the Manor House. She wondered whether she had inadvertently offended
him, but could recall nothing; their last meeting had been as friendly
as ever, nor had his manner in any way betrayed anything amiss. He
was, however, so strange and fiery a creature, so unaccountable in
his moods, that some chance word of hers might well have rankled,
grown during the night, and borne fruit upon the following day. She
went carefully in her mind over their recent conversations, which,
happily inconsequent and spasmodic, were a little difficult to
recollect in detail; but she achieved this feat, smiling again with
a little heartache over Lovel’s remarks about children,--ah, what a
good friendship it had been!--but her sifting of their talks revealed
nothing. She went about the house, still wondering after Lovel. What
if she had imagined the whole thing? What if he had been genuinely
prevented? the hints that Olver had let drop might well be the progeny
only of that sickly brain. Revived by this idea, yet apprehensive of
its allusion, she sought out William Baskett and sent him off to Lovel
with a message. “Say to him, William, that I have a small repair to be
done to the cupboard in my room, and beg him to come with his bag of
tools as quickly as may be. Say that it is a neat job I require or I
would not otherwise disturb him. Say that it is in my room, and for my
own particular use.”
A quarter of an hour later William returned: Lovel must ask Miss
Warrener to excuse him, he was busy and could not come.
At that Clare flamed into anger. What! she held out an olive branch to
the man, over some imaginary affront, and he rejected it? Very well.
Let him nurse his grievance; he should not be given another chance. She
was all the angrier with him because she was angry with herself for
having sent a verbal message by Baskett; the story, conceivably, would
be repeated at the Waggon of Hay, in which case it would be all over
the village; she ought to have written Lovel a note. The whole of her
day was spoilt by her resentment; it pricked her constantly through
all her occupations; she dared not go outside the gates for fear of
meeting the offender; she hated him for thus disturbing her peace of
mind and inconveniencing her movements. One thing at least was clear by
now, that he was deliberately avoiding her. He should not have cause to
complain that she sought him out.
But by the next day her mood was already softened and her conscience
again at work. She was sorry to think that she might, however
unintentionally, have hurt him so deeply. Poor Lovel! his position and
his family made her over-sensitive. She would not willingly add to his
burden. Perhaps he was already regretting a too hasty refusal. But how
to approach him as it were by chance? for she felt she would sooner
lose his friendship altogether than send a second message to his house.
There was one very obvious course open to her: she took her pony and
rode up to the Downs.
But although she rode up to the White Horse, and down again to the Grey
Wethers, and round by Lovel’s hut, and skirted most of the valleys
where there was likely shelter and pasture for sheep, she saw no sign
of Lovel. She was again angry with him for not being there, nor did
the fact that he followed many trades besides that of a shepherd do
anything to soothe her annoyance. She came back, entering the village
on the farther side to avoid passing his house. She felt as though
something whose value she had never realised while she still possessed
it, had gone out of her life; and here again she found cause for anger
with Lovel.
But she could not remain angry with him for very long together. She
wondered what he was doing; whether he missed her as much as she missed
him; whether his mood had passed by now into a sulky childish obstinacy
that was determined not to make the first advance, but that, if it
were dragged out of its corner, could be willing enough to be coaxed
into making friends. Clare smiled fondly as she thought how well she
knew him. She thought that she had only to meet him face to face for
laughter to spring into his eyes,--laughter both at the relief of their
reconciliation, and at himself for his past foolishness.
In the meantime she fell to dwelling upon his occupations, and
recalling all the gossip she had ever heard on his account, the stories
of his skill, and of his almost miraculous cures performed upon ailing
animals; of his breaking-in colts in record time; of his more illicit
career as a poacher. There was something in her which enjoyed this
train of thought and the pictures it evoked. She liked to think of
Lovel moving as stealthy as a cat through the woods at midnight, a
snare in his hand and a game-bag across his back. She liked to think
of him thus alone with the woods, the night, and the slinking animals,
his foot cautious upon the leaves; she thought that he must be happy
thus. She even liked to think of him bending over his victim, and of
the warm, smoking blood spurted over his hands. Although he hunted
them, he had a kinship with the animals. When he crouched, motionless
as a hare, at the approach of a keeper, he, the hunter, was suddenly on
the animals’ side more truly than the keeper, who was there to protect
them. There was something ridiculous in the idea of a keeper protecting
the animals against Lovel; even the rabbit squealing in the noose must
know that only by chance was Lovel out for its capture,--an enemy of
superior force, merely, rather than anything so utterly removed as a
man.
All this dwelling upon Lovel, which sent her absent-minded about the
house and garden, did not bring her any nearer to making her peace
with him. She was now no longer angry, but sore and puzzled, and she
was sure that he must be unhappy too, although she knew that even
after their reconciliation,--ultimately inevitable, to her mind,--he
would never own to this. The necessity of this reconciliation seemed
to her so simple and so obvious that she never thought of questioning
her pride. Daily she rode upon the Down, and daily as she returned
disappointed she contemplated in greater detail the possibility of
sending, after all, a second message to Lovel. She could even send
it in her father’s name. But he would not come. She was convinced he
would not come. That was not the method to adopt. She must take him by
surprise; she must startle him; appear suddenly before him, so that he
would smile before he had time to remember his grievance, and, having
once smiled, it would be too late to resume a severe face.
In the midst of this pre-occupation, she almost forgot Calladine, that
theatrical man, and the excitability of his manner recently towards
her. She had not seen him again, for which she was thankful; she
could not have met him without embarrassment. The idea of marriage
was incongruous and slightly absurd. She belonged to herself, and to
herself only; and the suggestion that Calladine or any one else should
wish to capture her was not serious but merely laughable. It had not
occurred to her that he, as well as Lovel, might be unhappy on her
account; such a thought would have distressed her exceedingly. It was
entirely without thought of Calladine, save for an occasional fleeting
hope that he might not have chosen to ride in the direction as herself,
that she roved over the Downs in search of Lovel. A fortnight passed
before she found him. She could, doubtless, have met him long before
by simply walking down the village street, but that would not have
been at all to her purpose, and she had in fact been at pains to avoid
any such encounter. At the end of a fortnight, having ridden up to
the White Horse, from where the widest view was to be obtained, she
discerned a long way off, up by the clump of beeches on the horizon, a
flock of sheep accompanied by a shepherd. Unhesitatingly, even gaily,
she started off in his pursuit. She was happy to think that their long
estrangement was drawing to its end. She skipped in her mind over the
preliminaries which must be got over before they could take up their
friendship again on its old easy terms. She, with a mind impatient
of all but essentials, would preferably have dispensed with these
preliminaries, explanations, upbraidings, and possibly abuse. She
wanted to waste no time; there were so many things she wanted to tell
him; she wanted to tell him how her pony had gone lame from picking up
a stone in his shoe; she wanted to tell him again of the melancholy
effect produced upon her by her visit to Starvecrow; she wanted to
ask him to splice her trout-rod and come with her one evening down to
the quiet pool of the brook. Her eagerness grew with the seething of
these small schemes as she urged her pony across the grass. She was
approaching Lovel by a devious way, going down into the valleys, where
she would escape his notice, until she could strike directly up the
hill and top the crest suddenly before his eyes. Her own eyes sparkled
over the precautions she was taking. She thought that she had now gone
far enough along the low reaches of the valleys, and set her pony at
the hill; they mounted the long, steep incline, like going upon an
adventure.
On the breeze came the tinkling of the sheep-bells, as the flock moved
cropping.
She had calculated her distance well, for when she finally reached the
top of the hill, she found that she had exactly hit off the flock of
sheep cropping beside the clump of beeches. Close by them lay a bundle
of osiers, hastily thrown down, and several wattled hurdles, with
fresh osiers threaded into them for repair; a knife, the sun shining
on its strong, curved blade; and a small bundle tied up in a red
pocket handkerchief. There were all these signs of the recent presence
of the shepherd, but he himself was nowhere to be seen. Clare looked
round in perplexity. The sun was strong, the breeze fresh, the grasses
glittered and curtsied, the shadows of the clouds bowled down the hills
and ran up the opposite side, the view was broad, but it revealed no
Lovel. With all that open country lying spread out, he must have taken
refuge in the small beech-wood,--watching her, perhaps, from behind
the trunk of a tree. She was almost amused by this childish game of
hide and seek, and in any case was determined not to be baffled by him
now that she had come so far; she could not now turn and ride away in
acknowledgment of defeat. Swinging herself off her pony she knotted
the reins loosely and let it turn away to snuff the grass, while she
herself entered the little wood, brave though tremulous, her optimism
ebbing as her obstinacy increased. The tree-trunks were not very close
together, so that she could look through the clump from one side out to
the other; she often went into these clumps of beech, and lay down on
the bare ground, looking up the smooth grey trunks, watching the sun
glint its shivered rays through the branches, and listening to the wind
among the leaves; she had even been into them with Lovel, and he had
knocked the warts off the trunks and carved them into frightening faces
with his knife to amuse her.
She paused with her hand upon the tree. “Lovel!” she cried. “I know
you are here, don’t hide from me; come out, Lovel!” There was no
answer, and after a little hesitation she went deeper into the wood.
She saw him then; he was not hiding, he was standing there perfectly
motionless, in the midst of a small clearing in the trees, standing
very quiet, like a man who after a long pursuit sees himself finally
brought to bay. He was looking straight at her, as though he knew the
direction in which she would come.
Now that she was confronted with him, a little of her self-confidence
went; he had, for a long fortnight now, inhabited her mind only, and
her vision not at all; and in her mind their meeting had run always
on the lines she devised for it, but here she had Lovel himself of
untested inflexibility, to trip the running of her programme. She gazed
at him beseechingly, but he still stood, in an attitude of expectant
resignation, waiting for her to open the attack. It came into her mind
that even now she might turn away, without a word spoken, having learnt
all that there was to be learnt from a single look. Instead, she went
up to him, saying “Lovel?” and upon an impulse she held out her hand.
He remained unmoved, examining her with a sort of abstracted interest.
She thought that she had never seen him so much like an animal,
pausing even while poised for flight, and a despair overcame her when
she remembered her own conceit that she could tame and bring to heel
again a creature so wild. She was ashamed when she remembered that she
had pitied him, had assumed that he must be unhappy, had smiled to
herself when she thought of keeping up his pretence of temper like a
sulky child. That smile had had in it much that was tender, much that
was maternal; had she then forgotten Lovel, or had her imagination
so metamorphosed his image, that she could have persuaded herself of
his need for tenderness, tolerance, or pity? He had need for none of
those soft things; she had been mistaken in thinking that he in any way
needed her; he needed no one; he stood alone. Nevertheless, she would
not retreat without some struggle; he might, still, prove to be no
worse than angry and hurt; if he insisted on remaining so, it should,
at least, not be owing to a lack of good-will on her part. “Lovel,” she
said, “Lovel, have I offended you in any way? See, I have come here
deliberately to ask you and to say that I am sorry for whatever I may
have done; how can I say more?”
Still he did not reply, but turned his head slightly and uneasily as
though looking for escape. He still had that air of being poised in
the clearing of the trees, alienating him from her as if she had come
upon him in the midst of some secret rite which he only awaited her
departure to resume. She felt inclined to cry out, “We were so close
to one another, once!” and the pain of the loss stabbed her sharply,
but instead she pleaded again with him, “Lovel, if you would only
speak to me we could put this misunderstanding right.” Where was the
smile she had so confidently hoped to startle into his eyes? He had
never shown himself so aloof or so forbidding; she felt herself small,
insignificant, and importunate; if she had found him in the open, she
thought, he would have been more vulnerable, but here among the trees
he seemed curiously protected.
He had not moved a step ever since she came up with him; was he rooted
there, a tree himself, or a sapling? she did not know; and a panic
began to spread over her at his fancied communion and alliance with
nature. He was as brown as the earth, his clothes were the colour of
dead leaves, his shirt was red like a robin’s breast. She remembered
again the tales she had heard of him, and her own fancies that had
followed him at the poacher’s trade, and this time she was afraid. She
wove them together with the ignorant tales of the witchcraft among
the Lovels. Could there be any truth in these fantastic notions? a
secret of harmony in nature which entitled the initiated to powers
inexplicable to the uninitiated? why did all animals so dread Olver
Lovel? so trust to Nicholas? what of her own intuitions? her sudden,
reasonless terrors? her mingled love and fear of the sarsen stones and
of trees? her constant phrase, uttered half in jest, that some day she
would be fetched away? And how was Lovel concerned? what part was he
to have in the fetching? If only he were not so brown, brown as earth,
lithe as the saplings, his shirt red as a robin’s breast; if only his
eyes were not constant pilgrims to the horizon.
She turned to leave him; at all costs she must get out of this wood,
where she felt the old threat closing in round her, and in which Lovel
was so mysteriously implicated. She turned slowly, not to betray her
panic, still with the half-hope that he would speak and thereby break
her spell. But when he spoke, it only deepened.
“There is no misunderstanding,” he said.
She wheeled round again upon him.
“Then why have you so avoided me?” she said passionately. “A fortnight
ago we met by the Grey Wethers, we had no quarrel, we parted friends.
The next day you were sent for to the Manor House, you would not come,
you sent your brother. I sent for you later myself,--a special message.
You would not come. I thought I had offended you in some way. Do you
know that I have looked for you all over the hills to ask you for your
reason? A fortnight I have spent in looking for you.”
“I know,” he said. “I have seen you.”
Her voice died away; she had thrown herself against his defences and
bruised herself. Her indignation had made a tiny uproar in the wood
without detracting from the calm of the trees or the dignity of Lovel.
She made a small gesture of abandonment; her one desire now was to get
away. “There is nothing more to be said.”
“Set your mind at ease,” he observed unexpectedly. “You never offended
me. Believe me, you could not do so even if you tried; believe me, you
are too sweet and gentle to do such a thing. Put all the blame on to
me. I am capricious and wayward, you know; any one in the village will
tell you as much and a dozen worse things besides. You must believe
them all. You have my word on it that they are all true. But as for
blaming yourself, never dream of doing so. Think only that I am not fit
for you to associate with, and let me go my way without looking for me
any more.”
“Is this your only reason?” said Clare.
He hesitated. He was still standing motionless and every moment she
felt that he was being farther and farther withdrawn from her.
“No, it is not my only reason,” he said at last, “but it is the only
one I choose to give to you. It is enough surely. I come of a family
with a very ill-name, and I myself would see the inside of a prison
over and over again if the guardians of the law were as cute at their
work as I, perhaps, am at mine. I think it is sufficient reason.”
“Have you robbed, or even murdered, Lovel?” she asked.
“Would you be convinced if I told you that I had?” he replied with idle
curiosity. “I have robbed crowded coverts, if you call that robbing,
but as for the rest, although I have taken the lives of pheasants and
partridges, I have not taken the life of man or made away with the
property of any of my employers while it was in my charge.”
“Your reason is a very insufficient one,” she said, “you are telling me
nothing that I did not know already. Will you come outside the trees? I
cannot talk to you in here, I feel trapped.”
“No,” he said, retreating a step. “I came in here to avoid you, but
since you have followed me we stay in the place I chose. And my other
reason is fully adequate,--oh, fully, fully!” he said with great
feeling, “so now leave me, Clare, and think of me as harshly as
you can. If you meet me anywhere, pass me by; I ask that of you as
earnestly as ever a favour was asked.”
“You ask me to pass you by even on the Downs?” she said slowly.
“I do,” he replied. He rushed on, not looking at her, “I must not
make friends. I want to be alone. You stole my friendship, and I have
resented it. Call me ill-mannered, even brutal; call me ungrateful,
boorish. I was angry when I saw you riding to-day. It is better that
you should know the truth, and it cannot hurt you, coming from me. What
am I to you? a peasant, a gipsy, a Jack-of-all-trades. I have nothing
to do with your life or you with mine, so leave me alone,--leave me
alone,” he said.
All her pride was lashed alive now; she was utterly astonished, and, in
her simplicity, convinced. “I have forced my friendship upon you,” she
stammered. “Yes, yes,” said Lovel, driving it home. She stared at him,
lovely in her distress. But even in her humiliation she was generous.
“Forgive me,” she stammered again. She turned and fled out from amongst
the trees, aware,--but not knowing how truly,--that she had left there
something which she would never regain. She came out by the osiers,
the hurdles, and Lovel’s knife lying upon the ground. The sight of
it, in its familiarity, stung tears to her eyes. If he had not wanted
her, why had he carved faces from the warts of the beech-trees for her
amusement. Why had he tired so suddenly? rebelled so wildly against
the slight tie of her friendship? She swung herself on to her pony and
galloped away, not seeing where she was going, but only mad to put the
greatest possible distance between herself and that wood whence she had
escaped indeed, but only with her life.
Calladine meanwhile, who knew nothing of Clare’s friendship with Lovel,
and who would have stared had he heard it mentioned, had lived in a
torment ever since her visit. She had come and gone again, and he felt
as though during her brief sojourn she had stirred round the sluggish
atmosphere of his house with a wand. His eye became more critical as he
surveyed his surroundings from her point of view. He tried to imagine
what she would say were she to take his house thoroughly in hand, and
began to introduce such alterations as he thought she would approve;
he rearranged his books, he re-hung his pictures, he ordered patterns
from London and had his leather chairs covered with a flowered chintz.
His servant Mrs. Quince was at first at a loss to know what had come
over her master, but after she and Martha Sparrow had put their heads
together they arrived at the obvious conclusion. “’Tis a woman’s house
now, Martha,--dimity in the windows, and what do you think? dried rose
leaves and spices among the linen!--though as yet there’s no woman to
live in it.” Calladine shut his mind obstinately to the curiosity he
knew he must be awaking in Mrs. Quince; he daily informed her of his
wishes while inviting no comment, and she, on her part, took advantage
of his new mood, and of the good-humour in which, she argued, he must
be anxious to keep her, to ask for an extra pair of hands for all the
new work she pretended he was creating. “There’s that girl of Farmer
Morland’s, sir, casting round for a place.” Calladine agreed at once,
without argument or enquiry. Let Farmer Morland’s girl be engaged by
all means; and Daisy, with her red head, her freckles, her pale blue
eyes, and her frilled Sunday muslins, was installed in the attic.
Calladine, in so far as he noticed her at all, disliked her at sight;
she dropped a curtsey to him the first time she met him, and tried
to ingratiate him with a smile. But he was too deeply bent upon his
own concerns to pay her more than the tribute of a passing distaste.
Clare had been to his house, his room had contained Clare, her voice
had vibrated through the air he breathed, her hand had rested on his
door handle, her foot had trodden his stair. She might come again--but
such was his fantasy that he all but dreaded lest the return of her
presence should disturb the perfection of his memory. He was almost
content, for the moment, that he might remain at Starvecrow, doing her
service. A garden, she had said; and he toiled at the obstinate soil
till his hands lost their refinement and hardened in the palms, and he
smiled to see his broken nails. Mrs. Quince observed him sarcastically
from the windows of the house, hands on hips. He had thrown aside his
coat and rolled up his shirt-sleeves. “But he’ll need to do away with
those silk shirts if he’s to go in for pick and mattock,” she grumbled,
between tenderness and scorn. Calladine was indeed an incongruous
figure, spare and delicate of build, with his greying hair that gave
him a slightly eighteenth century appearance, and his long back bent
over the stones and flints of that untilled hillside. He thought,
sometimes ruefully, when he stood up to stretch his back and to survey
the little progress he had made, that Clare had set him a harder task
than she knew. He began to invest it with characteristically romantic
properties. It was like scaling the Hill of Glass, or separating the
wheat from the millet, or travelling to the ends of the earth to bring
back a jet bottled from the Singing Fountain. If he could transform
this strong wilderness to a blowing curtseying garden, might he, having
accomplished his task, present himself to claim his prize? And what
would she say, she the distant, she the all-unconscious, when she came
to inspect the results of his labours? Would she praise? would she
deride? he swung his pick again with an unconvinced jeer at himself for
the fabric of symbolism he was creating.