Mrs. Quince observed to Martha, suggesting that it was she herself whom
she thus slightly derided. Martha, simple soul, was taken in. “Likely
enough, Mrs. Quince, she has a rare eye to the ordering of a house.”
Mrs. Quince smiled on one side of her face. “She took over from me when
she was fifteen,” continued Martha in perfect good faith, “and I wasn’t
able to call my dusters my own. Look what she has made Mr. Calladine do
already; the house isn’t the gloomy place it was.”
“What he has done was Mr. Calladine’s own choice,” said Mrs. Quince
tartly.
“But you may be sure she put him up to it,” Martha replied.
So for hours they talked round and round the central subject, avoiding
always the crux of the discussion, which was that Martha, with the
match-making instinct, longed for the day when she should let Clare
pass from her hands as a bride, and that Mrs. Quince, who had governed
and mothered Calladine (in so far as so uncomfortable and so unreal
a man would allow himself to be mothered) equally dreaded the day
when another woman should take over from her the reins of Starvecrow.
Calladine himself remarked her altered manner. “Will you be taking
your lemon and hot water the same as usual at night, sir?” she asked
him, and when in surprise he said, “Why shouldn’t I, Mrs. Quince?”
she replied in a voice full of vague and sinister suggestion, “Well,
I thought as things was so changed, and likely to be more changed in
future, that that might be going overboard with the rest.”
Because Mrs. Quince could not keep off her idea, which buzzed in her
head as tirelessly as a mosquito, in between Martha’s visits she began
to throw out dark hints to Daisy Morland. Daisy absorbed them with the
intelligence she brought to bear only on questions connected with the
sexual relationship of any two persons. She was careful not to betray
too much of her interest to Mrs. Quince; only a modicum sufficient to
keep the housekeeper going; and thus judiciously she was able to give
the impression that she took in only about half of what was said, so
that Mrs. Quince loosened her tongue to her more than she ventured
to loosen it to Martha Sparrow, and presently, encouraged by Daisy’s
ejaculations of sympathy and admiration, she fell into the habit of
speaking her mind freely as to the vexatious prospect of having a young
mistress in the house, “With her notions and her fandangles, upsetting
folk that knew their work inside out long before she was born.” Daisy
echoed the complaint; but inwardly she devoutly favoured the scheme of
a marriage between Mr. Calladine and Miss Warrener. A parallel plan
was maturing slowly in her brain, that she would turn Mr. Calladine’s
name to her own advantage. She recalled all too vividly the faces of
Miss Warrener and young Lovel as she had seen them upon the Downs,
when, as she had expressed it in a bout of jealous despair to Olver,
“a week wouldn’t have been enough for all they had to say to one
another.” It was true that she had not seen them touch so much as each
other’s hands, which seemed remarkable to her ideas, accustomed to the
loose, inarticulate, indiscriminate rustic fondling, but this, with a
sneer, her instinct working less subtly than it might have worked, she
attributed to Miss Clare being “gentry,” and to Lovel fancying himself
“gentry” too, though every one knew in what poverty he lived, for
all his ancestors and his book-reading. But, she reflected, with the
satisfaction of reducing even “gentry” to a least common denominator
with simple folk like herself, in the end it came to the same thing
for everybody; and there was only one way of begetting children:
no amount of gentility was able to refine _that_ away! She put it
crudely to herself, and grinned. But a thought struck her: what if
young Lovel in that high-handed way he had with him, should actually
succeed in getting Miss Warrener before Mr. Calladine had spoken?
Mr. Calladine was a gentleman,--she couldn’t call him a man, no, but
a gentleman he certainly was, and she was even a little overawed by
his gentility,--who would take a long time in coming to the point;
he would dawdle the thing out, just for the sake of tickling his own
feelings; she could tell that merely by looking at him. Oh, he might
have made up his mind long ago, but that wouldn’t prevent him from
dallying with a girl, seeing her often, teasing himself and her with
doubts, wondering whether he would want her quite so much once he had
got her, and preferring to live on the whole, in the uncertainty of
courtship.... She could see through Mr. Calladine; that was one effect
being “gentry” had on people. She had nothing but scorn for men like
that. Look at him now, digging up a patch for a garden, and all to
please Miss Clare,--Mrs. Quince had said so,--and not as though he had
been a poor man digging over his potato-patch against the day when he
would have to keep a wife. Lovel wasn’t like that; and therein lay both
her fear and her respect. She tried to console herself by thinking how
preposterous was the idea that Lovel should ever hope to get Miss
Warrener, he, a village boy when all was said and done, with an old
bed-ridden witch for a mother and a daft hobgoblin for a brother; but
her own feelings for Lovel stepped in to destroy this consolation:
wasn’t he a proper strong young man, as difficult to catch as a colt
turned loose on the Downs, with his wild dark air, enough to touch the
fancy of a girl? She couldn’t tell herself why she had so set her heart
on Lovel, if it wasn’t for that air of his,--so set her heart on him
that she was ready to take on the zany and the old witch and all, if
only she could get him. He had never looked twice at her, for all she
had tried hard enough to attract his attention; yet she preferred him
to any young man in the village, even to Peter Gorwyn, the smith’s son,
with his muscular six foot two, with whom she had made so merry on the
day of the Scouring, or Job Lackland, who played the fiddle and whose
appearance of fair girlishness was so misleading. They were all very
well, either of those two, for a one day’s fooling; she reckoned them
at their proper worth, just as they reckoned her; Lovel alone was the
serious business. She supposed that she could get Peter Gorwyn to marry
her; he was a decent boy, and his sense of decency would certainly get
him as far as the church,--and suddenly, in her mind, she saw quite
complete the scheme by which she would decoy Lovel.
She brooded over this for some time, perfecting its details, with
little gusts of excitement. There was as yet no very great urgency;
she could afford to wait a week or two. Olver, moreover, whom she met
one day that Mrs. Quince had sent her on an errand to King’s Avon,
informed her that his brother seemed very moody of late and short
in the temper, from which she deduced that he was either not seeing
Clare or that something had happened to cloud their friendship. The
information reassured her, and she cheerfully completed her purchases,
passing the time of day with her acquaintances and even accepting a
glass of stout at the Waggon of Hay from young Gorwyn, of which she
knew that Mrs. Quince would not approve; she looked at young Gorwyn
over the rim of her glass as she drank, and wondered whether the day
would ever come when she could tell him what she owed him: perhaps on
the occasion of some future Scouring, when he and she were left behind
among the old folks of the village, to dodder and dither in the sun of
the street, perhaps she would tell him then, and a fine astonishment
and a good though quavering laugh, he would get out of it. It was funny
to look at him now, handsome enough as he lounged beside the bar, and
to think of him bent double over a stick; funny, too, to think of what
had been between them and of what it was perhaps to lead to. One never
knew how things were going to turn out.... She set down her glass
on the counter, thanked him, and gathered up her parcels to go. He
offered to accompany her, but she declined the offer; she had plenty to
think about in her walk home over the Downs. “You’re mighty pernickety
to-day,” he twitted her, rather relieved to be let off the consequences
of the offer gallantry had prompted, and went with her as far as the
door, and the old men sitting with their pipes in the chimney corner
commented, “A hefty pair.”
She took the road which led out of the village on the western side and
which presently ceased to be a metalled way and dissolved into one of
those broad green tracks that all over the Downlands of England mark
the course of the ancient paths. She had a good three miles to walk,
but her numerous small parcels of groceries and haberdashery were not
heavy, and her mind was occupied with the account she had heard of
Lovel. She could think it over at peace while it was still fresh in
her memory; at Starvecrow, Mrs. Quince would hustle her, and she would
not have time to sort her impressions until she went up to her attic
for the night, when she would be too tired for anything but sleep. It
had been clever of her to refuse young Gorwyn’s suggestion, although
it went sorely against the grain with her ever to decline any man’s
company. Still, she had done well; this was the very place to think
out ways and means, with the peace of evening falling and only the
distant bleatings of sheep to disturb a body’s thoughts. So Lovel was
moody, was he? something had gone wrong, and according to her shrewd
and simple creed nothing could go wrong enough to provoke moodiness in
a man who had no crops or beasts of his own to worry about except his
dealings with a woman. Had Miss Warrener given him the cold shoulder at
last? she wouldn’t wonder, and was maliciously glad that Lovel should
have met at last with a match in his own hoity-toity ways. That would
show him, what it felt like. But she perceived that, although she had
hitherto only congratulated herself over his discomfiture, it was in
reality full of danger, for where was the danger to equal the danger
of a reconciliation? She must, she saw it now, shoot her dart before
Lovel and that hussy could make it up. But how to meet him? how to get
so soon after this expedition, an afternoon’s leave from Mrs. Quince?
Besides, there was the circus soon visiting King’s Avon; she didn’t
want to imperil her chance of getting leave to attend that with her
father and mother. She paused, cogitating, her finger pressed against
the side of her nose. She looked around for inspiration. Nothing but
the emptiness of the rolling country oddly broken by a few stray
barrows and tumuli; a little farm half-hidden in a clump of trees; a
water-mill slowly revolving with a recurrent flash from the setting
sun; a hay-stack standing in a wattled enclosure by the side of the
track. “As well look for an idea as for a needle in a bundle of hay,”
she muttered to herself. The very thing! the very idea she wanted!
Glancing cautiously round to see that no one was in sight, she bestrode
the hurdles and thrust into the dusty depths of the haystack the most
urgent and necessary of Mrs. Quince’s many commissions. She would get
a sound rating for her forgetfulness, but she would surely be sent
back next day to King’s Avon to repair the negligence, and then, if
she could not contrive to find Lovel, might she be called a fool for
ever after! Chuckling over her own ingenuousness, she hurried on her
way. She had no eye for the beauty of the late summer evening, that so
dusted with gold the hills that they might all have been one rolling
field of standing corn, but hurried on, her mind full of her own small
and artful schemes, and dwelling with relish on the thought of Clare
and Lovel estranged within a stone’s throw of one another in the
village she had left behind her.
Her gauge of Mrs. Quince’s irritability had been very accurate. The
other parcels duly handed over, Mrs. Quince had demanded her thread,
of which, she declared, she had not a morsel left in the house. She
inveighed against Calladine, who was so impatient that he daily
enquired when the new curtains would be finished, but she inveighed
still more against Daisy, who, she exclaimed, must be bereft of all
ordinary sense to forget any item of so careful a list as she, Mrs.
Quince, had herself prepared. Well, there was no help for it: back
Daisy must go, and that no later than to-morrow, for besides the
curtains there was all the mending to be done, and if she got a corn or
a blister tramping the extra six miles she would only have herself to
blame.
Daisy made no complaint. She was beginning to feel herself a match for
them all, for if she could outwit Mrs. Quince, who was a woman, how
much more easily would she be able to outwit Lovel, who was only a man?
Accordingly she started out on the following day, ostensibly penitent
but inwardly triumphant, and slung down the hill, leaving on its
height Starvecrow with its blown thorn trees and Calladine swinging
his pick in the garden. The only thought which pre-occupied her, was
where to find Lovel, for as she knew, his occupations took him in many
various directions, and he was just as likely to be driving a herd into
Marlborough to market as watching sheep on the Downs. Olver, however,
she could be tolerably certain of finding in the village, and he, at
least, might know his brother’s whereabouts. On the way she retrieved
the packet of thread from its hiding place in the stack, since she was
too thrifty a soul to waste her own money in buying a new lot from the
shop, and as she climbed rather laboriously back over the hurdles, she
saw Lovel himself riding idly towards her up the green track.
He was alone; he had not seen her, for his head was sunk and he rode
with loose reins as a man profoundly dejected, not caring whither he
went. Daisy stood watching his approach, superstitiously encouraged as
to her ultimate enterprise by her initial good luck. Not only would
no time be wasted, but she would be spared quite a mile’s walk, for
they were a good half-mile out of the village. How slack he rode! had
she not been a woman in love with him, she would have pitied him. His
horse slunk along as dejected as he, with drooping head and careless
stumbling foot. They came up the track towards her at a walk, the
reins swinging loosely from side to side, but even though he sat so
lackadaisical in his saddle she noted the easy give of his body to the
horse’s gait, and the light touch of the hands that would tauten to an
instant check should the animal start or shy. Shy indeed it did, as
Daisy stepped suddenly out from the side of the track to intercept it,
and Lovel was startled into instinctive vigilance, raising his eyes
under the brim of his wide hat to see what stood in the way. But not so
much life as even an expression of annoyance crept in his mournful eyes
as he saw Daisy; he lifted his hat civilly, and would have ridden on,
but that she detained him.
“Not so fast, Gipsy Lovel, when I’ve walked all this way from
Starvecrow on purpose to see you.”
She tried to make her tone arch rather than threatening; it was her
habit to coax men rather than to coerce them. She might have known
that no woman, not even Clare, could coax Lovel when he was in the
opposite humour, but the manner was too habitual for her to discard.
“Won’t you get off your horse,” she said, “and sit down on the grass
beside me while I say what I have to say to you?”
She sighted the hay-stack, out of which a section had already been cut,
and thought in her cheap and common mind that if only she could get him
to rest there with her, leaning back against the warm dusty hay, she
would find greater ease in bringing him round to her point of view, for
she was a staunch believer in the influence of physical comfort upon
the tempers of men. “See, here’s a nice place,” she invited him, but
with a cold patience he surveyed her from the height of his horse and
begged that she would say her say with the utmost possible brevity and
allow him to pass on.
The corners of her mouth began to go down ugly and sulky, as the
first obstacle thwarted her on the path which had hitherto been so
surprisingly smooth, but she hastily lifted them again, for it would
not do to let ill-humour creep into their relations.
“Oh, well, I’ll begin,” she said as brightly as she could, “and if you
feel like coming down from your grandeur half-way through, just stop me
and I’ll give you a breathing-space.”
Lovel waited gravely, the shadow of his hat heavy across his eyes.
Now that Daisy was face to face with him, she was at a loss how to
begin; she could not just blurt out her story and ask him to marry her;
and anyway, he made her feel so insignificant, sitting there on a great
horse like an idol, or like one of those soldiers she’d seen pictures
of, in a steel helmet and a leather jacket and an upright lance in his
hand. She told him this, and he listened unbending, silhouetted for her
against the sky, mollified neither by her archness nor by her genuine
confusion. “Oh, well, if you will have it up there,” she said at last
in despair, “I’ll have to shout it up to you, but surely a poor girl
never told a story in such a gawk of a position.”
She began then, but, disconcerted, she began as she had not meant to
begin, by saying “Do you recollect the Scouring this year?” and then
hastily correcting herself, “No, no, I don’t mean that at all, what I
mean is, your young brother Olver....”
“No, I don’t mean that either,” she said, seeing that his expression
had become, if anything, a little sterner at the mention of Olver’s
name. “It’s like this,” she said desperately, “I’m over to Starvecrow
now, at Mr. Calladine’s, but it’s a question how long I’ll be able to
remain in the place. And I thought that you, Nick Lovel, being a decent
man in spite of all your pride, would be the last one not to help a
poor girl when she had no one but you to turn to, and afraid to face
her own parents, and not so much as a married sister she could go to,
or a penny of money saved, seeing Mr. Calladine’s is my first place
and Dad never paid me for the work I did on the farm, but a bit now
and then to buy myself a pair of new shoes or a ribbon, and anything
I had went on muslin for a dress to the Scouring, which I made myself
instead of taking it to the dressmaker in Marlborough same as Annabel
Blagdon. And it isn’t for Mr. Calladine’s getting married that I do
be afraid of leaving the place, but for my own trouble, and that’s a
thing that Mrs. Quince is bound to find out sooner or later, and the
only wonder is she hasn’t started asking questions already, but now
every time she opens her mouth I’m feared it’s coming that I do feel
my cheeks going all patchy, red and white, same as sometimes in the
spring ’mong boys and girls. But I knew if I came to you, you would see
it in the Christian light, and I could give in my notice and say I was
leaving to get married, and ’twould be all envy and bless-you-Daisy,
and Come-and-see-us-when-you’re-a-married-woman, instead of
Out-you-go-you-wanton-sheltering-behind-a-proper-gentleman’s-name.”
“What in God’s name are you trying to tell me?” said Lovel.
“I’m trying to tell you I’m going to have a baby,” replied Daisy,
beginning to cry in good earnest.
“Well, that’s no affair of mine; what is it you want of me?” said
Lovel. “If it’s money you want, you’re welcome to anything I can
spare,--if you will only let me go my ways now,” he added inaudibly.
“What good would money be to me,” sobbed Daisy, “when I haven’t a home
to go to or a man to give me his name? My father’d turn me out, I know
he would,--he wouldn’t give me a corner of his barn or a truss of his
hay for my baby to be born on, he wouldn’t, and my mother wouldn’t give
me my own long-clothes to clothe its nakedness.”
“You must get the fellow to marry you,--is he a native of these parts?”
asked Lovel, perfunctorily, aware only of the overwhelming oppression
of his own spirit and his urgent longing for solitude.
A cunning look came into her eyes when he mentioned marriage, and for
the first time she recovered a little of her direction, which she had
lost in her floundering to and fro.
“Ah, so you think he ought to marry me? Well, so do I,” she said.
“You’d think ill of a man who could let a girl go down and her child be
nameless save for the name of a woman, which isn’t a name at all?”
“Yes, yes,” said Lovel, fretting to be at an end.
“Supposing I told you,” she proceeded, slowly now and with caution,
“that he couldn’t marry? wasn’t fit to marry?”
“Not fit to marry? if he’s fit to be the father of your child he’s
surely fit enough to marry,” said Lovel.
“Well, but there might be other reasons,--ill-health, mightn’t there?
or he might be married already, let’s say....”
“In any case, it doesn’t concern me. I’m sorry,” said Lovel, “but
you’re talking to me of things you’d better be talking of to another
man.”
“Are you so sure of that?” she asked, coming up to him and putting her
hand on the neck of his horse. She was aware that her eyes must be
all puffy and blubbered after her recent crying, but the crisis being
at hand now, for good or for bad, she was not going to delay it until
another occasion when she should have had a better chance of setting
herself to rights. “Are you so sure of that?” she asked, in a tone she
tried to make impressive.
“Sure?” echoed Lovel, looking at her in disgust at the implication that
he himself could ever have touched her. He even gathered up his reins
as a sign that he definitely wanted her to release him now.
“Not so fast,” she said again. “There’s such a thing as responsibility
for other’s actions, whether you like it or no. And it’s a
responsibility I’m not in a position to let you off. I have to think of
my baby as well as of myself, you see, and so long as he gets the name
of Lovel I’m willing to overlook him not getting it from the proper
quarter. Though why I talk of my baby as he, I’m sure I don’t know,”
she added with a giggle, “for it’s even chances it’ll be a girl.”
“What in the devil’s name are you saying?” ejaculated Lovel
contemptuously. “Name of Lovel? is your trouble sending you out of your
senses?”
“No, it’s brought me to them,” she said tartly. “I may have been a fool
in the past, and taken my pleasures too light where I found them, but
that’s over now, and for the future I’m going to look after myself and
my baby. And if you don’t take the proper steps, and the only decent
steps, and the steps I want, there’s not a soul in Wilts and Somerset
but shall know the scandal of that daft beast you let roam about at his
own free-will.”
“What ...” began Lovel, aghast.
“Yes,” she cried shrilly. “’Tis all very well for you to be sitting
up there so grand on your horse, with your eyes looking out over
your nose, while your brother Olver who ought to be in Marlborough
lock-up--and so ought you too, you poacher, for that matter--skulks
about in dark barns taking advantage like the beast he is of poor girls
on a scatter of straw. And I saw you, yes, I saw you, not only coming
home from Marlborough fair, but often, quite the gentleman with Miss
Warrener, and where had you two been, I should like to know? and it
made me so mad seeing you that I didn’t care what any one done to me,
whether it was Olver Lovel or another. I was crying after you all the
time, if you want to know, so as I scarcely noticed a thing. And now,
since even _you’d_ scarcely see me married to that hoddy-doddy, you’ll
just have to marry me yourself, and pass off your nephew as your son
for the rest of our life, and have only yourself to thank. And you
needn’t think you’ll be losing your Miss Warrener any the more, for
she’s been promised to Mr. Calladine this many a week back.”
“Promised to Mr. Calladine?” said Lovel, starting. “How do you know
that?”
“Every one in the village knows it but you,” she jeered, “and if you
wasn’t too proud to consort with your equals a bit more you’d know it
too. Ask Martha Sparrow or William Baskett or any of them. Ask Mrs.
Quince over to Starvecrow. Ask her if the house isn’t being done up
all grand against the lady coming. Ride over and see if Mr. Calladine
isn’t picking up a patch of garden with his own hands, forsooth. Ask
parson if he hasn’t had notice yet to call the banns. We’ll have ours
called the same Sunday. ‘Richard Calladine and Clare Warrener, Nicholas
Lovel and Margaret Morland, all of this parish.’ That’ll be a fine
sit-up-and-take-notice for the congregation.”
“I must speak to Olver first,” said Lovel dully.
“Then you’ll do it?” urged Daisy. “If you find that what I’ve told
you’s true, you’ll do it?”
“Oh, yes, I’ll marry you,” said Lovel, tonelessly. “But I’ll speak to
Olver first,” he added, “and you’ll see the doctor.”
“Oh, there’s no mistake, you’ll find,” said Daisy, bursting into a
hysterical laugh. “And I’m not so bad as you think me, Lovel. I’m
thrifty in a house, and I’ll make you a good wife, and I’ve loved you
truly this long time, as well you know.”