affair though it was. It trailed in, one afternoon, trailed in through
the gap in the earth-works; a couple of caravans, a merry-go-round, two
or three cages on wheels, and some led horses; it trailed in with its
air of perpetual perambulation and its poor pretence of gaiety, and
encamped itself, as it must have encamped countless times before, and
would do countless times again, choosing this time the field of the
sarsen stones, which by virtue of tradition was looked upon as common
land, where any farmer might turn his beasts overnight before a market,
or any fair or circus, as now, claim hospitality. The village boys came
to stare at the preparations, at the gaudy yellow carts marooned among
the grave ancient stones; they stared, vacantly chewing grass stalks,
at the men who were getting up the tent, running with the ropes that
were to fasten down the great, flapping thing, and heaving up the poles
that transformed the amorphous folds into a shape and a transitory
shelter. Of the animals there was not much to be seen; the cages
were roped off behind the caravans, and nothing but a desultory roar
betrayed the presence of these aliens among the English Downs.
Shortly after nightfall a man with red and yellow streamers pinned
on to his coat and tied round the crown of his hat, passed down the
village street beating a drum as a signal that the performance was
about to begin. There proceeded already a stream of the population
towards the fields, by twos or in families, and between the gate of the
field and the tent the grass was already trampled into a track. Night
was come; and within the opening of the tent the interior lighting
glowed warm and fulvid; towards this square of light in the centre of
the field, thus inviting, the procession of villagers made its way,
inwardly eager, outwardly sheepish, and drew together at the entrance,
where a rude box-office had been erected, and another man with red
and yellow streamers dispensed tickets in return for the coppers and
six-pences paid across his little counter.
Inside the tent, the newcomers herded, uncertain. Most of the benches
immediately around the central oval of grass were already filled
up, and the rows of faces and hands were uniformly lit by the two
gas-flares, one on either side of the supporting pole. The grass oval,
under this light, appeared most brilliantly green. The roof and sides
of the tent swept away into shadow,--shadow dimly peopled by the
audience on the rising tiers of benches, of whom only the first two
or three rows were illuminated, and the rest indistinguishable, save
as vague rings of buff-coloured hands and faces, over which the light
sometimes flickered fitfully. Over in one corner stood one of the
yellow carts, its shafts propped up somewhat foolishly into the air,
and its body, on which was painted in large black letters the single
word, ORCHESTRA, filled by members of the company with bassoons and
other wind instruments, the lower parts of their persons concealed by
the sides of the cart, and the upper emerging like so many jacks in the
box. Beside this cart was the opening for the entrance and exit of the
performers.
Into this scene of flaming light, strong colours, and deep shadows,
came Lovel and his brother, the former so scowling and dark,--for he
detested this appearance in public,--that he might rather have been a
member of the traveling mountebanks than of the yokel audience. As he
stepped out into the light, followed by Olver, this defiance was almost
absurdly evident in his manner. He knew that the light was full on his
face and on the figure that shambled behind him, and that the eyes of
the audience were turned with a mild curiosity towards the pair; he
felt himself to be an incident of the show they had all come to see.
He looked round for a place. A few kindly neighbours made room on one
of the front benches, so that, although Lovel would have preferred a
more retiring seat, he was obliged to take his place there with Olver,
at his side. Olver was gazing all round with the fascination of a
child. He had never seen so many people gathered all together before,
and his neighbours, familiar to him as individuals, acquired a new
impressiveness when seen thus together in their numbers; he had never
seen a circus ring, or an illumination so strange or so effective as
that cast by the gas-flares; and as for the performance itself, he had
nothing but vague and fantastic ideas of what he was about to behold.
Very furtively he brought out from his coat pocket the round mirror
which Clare had given him, and bent over it; reflected in it, he saw
the lights, and the ring of faces, the thin scarlet rope, the shadows,
the green grass, the yellow cart, according as he turned it. Lovel sat
stiff and erect beside him, staring straight ahead, his arms folded
across his chest. Olver bent lower over his mirror. He chuckled softly
over it. The orchestra now stood up in the cart and began to play,
brassily, noisily, but to the great delight of the audience.
Olver was annoyed because he could not see reflected in his mirror the
agreeable noise which the band was making, and the tiny reproduction
of the scene was thus rendered incomplete. Still he peered into the
mirror, where the picture was small and distant, as seen through the
wrong end of field-glasses, and also with that slight distortion which
never failed to enchant him: the supporting pole appeared slightly
bent, the scarlet ropes curved round like serpents, and each face, as
he examined it separately, was a tiny caricature of the face reflected.
With the blare of the band Lovel relaxed a little from his rigidity;
he glanced round him, nodded briefly to a few acquaintances, and
considered with an uninterested eye the scanty properties of the show
standing prepared near the performers’ entrance. He heard the eager
whispering going on in the audience, and, being himself scornful and
unhappy, was possessed by a passing contempt. He saw Martha Sparrow
there with her brother John, and a group of the cronies from the Waggon
of Hay; he caught sight of Farmer Morland with his wife and daughter,
and instantly looked away, for he had seen Daisy’s eyes fixed upon
him, and had no wish to respond to the smile she was holding in
readiness. No doubt they considered that he ought to have escorted her.
At that moment he saw Clare come in with Mr. Calladine.
He had not expected this, and remained transfixed, staring at them in
complete dismay. Clare came in shyly, turning to speak to Calladine
over her shoulder; she was wearing a dark blue cloak over her muslin
dress, and no hat, only a dark blue ribbon in her hair. Coming, in
her turn, into the light, she hesitated with a perceptible confusion
that seized Lovel by the heart. Calladine came forward, competent and
proprietary, found her a seat, and took his place beside her; they bent
together over the leaflet of the programme. Still Lovel stared; she
looked up, and their eyes met across the width of the ring. Her lips
parted; for a full minute they stared at one another. He saw the blush
rising, like a flame of reproach, in her cheeks. For that minute, as
their heads swam, they had no thought of the pairs of eyes observing
them: of Olver’s, of Daisy Morland’s, or of Calladine’s, respectively
with a mischievous, a jealous, and a dismayed absorption. Then Clare
came to her senses; she looked deliberately away, looked around,
searching for faces she might greet, found Martha Sparrow, found
some of the tradesmen, and smiled to them all with disproportionate
alacrity. She spoke again to Calladine, whose pride in her had changed
to a visible moodiness; he answered her indeed, but briefly, and
sat angrily tapping the top of his walking-stick against his teeth.
Lovel, having no knowledge of the world, but only his instincts,
wondered whether he should leave the tent, or should remain to enjoy
the atrocious pleasure of watching her once again. He knew that now he
would have to fight out his renunciation afresh from the beginning;
the dull resignation which had clouded over him of late had all melted
away in a second before her restored presence. Merely to see her sent
the heat and ecstasy of life back into his veins. Twenty-eight years of
existence had not accustomed him to the rush of his own emotions. Such
a reasonless joy as this which seized him even while he knew that she
was promised to Calladine, still had the power to surprise him.
The beginning of the circus did not distract him; rather it favoured
him, for under the cover of the general interest he was able to gloat
his eyes upon her to his heart’s content. Olver, who had long ago made
up his mind about his brother, had now little desire to watch for the
manifestations of a passion he took for granted in spite of all Nicco’s
denials, and devoted the whole of his rapt attention to the events
of the ring. These were enough to transport his simple soul, easily
pleased at best. Piebald horses, and fat thighs encased in pink tights,
curvetted before him; while with flashing smiles young men and women
performed apparently impossible feats of strength and balance. Olver
presently conceived the idea of following the circus in his mirror, and
alternated between the actual, which was already entrancing enough, and
the reflected, which provided him with a world so indescribably and
doubly queer. He hoped that the little, queer, brilliant pictures would
be preserved forever in the depths of the glass. A fat woman in pink
and spangles jumped through paper hoops off the back of a cantering
horse, crying “Hop!” as she jumped and again as she landed, and the
manager standing in the centre cracked his long whip at the horse’s
fetlocks, but only hit the clown, whose whitened face, ghastly under
the gas-jets, went bowling round in somersaults over the grass of the
ring. There was also a snake-man, dressed from head to foot in emerald
green, who contorted himself in the midst of a silence rendered more
impressive by the sudden cessation of the braying band, into the knots
common to all such performers; and the laughter which had accompanied
the clown was stilled into a respectful awe. The snake-man, Olver
found, was especially effective seen in the mirror.
The atmosphere in the tent by now was somewhat clouded by tobacco
smoke, softening the hard, high glare of the gas, and through the smoke
the faces appeared hazy, sitting round in their rows, likewise the
hands, that periodically broke out into a beating of applause. But to
Lovel, who had not taken his eyes off Clare, her face was distinct as
ever; and his own face, to Daisy Morland, was distinct, and, above his
red shirt, dark and proud.
In the ring now were three small bears, one dressed as a
clergyman,--whose appearance had provoked roars of laughter,--one
as a lady, with a poke bonnet and bustle, and the third as a clown,
the buffoon and wag of the party. These three sad animals were at
their tasks of travelling round the ring on large balls, pushing a
perambulator, balancing on a tight rope, or whatever it might be;
Lovel, in so far as he bestowed a passing interest in the show,
was indignant at the pitiful degradation. The audience had no such
niceness; they roared their hearty laughter, and some of those sitting
immediately behind the scarlet ropes even thrust a foot towards the
bears as they passed round in their drab monotony, provoking a dull
turn of the head and a lack-lustre glance, too spiritless even for
a snarl. Arm in arm the clergyman and the lady paraded the ring on
their hind legs, stopping now and then to bow gravely; they stopped
thus opposite to Clare and Calladine, recognised by the quick eye of
the manager as the only gentry present. Clare and Lovel looked at one
another once more when this occurred, a look in which their personal
passion, for once, had no part, but only discomfort and sympathy with
the indignity put upon the beasts. Yet that look, impersonal though it
was, only tightened Lovel’s heart the more, for it had in it all the
intimacy of their understanding, in the same way as when they had been
used to look across the Downs, and, seeing the bowling shadows of the
clouds, had spoken no word, but sometimes smiled, knowing each so well
the thoughts that were passing in the mind of the other.
He began to wonder what he should do when the show was over, and the
moment came for every one to leave the tent. He was near the exit;
should he hurry out and hasten home, shutting the door of his house
behind him, before Clare and Calladine had so much as turned into the
street? “Likely they’ll wander home by the fields, being lovers,” he
said to himself. Or should he go boldly up to Daisy and invite her
to walk home with him, in order to prove to Clare the extent of his
indifference? He rejected this course, despising its cheapness. Or
should he remain seated where he was, letting Clare and Calladine
pass out of the tent before him? The one thing to be avoided was the
jostle in the exit. He might get pushed up against her, or against
Calladine,--if he felt Calladine jostle against him he would turn and
hit him. But he had Olver to reckon with; Olver who would tug at his
coat and bid him come, if he tried to remain behind; Olver who would
in any case torment him afterwards with questions as whether he had
seen Clare; and, half turning to look at Olver, he caught sight of the
mirror held tilted, over which the boy stooped with such absorption,
and he wondered idly where Olver had got this toy, that seemed so to
fascinate him and to occupy so much of his time; but after that passing
curiosity he returned to his own miserable concerns that gnawed like
rodents at his brain, and his eyes perpetually sought the face of
Clare, as though in her fairness lay simultaneously both the problem
and the solution.
So turned inward upon himself was he, that a sudden shout was the
first thing to rouse him. He raised his head; a sheet of flame shot
upwards from the gas; all was confusion suddenly; the audience rose
and stampeded into the ring, trying to get to the exits; benches were
overturned; women screamed, men swore; overhead the flame tore a great
hole in the darkness, and portions of the burning canvas floated,
turning over and over, down to the ground.
Lovel fought his way through the striving mass of people like one
possessed, caring nothing who he pushed aside or who he struck and
elbowed. For one second he came upon the terrified face of Daisy; she
tried to cling to him, but he threw her off. He was fighting against
the tide of the crowd. By now the canvas was roaring overhead, the
shouts increased, the panic surged wildly towards the narrow openings,
all round was nothing but terror and a mad confusion. Lovel clove his
way through the sea of limbs and faces; he tore a path by sheer fury.
Reaching Calladine, he thrust him aside, and seized Clare by the hand.
“Come,” he said, dragging her. He was obliged to put his arm round
her shoulders and half carry her along as with the other arm he opened
up a way for them both. The exit was hopelessly blocked; he took his
knife from his pocket and ripped a long vertical slit in the side of
the tent, through which he forced her first and then himself after her,
and the crowd seeing this escape, streamed through after them. The
night air was suddenly cool around them. He picked her up and carried
her away to the top of the encircling embankment. The Downs were black
behind them, and from the height of the ridge they gazed down upon the
red leaping flames in the field below.
The field was wildly lit up, and around the blazing tent stood the
crowd in a circle, watching the destruction they could not prevent.
The flames reared to the height of trees, holding up the blackness;
the light fell upon the shapes of the sarsen stones, that, unmoved,
regarded this disaster as they might have regarded any other. Clare
seized Lovel’s arm.
“Are they all safe?”
“They will be, by now,” Lovel replied mechanically.
“The animals,” cried Clare.
At that, Lovel returned to earth, and a slow smile of amusement crept
over his mouth.
“Why, they will have escaped,” he said slowly; “escaped and be roaming
about till morning. The village besieged by bears. Well, Miss
Warrener, it will not be the first time that bears will have been loose
among these stones or prowling on the Downs. Will we all turn out with
sticks and staves to-morrow to drive ’em in? Come and ride them in,
Miss Warrener, to-morrow morning before any one else is astir. Will you
do that?”
“With you?” she asked.
“Why not?” he replied. “But I forgot,” he added, “Mr. Calladine has
the disposal of your doings now, has he not? Many’s the pleasant hour
you spend over books or in your garden; gentle and pleasant. There was
a time when you rode rough as a boy; but that’s over now. Your finger
nails are smooth,” he said, taking her hand and examining it critically
by the vague light of the flames; “the hand of a lady,” and he lifted
it up and sniffed it. “Scented too!” he said. “Scented for Calladine to
kiss and fondle,” and gently he gave it back into her keeping, shaking
his head. “Ah, Miss Warrener, it was a terrible mistake you made when
you rode your pony in your little shepherd’s cap; ’twasn’t that you
were cut out for. No, but for a lady’s life. ‘I shall want the carriage
this afternoon, Mrs. Quince, to drive to Shrivenham.’” He minced the
words. “‘And I shall want the rug put in the carriage lest it turn cold
at sunset.’ No more catching your pony in the paddock when the fancy
takes you for a gallop across the hills. I’ll come as your groom,
if you’ll have me, and promise to keep away my brother, whose touch
startles horses.”
“You must let me go home,” said Clare, who, white-faced, was holding
her cloak about her.
“Remember, there are bears,” said Lovel. “A bear dressed as a lady, a
bear dressed as a clergyman, and one, poor soul, as a clown. They are
walking arm-in-arm, perhaps, as they did in the ring, but if they met
you walking alone across the fields they might remember that they were
born wild. They might forget that they had been tamed to civility. Cap
off: ‘Good evening, miss,’ as I might meet you in the lane. Never trust
the brute too far. But shouldn’t Mr. Calladine be here to protect you?”
“How can he see me up here?” said Clare. “The night is very dark, and
the light down there must blind him.”
“You have on a light dress under that cloak,” mocked Lovel, “if you
want him to see you.” But she did not throw aside her cloak, and he
noted it.
At that moment came a cracking sound, as the central pole of the
tent crashed down, bringing with it what was left of the flaming
canvas. A loud cheer went up from the crowd, who, now that their own
skins were safe, were irresponsibly quite ready to accept one form
of entertainment in substitution for another. The fire died down for
a moment, then flared up again, as some of the benches and trestles
caught alight. The proprietor of the circus raged round, clasping his
head with his hands, but there was nothing to be done, and the few
buckets of water brought from a neighbouring well made no difference at
all.
“Mr. Calladine is not more prompt at finding you here that he was in
getting you away from the tent,” said Lovel.
“Why do you gibe at Mr. Calladine?” Clare burst out. “He has had a
great deal to suffer at my hands, and it ill becomes you to sneer,” she
finished inconsequently.
The inconsequence did not trouble Lovel; his mind leapt the gap with
the ellipsis.
“At all events he has nothing to complain of at present,” he remarked.
“Nothing, except that he is not the man to take good care of what he
has obtained. Born irresolute--there’s a disadvantage of birth as bad
as any other. Yet, I’d exchange my own for it; I’d accept to have only
myself to overcome. Yes, by God, I’ve no sympathy for him. Why doesn’t
he carry away his conquest? Too uncertain of his own worth? Look at
his face--haggard with doubt of himself. I scarcely envy Calladine.
He’s a straw to be swept away by a strong current, safe only so long
as he may lie in shelter. If I wanted to undo Calladine, I should
say to him, ‘Are you sure that you are the man to hold so untamed a
thing?’ As yourself, I mean, Miss Warrener. Or am I mistaken? Are you
a lady at heart--a lady and not a woman? Mrs. Richard Calladine. The
muslin dress, or the shepherd’s cap? If the muslin dress, then go to
Calladine. If the shepherd’s cap, then....”
He paused.
“I should not listen to you, reducing Mr. Calladine to this
insignificance,” murmured Clare in great distress.
Calladine had become a shadow; a poor grey wisp drained of blood. Only
Lovel and herself seemed alive, so terribly alive that the wraith which
was Calladine faded between them. So far, no one had noticed them
standing up on the ridge of the embankment; the night was, as Clare had
said, very dark, and furthermore a few sparse trees helped to conceal
them. They stood, not very far from one another, very much isolated,
detached from the glow and excitement of the fire down in the field
below, as though they were two travellers come to a brief surveying
pause on the road which they pursued together.
“Mr. Calladine is not the poor creature you think him,” said Clare on
an impulse. “Years ago he loved a woman, still unforgotten. That is not
the fidelity of a weak man. I tell you this, in order that you should
think better of him, and knowing that you will keep it to yourself.”
“A woman he never got?” said Lovel. “And brooded over her ever since?
Do not doubt--Miss Warrener, he coaxed himself into loving her more,
during all those years of brooding, than ever he did when he had her
before his eyes. Be very sure, she made a proper fool of him, to
embitter him so for a lifetime--until he found you. Don’t be too sorry
for him. He has enjoyed living upon that memory.”
“Oh, you are hard and cynical,” said Clare, vexed, because she saw
suddenly the whole of that episode, which, in her eyes, had always
thrown so picturesque a colour over Calladine’s melancholy--saw it now
in a cruel, naked light, Calladine duped first, and then retiring in
sulky discomfiture, to build upon a silly, sordid, mismanaged story an
erection of wordy romance: “I wish I had not told you; you take every
opportunity, to-night, of belittling Mr. Calladine.”
“I? Oh, no,” said Lovel, carelessly, “and in any case, why do we talk
about him so much? he is not here, but to-morrow you will again be with
him, and the day after that, and the day after that. Even now he is
probably arrived breathless at the Manor House, where he will tell your
father that that gipsy fellow snatched you away, and that he has lost
you altogether. He has never given me anything but black looks, ever
since he came to live here. How much have you told him about yourself
and me?”
“There was nothing to tell,” said Clare.
“True,” said Lovel. “There was nothing to tell.”
They were silent. She felt that he was in a highly dangerous mood.
Calladine was not dangerous; violent, but not dangerous; not as Lovel’s
contained quietness was dangerous. Lovel, at any moment, might suddenly
leap upon her; he was so lithe and quick. Moreover, she felt now, in
his company, that she was alone with him on a hill or a wide heath, for
the people down in the field below had no significance whatever, no
more than had Calladine, to whom she was promised.
“I ought to go home now,” she said presently.
“Oh, yes,” said Lovel, turning on her, “you ought to go home. Go home
and tell them that the gipsy fellow took you out, rudely enough, but
still into safety. Go and tell them that once or twice on the Downs
you gave him a few kind words and that he presumed upon them to get
you out of that tent to-night. Tell them that once he rejected your
kindness,--which you offered out of your pity for him,--and drove you
away with harsh words.”
“We have not spoken since,” she said.
“No,” he replied without comment.
Suddenly they began talking quite naturally and gently with one another.
“Who would have thought,” said Lovel, “that you would be coming to the
circus. Not that I should have come, nor you, I fancy, either, had
we known what we were to see. Yet we might have thought. Wild beasts
turned to buffoons. I would have liked to let a tiger out of its cage,
loose among the crowd. Did you see their eyes? yes, even the little
pig-eyes of the bears. I wouldn’t like to look into the eyes of the
tigers in their cages, when they stare through the bars. Trundled about
over England in those cages.... Why did you come? I came to please
poor Olver.”