continued absence produced an emptiness, in which all things seemed
meaningless and noisy. Then he saw her, standing at a little distance
chatting to the landlord of the Royal George Inn, and a great calm
spread, lake-like, over him. She was at hand; nothing else mattered. He
proceeded quietly to transact his business, having all his faculties
now undistracted about him; he did not even want to look at her, now
that he knew that she was there; she would wait for him and though they
both stood talking to other people, without betraying the consciousness
of one another he knew that they were really converging, that their
two lives were really converging upon the same moment when they would
join up and turn to leave the market-place, without a word spoken,
together. Sure enough, next time that he looked up, she had drawn a
little nearer; he was glad; he felt his absolute silent unity with her,
without any question of command or submission on either side, an almost
sexless unity, and one that had grown up without any agreement spoken
in words.
“Those’ll be father’s sheep, Lovel?” said a voice ingratiating, at his
elbow.
He looked down, and saw Daisy Morland, the farmer’s daughter, her large
freckled face raised amiably to his between the puffed red ringlets.
Lovel disliked Daisy as much as Daisy liked him; he avoided her company
as pointedly as she sought his; the fact that he was for the moment in
her father’s employ no doubt encouraged her to think that she had a
certain claim on him; and now especially when his mind was bent upon
Clare she seemed to him more than usually aggressive.
“I’ll help you drive them home,” she exclaimed brightly.
“No need, I have the dogs,” said Lovel, and added, “thanks,” which he
was far from feeling.
“No trouble, you know,” said Daisy, giving him a look full of meaning.
Several of their neighbours were watching the scene with amusement.
“Best let me take them quietly,” said Lovel; “and anyhow,” he added, as
though that settled the matter, “I’m riding.”
“Oh, but I’ve got the cob!” cried Daisy triumphantly.
“Best not,” said Lovel, for he could think of nothing else to say.
“But I say yes,” said Daisy. “Come, Lovel,” she persisted in a coaxing
voice, “my own father’s sheep? You wouldn’t stop me riding alongside
you?”
Lovel felt himself beaten; he had, indeed, no reasonable objection to
raise.
“I shan’t be taking them by the high road.”
“So much the better,” said Daisy.
A clear voice said beside them suddenly, “Lovel, I have a favour to
ask; I don’t like riding alone in such a crowd of people, may I ask
your escort back to the Manor House when you go?”
He turned upon Clare, who had come up unobserved, and saw the mischief
beneath the request so formally and demurely proffered.
“Of course, Miss Warrener, I am at your service,” he replied instantly,
and they stood, for a moment, the two of them together, looking at
Daisy, whose freckled face had grown suffused with an unbecoming red,
that clashed with the red of her hair and spread patchily round her
throat down to the opening of her gown.
“Forgive me for interrupting you, Daisy,” said Clare serenely.
Daisy mumbled a “No matter, miss,” class triumphing over sex.
“Can I get your pony for you, Miss Warrener?” said Lovel to Clare
politely.
“I will wait till you are ready,” said Clare politely to Lovel!
Their eyes met.
“Let us go,” said Lovel irresistibly.
With the clamour of the market all round them they manœuvred the little
flock of sheep out of their pen into a side-street, leading their
horses till they should be clear of the town. The cries of the market
place died away behind them,--the market place where Daisy still stared
after them with a stare of dull, revengeful anger, too stupefied to
care as yet that the whole of Marlborough should have witnessed her
humiliation. But, having no pride, she minded this less than the loss
of the ride she had promised herself with Lovel. Miss Warrener had got
him, taken him coolly away from under her very nose; they had drifted
away together without any fuss as though they belonged naturally to
one another. Miss Warrener! Who would have thought of meeting Miss
Warrener at a cattle-market? It was not the first time, either, that
Daisy had seen Lovel and Miss Warrener together, not by any means the
first time, since she was not above following Lovel secretly and spying
upon him up there on the Downs when he thought himself safe. But who
could have thought that the girl would have come to Marlborough fair
for the purpose of meeting Lovel? for Daisy had no doubt that that had
been Clare’s intention; and so cool about it, so lady-like, “Lovel,
I have a favour to ask” indeed! “Lardy-da!” said Daisy to herself,
mincingly, as she angrily imitated Clare’s manner in her own mind,
affecting to despise it, while really envying it as she would never
have acknowledged.
She woke to the realisation that the market was still proceeding,
with its shouts, its jostlings, and its huddling of beasts, round her
immobilised figure, and, bestirring herself, she went in search of the
fat cob, meaning to follow (at a distance, and keeping out of sight),
Lovel and Clare on their ponies, who, she calculated, must by now be
driving the little flock before them over the crest of the hill.
And she saw them go, with the eyes of a jealous woman, and knew that
during the two succeeding days, while Lovel kept the flock at pasture,
Miss Warrener joined him again, and sat with him on the Grey Wethers;
she saw all his length stretched on the grass at Miss Warrener’s feet,
and saw their fingers close together over some cat’s cradle that they
were playing. But she saw no more than that, though she watched so that
there wasn’t much that her eyes could have missed.
Lovel rode slowly away along the back of the Down, the woolly flock
tossing and huddling along in front of him, in a hurried, senseless
way, controlled by the barking of the two sheepdogs, who were swift to
chase up a straggler, or to straighten out any unseemly bulge at the
side of the flock,--that same flock that he had bought at Marlborough
fair for Farmer Morland. Lovel, knowing he could trust his dogs, rode
in an abstraction. The afternoon sun cast fitful, fan-shaped gleams
down through the thin clouds, like sunbeams passed through a sieve, or
seen through a veil of the finest rain; it produced an effect of shadow
and wet gold familiar to him in his comings and goings over the Downs,
but now for the first time it occurred to him to compare the outside
world with his own life; and, while his meetings with Clare might
stand for that wet gold, the shadows fell mournfully into a yet more
inevitable analogy.
He came down into the village by dusk, regretful as ever to exchange
the heights for the hollow. Up there he seemed to shake off for a
little the burden of his life, which as soon as he re-entered the ring
of the village he resumed. He was, however, too well-accustomed to this
sensation to pay any particular attention as he passed through the
gap of the embankment. “Charmed circle,” his mother had often croaked
to him, but he always shrugged disdainfully, knowing well that his
imagination was all too ready to be led away along such lines, and
being determined to keep his good sense wholesomely about him. The
tossing woolly backs of the sheep preceded him now in a long wedge,
four or five abreast, down the narrow road; they bleated uneasily, and
tried to break through the hedge on either side. “Poor silly things,
ye don’t like being penned up any better than the rest of us,” Lovel
said to them, as he bent from his horse to open the gate into the
field, and called to his dogs to head off the flock, which crowded back
helter-skelter through the gate and then dispersed themselves in a
sudden browsing content in the field among the monoliths.
Lovel called off his dogs and pulled the gate shut again, with the
crook of his riding whip. He surveyed the sheep for a moment over
the gate: they were already grazing, dim shapes in the dusk, on the
comparatively rich pasture after the short turf of the Downs. “A
good lot,” Lovel thought professionally, “and all for the butcher
to-morrow,” but he had no sentiment to waste over the fate of the
sheep. He rode on into the village, leaving the circle of the
embankment with its few naked trees, behind him; ahead of him, the
church spire rose up against the sky, and presently as he turned the
corner the village street came fully into view, with all its necessary
provisions for the conduct of existence: houses for folk to be born in,
shops where they might purchase the paraphernalia of daily life, the
tavern where they might be merry, the church where they might worship,
be christened, married, or buried according to their passing needs,
and the chapel where, if they were so inclined, they might differ as
to their faith with their fellow-men. Church and Chapel Lovel ignored
altogether, a work which his mother had begun for him by refusing
flatly to have him made a Christian. “You’ll call him Nicholas Lovel
for all that Parson don’t souse him,” she had said, arms akimbo, to the
indignant deputation of the parish.
John Sparrow was turning into the Waggon of Hay as Lovel rode past it.
“Come join us, neighbour?” he said half in mischief; the wits of the
village lived in constant hope that some day, some day, a liquor potent
or sufficient enough should be found to loosen the lips of Gipsy Lovel,
and what secrets they would hear then! Lovel was briefly tempted, then
he shook his head, and passed on: his mother and brother would be
waiting for their meal for him, too helpless to begin without him since
he had said he would be home by four. At that moment the Church clock
struck six: he was two hours late, two hours he had idled away with
Clare. He strung himself up to endure the reproaches with which he knew
he would be greeted.
He left his horse in the small paddock at the back of the house, and,
carrying the bridle and saddle over his arm, returned to the street and
went into the house by the front door. The passage within was dark, but
by long habit he found the hooks on which to hang up his gear, and at
the noise he made in doing so, and the tread of his riding boots on the
flagged floor, his brother came eagerly out into the passage, carrying
a candle.
“Oh, Nicholas, is it you? Why, you promised to be home by four, and it
is gone six; where in the world have you been all this time? I have
been three times down the road to look for you.”
“I wish you would do nothing of the sort when I am late,” Lovel said
curtly. He hated his brother at that moment, he hated the dark house
and the implied reproach; his two hours with Clare flooded over him.
“Is supper ready, at least?”
Olver whined, “I had forgotten about supper,--I thought only of
you,--don’t be angry with me, Nicco,--I know I should have set it out.”
“It does not matter,” said Lovel: if he got angry Olver would cringe,
and whine the more. “Give me the candle, I will see to it.” He took
the candle from Olver’s hand, and Olver’s strange eyes gleamed on him
in its light with questioning timidity. The grandfather’s clock ticked
loudly out of the dark recesses of the passage. “I hope you have kept
the fire going,” said Nicholas, opening the door into the living room.
Olver followed at his heels with the dogs.
The living-room was dark and low, lit redly by the logs in the open
fire-place, and because there was neither paint nor paper on the
walls the great stones of the masonry were visible. The eye looked
down instinctively to find a floor of hard-trodden mud,--and was
disappointed, for the floor here, like that of the passage, was formed
of flag stones. There was little furniture: a centre table, which
served for meals, a few chairs of cane and wood, a tall dresser reared
against one wall, containing on its shelves the crockery for everyday
use, and a shelf above the fire-place, on which stood a row of china
fruits in bright, shining colours,--this comprised the sum total of
furniture and decoration in the whole room. Lovel scarcely noticed
what was in the room and what was not; he liked the stone walls, and
would not have them covered up, but them he liked for the sake of their
tradition and of the quarry from which they had come.
He now set the candle on the table, and got from out of the cupboard
under the dresser a loaf of bread, some cheese and butter, and the
necessary knives and plates. He did this menial work mechanically; he
had long ceased to expostulate with his brother, or to induce him to
mend his neglectful ways. He supposed, when he thought about it at all,
that till the end of his life he would continue to serve and provide
for his mother and his brother. He was their provider, their protector,
their victim, their master, and their slave; that was his function, and
he did not complain against it. A servant he would not get, even could
he have paid the wages ten times over, because of the tattle carried
to the village. He saw, then, in the simplicity of his mind, no other
course open to him than to perform all the duties himself.
He set aside upon a tray a cup of tea, when he had made it, and a bowl
of gruel for the bedridden old woman upstairs. This he gave to Olver,
telling him to carry it up carefully, and stood himself at the foot of
the stairs holding up the candle for a light. He heard the door open
above, and his mother’s querulous voice. He smiled grimly to himself as
he thought of how long she had been waiting for her tea, and of what
she would have said could she have known the cause, and have seen the
two figures of himself and Clare standing in the sunlight on the Downs.
This radiant vision of Clare crossed his heart in a flash; it hurt him.
_Had_ his mother seen them? he never knew himself the true extent of
the powers he must not allow himself to think about, because he was
afraid of them. Gipsy Lovel, he knew they called him in the village....
Olver came down again, and still his eyes sought his brother’s face
to find whether he had been forgiven. His brother’s servility and
excessive devotion to himself exasperated Nicholas. He sat over his
supper tossing bits of food to the dogs, and trying to pretend to
himself that Olver with his searching eyes and anxious face was not
sitting opposite to him in mute beseeching, hanging on to his looks and
gestures. Nicholas despised himself for his churlishness, but to-night
his home, his brother, were violently intolerable to him. He could not
breathe, he was being stifled; he rose nervously and kicked the logs
into a blaze; in the middle of doing this he swung round.
“Why do you follow me so with your gaze?” he asked impatiently.
“You are angry with me, Nicco, for having forgotten the supper, but
indeed I thought only of you, and you are all I have in the world.”
Lovel said, not unkindly, “Well, you wasted your anxiety: I am better
able than most to look after myself. I am not angry any more,” but in
spite of his words he still felt that the house oppressed him, and
that a restlessness, usually kept under control, was gnawing at him.
He knew well whom to blame: it was Clare, who appeared to him the
personification of all he had abjured. He had had Clare for two hours
before his eyes, the sight of her stirring him as the wind stirs a
bell, and now in the place of Clare he was returned to the monotony
of his sad home; in the full determination not to think of Clare he
crossed over to the fire where his dogs already lay sleeping, filled
his pipe and lighted it, and forthwith began to dream of nothing but
Clare as he sat gazing into the heart of the red ashes.
She was so little known to him; he liked to picture,--yet his
bashfulness made of it a fearful pleasure,--the ordering of her room,
of her clothes laid neatly in drawers; he thought of her ribbons; he
knew that in the evenings she discarded her gauntlets and her cap and
wore soft coloured silks--he had heard Martha Sparrow say so. He had
never seen her in these; was never likely so to see her; he trembled
at the thrill of so seeing her: her arms would be bare, her throat
rounded and white, with red corals up it. Yet he was not sure that he
desired to see her thus, save as an experience, for thus the difference
between them would be most emphasised; when he met her upon the Downs,
and their ponies fell into step side by side, then she was at her
closest to him, seeing the heavens and the hills with the same eye,
knowing the same things as he knew, reading the signs of the weather,
picking up the same landmarks familiar to them both; but such was the
tremulousness of his mind that he wavered between the preference of
knowing her at her closest, or at her most remote: the one caressed
him infinitely, but the other mystified and tempted him, and made his
pleasure into a rapturous pain. What hope had he of ever beholding
in the flesh that wraith which his fancy evoked? he, Lovel, sitting
over the fire with his two rough dogs and his mazed brother, and at
the end of a day’s shepherding, while she dined at the Manor House
with her father in the warmth of lamplight and the quiet dignity of
pervading scholarship? She was gracious enough to him when they met on
the hills; there, the closeness of their age and pursuits made them
forgetful of their other disparities; the same rain made them both
wet, the same wind ruffled their hair; but with her nod of farewell,
kindly though it might be, they were instantly severed: he sank, she
rose, and drifted out of his reach. He was indignant that an accident
of fortune should be the mean occasion of parting them, an accident of
fortune, not of birth, for by lineage the Lovels, although so fallen,
had, in the pride of their Egyptian blood, no comparison to fear. Then
he remembered that a deeper irony kept him apart from any woman. He had
before him constantly the sight of his mother and brother to uphold
him in the resolution that with the three of them the race must end.
Such blood must not be carried on. But because the primitive instincts
were deep and intractable in him, the renunciation roused his anger;
his animal birthright was to beget sons, and he rebelled against the
chance that cheated him of it; and in the same train of thought came
the image, whose lovely audacity appalled even while it enraptured
him, of his children and Clare’s; he saw their strong limbs and heard
their laughter, an image vivid and actual, and--he swore to himself--of
a wholesome inspiration. He must see and think no more of Clare! But
as he came to this conclusion, Olver, who had been squatting on the
opposite side of the hearth, stirring the ashes and shooting furtive
glances from time to time at his brother, said, “There came for you a
message while you were away, from Mr. Warrener, to know would you go
up to the Manor House to-morrow, to fix shelves for his books. William
Baskett came with the message, and says, Mr. Warrener is impatient, and
though the books have been stacked up on the floor for over a year,
must needs have the shelves ready to-morrow now that he had at last
taken the idea into his head.”
“I cannot go,” said Lovel moodily.
He gave no reason. He thought that the effort was being made
unnecessarily hard for him by this chance intervention. True, he
might not set eyes on Clare, but even so the Manor House would be so
redolent of her as to trouble him to the soul. She might be absent;
but, again, she might come into the room and stand over him while he
sawed and planed, chattering to him in her fashion, at once grave and
light-hearted. “I cannot go,” he said, afraid for himself.
Olver shuffled across the hearth and knelt at his brother’s feet,
looking up into his face.
“There is a weight on your mind, brother. Oh, yes, no use in shaking
your head: I always know. Won’t you tell Olver? You don’t know what
powers I might have to help you,--no, no, nothing that you disapprove
of,” he added hastily, seeing Lovel’s face darken, “but you know, you
often say I’ve a kink of wisdom, and so I have,” he went on, carried
away, as he readily was, by his vanity. “Only you cannot appreciate it,
brother, or you would trust me more.”
Lovel would have given much to be left in peace just then in order
to pursue his quarrel with his own heart, but he was incapable of
slighting his brother’s demonstrations of affection, so he put his hand
on the head pressed against his knee, and, without speaking, caressed
the curls in a manner he hoped was not too obviously perfunctory. He
felt Olver’s instant yielding under the caress, and the creature’s
pathetic dependence only increased his melancholy. “It costs me so
little, and means so much to him,” he thought, and continued to soothe
Olver’s temples with the tips of his fingers.
They sat in silence for some time, a silence disturbed only by the sigh
of a tired dog in his sleep, or by the falling apart and flaring of a
log. Presently Olver said, in a meditative tone, without moving, “You
hated me, Nicco, when you first came in and I asked you where you had
been. Yet I have often asked you that, and you have not been angry.”
“You knew where I had been: driving sheep for Mr. Morland,” replied
Lovel mechanically.
“Yes,--and meeting Miss Warrener.” Olver gave a great chuckle. “Oh,
yes, I know,” he continued, “because the first time I went down the
road to see whether you were coming I met Miss Warrener, riding on her
pony, and she stopped to ask me how I did, and said that she had seen
you. She carried a bunch of gorse slung at her saddle, which she said
you had cut for her. Is that how the land lies, brother?”
“No, no,--simple boy,--never hint such a thing.” Lovel was angry, and
extraordinarily distressed.
“_I_ know,” said Olver, nodding sagely. He rambled on, “Daisy Morland
has seen you together, and because she wants you for herself her
eyes are sharpened. I found her in Farmer Morland’s barn, cutting
mangolds for the cattle. She asked me to help her. Very soon I was
cutting mangolds alone, and she was lying in the hay watching me. She
said, ‘That brother of yours is a sly dog,--hoity, toity with us poor
girls,--too good to speak to a Christian,--and all because he fries
other fish in secret.’ I asked her what she meant. She tossed her head
and said it was not for her to give away your secrets to me. So I
stopped cutting, and threw her down on her back in the hay, and tickled
her till she promised she would tell me. She was soft to tickle; she
squealed and wriggled about. Why don’t you like her?” asked Olver.
“Go on,” Nicholas answered.
“Then she said she had been hiding behind a rick somewhere up near
the Grey Wethers, and she had seen you come riding along with Miss
Warrener. She said you got off your horses when you came to the
Wethers, and sat down on one of the stones, and stayed there till the
sun began to sink; then you caught your horses and rode away, very
close together. She said you had talked all the time as though a week
was too little for all you had to say. She said she had seen you both
at Marlborough market, too. Then she began to cry; she cried so loud I
was afraid Farmer Morland would come in to see what was ado, so I held
my hand over her mouth until she stopped. She said you were breaking
her heart, and she cared nothing what became of her. She said she was
reckless. What’s the meaning of it all?”
“Jealousy,” said Lovel, with suppressed fury.