet Miss Warrener, Mrs. Calladine, for all I know,—much you care that I sit at home and think myself sick over the danger I’ll run and the pain I’ll suffer, while you maybe won’t come near home till it’s all over one way or the other.”
“When the time gets near I’ll stop closer to home.”
She wanted to cry out, “You dolt, you blockhead, the time is nearnow,” but dared only repeat “One doesn’t always know ...” and began to whimper.
“I won’t go far afield,” said Lovel, soothing her. He was full of pity for all women in her condition, so that none of her words had power to anger him.
A small remorse came over her when he was kind like this, a compunction for having tricked him: would he have been so kind, so long-suffering about the child had he not believed without question in his own brother’s guilt? She tried to edge closer to him; “Nicholas, if anything happened to me, you wouldn’t think too hardly of me, would you?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” said Lovel, weary of the discussion, but still patient and kind.
“You won’t go far, Nicco, will you?”
“No, if that comforts you.”
He was committed now, having given his promise; there would be no more roamings for him; but he was willing to forgo their small solace, negligible in the midst of his desolation, if thereby he might reassure the poor contemptible creature.
“Nicco,” she said timidly, with an impulse of honesty, prompted by his gentleness, “’tisn’t fair to ask you, hardly ... ’tisn’t your child, after all’s said and done.”
“I’m responsible for my brother,” said Lovel, and she turned away from him and wept, overcome.
“You’re an upright man, Lovel,” she cried through her tears, “too upright for such as me.”
He had not understood her full meaning, of course; he had told her again not to distress herself, he had assured her again that he would not go far from home, he had even patted her shoulder, letting her see nothing of the effort it cost him, and he had gone out then, to a house down the street where he had a small carpentering job to finish. Daisy remained alone in the kitchen, alone with the satisfaction of having gained her point that he would abandon his long absences, but still she was not satisfied as she expected; she sat on where he had left her, bluntly probed by conscience, she whose conscience had never troubled her until this contact with Lovel and his standards: what was she doing to Lovel,she asked herself now? she had got him, but was that all? was that enough for her? to have got him and to know she had caught him by a trick? to see him inert under his dull unhappiness? never to hear him complain, never to catch him at fault, but to see him quiet as though his spirit was ebbing daily from him? Even she, in her blundering insensitiveness, stirred uneasily at the thought of his injuries. “But what was I to be at?” she cried to herself in self-justification; “I wanted him, and all’s fair....” She moved in her chair and twisted her hands. “Nicco, Nicco,” she moaned. “If he knew how I wanted him he’d forgive me,” and with this reflection came a deeper stab: it was probably true that he would indeed forgive her,—that she had indeed broken him down to the extent of that saint-like clemency. What would put anger and mettle back into him? what would put life back into him? Clare, nothing but Clare, without whom he was incomplete, only a gentle husk; and for a passing moment her thoughts travelled to Clare, living out her life in some fashion or another by Calladine’s side at Starvecrow. What, in her ignorance, had she helped to bring about? She paused and drew back on the brink of things she did not understand, taking refuge again in her own miseries, comfortably familiar by reason of the many times she had pored over them, with no dark corners or frightening perspectives, but all close, small and personal, under the range ofher poor niggling microscope. And she was in the right frame of mind for such brooding, feeling herself oppressed and full of foreboding, as she sat in the kitchen big with the child, and big with the failure of her life, waiting indeed for deliverance from the child, but seeing no solution to the greater oppression, which she might expect to continue until she should grow as spiritless and broken as Lovel and their existence should dwindle to a grey twilight of apathy unenlivened even by anger or revolt. She had rarely felt so dejected; the very stones of the kitchen walls crushed her with their rude size; the child within her, usually so active, so ironically vigorous, was so quiet to-day that she began to wonder whether it were dead; the old woman overhead made no sound; and all round the house lay the thick soft deadening pall of snow that muffled the country from Thames to Severn. She wished that Lovel had not gone out; disheartened though she now was, she still clung to the tormenting comfort of his presence; it was almost a consolation to see him suffering beside her. Since life held neither hope nor joy for either of them, let her in her own pain at least be able to sneer at the sight of his; let them be together in their separation. She grew frightened at the wildness and virulence of her thoughts. They were not so much thoughts, as impulses that floated a little crazily across her mind. She was not well to-day; it was not surprising; it was cruel of Nicholas to leave her alone. She stirred, and looked round,saw no one, but fancied that eyes watched her. “Olver!” she cried out, although she had seen nothing.
In a pause that followed her cry she breathed heavily, staring round with eyes that dared not flutter into a blink. Her eyeballs became tense and dry, her hands strained at the edge of the table. For all that she knew, her brother-in-law might have been in the room all the time; she was still startled by his soft appearances and vanishings, as by his sudden meaningless laughter, and by the arrows of shrewdness that would dart across his erratic brain. “Olver?” she whispered next, half-expecting him to answer from under her very feet, and little as she desired his company, she thought that any answer would be preferable to the continued silence in the room and to the doubt as to whether Olver was there or not.
She was coming to the conclusion that her instinct had been a mistaken one, since five minutes had certainly elapsed while she stared and peered round the room, and she was about to relax from her strain of looking and listening for Olver, when she heard a faint tap on the window, and, looking round, she saw his face pressed against the window pane from outside. Her fright gave way to petulance; she called out to him to give over his tricks, and at the same time she beckoned imperiously to him to come into the house. Well-accustomed to him by now, she felt relief when he materialised out of the silence.“How long had you been watching me?” she asked.
“That’s my secret,” he replied.
She struggled, impatient of the little mysteries he liked to make.
“Anyhow, Nicholas isn’t here,” she observed, turning away from Olver and tapping her fingers irritably upon the table.
“I don’t want Nicholas,” said Olver, “I want you.”
He came further into the room, while she looked at him in enquiry.
“Oh, you’ve found an old bird’s nest you want to show me,” she said disdainfully.
“That’s as far as you can think,” replied Olver with equal disdain. He came up to her. “Have you ever thought that there’s things you’ve no idea of going on all round you?”
“Why,” she said, fright again overtaking her, “that’s what I was thinking just now.”
“But you didn’t like to think too close on it?”
“No, perhaps I didn’t. Let me be, Olver; I’ve troubles enough without you moidering me.”
“And are you the only one to have troubles?”
“Let me be, Olver, I tell you.”
“No, I won’t let you be. I’ve a grudge against you. I’ve thought it out.”
“I’m not well, Olver; keep your grudge till I’ve got my baby. Then I’ll have it out with you if I must.”
“You hadn’t any pity on Nicco.”
“Oh, that’s how the land lies, is it?”
“No use being brazen about it, Daisy. I’m here to speak for Nicco, and nothing you say’ll stop me.”
“If you don’t let me be, I’ll tell Nicholas, and he’ll be angry with you.”
“I’m not afraid of Nicco.”
“Oh, yes, you are. We all are. Even me,—and I’m his wife.”
“A pretty wife. Nicco can kill me if he likes; I’ll speak first. I know better what’s good for him than he knows himself. You’ve broken his heart.”
“Not me, Olver, not me only. His heart would have been broken anyhow. And God knows he’s breaking mine.”
“Who cares about yours? Nicco’s worth everything.”
“I know that, do you suppose I don’t know that? It’s making me mad, Olver. Can’t you have a little pity on me and leave me to myself?”
“I wouldn’t have any pity for you, not if you were dying.”
“Well, I shall be dying before very long, if that’s any consolation to you.”
“You aren’t the sort that dies. Nicco’ll have you stuck to him for years; he’ll leave you before you leave him.”
“Don’t say that, Olver; he’s strong; different, but as strong as me.”
“Oh, his body’s strong enough, but there’s something burns him away inside. Look at his eyes.”
“Olver, don’t say such terrible things. What do you know? I never can tell how much you know,—you’re simple, aren’t you? He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t complain to you, does he?”
“He’ll die, but he won’t have complained once. And we shall never know. He’s good to us both, isn’t he?”
“Good,—yes, he’s good; but you don’t understand, Olver, you needn’t rub it into me how good he is or how much he’s worth. I know it already, I love him so much it makes me sick and mad. It’s almost too much for me, what I have to put up with, what with one thing and another.... Now go away, can’t you? I’ve told you, I’ve admitted it all to you; I can’t put it more plainly.”
“He’s good to you just as he’s good to me; he hasn’t a ha’pennyworth of feeling for you.”
“I know, Olver, I know; can’t you leave me alone? I’m not well, I tell you; it isn’t the moment to come baiting me.”
“There’s another woman he wanted....”
“You shan’t speak of her!” screamed Daisy.
“Oh, yes, I will,” said Olver, seizing her by the wrists. “Do you call to mind what you once told me, that you saw them together, and it seemed a week wasn’t enough for all they had to say? Where are they now. Three miles apart, yet they haven’t seen one another for six months,—from the time the Downs were green to the time the Downs are white. And do yousuppose he’s left her for a moment in thought, or she left him? Not they. They used to slip together to the Kennet, those two, and they’ve been suddenly divided. And you whine to me because you’re unhappy. You say you’re not well. Not well! You! Who cares? You could whelp a litter and be none the worse, and you can stand a bit of unhappiness just as well as you can stand your baby. I’ve no pity for you. But Nicco,—he’ll break,—he’ll die inside.”
“Don’t, Olver, don’t; what’s the good of torturing me now. What can I do?”
“What can you do? You can clear out, can’t you? Go and have your baby in a ditch, somewhere where Nicco can never find you again,” he said brutally.
“Where would be the good of that? She’s married herself, Miss Warrener is, and I love Nicco, I keep on telling you; I can’t give him up,” cried Daisy, confused and hunted to the last extremity; and she thought of something she could say to Olver, something which would either silence him or else force him to throw down all his cards upon the table, “Whose fault is it, anyhow, that Nicco had to marry me, to save me from the shame his own brother brought upon me?”
“You think you can trick me like you tricked him,” cried Olver, horrible with rage. “Why don’t you say the shame Peter Gorwyn brought on you? You might be a little nearer the mark.”
“Peter Gorwyn?”
They faced one another, all civilisation gone from them. They struck blindly at one another, keeping nothing back.
“I saw you, oh, I saw you, the day of the Scouring.”
“I loved Nicco, I do love him; I had to have him!”
“Youlove him?—you’re killing him.”
“He couldn’t have got Miss Warrener,—not with a brother like you. Do you hear? ’Tisn’t me that keeps him from her; it’s you, you, you.”
“Me?” shouted Olver.
“You, did you never think of that before? It doesn’t matter whether my baby is your baby or Peter Gorwyn’s baby. It’s you that spoil his life for him, you and your mother, you mischievous dolt, and your dirty blood in him. He’s tainted, and he knows it. ’Tisn’t me. I came long after; I’m just an extra. ’Tis you and your mother destroyed him, from the day he was born.”
She clasped her hands suddenly to her side and fell back on to her chair.
“You’ve done for me,” she groaned.
The door opened and Lovel stood upon the threshold. Olver ran to him, touching him all over with his hands, reaching up to pass his hands even over his brother’s head.
“Look at her, Nicco; she’s tricked you, the brat isn’t mine, it’s Peter Gorwyn’s, and she says ’tis I that kept you from Miss Warrener. Why don’t you kill her, Nicco? and I’ll go right awayif it’s true; I love you better than she does; you shall have Miss Warrener.”
“What’s all this?” said Lovel. He put Olver’s passionate fumbling hands aside, and went over to Daisy. “You’re ill,” he said in a practical voice; “What is it? has Olver hurt you?”
“You heard what he said,” she replied, looking up at him with terrified and pain-racked eyes.
“Never mind about that. Are you ill? Let me help you up.”
“She’s tricked you, Nicco,” cried Olver, fawning round him.
“Hold your tongue, Olver; she’s in pain. You poor fool, why didn’t you tell me? Heaven knows if I can get to Marlborough through this snow with darkness coming on. Lean on me, I’ll take you upstairs. Lean on me; never mind anything else.”
Olver was pulling frantically at him.
“Is it true, Nicco? is it me? Oh, my poor Nicco,—first me and then her,—what can I do?—but I’ll do something,—I’ll find something to do,—oh, my head, my heart.”
“The pain, the pain!” cried Daisy.
“Lean on me,” said Lovel, putting his arm round her.
“Gorwyn’s child!” screamed Olver in a frenzy. He followed them to the foot of the stairs, where he stumbled and fell on the lowermost step, still calling incoherently after Lovel, who was persuading his wife up to her room, sayingmeanwhile, “Lean on me, Daisy, I won’t let you fall, don’t be afraid, it’ll all be over soon.”
The word was quickly passed down the village street that Daisy Lovel’s time was come, and that Lovel begged the kindness of some charitable woman to remain near his wife while he rode to Marlborough in search of the midwife. “There’s a chance for somebody,” said one woman, “to see the inside of that house for herself.” “And there’s a come-down for Gipsy Lovel,” said another, “to have to beg for one of us to go into his place. Where would he be if we all refused?” “Her time come already? and she married,—let me see,—four, five months, is it?” said a third. But in spite of these and other scornful remarks, volunteers were forthcoming, and even those who had lagged most behind, or who had recommended that Lovel be left to suffer now the penalty of his years of unneighbourliness, watched enviously the departure of Mrs. Blagdon for the house of mystery and evil legend. They saw her received at the door by Lovel, drawn in and swallowed up, as to their imagination Daisy herself had been swallowed up on the day of her wedding.
They continued, however, to observe Lovel’s house for some time, glancing at intervals between the lace curtains which decked their own windows, and saw a light spring up in the room they assumed to be Daisy’s, and a gigantic shadow passing to and fro upon the blind.Evening had come, swiftly to be followed by night; the snow had begun to fall again in large flakes; very soon the street was white, unbroken by footmarks, since every soul was within doors. The women idly watching between their curtains saw Lovel emerge from his house, close the door behind him, and pass down the alley between two houses to the shed where he kept his horse. They saw him emerge again, leading the horse; they saw him swing himself into the saddle and ride away, his coat collar turned up high against the snow, tall and spare as he disappeared silently into the thick dusk. The women said, “He’s off to Marlborough to find the midwife. Things can’t be going,” they added with relish, “as well as they should.” The men only growled, “He must be crazed to think he can find the road to Marlborough on a night like this; he’ll break his own neck and his horse’s legs.” But the women had a curious faith in Lovel’s efficiency.
Few village confinements were honoured with so much interest. The darkness in the street was now intense, heightened by the snow that continued to float down in large, soft flakes; only the little yellow lights in the windows broke it, all on the ground-floor level but for the significant exception of Daisy’s window, whose lighted rectangle on the upper storey threw its beams out against the falling snow. All was silent in the Lovels’ house; ever Mrs. Blagdon seemed to have fallen into the clandestine habits of herhosts, for she had not once run out across the street in an interval for a moment’s gossip with a neighbour; only the shadow passed upon the blind, enormous and suggestive, to show that any life stirred within the house. The snow fell thicker; the few black holes left by the hoofs of Lovel’s horse had been long since blotted out, and Lovel himself had disappeared into the night as completely as though he had no intention of ever coming back. Hours had passed, suppers were finished and cleared away in all the little lighted kitchens, still the good wives were reluctant to move upstairs to bed, while careful to conceal their reluctance from the men. And Mrs. Blagdon, when she finally threw up a window in spite of the steely cold, to call out in an irritable and impatient voice, “Anybody seen anything of Lovel?” was answered by a dozen voices in negation.
“How’s things, Mrs. Blagdon?”
“Turned round the wrong way,” came the reply laconically.
The street fell back into its silence after the small disturbance. Women who had been through the experience gave a moment’s pity to Daisy. Gorwyn, the smith, knocking out his pipe against his hearthstone, reiterated the opinion that Lovel would not be seen again that night. Peter, his son, stirred uneasily. “Is it all up with her, would you think, mother?” But Mrs. Gorwyn was contemptuous. “Lord, no; asolid girl like Daisy’d stand a deal more than that.”
Country news, that most unaccountable traveller, spread even to Starvecrow in its isolation. Mrs. Quince was full of it,—she who towards Clare had kept herself so very prim and respectfully reserved. “You will remember, madam, the girl you saw in the attic bedroom here, Daisy Morland by name?”
“I remember perfectly, Mrs. Quince; what of her?”
“You will remember she was stitching at some baby-linen,—she was married to that good-for-nothing Lovel,—Gipsy Lovel, they call him,—a fortnight later,—a matter of three weeks before you were married yourself, madam.”
“Yes, Mrs. Quince?”
“She was brought to bed of a son in the early hours of this morning, madam,” said Mrs. Quince importantly.
“Really. I hope she is well?”
“Well enough; these country girls make nothing of it. Lightly born as lightly come by, I always say. Yet at one time it was a question whether they could save the baby.” Mrs. Quince added some details. “Yes, madam. Her husband had to ride to Marlborough and brought the doctor out a-pillion, and how he could ha’ done it with the night as black as pitch, and the snow falling, and the roads hedge-deep in snow,is what the folk are all asking themselves. They saw him start, but no one saw him come back, but sure enough when they went to unbar their doors this morning there were the tracks of a horse up the street. A fine boy, they say. It’s fortunate he hasn’t taken after his Uncle Olver.”
“Yes,” said Clare.
“It’s my opinion, madam, I don’t know if it’s yours too,—that people like that have no business to get children. ’Tisn’t fair, as a matter of conscience, when you don’t know what dark blood you may be handing on. Anybody has only got to look at the Lovels to know there’s no good in them,—well, they ought to restrain themselves, that’s what I say.”
Seeing that Clare did not reply, Mrs. Quince resumed after a moment, “There always were things about those Lovels that weren’t natural. Now here’s another thing: how did he ride from King’s Avon to Marlborough and back on a night like last night, if something unholy wasn’t in league with him? No other man in the village could have done it, and there’s not many that would have tried. No, let the baby go, they’d have said, and the woman too, if need be. And he’s always out on those hills; if he had to go after sheep there would be some sense in it, but he just goes straying alone when most men are glad enough to keep their fireside. He’s been seen on the top of White Horse Hill, in the middle of a blizzard fit to cut you in half. And I have heard it told, that after he’s passed by,the Grey Wethers have been found uncovered; yes, even though they were at the bottom of the deepest drift there they’ll be, sticking up black in the middle of the snow.”
“You can’t believe everything you’re told, Mrs. Quince.”
“Well, that’s as it may be, madam. All the same, I stick to it that there is something unholy about those Lovels; it’s easy to say the younger one is daft, but there’s nothing daft about Nicholas,—far from it. So why does he look so dark and queer? and why must he pass on his sly Egyptian blood to an English girl? if he must get children, let him get them on one of his own sort, that’s what I say.”
Here Calladine came in.
“Secrets?” he asked in his most urbane manner, seeing Mrs. Quince become silent in the midst of garrulity.
“No,” said Clare. “Mrs. Quince was telling me that Lovel’s wife has had a son, and that Lovel had to go to Marlborough in the middle of the night to fetch the doctor.”
“Dear me, that’s a daring, uncomfortable thing to do,” said Calladine, smiling in a patronising way.
“Yes,” said Clare, looking at him. “Not many people would have cared for the job, I think.”
Calladine laughed negligently.
“You always had a weakness for your poacher,” he replied.
“Would you be wanting me any more, madam?” enquired Mrs. Quince.
“If Lovel’s wife is in need of anything I can send her, please let me know, Mrs. Quince.”
“Yes, madam. Very good of you, madam.”
When the housekeeper had left the room, Calladine said, “I never question your actions, as you know, Clare, but do you think it judicious to encourage these people? The woman was married not very long before ourselves, yet she already gives birth to a baby; the man is well-known as an undesirable in the whole neighbourhood.”
Clare went up to him. “Oh, Richard,” she cried gaily, “are they worth talking about any longer?” She pushed him down into his armchair and knelt at his feet. “What are we going to do to-day, tell me?”
“To do?” repeated Calladine in surprise. “Why, what is there that we could possibly do on a day like this? What a restless spirit it is—always crying out to be up and doing—when I am quite content if I may sit and look into your eyes.”
“That’s very pretty, Richard, but it doesn’t mean much; don’t you ever want to be out, moving, riding, anything! anything but sit cooped indoors day after day with books?”
“I confess I haven’t much desire to be riding into snow-drifts on this particular morning,” said Calladine, glancing at the white-and-leaden prospect out of the window.
“And you wouldn’t allow me to do so either, if I had a mind to?”
“Such a wild child!” said Calladine fondly, stroking her hair. “How fortunate that you should have a staid, elderly husband to look after you.”
“How do you think I looked after myself for nineteen years, then, Richard?”
“Heaven knows,” said Calladine in mock dismay; banter with Clare was a form of conversation he particularly enjoyed. The morning promised to pass agreeably; there was nothing he liked better than for Clare to kneel at his feet, as she was doing now, sitting back on her heels, while he looked at her fresh youthfulness with that fond and tender glance of his, and rallied her gently, or caressed her with the courtly phrases she had heard from him alone among men. “Howdidyou look after yourself?” he repeated. “You always escaped from old Martha Sparrow, and even the poacher cannot always have been at hand for a ready rescue, and in any case he is scarcely my idea of a knight-errant.”
“No,” said Clare, “he hasn’t such pretty manners as you, Richard.”
“Now you’re laughing at me,—are you, or aren’t you? I never know,” and he caught her to him and began flecking her face and hair with quick kisses, but desisted to say more seriously, “You’re so exquisitely a woman, Clare, so deliciously a child; I realised that you were bothfrom the day you first came to visit me here.”
The phrase had a vague echo of familiarity for Clare; “so exquisitely a woman”; she felt sure that she had heard him say that, or something very like it, before; and she thought with the hardness that was becoming habitual to her where he was concerned, that from no woman would he demand anything further.
“What a toy I am to you, Richard,” she said idly; “what a toy you like to make of me.”
“The most exquisite toy that ever came into the life of a sad and lonely man,” he said, with a return to his old manner, and he took her hand and began to play with the bangle on her wrist. He handled her much as he would handle his terra-cotta statuettes, and for a while she endured it, but presently sprang away and went to stand at the window where she might look out upon the prospect of shining snow.
“Always looking out, Clare? what liberty do you see out there? you think I ought to let you go, little caged bird, but you would soon perish,—your pretty limbs wouldn’t stand the cold,—better stay happily where you are, believe me,—don’t fret,—come back to me,—let me whisper how precious you are,—come back to our lovely idleness.”
“But I don’t like idleness, Richard; no use pretending I do; you should not have married some one so restless as I.” His hands were upon her shoulders; she wanted to shake them off.
“Did the poacher ...” began Calladine.
“Ah, leave Lovel alone,” she cried; “what impels you to speak of him this morning? Leave him alone, with his wife and his baby; they can very well look after themselves without any interest from us.”
“But, Clare, Mrs. Quince was speaking of them; it’s only natural that my thoughts should continue to run in that direction; and even you yourself....”
“You’re fascinated by the subject of Lovel,” she said, whirling round on him, “now, aren’t you? own to it. You always bring him in: the Downs, the circus, and now his baby,—everything’s an excuse for bringing in Lovel. And why? Is it because he took me out of the circus-tent that night? is it because I rode with him? why not speak out what’s at the back of your mind?”
“But, Clare, Clare! why so fierce and challenging suddenly? there’s nothing at the back of my mind.” (“There is,” she thought, “and you too great a coward to face it out.”) “Come now, don’t let us quarrel and we won’t speak of Lovel if it offends you,—will that satisfy you?”
“It’s of no importance whether we speak of a man in the village or not,” she said, turning away and hunching her shoulders.
They went back to sit by the fire, a bulk of hostility unspoken between them. Calladine felt peevish; his indolent, graceful, vaguely amorous morning had been spoilt; and spoilt by what?by the presence of Lovel. “You’ve never yet shaken off that lean rogue,” he broke out once, sudden and querulous after a spell of silence. They both sat staring into the fire, separate as they could be. They had not previously spoken of Lovel, not directly, not insistently; only to range round him with that nagging, niggling hesitation that seemed to pull at Calladine. But now his presence blocked every other road of conversation; he got in the way, he was near, he could not be got rid of. Almost, he was in the room.
Calladine looked at Clare; fair and slight, delicate even, but so unafraid. A touch, and she was instantly up and all-daring. She kindled at a spark. What was it that she and Lovel had in common? the same apparent frailty of body, the same flame of spirit,—Calladine had all the lyricism to clothe his perceptions with words. He had apprehended Lovel; on the rare occasion when he had seen him, he had apprehended him fully, to his own disquietude. And he apprehended Clare and their resemblance, with pain and resentment. They were two fine and vulnerable things, he thought; vulnerable and brave. But he thought it with only half of his brain, the lyrical, romantic half; with the other half he was peevish and irritated.
If only they were not so silent; Clare had never faltered or complained. Only she had wanted to go out; she had looked out of the window with a kind of homesickness. He wasalways catching her eyes at their straying, and being made aware how far removed she was from himself. But this, again, had been with half of his brain; with the other half he had known that she was his wife and that he had got her under his roof. And he had not allowed his lyrical self to call her a prisoner.
What if she were to escape? He would be without persuasion or authority.
“You stay with me out of apathy,” he cried. “If once your fancy changed, you would be gone.”
Clare, who had not been thinking of him, turned a mild glance of slight attention on him. He was glaring at her, frightened and angry.
“Yes,” he continued, “I don’t hold you; you’re kind to me, and you indulge my game of pretence. But you’re not really here. You’re indulgent to me as if I were a child,—‘yes, dear, very nice,’ between your own, grown-up preoccupations. But you ought to remember that I am your husband,” he said.
“When have I forgotten it?”
He sulked. It was true she had not forgotten it. He had no reproaches against her; she had been patient, gentle.
“I don’t hold you,” he grumbled.
It was a long time since she had seen him like this; usually he was assertive and complacent. How slight a thing it took to disturb him! His complacency was only a façade, a painted hoarding propped up by struts,—theatrical, likeeverything else about him. But she really bothered very little with him, now that she had found him out.
“Oh, yes, Richard,” she said, to pacify him and to be done with the argument.
“But I say no,” he cried, hitting his fist on the arm of his chair. “You’re for ever looking out of the window, and sometimes when I speak to you, you answer beside the point. I married you to get a wife, not a woman languishing like a captive in my house.”
She laughed at that, quite amusedly, and he felt he had been foolish. Still he would not abandon his point.
“That fellow would only have to beckon ...” he grumbled.
“Lovel again?” asked Clare.
“You enjoy saying his name.”
“I do not,” said Clare quietly.
“No,” he said, staring at her, “perhaps you do not.”
Perhaps she did not. Perhaps the very name was pain to her. But he must go wrangling on at her.
“Lovel wouldn’t keep you indoors, perhaps you think.—He would let you out into the snow,—take you out into it himself perhaps.”
She only looked at him. He went on, more judicial now; deliberate, less blatantly bad-tempered.
“Yet, after all, I don’t know why you hold such a good opinion of this fellow Lovel. Hesticks to no trade,—he gets a country girl into trouble and has to marry her,—not a very creditable record, it seems to me.” He was leaning back in his chair, with his finger-tips together. “And, judging by his stock, he has no right to beget sons,—better if he did not associate with women at all,—such people should be allowed to die out.”
“So Mrs. Quince was saying. Perhaps he feels the same himself,” said Clare in a contained voice.
“It looks like it! a child born after four months of marriage. I am bound to say, my dear, your suggestion isn’t very convincing. But there, what should you know of the lusts of these country young men? Animals, merely. Forgive me if I seem self-righteous. I feel strongly,—very strongly.” He leaned forward and patted her. “You can understand that I don’t like to think of my Clare contaminated by such company.”
“You mean Lovel?”
“Most certainly I mean Lovel.—Why do you look at me so darkly, Clare?”
“Did I look at you darkly? I didn’t mean to. My thoughts were far away.”
“And where....”
“Ah, Richard, mayn’t I have my thoughts to myself?”
“By all means, Clare. I hope, my dear, that no one has ever accused me of being a tyrant. Of course your thoughts are your own.—Butyou don’t resent, do you, the things I have been saying of Lovel?”
“I am only tired of the whole subject.”
“Yes,—of course,—naturally,—I quite understand that. Mrs. Quince is an old gossip. I must tell her that it really doesn’t interest you to be informed every time a woman in the village has a baby. It doesn’t does it?”
“No, of course not,—but don’t say anything to Mrs. Quince, I beg you.”
“But I can’t have my wife bothered by my old gossip of a housekeeper. I daresay she meant it well, thinking you were interested in Lovel.”
“Richard, please,—let us leave Lovel now,—I shall begin to scream if I hear his name mentioned again, I warn you.”
“Clare. You try to joke, but the idea of saying that wouldn’t come into your head if there were not some truth in it.”
“Well, I told you I was tired of the subject.”
“You are talking now like an irritable woman.”
“Am I? But Iama woman, and not a man, and therefore I daresay as irritable as all other women.”
“You mean that men can be every whit as irritable,—myself, for example.”
“Now you are putting words into my mouth that I never said. Is it a guilty conscience, Richard?”
“You persist in joking when I want you to be serious!”
“Oh, Richard, what a childish conversation. Instead of sitting here and talking, let us....”
“Well, what? Let us what?”
“Nothing, I’ve thought better of it.”
“Let us go out, you were going to say. Always the same folly! Have you any idea of the depth of the snow? Out, indeed!”
“I never said it.”
“No, but you thought it.—Ah, if I say that, you will ask again if you mayn’t have your thoughts to yourself. There are moments when I don’t know how to deal with you, Clare.” He knew his own injustice, but his querulous jealousy pricked him on. “Any other woman would be content to sit by her own fireside this bitter day with the man she had married so short a time ago.”
“Four months,—getting on for half a year.”
“I see,—you have found the time long. If you entered a little more into my interests, instead of having your own thoughts to yourself so much, my dear, perhaps you would find it pass quicker, and it would be more companionable.”
Clare thought that he looked at her almost with hatred. She was herself too indifferent to be interested either one way or the other.
“I shall be glad when this accursed snow is melted and gone,” he added, “and you will perhaps be a little less restless.”
At that moment Mrs. Quince came in, looking perturbed.
“There is Olver Lovel downstairs, madam, asking to see you,—I didn’t know what to say,—he seems so bent upon it,—but he looks like a scarecrow, that he does, with his coat torn and his hat stove in, and bits of straw all over him as though he had spent the night sleeping in a barn.”
Clare rose.
“Where is he, Mrs. Quince?”
Calladine started forward with a detaining hand.
“No, Clare, you can’t see this man,—let me speak to him first,—at least it’s not right, not safe, for you to see him.”
“And he says he must speak to Mrs. Calladine alone, sir,” Mrs. Quince put in.
“Of course I shall see him,” said Clare.
Calladine grew agitated. “Mrs. Quince, you need not wait; please leave the room. Now, Clare, understand: it is against my wishes that you see this man. Let me go down and find out what he wants, and then if I find that he is quiet and reasonable I will allow you to interview him in my presence. He has probably come to beg, in which case I can give him a few shillings as well as you can, and send him away.”
Clare faced him. “Please let me pass, Richard; I am sorry to do anything against your wishes, but I intend to speak to Olver,—and alone.”
“Let me make myself quite clear: it is not only against my wishes, but, since my wishes fail to touch you, also against my orders.”
“I am sorry, Richard, but I mean what I said.”
He blustered; she remained quiet; in their first encounter he was no match for her.
“You disobey me deliberately, then?”
“This is a case in which I must use my own judgment.”
“You will not expect me to receive you back into my favour afterwards.”
She smiled a little.
“Really, Richard, I am afraid I must take the risk of that.”
“Go, then,” he said, stepping dramatically aside, “go, in direct defiance.” Still he did not quite expect her to flout his authority, and remained amazed when she passed him and went swiftly out of the room.
Left to himself, he made a movement to follow her, but drew back. Let her go, to her Lovels and her secret life: he had never really held her. Let her go, to the summons which had come, and to which she had so instantly responded. He himself, from the moment Olver Lovel’s name had been pronounced, had dwindled to nullity; he had ceased, on the spot, to exist for her. All these months, she had lived with him, a stranger, away from her kind. And he recalled Mrs. Quince’s description of Olver,—“he looks like a scarecrow, that he does,”—this emissary from Nicholas Lovel to his, Calladine’s wife.
Calladine strode up and down the room. She was downstairs now with Olver; what was he saying to her? What was in the future, haunted by the presence of Lovel as the past had never been? How should they ever get rid of Lovel now, standing between them? That uncomfortable presence of Lovel in the past, at which Calladine had pecked and nagged, was nothing to his dominion over the future. Surely he had been mad not to take Clare’s acquaintance with the poacher as a matter of course? mad to harass her as he had harassed her that morning? By his own folly he had created the spectre, the giant, of the situation. He strode up and down, hitting fist against palm in his vexation. Then he grew afraid; what if the poacher should not restrict his poaching to game alone? What if he should entice Clare by the occult powers with which the countryside credited him? Occult powers, or human powers, it was all one. Calladine felt his helplessness; he was weak, wordy, he could be set aside. They would set him aside, those two.
He was an ill-used man. Self-pity nearly brought tears to his eyes. Life used him ill: first the woman who had fooled him, now Clare. Clare’s kindness to him had been a dalliance, while she had nothing better to do; it had evaporated at the mention of a name. He hated her, he hated Lovel, he hated the Downs and thesnow. Glittering and cold, without compromise; he did not understand the Downs and the winter, but Clare and Lovel understood them. What was Olver saying to Clare? Calladine felt his life finished; and through his perfectly genuine anguish he did not fail to perceive the romantic value of his situation. He fell into a chair, and remained there with his legs extended as he gazed despondently on the floor before him.
Clare would tell him nothing. He foresaw that, and his foresight was justified. She came back, immeasurably far removed from him. He wanted to ignore her return, to remain stiff with dignity, but it was not long before his curiosity weakened him. “Well, you are not very communicative. I see that you have no desire to make amends for the distress you have caused me. Was the poacher’s message, then, too sacred,—too personal,—to be imparted to me?”
Clare’s eyes, when she turned them on him, were narrowed with pain.
“Richard, must you ask me questions now? I have come back to you; I ask you only to leave me to myself.”
But that was precisely what he could not do.
“You ask a good deal, don’t you, in asking that? I see you white and shaken, yet I am not to know the cause. You ask a good deal of my forbearance, indeed. I am not to know what messages another man sends you. I am not to know what is going on, nearly under my nose, but kept away from me. I am to be defied bymy wife, and then kept in ignorance by her. This is the state of affairs we have come to in one short morning! What has happened to us? it bewilders me.... I insist upon knowing,—Iwillknow,—has that half-wit come to you with a message from his brother?”
“No,” said Clare.
“How you have to force even that one monosyllable from your lips! What, he came on his own initiative? Clare, you are not speaking the truth.—Yes, I am sure you are; I beg your pardon. You distract me by your coldness. Clare, forgive me, I scarcely knew what I was saying.”
“Don’t touch me,” said Clare, recoiling, “for pity’s sake don’t touch me now.”
“I am a very unhappy man,” said Calladine, falling again into his chair and taking his head between his hands. “I am indeed an unhappy man,—what am I to do with my life?”
He remained for some time with his head sunk between his hands, then, glancing up to see what effect his attitude might have had upon Clare, he found her gazing out of the window.
“I see,—you forget my very presence,” he said reproachfully, and his sense of injury was doubled. But because his distress was genuine, although he could not refrain from rhetoric, he followed her across the room in a tormented way, and tried to see into her face. “Clare, speak to me; I am not angry, only unhappy. There issomething now in your mind which I do not share; you live in a half-hour which is secret from me.—Or have you always,” he cried suddenly, “lived in hours I knew nothing of?”
Mrs. Quince peeped in through the door.
“Ah, that’s good,” she said in a relieved tone; “I wasn’t easy so long as I thought Mrs. Calladine was with that scamp,” and she retired.
“Even the servants, you see, Clare, are concerned for you.”
“Mrs. Quince, far from being concerned,” Clare said, returning briefly to a consciousness of Calladine and of the house that held her, “is full of delight.”
“Clare, these bitter words from you! you are changed indeed, or am I seeing you as you are for the first time? I begin to look back at these four months as at a long delusion; I am utterly bewildered. You are withdrawn to an unbelievable distance from me; I feel it, yet I cannot say what has taken place. This morning, we were close to one another; we were, as it seemed, enclosed by our little room, leisured, snug, sheltered; now, I am striving to reach you, and am held off.” His words beat without meaning against Clare’s isolation; she could not emerge at all from the tumult of the terrible scene she had endured from Olver. She looked, indeed, at Calladine, intently, as though she were trying to bring herself back to the importance of his world, but her eyes were empty.
The day dragged away; Calladine continued to clamour fitfully. He could not leave her alone, and, though she clearly suffered, he, perverse, must torment her. By adding to her pain, he added to his own, but could not desist. She answered him very little; a negative, an affirmative now and then, was all he could get from her; for her part, all that she wished was that his voice might cease, so that she might have a lull, a silence, alone with her own mind. Yet it seemed to her that she had, indeed, a silence at the core of her being, still and inviolate against his ineffectual clamour, like the stillness in the heart of a cyclone, where birds poise and sing. At this core, this kernel, this patch of peace, she dwelt apart; Lovel was there, and so was Olver, Olver with the urgent hands and fanatical eyes, passing from Lovel to her and from her to Lovel, almost crushing them up against one another by the force of his urgency, Olver’s determination was like a menace, becoming almost malevolent by virtue of its very violence. He overwhelmed, he terrified her; she had nothing but weak refusal; she had tried to push him away with hands that had no strength in them. She had covered her eyes, but he had forced away her hands; she had shut her ears, but he had screamed past her defences. It was easy to remain deaf to Calladine’s whining; it had been impossible to shut out the ferocity of Olver’s attack. And yet, in spite of the din, she wasaware of that core of silence, in which she and Lovel were, with Olver rushing between.
She and Calladine, Lovel and Daisy, there they were, the four of them, all separate; and Olver, like a firebrand, a trail of fire, working between them. They might have had some control, the four, but for this crazy creature, obsessed by the one idea, not to be reasoned with. He was the incalculable element; he made the others helpless, taking their intentions out of their hands and throwing them away.
The danger of Olver,—what if he should see Calladine? What if he should irrupt into the room and shout irreparable words before she had time to stop him? The danger of Olver,—what had he said to Lovel? what to Lovel’s wife? But Calladine and Lovel’s wife alike remained insignificant; she and Lovel were the two full of meaning, shut up with the wild, charging Olver in their core of silence.
Vaguely somewhere, she was sorry for Calladine, but he was insignificant; she could not pause to consider him; where she and Lovel came together, he faded into that poor wisp drained of blood, that he had dwindled to on the evening of the circus fire, when she and Lovel had stood together on the embankment. They shed him; he slipped off, and only his noise reached them intermittently, scarcely troublesome.
Daisy herself was less unreal than Calladine; Daisy knew suffering too, Clare supposed; in aclumsy, common way she knew it; blundering, but human; yes, she could be sorry for the other woman.
But they must be sacrificed, the two, Calladine and Daisy, if matters came to a head; sacrificed to the blazing reality of herself and Lovel.
Would Olver come again? Would he leave her alone now? Would he give her a chance to forget the words he had spoken? some of them remained, rang in her head, brassy, like beaten gongs; fell on her like big sparks from an anvil, burning. It had been a strange experience, to hear Olver voice the passion that had upreared itself, always mute, in Lovel.
Olver came again. He came like an avenging angel, inspired, the crazed creature, by the urgency of his message. Like a reproachful angel he came to rebuke her, grotesquely disguised in his scarecrow travesty; the beauty of his selflessness shone through the ramshackle of his appearance. She scarcely knew whether to find him pathetic or alarming; she wanted to pity, she could only be disturbed; he disturbed her to the darkest places of her soul. The fixity of his idea, the strength of his purpose, his devotion, his anger, raised his simplicity to the plane of nobleness. She could not answer him; she was abashed before him.
She was afraid of him, his image pursued her, his upraised hand denouncing her, his eyes and tongue pouring scorn upon her. At moments he seemed like fate itself, like a thing she couldnot escape from. She never knew at what hour of the day he would come, so all day, sometimes for two or three days on end, she waited, dreading and longing for his coming. She could have refused to see him, but had not the strength; but when she must crush Calladine’s protests, then she had strength in plenty.
The snow lay deeper than ever, after another heavy fall, upon the Downs, but although still a prisoner her restlessness had left her: the life she had wanted came now to her from without. Olver brought that life; he brought tumult, anguish, but it was life that he brought, besieging her. And although he was not Lovel’s envoy, still it was straight from Lovel that he came. His eyes, as they flamed on Clare, an hour earlier had been filled with Lovel; she could fancy Lovel’s image still lingering in them. And after he had left her, it was to Lovel’s presence that he would return; he would hear Lovel’s voice and see Lovel’s hands, that so haunted her. Once she broke her silence to ask about Lovel, “What does he do, these days of snow? does he get out? stay at home?” and Olver answered, “To-day he has been twisting new snares, and last night he brought home a lamb that still lies by our fire.”
She knew that an end must come; beleaguered, she knew that. She had pushed life away, but it had followed her, even into her retreat. It was useless; Calladine was not life; his need of her had not been life. He was a shadow, a manof pretence, sufficient to himself, with his own pretences for company. It was only the true solitaries, the really lonely people, like Lovel, who had absolute need of their chosen loves. The strong, clamping loves, that fastened on to one another, to lose their hold only when they lost their hold on life; the unalterable, ordained loves. She could not justify the argument; her selfishness towards Calladine remained unjustified. But she knew that that would not weigh with her; she and Lovel would reach one another when the day came, even through a stone wall.
Still she could not justify it. She tried to, perfunctorily. She sat frowning, and saying the words over to herself. Selfishness, duty. They remained mere words; she could not feel them in her blood, as she felt her need for Lovel and Lovel’s need for her; they were words pitted against instinct. Was it love, that need? Was it no more than that ordinary miracle, love? She thought that it was more. They had the Downs as a bond between them; the Downs, and all nature, of which Lovel seemed the spirit, the incarnation. He was the darkness of the Downs, their threat, their solitude, their intractability; she was their light, their windiness, their sunlit flanks, their springiness of turf. United, they formed a whole. There was an essential significance in Lovel, as there was an essential insignificance in Calladine.
Olver seemed to know these things; he had an untutored insight. Calladine seemed to knowthem too, but that was less surprising; with his subtle, lyrical mind he might well be expected to apprehend, and apprehending, to drape in wordiness; to give a name; to illuminate blind impulse by giving a name. Poor Calladine; she watched him, detached, as he rambled from discovery to definition, tormenting himself by the beauty of his own phrasing. At moments he viewed them, herself and Lovel, as a spectator, losing himself in the romanticism he wove around them; recalled to the fact that it was his own wife of whom he spoke, he relapsed into the gloom and terror of his pain. For he lived in terror, impotent terror. And Clare watched him, living herself in her hours with Olver and in her consciousness of Lovel.
There was the little round mirror she had given to Olver. He always brought it with him; he told her, chuckling, and tapping its bright surface with his finger, that he could see her in it even when she was not present. She did not believe this, but still she half believed it. “Look into it now,” he said, thrusting it under her eyes, “and you will see Nicholas.” She shrank back, afraid; he could not persuade her to look into it, he could not even deride her into looking into it. “You don’t believe me, yet you won’t look,” he said, “but if you don’t believe me, why then won’t you look?” He was for ever daring her to look into it, to find the image of Nicholas. She would not; she did not believe in the magicalproperties of the mirror, yet nothing would induce her to glance into its queer convexity. “I watched the circus in this, the night Nicholas took you out of the tent,” he said, and she wondered whether he knew how bound to Lovel she had felt herself that night; “I watched Nicholas’ wedding in this; I looked in this at him and Daisy sitting in the kitchen. Look into it now,” he said, offering it to her again: “maybe you’ll see Daisy nursing her baby; maybe you’ll see Nicholas twisting snares; maybe you’ll see him riding up on White Horse Hill, alone, in the snow.”
“Do you remember what I told you once?” he said to her another time, “that Nicholas could bring you out to him, even at midnight, if he gave his mind to it?”
She wondered how long this strange period would last; she was not even impatient; the core of peace and silence within her lay so certain, so quiet, that she dwelt already as it were serene in the fulfilment of herself and Lovel.
Calladine came to her door to find it locked against him. He shook the handle. “Clare! it is I.” A wild winter night; the wind blew along the passage, lifting the loose matting on the floor, the gas-jet on the stair flickered and below the well of the staircase was dark. “Clare!” said Calladine again, shaking the handle.