Her voice within answered him, faint, shut away.
“Yes, I am here; I am in bed.”
She was there! the house contained her at least; she had not fled.
“Let me come in, Clare.”
A long pause, and then her voice again.
“I cannot, Richard.”
“You have locked me out?”
“I am sorry, Richard; I can’t let you in.”
He stood irresolute. Then he started shaking the door, frightened by its wooden resistance. Still she did not come to open, she remained hard to him, did not even pray him to desist. He ceased his useless shaking and began to plead with her, tears in his voice, humiliating himself. She made no answer. He went away, down into the sitting-room, where the embers of the fire still gleamed red between the bars. “I gave her everything,” he whispered, looking round upon the comfort of the room. Upstairs, she lay in her bed, soft and sweet and indifferent as he had always known her,—lost to him. He went over to the window and looked out; the masses of the clouds flew before the wind, so that the stars seen between the rifts seemed to be rushing across heaven. Starvecrow lay beneath them, small and lonely. A hatred of the place overcame him. “I shall take her away,” he muttered; “we will go to London.” And he saw her a fleeting figure, hurrying down straight narrow London streets, her footsteps that were used to the short turf ringing forlornly along the pavement. He pitied her in the midst of his anger and frustration: surely in London she woulddroop and pine. But she must be the one to suffer now; it was her turn; he had suffered enough. He could not run the risk of leaving her among these open hills, in league with the Lovels,—even now that crazy boy, that wild scarecrow figure, might be frisking beneath the windows. His wife, linked with those dark people,—so linked, that she was and always had been a stranger to him. Misery drove him to superstition: there was a kinship between the Lovels and the country, witchcraft and legend, the crazy boy, the sarsen stones, the ancient sacrifices, Lovel the vagabond poacher, the wayward shepherd, his immunity from cold or fatigue,—all these things ran together in Calladine’s unhappy head.
And Clare, what place had she among them? she was the country in its loveliness, the running brooks, the soaring birds, the sheep-bells, the dew, the distance, the manifold music.
He would take her away. Next day, he told her so, challenging her refusal. And although she neither refused, nor, indeed, made any answer, he insisted on the point, growing noisy in his insistence. “We shall leave this place, do you hear? We shall go, we shall take the railroad to London.” But London must be an empty sound to her, he thought, whose world was the Downs. “The city of London,” he emphasised, seeing the streets, the squares, the endless houses,—a maze of streets, in which she would lose herself, seeking in vain the way out.He looked at her with hatred; there, in London, where he would feel himself at home, he would at last get the better of her, be revenged upon her for all the pain she had made him endure; there, she would be the bewildered stranger, and not he; perhaps she would even cling to him for reassurance, and he would mock at her in her distress, and spurn her, over and over again, until she crept broken at his heels.
Then, seeing her so pale and fragile, he was remorseful, and fell on his knees beside her, crying, “Forgive me, Clare.”
She sat with him after dinner in their room. He was not restive, that evening; his panics overtook him only periodically; sometimes he appeared to regain all his old confidence. Olver had not troubled Starvecrow for several days, and Calladine readily forgot. He was standing now by his bookcase, lovingly shifting the volumes; his touch slipped like velvet over the frail old leather; delicately he fluttered over the pages. Clare could even find it in her heart to envy him, life to her came so rough and violent, to him so veiled and mellowed, always, so to speak, at second-hand. He murmured to himself over his books, or was it to her that he addressed his murmurings? how real was her presence to him? was she more real than those fugitive terra cotta nymphs of his? was she perhaps less real? as lovely, but more troublesome? a nymph that would not stay there quiet on her stand, but whose draperies were blown by the wild windfrom outside, and whose feet stirred mutinous towards escape? Still he murmured over his books, without that uneasy glance which meant that he was afraid of losing her; he had forgotten, for the moment; it was providential how easily he forgot, his excitability easily roused, and almost as easily abated.
But as for her, an oppression was on her, an exaltation. She rose. “Richard, I am going to the door to look at the night; don’t come; it’s cold outside.”
He was startled, but he had known her do this before, and he had no desire to leave his books or the warmth of the room. “Take a coat,” he said. She went up to him and kissed him lightly. He patted her shoulder with affection, and watched her cross the room to the door. “Graceful ... graceful,” he murmured to himself in appreciation, turning again to his shelves.
Clare passed downstairs to the hall. She moved as though her feet did not touch earth. With a fur cloak thrown round her, she opened the door and stepped out into the night, closing the door again behind her. The Downs were there, white in the starlight. Overhead, in a black sky, blazed the constellations, not yet sunk from the splendour of winter: Orion, low in the west, the splendid Plough, and Sirius, single and more brilliant than the rest. Clare passed down the dark path, swept clear of snow, to the little gate; at the gate the dark shape of a man came forward to meet her; it was Lovel.
“I knew you would be here,” she said without surprise.
“I have not been before,” he answered.
“No,” she replied, “I knew that.”
There was a little silence.
“Will you come with me now?” he said.
“What, out on the Downs?” she asked, trying to see his face through the darkness.
“Well, we belong there, don’t we?” he said patiently.
“Then what has kept us apart, I wonder?” she said. She wondered genuinely; their union seemed so large and simple. “Yes, I will come,” she added then.
“I have tried not to come to you, Clare,” said Lovel. “The child is not mine, you know,” he went on.
“I know; Olver told me. But what does it matter? Shall we go?”
He followed her through the gate, and they took the track up on to the Downs.
Three days later Calladine rode into King’s Avon, turning in at the Manor House gates at the slow walk which had been his pace for the whole three miles of his journey. He rode slackly and without interest, letting his horse stumble; even the instinctive check on the reins seemed to have deserted him. He gave his horse to William Baskett, who ran out from the stables, and, laying his gloves and crop on the bench in the hall, trod wearily into Mr.Warrener’s presence. The old man was surprised and delighted to see him. “My dear Calladine,—my dear Richard, fancy your riding over in this snowy weather,—why, I thought you scarcely stirred out of doors. And what brings you?” He peered closer. “Dear me, there’s surely nothing the matter?”
“Clare has left me,” said Calladine. The phrase had been in his head for three days now. It was a relief to him to pronounce it at last aloud. “She has gone away with young Lovel.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Mr. Warrener. “Left you? gone away with young Lovel? The shepherd fellow? But why? where have they gone to? what for?”
Calladine raised his hands and let them fall again with a gesture of hopelessness,—the hopelessness of explaining to Mr. Warrener. Yet in a way he relished lacerating himself with the explanation.
“Clare and the shepherd fellow,” he said, “are lovers. Yes, it is as I tell you. They have been lovers for many months, perhaps for many years. They were in the habit of meeting on the Downs,—I don’t know how often,—frequently,—perhaps every day. I can’t tell. Since Clare has been married to me they had not, so far as I know, met at all. She has only seen Lovel’s brother,—the simpleton. He has come over to Starvecrow to see her. I don’t know what he has said to her. I can only suppose that heengineered their meeting. All I can tell you is that three evenings ago she went out, as she said, to look at the night, and has not since returned.”
“Three evenings ago!” exclaimed Warrener. “But I knew nothing of all this.”
“No,” said Calladine wearily, “I gave strict orders that you were not to be told. I thought she would come back, you see. But as she has not come back, I cannot keep it a secret from you any longer. We must take some action, I suppose, if you think it necessary. Or shall we leave them to themselves. If any one is capable of looking after her, Lovel is the man. And he knows the Downs,—they both know the Downs,—surely the Downs wouldn’t hurt them?”
Mr. Warrener took no notice of this pitiable cry wrung suddenly out of his anxiety.
“Of course we must search for them,” he said, frightened and bewildered and angry. “But,—really this is a most extraordinary story,—how do youknowshe has gone with young Lovel? Clare!” he said, indignant, “whom I trusted to wander about at will,—to deceive me in this fashion!—but she never came to any harm, whilst she was under my care,—no, not untilyouwere responsible for her. Upon my word, sir, you’ve fulfilled your charge very badly,—what excuse have you to give to me?”
“You let her grow up into a wild thing,—the blame’s with you as much as with me,—andas to responsibility, she’s my wife even if sheisyour daughter.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Warrener, relapsing into his customary mildness, “it won’t help matters if you and I start wrangling. But tell me now, what makes you so certain she has gone with this ... his name positively sticks in my throat,—this shepherd fellow?”
“What makes me so certain? What do you suppose I have been doing these three days?” said Calladine querulously. “What do you suppose my state of mind has been? I knew Clare was safe, in one sense, I know she was with Lovel. Yes. His wife came to Starvecrow after him; she had guessed where he was going. Oh, a pretty interview I had with her—I have Clare to thank for that. She came crying to the door, and Mrs. Quince let her in, so Mrs. Quince, at least, guesses the whole story. She brought the woman up to my room, and left her alone with me, and I saw her smirk as she went out of the door. A pretty business.... She cried to me, this woman; she sat in Clare’s chair and cried. She owned up—a long tale—how she had got Lovel to marry her and how her child was neither his child nor his brother’s; I really don’t know what else—a long tale. She talked very extravagantly—said she was dying for love of him—and how he had never touched her,—a lot of nauseous detail. She kept on saying that he was decent,—decent, decent to her,—that kept on coming back,—and that she wassorry now,—she was being punished for what she had done. He was civil to her always, she said, but as cold as winter, and now he had gone. There was nothing left for her now, she said, but to stay looking after his people,—his old mother and his mad brother,—that was her idea of making amends. We went out together and looked all over the Downs for Clare and Lovel; she sobbed and cried all the time. She wanted me to raise a hue and cry, to put the police on their trail, but of course I would not do that. ‘If they want to go,’ I said, ‘let them go with as little noise as possible.’ But I looked for them myself, and if I had found them I would have besought Clare to come back. She was with me nearly all the time, this dreadful woman. I kept sending her away, but half an hour later there she was again. She brought her child with her, wrapped in a shawl. She said she felt like drowning it,—a shocking thing to hear a woman say. Saxon fair it was, and I believed her when she told me Lovel had nothing to do with it. She has been with me almost uninterruptedly now for three days; I kept her at Starvecrow because I didn’t want the story trumpeted over the whole village. Certain that she has gone with Lovel, indeed! Of course I am certain. Besides, I found the tracks of two persons’ feet in the snow—a man’s and a woman’s.”
“Well, why didn’t you follow those tracks?” asked Mr. Warrener, who had been staring at Calladine all through his recital.
“You may be sure I did, and they led me to the top of the Downs,—knee-deep in some places. Then snow began to fall again and the tracks were blotted out,—I lost them,—I fancied the Downs and the snow were conspiring against me with Clare and Lovel. Lovel’s wife grew frantic when she saw the tracks blurring; she began running round and round in a senseless circle. There was I, up on the height with that common woman, she having lost her husband and I having lost my wife. That is what your daughter, sir, has exposed me to.”
“Is that all you think about?” said Mr. Warrener.
“Heaven knows it isn’t!” cried Calladine. “I think horrible things,—I think of Clare suffering from the cold, and then I think of her close with Lovel, and upon my soul I don’t know whether to wish her dead or alive. You don’t understand, Mr. Warrener, the passion they have for one another. I suppose I knew it, a long way back, but I shut my mind to it. It seemed preposterous. I put it away. And then, when it began to come closer, I did not know how to fight it,—I knew how strong it was. And Clare was like a little trapped thing all the while; gentle to me, but always looking out of the window. I tried to tame her; she pretended to be quite tame, but all the while she kept that poised look about her,—ready to spread her wings.”
“You seem to have a good deal to say about it all,” Mr. Warrener observed.
Calladine was silent; he felt rebuked.
“I have been crushing down my thoughts for three days,” he muttered then, sulkily.
“But what are we to do?” said Mr. Warrener. He took out his big handkerchief and began to mop his forehead, then, remembering that the day was cold, he replaced it in his pocket. “Is it snowing now?” he asked irrelevantly.
“No,” said Calladine. “It is bright and frosty, and there is no wind; the wind has dropped ever since the night that Clare went. I used to think the wind made her more restless, ‘Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne,’ you know, ‘me rendra fou.’”
“But what are we to do?” said Mr. Warrener again. They were two helpless beings, to confront such a problem. “At all events, she is safe enough with young Lovel; I believe he is a capable sort of creature; he won’t let her come to any harm.”
“Curse him,” said Calladine, resentful that the legend of Lovel’s efficiency should have percolated even to Mr. Warrener’s secluded room.
“We must go out and look for them,” said Mr. Warrener. “Come, Calladine,” he said, rousing himself, “you don’t seem able to take any action. Bestir yourself; we must go out and look for them.”
“Must we?” said Calladine without interest.“But I don’t think it’s any good, you know. I have a superstitious feeling about it; there was something intangible about Clare. I never got hold of her,—she was my joy, she tinkled about my house, in and out of my rooms, but it was like having a linnet in a cage. You know how the men go out and snare the larks under nets on the Downs; well, it was like that. She didn’t mope; no, never; but I think she was only waiting for the day when she should fly away.”
“Nonsense, nonsense,” said Mr. Warrener. “Don’t encourage such ridiculous fancies, Richard.”
“I’ve seen her,” said Calladine, “looking out of the window, looking out of the window....”
“Come,” said Mr. Warrener again; “if you won’t come with me I must go alone.”
“And the man too,” said Calladine, obstinately; “he was always on the Downs; he wouldn’t bind himself down to a master; he slipped free.”
“Are you coming?” asked Mr. Warrener, standing up. He cast a glance at his writing-table. “Fancy Clare....” he said with a sigh. “She was a help to me, Calladine, you don’t know. I made a sacrifice in giving her to you. But I thought it was for the child’s happiness; and she hadn’t a mother. I missed her more than anybody knew. You never realised how much she helped me; why, look here....” and he showed Calladine a thick note-book filled with Clare’s handwriting. “She had an instinct forarchæology,” he said, “and she wrote a beautiful hand—clear and pretty both.”
“You make it sound like an epitaph,” said Calladine bitterly.
“Heaven forbid,” said Mr. Warrener, a little startled. “She’s safe enough, never you fear. All we have to do is to get her back and perhaps we’ll find your fears were groundless,—a burst of wildness, only,—she was accustomed to liberty, you know,—perhaps it’s no worse than that,—lovers, you said,—but oh, no, I can’t believe....”
“You and I, Mr. Warrener,” said Calladine, fixing the old man with a gaze full of meaning, “have perhaps lived a little too remote from life. Clare is alive, Lovel is alive; you and I are left behind.”
“But all the same....” said Mr. Warrener, greatly troubled, “all the same.... Lovers, you said. Oh, no, surely not,” and he looked embarrassed, uncomfortable, as at an indecency.
They went out together. They went on foot, with no very definite scheme of action in their minds. Vaguely they intended to make their way up on to the Downs, on to the topmost height if possible, and from there to scan the rolling country. They went side by side, Calladine long and spare, Mr. Warrener, round, short and bespectacled, and as they went they tried to disguise their anxiety from one another, and to pretend that they had gone out for no moreserious purpose than to recall a troublesome child from an escapade. But there were periods of silence between them, broken with a jerk by Mr. Warrener with brisk questions, “Now in what direction did she ride for choice, Calladine?” or “If the fellow is a shepherd, he must have a hut up on these hills.” “Yes, I have visited that: it was empty,” said Calladine, forced into a morose reply.
They took the road out of the village, the only road cleared by the snow-plough, and presently struck up into the hills, climbing with caution, for they were afraid of sinking suddenly into a drift against a bank. They climbed, prodding with long sticks before them, a long wearisome climb, their feet sinking over the ankle at every step into the soft snow; by now they had the excuse for speaking very little, for their energies went all on their progress. “I have spent my time like this for the last three days,” said Calladine, grimly.
It was noteworthy that neither of them considered for a moment that Clare and Lovel might have moved on to another part of the country; they took it for granted that they had remained among the Downs.
No paths were to be seen anywhere, only the rolling white hills, broken by the sky-line beech-clumps. No sound; neither the tinkling of water, nor the quivering of larks, nor the quaver of sheep, nor even the wind; only the hush of quiet snow lying spread. It was a stillness thatgrew as they climbed; a stillness, a shroud. There was the glitter of the snow, and the black clubbed trees, and the white sky, and the silence.
It occurred to them that they might get lost, for all the hills looked much the same, and the landmarks were all covered up; the White Horse, the Grey Wethers. Still, Calladine was contemptuous of that; and as for Mr. Warrener, he plodded on with an unrepining, pathetic obstinacy.
At last they came to the top, and stood on White Horse Hill, two puny figures scanning the horizon. “There is Lovel’s hut,” said Calladine, pointing it out. “We had better go down to it,” said Mr. Warrener, and they began the descent, which was almost as trying as their climb, for they had to hold themselves back, the snow being blown into deeper drifts on that side of the hill.
The great scoops in the flank of the hill forced them to follow a circular route which lengthened their road. The hut seemed to stand always equally far ahead, and never to draw any nearer; nor had they much hope of finding either Clare or Lovel within it. Mr. Warrener, now that he had gained a few hours of experience, was beginning to share Calladine’s hopelessness; before they started, it had seemed comparatively simple an undertaking to go out and search and shout for Clare over the Downs. Now, although he called her name tentatively on approaching the hut, the quilted silence swallowed up the smallecho of his voice. Yet it was a bell-like name to call, “Clare! Clare!”
Calladine let Mr. Warrener go forward and peer into the hut, and he felt a sudden tenderness for the old man. “If,” he said to himself, “Clare should never return to me, Mr. Warrener and I must keep house together,” but the idea of Clare not returning gave him a pang which eclipsed the amenities of the prospect with Mr. Warrener, leading a scholar’s life, and he was ashamed of the glimpse that had opened out on to a life so congenial, so secure.
Mr. Warrener turned in the doorway and beckoned.
“They have been here,” he said.
Calladine drew near and looked. Yes, they had been there. The hut was poor, a shepherd’s shelter, with a rough table arranged on a couple of boxes, and a thick pallet of bracken on the floor; warm enough, no doubt, and even snug, with the paraffin lamp burning and the door closed against the cold. Mr. Warrener and Calladine looked in silence. A horn mug stood on the table, beside a loaf of bread; two sugar-boxes served as stools. A couple of blankets were thrown over the bracken; a bag stuffed with bracken did for a pillow. There was nothing else.
“My God,” said Calladine, staring at the pallet, “they lay there last night,—they lay there!” He looked round the pitiful cabin, and a groan was forced from him. “He brought her here!”he said, “and I who gave her everything she could desire,—comfort, even beauty, refinement....” He sat down and buried his face, and touched perhaps the bitterest moment he had yet gone through. “How much she must have loved him,” he said, raising a suddenly haggard face to Mr. Warrener.
Mr. Warrener was deeply perturbed and distressed. Such things were altogether beyond his experience and understanding.
“Hush,—don’t take it so much to heart,” he said, confused, but meaning to be kind, and he touched Calladine on the shoulder with a gesture singularly awkward. “Now let us think what is to be done. Shall we remain here, and trust to their return at nightfall? It is true that we could not, all four of us, spend the night in this hut, but probably Lovel knows the way,—he can take us all home safely.”
“You seem to have a curious confidence in the fellow,” growled Calladine.
Mr. Warrener blinked in his mild fashion.
“Yes,—I don’t quite know why,” he said, “except that I’ve seen him about the village,—he seemed an alert, romantic kind of creature.—Forgive me, I see that pains you.”
“Oh, not at all,” said Calladine, ironical.
“We must wait,—there is nothing else to be done,” said Mr. Warrener, reluctantly.
“No,” said Calladine, rousing himself to a sudden determination, “I will wait, but you, Mr. Warrener, must make your way home whiledaylight lasts. You will only have to follow our own tracks in the snow. Indeed, I should prefer it,” he said, seeing the old man hesitate, and gently he took Mr. Warrener by the arm and urged him out of the hut. A hard cruel sun was already setting red behind a clump of beeches. The white sky became suffused with crimson in the west; on the rounded tops of the hills the snow flushed to pink. But it was a hard, cruel world that they saw, the hard red of the snow where the sunset did not catch it. The line of the beech-clump curved already across the slowly sinking sun, and presently hid it altogether from sight; the tops of the hills lost their flush, and only a few red bars lingered still in the sky.
“What a desolate spot!” exclaimed Mr. Warrener, impressed, “and what a spot,” he went on, “for a shepherd to study the courses of the stars, for such has been the tradition of shepherds since the days when the known world was not one tithe of the size we now learn it to be. Think of that, Calladine,” said the old man, warming to his subject, “those early shepherds on the hills were more conversant with the cycle of the heavenly bodies than with the distribution of their own planet. A fine tradition among shepherds—for what else have they to do? They don’t read in books, but they read in the heavens through the long, lonely nights; and observe, Calladine, that in winter, when the pleasures of the earth are less, the heavens in compensationtreble their magnificence. I don’t believe that a man who spends his nights alone in the open remains similar to other men. He’s soaked in the sense of space; and young Lovel....”
“Yes, yes,” said Calladine impatiently, “but there is no time to be lost if you are to reach King’s Avon before dark. Follow our tracks; there are no other tracks to confuse you, for it snowed a little this morning; indeed, there is still snow about in the air.”
“I don’t like to leave you alone in this lonely place,” said Mr. Warrener, still hesitating.
“Doubtless Clare and Lovel found no fault with its loneliness last night,” Calladine replied harshly.
“My dear Richard,” said Mr. Warrener, vexed at his son-in-law’s harping on this theme, “I am sure you distress yourself unnecessarily. Clare will be able to reassure you,—and she is a very truthful child,” he added, with a certain pleading pathos, as though to justify his upbringing of her.
“Where, then, did the man sleep?” said Calladine, turning on him. “Supposing he gave Clare the pallet, where did he pass the night himself? Tell me that.”
“Why, I don’t know,—sitting up, I suppose,—he could lean his back against the wall,” replied Mr. Warrener.
Finally he consented to go, and set off, Calladine watching him until after trudging up the hill he topped its crest and was lost to sight.Calladine then, a prey to such loneliness as he had never dreamt, returned into the hut to wait. Twilight came, the long, cold, late-winter twilight when the world seems dead. The last vestiges of colour faded out of the west. Such sharp shadows as there had been, merged into a greyer, universal shadow; the hard black and the hard white turned to grey, vast and mournful; the sky was all grey now, and the dusk heavy with impending snow. The quietness and the poverty of the hut settled down round Calladine. He had examined its few poor resources, fingering the utensils he found in the little cupboard on the wall, the tea-pot, the canister of tea and sugar, the rasher of bacon put ready on a plate; but now he sat listless, with hanging hands, and not so much as a sound came to make him raise his head. He did not know how long he sat there. The darkness deepened; soon the black night was again over the Downs, vaulted; the big golden stars, and the dim huge shapes of the hills. He was without sensation, numb, having the consciousness only of his extreme solitude. So numb was he, that he was scarcely aware what he waited for. He simply sat on, in complete darkness now, feeling neither hunger nor cold, forgetful almost of his sorrow, patient only like a man condemned to an indefinite suspense.
When he heard the sound of a voice singing out on the hill, he raised his head and waited. The voice drew nearer, singing a cheerful song;it trilled and carolled, as in an exuberant lightheartedness. To Calladine it came with a strange effect, this voice singing out in the night, unexplained, bearing down upon the hut, frivolous and rollicking. Suddenly it sounded quite close, outside. The door was torn open, a figure carrying a lantern appeared on the threshold, and Calladine beheld the grinning face and battered hat of Olver Lovel.
The boy carried parcels in his arms, besides the lantern swinging from his wrist. He appeared in excellent spirits, grinning broadly, skipping as he stood on the threshold of the door, with little excited skips from foot to foot. He seemed scarcely able to contain his high spirits and his excitement. When he saw that the hut was already occupied, he gaped stupidly, then burst into peals of laughter. Calladine, remaining seated, looked at him without a word. He perceived nothing startling in the advent of this apparition, apathetic as he was, and at the same time strung up to the most improbable occurrences. It seemed to him quite natural that Olver should stand shouting with laughter in the doorway; he saw nothing grotesque in the encounter of himself with the crazy boy out in this hut on the hills. Clare!—this was the note to which Clare had re-tuned his life.
“Mr. Calladine!” said Olver, ceasing from his laughter. He came forward and put his parcels and his lantern down on the table. Its rays illuminated the little hut. “So you werewaiting for them, sitting here in the dark, were you?” he observed.
“Will they come?” asked Calladine.
“Oh yes, they’ll come,” replied Olver easily. “But they won’t let you stop here, you know,” he added. “No, nor me either,” he pursued, coming closer to Calladine and speaking confidentially. “They’ll put us both out into the snow, get-yourselves-home-as-best-you-can. They won’t care. They won’t notice us, scarcely. They’re in a dream. Nod to me, perhaps; give me a pat, like a dog. Good Olver; he brings our food. But do they eat it? they seem like they don’t need food.”
“Have you seen them, then?” said Calladine.
“Seen them? Lord bless you, yes; and seen you too, wandering round with Daisy. I was behind you, many and many a time, but you didn’t turn.”
He began now to unpack his parcels, bringing out a loaf of bread, a tin of milk, some eggs, and finally some raw meat in slices. Calladine watched him in silence. He disposed of everything in a business-like manner, fetching two plates out of the cupboard, laying the table, putting ready the tea-pot and the canister.
“You might well have lit the lamp for them,” he said reproachfully to Calladine.
He lit the little paraffin lamp himself, and the hut was further irradiated by its yellow glow. The hut made now a patch of warmth and lightamong the cold, dark hills; a box of light, like a star in the blackness of space. Calladine felt the warmth creep through him, as though he were admitted to a hint of the sufficient and radiant secret of those lovers. The poverty of the shelter disappeared now, in the golden warmth of the light from within. And he felt that he, and not they, was the pauper.
Olver meanwhile had set the meat to fry over the lamp. It frizzled as he turned it with a fork, and he crouched over it, humming his song. “You seem very well contented,” said Calladine.
Olver looked up, having forgotten Calladine’s presence.
“I am contented, because Nicholas is happy,” he replied.
“Simple enough!” said Calladine.
“But she is happy too,” said Olver, sitting back on his heels and staring at Calladine.
“He is only a mad boy,” thought Calladine to himself.
Olver sang. He sang an old song, of a girl drowned in the mill-pool because she had lost her lover. The wistful beat of the ballad came back at the end of each verse; it droned on, with mournful persistence. At last Calladine could bear its monotony no longer, and asked, “When will they come?”
Olver shrugged. “Who can tell?”
“Where are they?” Calladine asked.
Olver shrugged again. “Who can tell?”
Calladine remembered how often he had asked Clare, “Where have you been? where have you been?”
He remembered that her answers had never left him any the wiser; he had never come near to what he really wanted to know.
What was it, indeed, that he had really wanted to know? the whole secret of her being, to be explained in a dozen words?
He said to Olver, “It is night, it is cold; have they lost their way out on the hills?”
Olver laughed at him. “Lost? They?”
“They are only human!” cried Calladine, afraid. He got up and stood over Olver. “Tell me, they are human, aren’t they?”
Olver laughed again.
Calladine went to the door. He opened it and looked out; the cold met him, and the stars in the blackness. “Clare!” he cried. “Clare!”
“I am going mad,” he said to himself. “I am going out of my mind.”
Looking back into the hut, he saw Olver still on his knees on the floor, prodding at the meat over the lamp. He went back, bent down, and cried close to Olver’s ear, “What are we doing here? they are keeping us waiting.”
“We don’t count,” replied Olver indifferently.
He began his song again. He had taken his mirror from his pocket, and was squinting into it, at the reflection of the hut; on each beat of the measure, he nodded down towards it.
“Her hair was tangled in the reeds.Her hair so gold and gay,”
“Her hair was tangled in the reeds.Her hair so gold and gay,”
“Her hair was tangled in the reeds.Her hair so gold and gay,”
“Her hair was tangled in the reeds.
Her hair so gold and gay,”
he sang.
“Would you like to look into my mirror?” he asked Calladine.
An idea took him; he scrambled to his feet.
“They’re all afraid of my mirror,” he said. “Shewouldn’t look into it, for fear of what she might see there. But you shall look. Look into it now, and you’ll see them; you shall see them as they were in here, last night.”
Calladine pushed him away; made him stagger against the wall of the hut.
“You would see them! you would see them!” cried Olver, delighted.
Neither of them noticed that the door had opened, and that Lovel stood in the hut.
“Nicco!” cried Olver.
Calladine wheeled round. Clare came into the hut, and her face shone out like Lovel’s, both golden in the light, both arrested in the midst of their carelessness.
Lovel spoke to Calladine.
“This was the only place we had,” he said, “couldn’t you leave it to us?”
Clare looked at Calladine; her face wore that oblique, fugitive look which he had known, and loved, and dreaded.
She turned to Lovel, and they swayed towards one another as though something drew them.
“We had better go,” she said, inviting him.
“Yes,” he replied, drifting idly on the stream of her will, of their common will, one with her.
She gave him her hand, and in the gold light they hung briefly, transient creatures of eternal flight. The curtain of night and stars stretched behind them, in the rectangle of the open door.
“The scenery is set!” cried Calladine hysterically, pointing with his hand.
The rays of the lantern streamed out towards the snow, gilding a path up the whiteness, quickly lost into the dark.
“They need no shelter,” cried Calladine.
The hills were outside, waiting, and the stars, silent.
“Why linger?” cried Calladine to Clare and Lovel.
They faded into the night, noiseless and swift. Calladine ran out of the hut, he ran up and down, he cried “Clare! Clare!” and the hills answered him. He came back into the hut, where Olver, dancing, held the mirror up to his eyes. “Look! and you shall see them.” He dashed the mirror out of Olver’s hand; it smashed upon the ground. “You will never see them again, now,” cried Olver, “you will never see them again.”
Transcriber’s Note:Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
Transcriber’s Note:Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.