GREY WETHERS
* * * * * *
_By_ V. SACKVILLE-WEST
GREY WETHERS
THE HEIR AND OTHER STORIES
CHALLENGE
HERITAGE
KNOLE AND THE SACKVILLES
_New York_:
_George H. Doran Company_
* * * * * *
GREY WETHERS
A Romantic Novel
by
V. SACKVILLE-WEST
New [Illustration: Logo] York
George H. Doran Company
Copyright, 1923,
by George H. Doran Company
[Illustration: Logo]
GREY WETHERS. II
Printed in the United States of America
_CLAIRE_
_Ces fantômes charmants que nous croyons à nous..._
_Ils sont là, près de nous, jouant sur notre route;_
_Ils ne dédaignent pas notre soleil obscur,_
_Et derrière eux, et sans que leur candeur s’en doute,_
_Leurs ailes font parfois de l’ombre sur le mur._
_Ils ont ce grand dégout mystérieux de l’âme_
_Pour notre chair coupable et pour notre destin;_
_Ils ont, êtres rêveurs qu’un autre azur réclame,_
_Je ne sais quelle soif de mourir le matin._
VICTOR HUGO.
GREY WETHERS
PART ONE
GREY WETHERS
_Part One_
More than half a century has now elapsed since the events which added
a new legend to the hard ancient hills lying about Marlborough and
King’s Avon. The last organised rustic Scouring of the White Horse of
King’s Avon,--from which occasion these events may properly be said to
date, although a believer in predestination might be found to contend
that they dated, indeed, from the very births of Clare Warrener and
Nicholas Lovel,--that last organised Scouring took place more than
half a century ago. The White Horse remains, the same gaunt, hoary
relic; King’s Avon remains, secluded, tragic, rearing its great stones
within the circle of its strange earthwork; the Downs remain, and every
winter, now as then, shroud their secrets and the memory of their
secrets beneath the same mantle of snow away from the speculation of
the curious. But of Clare Warrener and Nicholas Lovel no trace remains,
unless indeed they have passed into the wind and become incorporate
with the intractable spaces and uncompromising heights. A great many
tales are locally told of them, all too fantastic to be set down in
print; the chalky soil, so unpropitious to other crops, grew at least
a rich crop of superstition, especially in an age and district when
stories of witches and burnings were curiously mingled in the minds
of the ignorant with the opening of barrows and the fable of British
princes. So it is not surprising that the disappearance of these two
persons should have given rise to a jabber of conjecture which rapidly
came to be explained away by a variety of legends following the line of
approved local tradition. It is not the business of print to enter into
these conjectures or their interpretation. It is the business of print
to set down, in as practical a manner as may be, the circumstances
leading up to the final catastrophe,--or fulfilment, call it which you
will, according to the point of view from which you approach it,--and
to leave the reader to carry on the narrative for himself in the manner
best suited to his own fancy and requirements.
A peculiar silence reigned over the village; no children shouted,
and no young men or girls passed down the street with that exact air
of energy and enterprise that youth alone can produce. Somnolence
predominated; it seemed a village inhabited only by the aged, and by
those sparsely; a small gaggle of geese quacked and pried with their
flat beaks along the cobbles; but for them, the cats and the old men
had the place to themselves. The cats slumbered, curled round in the
corners of doorsteps, where the sun struck hot on the stone; and on a
bench outside the Waggon of Hay the four old men sat in a row, leaning
on their knobly sticks, and holding pewter mugs in their hands. Brown
old men, brown of hide and brown of garment, so that it was difficult
to tell where their clothes began or their hands and faces left off.
Eight boots of similar pattern set squarely side by side on the stones;
four heads of almost equal similarity nodded together over the pewter,
sagely and immemorially, for it would be safe to say that those four
old men of King’s Avon might have been at any moment replaced by
another set of four old men out of another century, without a casual
observer remarking on the difference. It was the day out of half a
score of years when they were left in supreme sovereignty over the
village. The Waggon of Hay became then what they considered it always
ought to be, and what they chose to maintain it had been at that epoch
of time called “when we were young,” a place of meeting sober and
stagnant, undisturbed by the rude, hobnailed entrance of young men,
calling for spirits in a tap-room where they should have been content
with beer or cider. It was the day when they might sit at peace in
their row on the bench, sure that no lout of a blunderer would stumble
over their toes. It was the day when they might indulge themselves to
their hearts’ content in gossip and politics, uninterrupted by the
revolutionary opinions of their juniors. They could go back to the
time when no railway disfigured the valley of the Frome, when the old
horned breed of true Wiltshire sheep wandered upon the heights, and
when no man dreamt of threshing his wheat save by flail, or of crushing
his apples in any but a wooden press. They could recall without effort
those days in the ’thirties, when, themselves but little older than the
century, they had gone in bands with rude weapons to break up the new
and hateful machinery in the farmers’ barns. They could tell again the
tales of superstition, and the sights which their fathers’ generation
had seen; and above all, most succulently, they could recall how old
Mother Lovel had been burnt on the top of Silbury Hill for a witch,
the bogey their mothers had used to frighten them with; and, nodding
together, the four heads coming closer, whisper that Nicholas Lovel
had all the black arts at his disposal, and had in a fit of rage put
a curse upon his own brother, so that the lad no longer had his wits
about him, but loitered around, the anxiety and disgrace of the village.
They had the whole day to themselves, in which to say over and over
again the things they had said many times before, and, greedy, would
have liked to have the evening too, but far from it, the evening of
that day was worse than any other evening, for the young men returned,
already uproarious and in their numbers, full of song and boastfulness,
their boots white with the chalk of the Downs, and their broad hats
stuck round with the grasses and sorrel that grew up there on those
unfertile heights. The old men would collect together in a corner,
remotely grumbling, watching the young men as they lounged against
the bar, filling the tap-room with their ribald good-humour and their
tobacco smoke. The old men disapproved of the young because they feared
in them the jostle of the oncoming generation, but the young men merely
laughed carelessly at the old, having from them no longer anything to
fear. The young men, on the evening of that particular day, would be
more than usually vainglorious, bragging of their exploits, growing
with every glass more direct in their modes of expression and more
hilarious in their laughter. It was the day when all prudery was thrown
aside, when each girl must look after herself as best she could or
would, when from the earliest hour of exodus from the village along the
road to the Downs the band of youths and girls fell into two primitive
groups of hunter and quarry, a scramble of catch-who-catch-can, an
escapade of wholesome license over the slopes of the Downs. It is true
that they started out armed with trowels and rakes, but even these
implements of homely design were soon garlanded with vetch and campion
torn from the hedgerows as the party went along, nor were these, the
ostensible justification of the expedition, the true weapons of the
day; the true weapons were the muslin frocks, the black shoes and
white stockings, the ribbons, the sunbonnets, and the eyes and curls
beneath the sunbonnets; and the leather leggings of the young men,
their strong brown hands, their belted smocks, their insolent air.
Impossible that a few wounds should not result from the marshalling of
such an armoury. And while the girls on their return must needs carry
away to their bedrooms the secrets of the day, evading the inquisitive
eye of their mothers, who, not condescending to ask, although burning
to know, remembered with a sigh similar feasts of their own youth,
the young men might gather in the tap-room and between hints and
guffaws convey to all who cared to hear that they were fine young men
worthy of their sex and of a sound country tradition. It was perhaps
from an unacknowledged flicker of envy that the old men frowned upon
their honest coarseness, for occasionally one of them, forgetting
his attitude of rebuke, would let out a cackle of enjoyment and
appreciation, much to his own dismay, and much to the amusement of the
youths, who would cry, “Hey, gaffer, don’t you wish you’d be with us?
Don’t you, you old dog?”
But until this lusty return filled the tap-room with its uproar, the
cats and the ancients of the village were left undisturbed. Both in
their several ways made the most of their opportunity, the cats to
sleep, since little boys who threw stones had gone with the party,
hangers-on and peeping-Toms of the day, and the ancients to utter
their sage words, to echo approval of one another, and to bury their
faces deep in the pewter mugs, from which they emerged with beards
dripping foam. A suck of the lips, a wipe with the back of the hand, a
long “A-ah,” of contentment, and the mumble of anecdote flowed again
upon its course. Sitting there in the sun was favourable to such
occupations. Since the strenuousness of life’s work was over,--the
early winter rising, the trudges after a lost ewe across snow-swept
Downs, the unearthing of mangolds from the frosted ridge, the hours
of scything swathe by swathe under burning midday,--what could remain
better to do than to sit upon a bench in the sun, with companions
who in colour and outlook were the very spit of oneself, to grumble
against new-fangled notions, and to wet one’s gizzard with a long pull
of ale, which, at all events, however ignominious to admit it, had not
deteriorated in quality since one’s youth?
Amongst the four old men, he who carried perhaps most authority, if
any difference could be said to exist amongst the ancient cronies, was
John Sparrow, who out-topped them by a year or so of age. Not that
this fact in itself constituted so marked a superiority; it placed the
senior rather at a disadvantage, since there existed amongst the four a
tacit competition as to which should outlive the other, and each within
his own mind dwelt upon the day when a fresh mound should be turned in
the neighbouring church-yard, and a shrunken row of three should sit
upon the bench, and the new topic, surprising by virtue of its very
novelty, be introduced among them, the topic of their missing member.
Each probably knew his companions well enough to hope for little
charity at their hands. It would be fine fun, to have John Sparrow, or
Caleb Patch, or Timothy Cutbush, or Eli Sheppard, lying there silent
and unable to protest, to pick to pieces at their leisure. No, the
few additional years of John Sparrow were not precisely the reason of
his weight of word. But Sparrow’s daughter Martha, called “my gal,”
although she would never again see sixty, was servant at the Manor
House, where lived the only gentry of the village, and consequently
whenever Sparrow began his phrase, “My gal says,” his utterance was
awaited with a certain degree of respect. The village was proud of its
gentry; Mr. Warrener was a scholar, and Miss Clare a lady. Although she
went everywhere alone, and rode her pony like a boy, her ladylikeness
could never be in question. Hence it came about that John Sparrow’s
quotations from Martha held a little flavour of high life, a very
remote echo of fashion; nothing more vicarious could well be imagined,
but to the fuddled minds of the other three it sufficed: John Sparrow
was in touch with elegance. He did not much look like it, as he sat
at the end of the row on the bench, the colour of a hayseed, having
now deposited his empty mug on the bench beside him and drawn from
his pocket a long clay pipe whose small bowl he was very carefully
ramming with tobacco. His daughter Martha was altogether a different
question; she wore a lilac print dress and an apron over it; her grey
hair was partly covered by a cap; she had a sedate manner and shining
old cheeks; she was clean and respectful. She had entirely ceased to
live at her father’s house, having her own bare but immaculate attic
bedroom at the Manor House, and periodically she allowed her father
to come there to tea in the kitchen, where he sat very neat and
intimidated and impressed, enjoying most that part of his visit when he
was boasting about it to his cronies afterwards. Being without subtlety
they betrayed every corner of their envy and curiosity, to which John
Sparrow was not loth to pander. They had had a table-cloth, and cups
and saucers--china, not tin--and Martha had put flowers on the table.
After tea Martha had played the musical box, but in the garden he had
heard Miss Clare laughing as she strolled up and down with her father.
That young lady was getting to a marriageable age; and here John
Sparrow’s recital, which began with veracity, was apt to go astray. He
would make a feeble attempt to convey a sense of his privity to secret
counsels by pursing up his lips, nodding his head, spreading out his
hands, and suchlike indications, without actually committing himself to
the indiscretion of words; but presently under the fire of questions,
the “Come now, John, out with it,” and the final shaft of scepticism
to the effect that he knew no more than they did themselves, he would
invariably be led into confidences which had no bearing whatsoever upon
the truth. Martha had whispered this, Martha had told him that, Miss
Clare, he doubted, was not in truth the daughter of Mr. Warrener; or,
if so be she was his daughter, then no daughter that he ought to own
to, but rather should pass her off as his niece or his ward.... The
other three accepted all such statements round-eyed, and the more they
gaped the more inventive he grew. Their credulity was his undoing.
And as they drowsed and maundered, they saw Miss Clare emerge presently
from the gates of the Manor House, with their glimpse of garden, lawn,
and cedars, riding astride upon her pony, whose little hoofs came
slipping and shambling over the cobbles, down the street, past the
old men, and took the road out towards the Downs. The old men raised
their heads at all this little clatter, and a greeting passed between
them and Miss Clare; they touched their hats, she waved her whip to
them and called out something which they were too deaf to catch, but
to which they responded with the “Ay, ay” and the gesture of tolerant
encouragement accorded by age towards popular youth. There was a mumble
amongst them after she had passed, of unspecified vague approval,
before the straggly old beards drooped again upon the chests, and the
street resumed the quiet broken by that small disturbance.
It was not a very great wonder that the village should look upon
its gentry as so exclusively its own. Its situation was such, that
everything which took place within its enclosure was peculiarly
focussed and self-contained. In the first place, it was isolated far
from other villages, at the foot of the Downs, which loomed over it on
three sides like a huge natural rampart, and in the second place it was
entirely surrounded by an ancient earthwork in a complete and perfect
circle. This earthwork was broken only at two points, to allow the road
to enter the circle, and to leave it again on the opposite side. Within
this little enclosed ring of thirty acres lay the village, complete
with church, Manor House, and village street, incapable of expansion
in any direction, unless it overflowed its boundary, which it had
never done. A few outlying farms at a little distance were included,
properly speaking, in the parish, but they were either too remote or
too well screened by voluminous trees to distract the eye from the
compact symmetry of the little town within the circle. Strangers to
the country, coming unawares upon this singular encampment, were at
first amazed; but presently there crept into their minds the sense
that the whole country traversed by them had been, in a way, but the
natural preparation to precisely such a mysterious and secluded patch
of human habitation. They recalled the straight white road driven
across the Downs; the pits of poor blanched chalk; the shaven clumps
of beech, like giant ricks, upon the skyline; mounds and barrows; the
perfect cone of Silbury Hill, which, rooted in its greater antiquity,
had forced the Roman road to deflect from its course; the loneliness
of the magnificent Downs; the primitive shapes surviving in the White
Horses cut as landmarks upon their flanks. Above all they would recall
those strange monuments of English paganism, the sarsen stones,
hewn by Nature and transported by man to be the instruments of his
superstition, left where they had fallen, singly or in rings, obscure
in a fold of the Downs, or reared to accord with the eternal procession
of the heavens in the gaunt majesty of Stonehenge.
The stranger would recall these stones as he followed the road through
the gap into the circle of King’s Avon, for there in an ordinary field
to the right of the road, just within the embankment, he would see,
standing upright to the height of ten or twelve feet, a number of
these stones, standing there with such apparent fixity and permanence
that it was disconcerting to observe, on a closer inspection, an equal
number of the stones fallen flat and half-buried in the ground. Their
impressiveness grew, as the beholder began to realise from their
symmetrical disposition that what he was considering was no less than
the ruins of a temple. The village lay just beyond the field, and in
the rough ground, near the field,--partly ditch below the embankment,
partly undergrowth,--many more of the stones might be discovered,
half-hidden by dead leaves and mosses, or even by tins and rubbish,
and in one or two cases made prisoner, like some inarticulate Laocoon,
by the serpenting roots of a beech overhanging the scarp. And as the
stranger, after poking about among this tangle, proceeded along the
lane towards the village, he would come upon other isolated stones,
either embedded in the bank below the hedge, or used as a gate-post
into a paddock, standing there patiently enough, towering above the
gate and above the hedge, indifferent to the fate that had come upon
it; and one, by the roadside, had been made to do duty as a milestone,
and bore upon its face the distances to Bath and Marlborough in
eighteenth-century script and Roman numerals. But, although
the stones were now thus scattered and even totally removed for
purposes of quarrying material, a patient observer might still piece
together the design and dimension of the temple, standing once like
Stonehenge in rings, when no human dwellings were there, in, as it
were, a cup of the Downs, open to sun and rain. But this imaginary
stranger would probably dwell rather upon the relationship between the
stones of King’s Avon, and the stars that they had known unaltered, and
the barrows humped upon the Downs, and the roughly-hewn flints turned
up by the plough, the bones and antlers, and the stray tokens left,
with very little fame, about the country, silent and enduring while
religions perhaps slightly more enlightened because more charitable
passed with the ages above their surfaces.
This paganism of England, he might have reflected as he made his way
slowly from stone to stone, pausing before each and finding in each
the same monotonous and uncommunicative austerity, this early English
paganism, how bleakly different it was from the paganism of the South!
Indeed, he might wonder whether to call his forebear pagan, which had
a rich full-blooded sound, or, stripping him of garlands, to call him
simply heathen. Here, in this flint country of the small northern
island, no flowers and fruit had surrounded the sacrifice, no cymbals
clashed, no grapes and plaited maize wreathed the horns of the victim,
no songs accompanied the priest. A stone, a knife, and blood, red and
grey, sufficed their ritual. This was no country to see nymphs in the
streams and oaks, to hear the flute of a satyr in the beechwood. Yet
there was a harsher dignity, beside which the Southern paganism was
soft and ample, over-ripe with sweetness. It was a creed which would
not concern itself with the fruits of earth; Demeter was not for it,
nor lecherous Pan, nor a god clothed in the plumes of a swan. It would
concern itself with nothing lower than the most majestic of human
contemplations, the sun and the stars in their courses, so that after
the lapse of centuries the upright stones still aspired to celestial
communion when the gentle or the angry dawn broke over the rounded
Atlantean shoulders of the Downs.
Clare Warrener rode idly along the leafy lane, her pony’s hoofs raising
little grey puffs of dust. Nothing in particular occupied her mind,
beyond the sight which she was going to see, and which for weeks now
she had been anticipating. She had promised herself that she would ride
on this day up on to the Downs, cast her eye over the festivity, and
ride on again, with perhaps a slight resentment at this invasion of the
hills; a resentment she knew to be absurd, since the rustic youths and
girls at their celebrating had a better right to the hills than she
had herself, they who were the descendants of shepherds and farmers,
wresting for centuries a living from the poor stony soil. She loved in
the hills their spaciousness, and their refusal to yield to tillage; at
most they would grant pasture to the sheep crawling on their slopes,
but for the rest they remained eternally, in the heart of an amenable
and complacent island, the untamed spot--they, and the moorlands, and
the hills of Wales and the North.
The shady lane which she had been following soon ceased to be bordered
by trees and took an upward direction leading to the foot of the Downs.
It became a steep white road mounting straight up the unboundaried
slopes, with high banks on either side, and the winter rain-runnels
marked in little zig-zagging ruts and pebbles. Some clumps of furze
and a few thorn-trees grew on the lower reaches, but presently even
these ceased, and the short turf was the only vegetation. Up here the
air was pure and sharp; the grasses waved as they were blown by the
breeze; in some places fires had left their blackened patches; a trail
of smoke-coloured sheep moved cropping in the dip of a valley. Larks
rose continually, soaring straight up into the air, impelled either
by some impulse of their own or else disturbed by the sound of the
pony’s passage. Clare rode with loose reins, letting the pony pick his
own way among the pebbles. The road began to wind; it curved round a
shoulder of hill, dipped into a hollow, rose steeply again, and all
the time its direction was hidden round the next corner. At moments
it reached a high point of vantage, whence Clare, looking down in the
direction she had come, could see the low fertile lands, the farms, and
the clump of trees pierced by the church-spire which was King’s Avon.
But to north, east, and west, nothing but Downs, the great back of the
south of England. She rode on. The pony climbed, his head down, his
withers high. She felt the muscles of his flank moving warm beneath
her leg; he climbed, strong and willing, and she put him at short cuts
which entailed mounting an almost perpendicular slope of grass, for the
pleasure of feeling him buckle to the effort.
Presently she heard voices and laughter borne to her on the wind.
Before long she reached a kind of plateau of grass, the highest point
of all, which commanded a wide view of both Downs and the chessboard
landscape far below, crossed by the white roads like streamers from
a Maypole; and at the further end of this plateau she saw scattered
in pairs over the grass, and assembled at one point as a nucleus from
which these couples had detached themselves, the youth of the village
of King’s Avon in holiday clothes with wild flowers strung about them.
She reined in her pony, not liking to interrupt their fun by drawing
too near or seeming to admire them as a curiosity. She could recognise
most of them at that distance; she picked out the red head of Daisy
Morland, the long limbs of Peter Gorwyn, the sunbonnet of Phoebe Patch,
the silly laugh of young Baskett, the straw-coloured shock of hair
belonging to Job Lackland, the black strap-shoes and white stockings
of Annabel Blagdon, who was the belle of the village, and, finally,
prowling on the outskirts rather like a pariah dog, the indefinably
misshapen form of Olver Lovel. Near by the group were set down the
wicker baskets in which they had brought their meal, also the trowels,
spades, turf-cutters, and hoes, apparently forgotten. The occasion of
the expedition was rendered completely invisible by the sprawling of
the persons seated upon it. This was none other than one of the famous
White Horses, which on that day must be scoured, that is to say,
cleaned of ten years’ accumulation of weeds and grasses; though it was
said that less plantains were uprooted than matches made that day, and
that the true business of keeping the White Horse duly scoured was
performed by some sober shepherd with a pocket-knife, idling away the
hours while his sheep moved slowly within his sight. Nevertheless the
tradition must be maintained. Clare felt a slight wistfulness that she
might not join in with the party, but she had been for so many years
strictly forbidden to do this by an indignant Martha Sparrow,--“’Twould
not be befitting your station at all, Miss Clare, indeed, to go with
those rough louts of boys and hoydens of girls,”--that she had come to
accept this ban as a law of nature, without question. She therefore
sat her pony at a distance, looking on enviously at the clumsy fun
in progress, watching the boys roll over and over down the slope and
get up dusting themselves and laughing, or wrestling with one another
on the grass and making a show of their superior strength before
the girls, who laughed and applauded. She felt especially envious
when she saw Job Lackland pick up his fiddle, settle it firm under
his chin, and begin to play, the notes of the old-fashioned tune
reaching her as clearly as notes struck on a bell, and she could see
the sprigged waistcoat and cut-away coat which Job always wore on
feast-days when he thought he might be called upon to play the fiddle.
The others scrambled to their feet and began a country-dance, a sort
of combination of a Morris dance and Sir Roger de Coverley, for they
fluttered their handkerchiefs as they danced, and at the same time ran
in couples up and down between two lines formed by the other dancers.
The muslin dresses and coal-scuttle bonnets of the girls, and the
smocks of the young men, together with their fluttering handkerchiefs
and their hands gaily clasped high as they turned and twisted beneath,
made a coloured and merry patch on the top of the hill, like a lot of
butterflies.
Job fiddled with increasing energy, and as he fiddled he tried to
beat time for the dancers with his bow, so that every now and then he
would miss out a bar while he waved his bow to re-establish order in
the dance which threatened to become confused. At last they all fell
exhausted upon the grass, and cider was passed round, and the old White
Horse, who had been temporarily revealed during the dance, was once
more hidden from view by the spreading frocks and sprawling limbs.
There were other preparations now in evidence, for to emulate the
scouring of the greater White Horse of Berkshire the youth of King’s
Avon indulged themselves in more or less organised games, which again
were but a cloak to their braggart vanity towards the girls. A rude
platform was erected on trestles on the flat summit of the hill, and
towards this the whole company surged, leaving the white scar of the
Horse once more exposed and placid upon the hillside. The direction of
the games was in the hands of young Gorwyn; he beat a small drum to
call his audience to order; he marshalled the competitors; he posted
tow-headed Lackland with his fiddle to strike up a tune during the
intervals.
The competitors stood in a group to one side, suddenly sheepish; the
audience, which by now consisted almost entirely of girls, ranged
themselves beneath the platform with the nudges and upturned faces
of anticipation. Clare could only see the crowns of their hats and
sunbonnets.
Half a dozen young men stood up on the platform, exposed to the jokes
and encouragements of their friends; in their embarrassment they did
not know what expression to assume; some scowled, some tried to stare
with an indifferent gaze out over the distance, some sought the faces
of their special friends among the audience and grinned awkwardly. All
were in the same predicament as to how to dispose of their hands and
feet; some stood stiff and erect, with arms folded severely across
their chests; others thrust their hands down into the pockets of their
breeches; others bent to fidget with a bootlace.
Some were for wrestling, others for the races; the bolder spirits, and
the most admired, were for broadstick. Gorwyn himself, the broadstick
champion of the village, was, as the last and principal event of the
day, to challenge the winner.
Clare, growing interested, rode a little nearer; the young men touched
their foreheads to her, some of the girls dropped a curtsy; her advance
caused a little ripple in the crowd. Again she felt the slight regret
that she might not mingle freely and on an equal footing with them;
surely they were clean, English young men, honest enough if a trifle
crude, and the girls were healthy and fresh in their muslins; but she
was too simply a child to dream of disobeying Martha’s mandate. She sat
her pony at her distance, looking on.
The first event was a bout of wrestling; not perhaps, a very scientific
exhibition, but the rivals went at it with a will, good-tempered and
full of zest, staggering about the platform, their fine, young-men’s
bodies knotted together like a piece of ever-changing sculpture in
a natural setting, not cooped into the dinginess of a studio or a
gallery. Clare saw the shock heads imprisoned under an arm, or going to
butt lowered like young rams; she could hear the deep breathing, and
the muffled shock as limbs and torsos closed anew together.
And the audience of girls cried out and applauded, or uttered little
screams when a fall seemed imminent; but the wrestlers themselves were
silent, save for their heavy breathing; and the feminine cries and
rustlings of admiration or dismay formed the natural accompaniment to
the masculine concentration.
The wrestling over, the wrestlers descended to mix in with the girls,
and the competition was eager and frank among the girls to get
possession of one of these heroes and to keep him by her side for
the rest of the afternoon. Only Annabel Blagdon, the belle, remained
unexcited and scornful; she affected to despise the mere wrestlers:
broadstick was the only game for her, as she had already advertised,
and her smiles were reserved for some broadstick champion with his
broken head. Therefore the wrestlers made for her all the more; made
awkward advances towards her, neglecting the blandishments of the
others which were lavished too cheaply upon them. But she scarcely
answered; she knew her power, she knew and savoured the irritation
of her sisters; she tapped her foot in its white stocking and black
strapped shoe, and scorned the wrestlers for their undamaged skins,
though secretly she could not help esteeming their broad shoulders and
their narrow loins.
Job Lackland meanwhile had struck up a tune on his crazy fiddle, and
made the air gay with his old jingling melody, until the tapping of
Gorwyn’s little drum announced a fresh event; this was a race after a
cheese down the steepest side of the hill, an all-but-perpendicular
bank, round which the ordinary pedestrian would have skirted, but the
lads started down it helter-skelter after the round cheese which was
bowling down, bumping and jumping, after its send-off push. Some few
of them kept their feet, others slithered down on their backsides, like
boys on an ice-slide, some in their effort to keep upright tumbled head
over heels; one, a wag, went down, rolled round in a ball, hands locked
under knees, in a series of somersaults.
No one was hurt, and the girls peering after them over the top, laughed
and danced in delight as the medley of arms and legs and bodies
reached the bottom, and a scrum for the prize ensued. It was finally
carried off by Olver Lovel, who, it was averred, crept in between the
scrambling legs and fetched it away in a moment when the object of the
race was forgotten, and only the fun of the scrimmage remembered.
No one quite knew in what spirit to take Olver’s success. It was too
unpopular for congratulations to ring genuine, so most of the party
turned aside and pretended to be busy with other things, sooner than
betray their disappointment,--for they were kindly folk,--and to spare
themselves the necessity of smiling to Olver. In fact, it was felt
that a slight chill had been cast over the afternoon by the simpleton
getting the better of the cheese.
As for Olver he was quite happy with his cheese, which was large and
round, and beside which he sat at a little distance on the grass,
occasionally patting it and stroking its smooth cool rotundity. Clare
let her interest stray from the platform, in order to observe him; like
most of the others he had put a wreath of sorrel and grasses round his
hat, but whereas the others acquired thereby merely a merry-making,
country appearance, Olver was made to look crazy and erratic, and twice
as simple as usual. He sat now on the grass making a daisy-chain to go
round the belly of his cheese; his legs were stretched out childishly
straight in front of him, and his shovel hat with the waving wreath was
bent down over his occupation.
Simple, thought Clare; but how quick and cunning were his fingers! that
was no unmixed simplicity.
He reached out his daisy-chain to measure against the cheese; he was
engrossed and took no notice of any one or of anything. She wondered
whether Nicholas Lovel knew that Olver was up here; usually he kept his
brother away from any gathering of the villagers, lest he annoy them in
any way. She had already noticed that Nicholas was not of the party and
smiled to imagine him as one of that hearty gang. She even wondered the
more, so aloof did he keep himself from the rest of the village, that
he allowed his brother to join with them. But she remembered then that
he made laws for himself only, and did not expect others to keep them;
he was too indifferent, rather than too tolerant, for that.
Clare thought that she would wait to see the broadstick contest, which
apparently was about to take place, and that she would then ride away,
for she knew that as the afternoon advanced, and especially as the
discreet twilight arrived to throw its veil over the passions aroused
by the prowess of the games, the party would become less rowdy, less
athletic, and more sentimental, more inclined to break up into couples
and to dispose itself thus about the grass, where no cover existed,
but where privacy was guaranteed by a tacit convention that all wore
blinkers. Clare remembered then,--what Martha Sparrow, gossiping, had
told her,--that Olver Lovel sometimes made himself very unpopular by
creeping up noiselessly behind some pair just as they were circling
round the most critical stages of their courtship, either to shout
loudly in their ears or else to tickle the backs of their necks with a
straw, so that it had even been discussed in the Waggon of Hay whether
he should be ostracised from the festival of the scouring. The threat
of ostracism, however, had not been carried out. They were all too
much afraid of Olver and of the tricks he might play in revenge on
them, worse than shouting in their ears, or tickling the backs of their
necks, or even than putting caterpillars up girl’s legs, which he had
been known to do; and in a less degree they were also afraid of his
brother Nicholas, not to mention the old mother, whom none of them had
ever seen, and for whose continued existence they had to take Nicholas’
word for granted.
Perhaps this fear of the Lovels, and of the queer powers they were
reputed to possess, weighed even more with the ignorant village folk
than the rough, kindly pity they felt for Nicholas in the affliction
put upon him.
Clare was eager to watch the broadstick play, which she had never
seen; Martha had told her that those who had taken part were to be
seen going about for days afterwards with bandaged heads, and even
kept the bandage on for longer than they need, as a badge that they
practised the old sturdy sport, and that he who carried off the honours
was entitled to the respect of the men in the Waggon of Hay, be they
natives or strangers passing through, and that there wasn’t a girl
in the parish would refuse him her lips. Martha, quite carried away,
had given her these accounts with enthusiasm. Clare had teased her,
“I believe you remember a scouring when you were young, Martha,” and
Martha had blushed and bridled, and declared she saw no harm in having
once been as young as Miss Clare herself, and went on to relate that
once she had been to the scouring of the great White Horse of White
Horse Vale, where teams of the Wiltshire men met teams of the Berkshire
men at wrestling and broadstick, so that it was not the little family
affair of the King’s Avon White Horse, but a great celebration that
lasted two days, and included roundabouts and side-show booths. But
broadstick play was dying out, and young men were not so keen to get
their heads broken as once they had been, which was a pity, for it
showed up their manliness, in spite of what the parsons might say;
that was Martha’s view.
Therefore Clare was especially anxious to see the play, for she thought
she might never have an opportunity of seeing it again.
Just then she heard the trot of a horse on the turf behind her, turf
baked so hard that it rang hollow. She did not turn round, but sat
waiting for the horseman to come up beside her. “So,” she thought to
herself, as a little expectant smile parted her lips, “Lovel has come
after all to have a look at the scouring.” The trot slackened into a
walk, and the head of a horse came alongside that of her own pony. A
voice said, “Good afternoon, Miss Warrener,” and looking round she saw
a man with iron-grey hair in the act of lifting his hat to her; but he
was not the man she had expected.
“Mr. Calladine,” she said, smiling after her first little shock of
surprise and disappointment.
“So you, too, have come to look on at the scouring,” he began.
“Whenever I hear of a scouring in the neighbourhood I am enticed to
watch it, and every time I go home realising that I have wasted my
time. But, after all, as well ride here as anywhere else, and better,
if I am to have the good fortune of meeting you.”
Clare was far too unpolished and simple to know how to reply to such
compliments. She only blushed, was angry with herself for blushing, and
stared the harder in silence at the party on the grass. Calladine saw
her deepened colour, and savoured to the full its unconscious charm;
he leant forward with a creaking of saddle-leather, his gloved hand
resting with the bunch of reins on the peak of his saddle.
“Will you ride a little way with me? There is not much more to be seen
here, and I fancy they have noticed us, and are getting shy. Ah, it’s
too late, for here comes young Gorwyn to offer us a drink. We must
accept it, I suppose, and only pray that ’tisn’t in a cup they have all
been using.”
Young Gorwyn, the master of the ceremonies, the son and apprentice
of the blacksmith, carried the cup of cider very carefully in his
immense hands, like a child carries a nest, as though he were afraid of
crushing it between them.
“Farmer Morland’s brewing,” he said, grinning foolishly as he offered
it.
Clare drank; it was clean and sweet, pure apple-juice and sugar. She
was then confronted by a difficulty with which she had no idea of how
to cope: ought she to offer the cup to Calladine after having drunk
from it herself?
She had always the uneasy feeling in Calladine’s company that more
ceremony was necessary than in her dealings with other human beings,
conducted with perfect and unthinking naturalness. But Calladine, who
was so grave and courtly, and who looked at her so intently while
speaking to her, and again so intently while she replied, seemed to
exact a different standard of manners.
In this case, fortunately, he saw her unhappy hesitation, and solved
the difficulty for her by stretching out his hand for the cup and
draining it right off.
But Gorwyn was watching, and, kindled by the unusualness of the day,
winked broadly as Calladine drank, and said heartily, “There’s luck to
you both!”
“I hope so,” said Calladine in a low voice. He glanced quickly at
Clare; she had either not heard, not noticed, or failed to interpret.
“Admirable, Peter!” he said in a louder tone, as he handed back the
cup. “Tell Daisy Morland from me and Miss Warrener, that her father’s
brewing, which I suspect she superintends, is first class.”
Young Gorwyn grinned again. “But you’ll stay to watch the broadstick,
now you’re here?” he said eagerly, since to him it was the great event
of the day.
“Well, I think perhaps broadstick is scarcely a suitable entertainment
for a young lady,--eh, Gorwyn?” said Mr. Calladine. “Races, or even
wrestling, but scarcely broadstick,--a rough game, and usually
unpleasant to watch at the end. I think Miss Warrener and I will ride
away and leave you to your sports.”
Gorwyn, who had at first looked astonished, opened his mouth to
protest, then a look of contempt came over his ruddy face, succeeded
by a sudden shyness; he mumbled something, and scampered back to his
companions.
“Oh, but I wanted to see the broadstick,” began Clare.
“My _dear_ young lady,” said Mr. Calladine, leaning sideways in
his saddle towards her, “may I, for once, stand in the place of
your father, and say that I am sure he would never approve of your
witnessing this rough display, and indeed would be most grieved if it
came to his ears that you had done so? May I beg you to have confidence
in my judgment? Come, now, let us ride away together, and if you can
obtain your father’s consent I will promise to escort you to some fair
where you may see the game,--will that content you?”
Clare, greatly disappointed, was too young to question Calladine’s
decision. If he said her father would disapprove, then he must be
right; although, privately she thought that her father, mild and vague,
would have no views at all on the subject. Obediently, however, she
wheeled her pony after Calladine’s horse, and they rode quietly away
along the top of the ridge. She was thinking how sorry she was that he
had come instead of Lovel. She did not very much like Mr. Calladine,
although she was kind to him out of goodness of heart, because she
thought he seemed lonely; indeed, he never ceased talking to her about
his loneliness.
He lived some way out of King’s Avon, right in the country; it must be,
she thought, very lonely in his small farm-house in the evenings, so
she sometimes persuaded her father to ask him to dinner.
On such occasions, not knowing how else to entertain her father and
guest, she would play to them both such simple airs as she could
command upon the piano, and sometimes would sing, accompanying herself,
such little songs as she had picked up from Martha Sparrow or the
country people. Mr. Calladine would come then and lean over the top
of the piano, watching her in the candlelight in that intent way he
had. She did not like this either; it was part of his elaborate and
disturbing manner, but she had too much pity for him to ask him to
desist. He seemed to like her singing; he always clapped his fine hands
softly together and begged for more. On the whole, she did not much
enjoy the evenings he spent at the Manor House; they were strained and
difficult; or, at least, so she thought, although he appeared unaware
of this, perfectly content, and in no hurry to take his leave. When
he at last did so, Clare, whose country idea of hospitality involved
accompanying her guest to the front door to see the last of him, was
always slightly relieved when she watched him button up his greatcoat,
climb into his gig, gather up the reins, and drive away into the night.
His horse paced now beside hers, and, riding with his beautifully
light hands, he restrained its paces to suit her pony’s, all with that
air of chivalrous deference which she found so subtly irritating.
It conveyed that she was not able to take care of herself, but that
he must do it for her, in a playful, tactful way, while allowing her
apparent liberty, and she felt now that he had taken her away from the
games as he might have taken a little girl. It made her inclined to
start her pony off into a gallop, but she reproved herself, remembering
that Mr. Calladine was very much older than she was,--he must be
quite fifty,--and that it was kind and condescending of one so fine
and cultured to desire her company. At the same time, she could not
help contrasting his manner with Lovel’s; Lovel was often brusque and
even rude to her; he lost his temper with her sometimes, and never
apologised afterwards; it was all the more insolent in Lovel, for he
was not the gentleman that Calladine was.
But she never felt with him the sense of strain that she felt with
Calladine. It seemed to her as natural to meet Lovel upon the Downs as
it would have been to meet a flock of sheep, and it never occurred to
her either to mention or to conceal the fact to her father. Calladine,
on the other hand,--she knew that when she got home, some obscure
instinct would impel her to say, “Father, I rode with Mr. Calladine.”
They had allowed their horses to follow their own course, which in that
open country was possible for miles, and Clare now perceived that they
were being carried in the direction of a group of Grey Wethers. She did
not at all want to go to these particular Grey Wethers with Calladine;
but when she tried to head her pony away he immediately said, “Do let
us ride on as far as the Grey Wethers, Miss Clare. We have never been
there together, and I have a fancy to go there with you.” Clare gave
way; it was not worth hurting his feelings, perhaps, for a whim. They
rode on accordingly until they came to the strange derelict stones,
where, at Calladine’s instigation, they got off their horses and sat
down side by side on one of the stones. Clare wondered what the object
of this pause could be; then, looking at Calladine, she saw that he was
nervously twisting his fingers together, and appeared by the agitation
of his manner to have something on his mind which he was trying to say.
She was not much surprised; she had often seen him break out under the
influence of some unexplained emotion, and waited quietly for what was
to come. She was not much interested either; but if it did him good to
speak, then, poor man, by all means let him speak his fill. Finally,
she prompted him, almost with mischief, “You seem full of disturbing
thoughts, Mr. Calladine?”
“I have something to say to you,” he began. “An explanation, more than
a confession. What do you know of me, after all? Very little, beyond
that I am a stranger settled in these parts, living a lonely life in
a remote farm-house with one old servant and a groom. You know that I
have no regular occupation; that I read the classics in a desultory
way; dabble in archæology, and interest myself in the local customs and
topography. You know that my leisure is unlimited, and my means ample.
You appear to take me for granted, but then I never attributed to you
an inquisitive mind. Have you ever wondered where I came from, and
why? have you, above all, never despised me a little for my idleness
of a dilettante while all around you you saw other men work for their
livelihood?”