said Lovel in a voice of such anguish that even Daisy in the midst of
her relief and jubilation was struck silent and ashamed.
The gossip of Mrs. Quince and Martha Sparrow had not taken long to
reach the Waggon of Hay through the medium of John Sparrow. Blowing his
old frame out with importance, he had hastened off to this favourite
resort with the intelligence as soon as his daughter had whispered
it to him, fearful lest any might have forestalled him, and he be
greeted with derision as a bringer of stale news. But he need not have
feared: he was the first direct link between the Waggon of Hay and
Starvecrow, and it was to a gratifying inquisitive audience that, after
due mystification, he finally made his announcement. Mr. Calladine
to marry Miss Clare! Well, here was good health to them both, and a
strapping posterity, and a bumper went round. The topic took its place
in popularity with the continuance of the dry weather (which was
spoiling the roots), and the imminent arrival of a travelling circus,
already advertised on hand-bills and posters all over the village. John
Sparrow sat in the chimney corner with his pipe and his mug, and by
recurrent reminders kept the fact green in the memory of his companions
that, but for his connection with the Manor House, they would not yet
have been in possession of the news. (And indeed, had they best known
it, they were in possession of it even before the two persons chiefly
concerned.) Every fresh arrival had to be told--“Well, now, Job, or
Luke, or William, what sort of surprise do you think we have got for
you?”--and laughter of the most elementary sort stirred the cobwebs
about the rafters at every, “Well, to be sure, now, who would have
thought it?” and the expressions of good-will to Miss Clare were many,
though it was wished that she might have chosen a man who was a bit
more of a man than Mr. Calladine.
One listener there was, who had received the information with anxiety,
though without raising his voice in comment. Olver Lovel, for some days
now, had haunted the Waggon of Hay, tolerated though not encouraged
by the rustics. So long as he did no harm, made no noise, did not get
drunk, and got in nobody’s way, they would not object to his slinking
round, surreptitiously finishing up the dregs out of other people’s
glasses. They were a little surprised to see him there, for they knew
that in the past his brother (who, let them do him justice, saw to
it that the zany gave as little annoyance as possible), had put the
Waggon strictly out of bounds for Olver. Olver knew it too; he knew
also, what they did not know, that the embargo had never been removed,
and that the Waggon was as much out of bounds now as it had ever
been; but Nicco had been in so strange a mood of late--so strange,
inattentive, and lenient a mood--that Olver was ready to run the risk
of taking advantage. He did not know what had come over Nicco. Money
and food seemed plentiful, although Nicco rarely went out poaching
now; he would break into the savings-box and not seem to mind; he had
even given Olver, on a bare request, enough money to buy a new smock;
and their mother was allowed the matches at night now, for all the
world as though Nicco no longer cared whether the house was burnt
down about their ears or not. Olver had rejoiced greatly in this new
order of things. Day by day he had grown more daring; little acts
of insubordination passing unnoticed, he had at last achieved the
supreme defiance of creeping down to the Waggon one evening, and had
stayed there drinking up the dregs and listening to the conversation,
half of which was to him unintelligible and half a source of awe and
admiration, until ten o’clock at night. Still Nicco said nothing; did
not ask where he had been; did not even comment on his absence from
supper. Olver was full of contempt for this new, lax Nicholas--full
of contempt, but determined to make hay while the sun shone. No doubt
the day would come when Nicco would fly into a rage, recover the
matches, give Olver a thrashing, take away his new smock, and the old
redoubtable order would be re-established. Somewhere, perversely,
secretly, Olver hoped for that day; at present he felt himself a little
like a horse allowed his head down a slippery hill. But this small,
perverse and secret hope he did not admit even to himself. What!
deplore the new system which permitted him to go to the Waggon almost
every evening, to beg a twist of tobacco, to sit on the floor near the
fire in the chimney corner, to listen, and to look--to look through
the tobacco smoke at all the different-coloured spirits in the range
of shining bottles, which reflected the tap-room rather in the same
distorted way as his own little round mirror; at the steel handles on
the bar-counter; at the coloured picture of the Queen and the late
Prince Consort; at the photograph of the landlord standing beside a
giant eight foot high--how could he deplore a system which permitted
these delights?
And now in this same tap-room he had picked up the one piece of
information he wanted. He knew now what was the matter with Nicco: Miss
Warrener was promised to Mr. Calladine.
His gratitude to Miss Warrener doubled: not only did he owe her the
mirror, which was incomparably the dearest of his few possessions,
but he also owed her, indirectly, his new smock and his visits to the
Waggon of Hay. He owed her all Nicco’s sad indulgence. His mother owed
her the matches placed beside her bed every night. What benefits had
Miss Warrener not conferred upon Olver and his mother!
So for a long time his feeble mind played round his debt to Miss
Warrener, before it dawned upon him that Nicholas, to be so changed,
must be very unhappy. His involved but absolute devotion to his
brother flared instantly; he might deceive Nicholas, he might have
fretted once, not so very long ago, beneath his severity; but in his
eyes Nicholas was nevertheless God. At the mere thought that Nicholas
might be unhappy,--might even now be sitting over the hearth at
home, not angry with Olver because he no longer had the spirit left
in him to be angry with anything or any one,--at these thoughts,
which reached Olver’s poor brain in a more or less confused form, he
scrambled to his feet, much to the surprise of the company, which had
been sitting quietly smoking and talking around him. He stood up by
the bar, a wild and startling figure; ashes from the fire had blown
into his hair, which moreover stood straight up on end as he ran his
fingers despairingly through it. He burst into abuse, unmistakably
directed against some woman. “Here, here: order!” cried authority,
stepping hastily forward, but before it became necessary to eject the
disturber, he had vanished of his own accord out into the street.
Olver ran as fast as he could go down the street towards his own home.
A light burnt behind the ill-fitting shutters both upstairs and down;
that meant that his mother was not yet gone to bed, and that Nicco was
at home. He irrupted violently into the kitchen; Nicco was sitting
there, just as he had imagined him; doing nothing, staring into the
fire. There was no sign of his having had any supper. Olver rushed up
to his brother and threw his arms about him. “Nicco, I know it all now,
the bitch, the baggage, but you shan’t lose her if you want her. I’ll
get her for you,--trust Olver,--I’ll get her out on to the Downs with
something she gave me,--or I’ll lend it to you to get her yourself if
you like. I once told her you could if you were so minded. You shall
have her. They said down at the Waggon that she was promised to Mr.
Calladine. But she shan’t go to him, she shall go to you.”
“Olver,” said Lovel quietly, “why did you never tell me about yourself
and Daisy Morland in the barn?”
Olver began to stammer; he said, “I did tell you,--I told you she had
seen you with Miss Warrener,--I told you I held her down and tickled
her till she squealed,--I did tell you, Nicco.”
“You told me half,” said Lovel. A hope pricked at his heart that
Daisy’s story might be false. “She has told me herself,” he added.
Olver was quite sure now that his brother would kill him for this and
for going to the Waggon of Hay,--for the two things together. He looked
at Nicholas with his shifty blue eyes so oddly rimmed with black, and
shuffled one foot over the other, but Nicholas’ eyes held him and asked
for the truth.
“Well ...” he muttered.
“You had her?” said Lovel without mercy.
“And why not?” burst out Olver. “All the boys do,--yes, and brag about
it. Look at Peg Lackland, going....”
“All right,” said Lovel, with the same quietness; “I’m not blaming
you.” Not blaming him? had the world stopped going round? “Only if you
ever tell any one this I shall kill you,--do you quite understand?”
Olver stared, but with Nicco’s threat stability and familiarity seemed
to be returning in some degree to his world. He nodded his head.
“I’m going to marry Daisy Morland myself,” added Lovel, still fixing
him with his eyes, “and I can’t have it said that she has ever gone
with my brother. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Going to marry Daisy Morland? but Miss Warrener ...” began Olver.
“Miss Warrener is going to marry Mr. Calladine,” said Lovel steadily;
“that has nothing to do with me, except that she was always civil to
me when I met her on the Downs. I know my standing, and Miss Warrener
knows hers. She marries a gentleman, and I marry a farmer’s girl;
that’s as it should be.”
“So Daisy will come to live here?” said Olver, completely amazed now.
“Yes,” said Lovel brutally, “she will come to live here. She will be
useful looking after our mother and keeping the place a bit better than
you and I can keep it. And if ever it gets out that she once went with
you, I break your head.”
“Yes, Nicco,” said Olver humbly.
“You can tell all the village, if you like, down at the Waggon, that I
am going to marry her,” said Lovel.
“Yes, Nicco,” said Olver again, not fully grasping the implied
sanction. “I’m sorry I went with her,” he added out of his confusion.
“That doesn’t matter,” replied Lovel in his old weary voice. “Poor
Olver, what does it matter? We’re all so greatly to be pitied, what’s
that the more or the less?”
Calladine announced to Mrs. Quince that he was dining at the Manor
House. Daisy rejoiced at this piece of news, for ever since her return
to Starvecrow she had been nervous lest Lovel and Miss Warrener should
meet and Lovel discover that she, Daisy, had in one particular exceeded
the truth in her assertions. She hoped,--and would have prayed, but
that her superstitious faith feared the possible blasphemy,--that
Calladine would no longer delay his avowal, but would return after
dinner that night a betrothed man. Indeed, for all she knew, he might
be secretly betrothed even now, not merely contemplating betrothal,
and she thus have spoken the truth after all, albeit inadvertently to
Lovel. Luck had been so much upon her side, that perhaps it might have
favoured her also in this instance.
Never did lover set out accompanied by more earnest wishes for his
success than Calladine that evening accompanied by the wishes of his
housemaid.
Calladine found Mr. Warrener alone.
“I don’t know what has become of Clare,” said the old gentleman after
greeting his guest; “it’s unlike her to be late for dinner, especially
when she knew you were coming. Perhaps I allow her too much liberty,”
he added, peering into Calladine’s face to read whether he found any
condemnation therein.
“Miss Clare,” said Calladine, speaking gently, for he knew Mr.
Warrener’s occasional uneasiness, “is not a young lady whom it would be
judicious to confine.”
“Um,--wild, you think her?” said Mr. Warrener, rubbing his chin.
“Not wild,--only free....” Calladine breathed.
“She is a very great responsibility,” said Mr. Warrener, perplexed.
Calladine smiled. Who were they, two cultured and scholarly men pacing
a lamplit study, to be disposing of the freedom of that airy spirit?
But he was gentle to the old man, for in many ways he loved him.
“Your safeguard, sir, lies in her trustworthiness.”
“A happy word,” said Mr. Warrener, immensely relieved, and they
continued to pace the room, talking of other things, until Martha
summoned them to dinner.
The candles between them, they dined. They spoke the same language, and
the suavity that reigned was not only the suavity of the room. Almost,
Clare’s absence was a relief; always, her elusiveness was a slight
trouble, like a breeze in the room. Even now, she was present in their
minds; their eyes flickered towards the door; where was she? dancing
after what Will-o’-the-Wisp?
She came, more vivacious than Calladine had ever seen her; so lively
now, that he thought her feverish, now drooping silent and listless,
rousing herself to Mr. Warrener’s “Clare! Clare, you don’t hear what I
am saying,” with a startled smile,--Mr. Warrener, in excellent spirits
and full of discourse. Calladine watched her covertly, between the
candles on the dinner-table. He would speak to her to-night; speak,
lest he should lose her for the sake of a fancy. He could not wait,
until the garden which she had ordained should be finished.
Yet, what haunted her? What wild grief lay beneath her gaiety?
But there was Mr. Warrener to reckon with, eager and garrulous
to-night, and oblivious to the fact that Calladine wanted to stray out
into the garden through the French windows with Clare. Calladine was
enraged with impatience against the old gentleman, in whose trained
and scholarly mind he usually delighted. Having wondered whether Mr.
Warrener realised that he came to the Manor House as a suitor for his
daughter’s hand, to-night he crossly decided that the idea had never
once entered Mr. Warrener’s head. Otherwise it was impossible that he
should be so obtuse ... scrupulously courteous as he always was, and
considerate the moment he recognised the need for any consideration.
Calladine nearly laughed for his irritation, as Mr. Warrener, who was
at work upon a new theme, brought out diagram after diagram, specimen
after specimen, in his zeal to prove his point, dropping dates and
facts into place like the cubes of a patterned mosaic. But to-night
the facts and figures seemed to Calladine only brittle and dry, when
life was waiting for him in the shadowed corner of the room. Clare
sat there, in her rose-red dress, and now that she believed the eye
of neither of the two men to be upon her, Calladine could furtively
observe that she had relaxed the strain of her attention, and sat
limp with her gaze fixed upon the dark garden through the window. The
tight bodice moulded the extreme youth of her form; her hands lay
idly clasped in her lap. His egoism vanished before the pathos of
her attitude. She became a child in his eyes: a child broken by some
unexplained sorrow,--yet what sorrow, what sorrow could have come upon
her in her free yet sheltered life? And because, however genuine his
sentiment, he must always attitudinise to himself, he saw himself a
sage and tender protector, the guardian of this too-emotional child
against the fancied ills,--for how should they be otherwise than
fancied?--that beset her. He realised then that he had lost count,
as much as Clare herself, of what Mr. Warrener was saying, and saw
to his relief, as he tried to make a flurried return to archæology,
that Mr. Warrener was no longer addressing him, but had drifted into
a soliloquy, according to his wont, with the little flints and shards
ranged upon his desk.
“May Clare and I go out, sir?” said Calladine softly.
They wandered into the garden, Calladine tall and grave, Clare with the
rustle of her silks and the little crunch of her heels, racing beside
him up and down the garden path. She had been afraid, for a moment,
that he was about to ask her to play or sing: music, with him leaning
towards her over the piano.... Reprieved from music, it was indifferent
to her what she did. They paced the path; an owl whooped softly from
the cedar; was answered, from afar off, out on the Downs.
Through the lighted windows they saw Mr. Warrener, his lips still
mumbling, bent meticulously over his shards.
Clare, with the rustle of her silks and the tap of her heels, and the
private knowledge of her mind, looked away from Calladine.
He examined the words that she flippantly threw out, looking for
bitterness, but no bitterness escaped her, looking for cynicism,
but her lips were innocent of it. And nothing came to him but
matter-of-fact questions, “Where had you been, Miss Clare?” and the
like, which she answered civilly, though he knew that where her body
had been was of no import, the only thing of import was the adventure
of her spirit, and that he could never seize or follow. She was a
stranger to him, irrevocably, and he savoured all the full pain of that
phrase. “Where had you been, Miss Clare?”--oh, empty enquiry! what
could she tell him, that would bring him nearer to her? but at the same
time in a sudden frustrated rage he thought that were she ever to be
his he would not let her out of his sight for a moment. Revengeful, he
was; petulant; snatching,--and she so detached, cool, tantalising.
He called himself back; Clare made him lose his sense; he could put
out his hand now and touch her bare arm, touch her flesh; such contact
would be reassuring, would chase from his mind all ideas of her
elusiveness; he could handle her roughly, if he would; drag her up into
his arms, mutter angrily against her lips,--but even so, would he hold
her?--and the old despair came back upon him. She made him angry;
there was no happiness for him, even in winning her, yet win her he
must, and was determined upon it, for he was an obstinate man, with
room in his head only for one idea once it had taken hold of him.
But he must be gentle with her, or else she would blow away from him
like thistledown.
And while he was wondering how he might least scare her, he was shaking
with his rage and his desire and his anxiety.
It was quiet in the garden; he liked the security of gardens, he liked
the gentleness of these little grey West-country manor-houses such as
the Manor House of King’s Avon; they shut out the wild; they ignored
the great pale Downs, and the rovings of such dark people as Gipsy
Lovel. And he began to talk, murmuring much of what he had obscurely
felt, “A pastoral country,” he said, “fair and straightforward, a
stranger might think; and yet we who live in it know better, we know
its dim hauntings, we know how present are the dead, we know the little
countless tragedies,--the rabbit squealing beneath the stoat, the
blackbird pecked by the sparrowhawk. We know the perpetual enmity that
goes on under the apparent harmony.” And,--what possessed him?--he
spoke also of Lovel. “That dark, supple fellow,--he knows as much as
anybody of the secrets of the woods; he’s got a quick eye and a sure
hand, and a glance like the glance of an animal ready to spring away;
it’s a wild blood they have in them, the gipsies, whether they live
in a house or move their hearth about with them,--a strong stain of
blood, that never gets washed out. Look at that fellow, now,--he never
takes a regular job,--he strays from farmer to farmer, when he isn’t
sneaking on his own concerns. And it’s all the gipsy blood in him, Miss
Clare,--untamed he lives, and untamed he’ll die. But he understands the
country, I dare wager, as well as any hare or kestrel that hides or
flies, taking its chance of life and death.”
It struck him as absurd that in this hour when all his faculty was
bent upon so different a matter, he should be discoursing idly of the
country and the vagrant fellow he was accustomed to sight sometimes
upon a distant skyline; but he knew that some connection existed in his
mind, and traced it down to his constant uneasiness about Clare. It was
all very well for him to speak airily, confident now in the security
of the Manor House garden,--outside the garden lay the Downs,--and
where had Clare been? where did Clare spend all her days? Demure she
paced beside him, and the black cedar spread its flat branches above
the lawn, and within the lighted windows Mr. Warrener poked among the
shards on his desk; secure! secure! but danger lay behind the pretence,
danger in confederacy with Clare. Demure she paced beside him in the
summer night, drawing her lace scarf close about her shoulders, so that
one pale gleaming hand lay against her breast, holding the lace, but
she was silent, shut away with her uncommunicated thoughts.
He trusted himself abruptly to the direct question.
“Clare, what is the matter?”
She was too big, too simple, to defend herself with the ready-to-hand
artifice of denial or evasion.
“Nothing is the matter which you can help, Mr. Calladine, thank you,
and nothing that I shall not recover from.” She spoke the truth as far
as she knew it. “I own that I have been vexed,--even hurt, perhaps,”
she put her head up as she made the admission. “But I could scarcely
hope to go through life, could I, without meeting some vexation by the
way? and now that I have met it, I must take it, mustn’t I, without
losing my sense of proportion?”
He smiled, in the darkness which secured his smile from her
observation, at the phraseology of her piteous wisdom.
“But why not confide it to me?” he said, bending down towards her.
“I am older than you, you know, and a trouble shared, they say, is a
trouble halved.”
“My God, no,” she breathed.
He was shocked at such an expression on her lips. Had something or some
one then really driven the child up to the bounds of her endurance?
Was she too readily driven to such extremity of feeling? or was the
provocation she had received sufficient to justify it? alas, he had
no experience of her capacity for emotion. But he thought, from what
he knew of her, that she must be indeed profoundly troubled before she
would betray her distress.
“If any man has hurt you,” he burst out, “only tell me his name.”
She opened her mouth and stared at him as though she were about to
utter a name as he bade her, so strong was in her the habit of childish
obedience, but with the name ringing, although not for expression, in
her head, she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
He was appalled at the passion of her crying. She had sunk down upon
a bench, and he knelt beside her, trying to pull her hands away from
her face, but she shook her head and turned away from him, isolating
herself in the grief she was not yet accustomed to and could not yet
understand. She could not understand it, and, tormented, desired only
an escape from its weight and astonishment. “I am crying because
you made me cry,” she said, at last to Calladine; “I have not cried
before,--I promise you I have not cried before,” and at the thought of
Lovel, absent and unconscious that she was weeping, unconscious of the
fruit his harshness had borne, she wept afresh.
“Clare, Clare,” said Calladine, pulling at her wet hands, “don’t you
remember, up by the Grey Wethers, a promise you made me? that if ever
trouble came upon you, you would come to me for help? Don’t you
remember,--the day of the Scouring? Where’s your promise gone now? I
would have held my hand in a flame that you would never break your
word. Perhaps you thought it was fancy on my part; I was never more
deadly serious. Isn’t this the moment to give me my chance of serving
you?”
She was so much surprised by the reminder that she took her hands away
from before her face and gazed at him. Her tears over, the idea that
she should go to Calladine for help against Lovel caused her to laugh
mirthlessly. That Mr. Calladine should protect her against Lovel! well!
well! She laughed again. “Clare,” he exclaimed, “don’t laugh so, you
frighten me.”
“There is one thing which you can do,” she said slowly. He grasped at
it; besought her to tell him what it was. Still she hesitated; yes,
anything to get away from the pain of Lovel. And it would please Mr.
Calladine; and if it pleased him what did it matter? perhaps she had
often hurt him in the past as Lovel had hurt her now. “Marry me,” she
said; and added candidly, “I know you want to.”