its wooden resistance. Still she did not come to open, she remained
hard to him, did not even pray him to desist. He ceased his useless
shaking and began to plead with her, tears in his voice, humiliating
himself. She made no answer. He went away, down into the sitting-room,
where the embers of the fire still gleamed red between the bars. “I
gave her everything,” he whispered, looking round upon the comfort of
the room. Upstairs, she lay in her bed, soft and sweet and indifferent
as he had always known her,--lost to him. He went over to the window
and looked out; the masses of the clouds flew before the wind, so
that the stars seen between the rifts seemed to be rushing across
heaven. Starvecrow lay beneath them, small and lonely. A hatred of
the place overcame him. “I shall take her away,” he muttered; “we
will go to London.” And he saw her a fleeting figure, hurrying down
straight narrow London streets, her footsteps that were used to the
short turf ringing forlornly along the pavement. He pitied her in the
midst of his anger and frustration: surely in London she would droop
and pine. But she must be the one to suffer now; it was her turn; he
had suffered enough. He could not run the risk of leaving her among
these open hills, in league with the Lovels,--even now that crazy boy,
that wild scarecrow figure, might be frisking beneath the windows.
His wife, linked with those dark people,--so linked, that she was and
always had been a stranger to him. Misery drove him to superstition:
there was a kinship between the Lovels and the country, witchcraft and
legend, the crazy boy, the sarsen stones, the ancient sacrifices, Lovel
the vagabond poacher, the wayward shepherd, his immunity from cold or
fatigue,--all these things ran together in Calladine’s unhappy head.
And Clare, what place had she among them? she was the country in its
loveliness, the running brooks, the soaring birds, the sheep-bells, the
dew, the distance, the manifold music.
He would take her away. Next day, he told her so, challenging her
refusal. And although she neither refused, nor, indeed, made any
answer, he insisted on the point, growing noisy in his insistence.
“We shall leave this place, do you hear? We shall go, we shall take
the railroad to London.” But London must be an empty sound to her,
he thought, whose world was the Downs. “The city of London,” he
emphasised, seeing the streets, the squares, the endless houses,--a
maze of streets, in which she would lose herself, seeking in vain the
way out. He looked at her with hatred; there, in London, where he
would feel himself at home, he would at last get the better of her, be
revenged upon her for all the pain she had made him endure; there, she
would be the bewildered stranger, and not he; perhaps she would even
cling to him for reassurance, and he would mock at her in her distress,
and spurn her, over and over again, until she crept broken at his heels.
Then, seeing her so pale and fragile, he was remorseful, and fell on
his knees beside her, crying, “Forgive me, Clare.”
She sat with him after dinner in their room. He was not restive,
that evening; his panics overtook him only periodically; sometimes
he appeared to regain all his old confidence. Olver had not troubled
Starvecrow for several days, and Calladine readily forgot. He was
standing now by his bookcase, lovingly shifting the volumes; his touch
slipped like velvet over the frail old leather; delicately he fluttered
over the pages. Clare could even find it in her heart to envy him,
life to her came so rough and violent, to him so veiled and mellowed,
always, so to speak, at second-hand. He murmured to himself over his
books, or was it to her that he addressed his murmurings? how real
was her presence to him? was she more real than those fugitive terra
cotta nymphs of his? was she perhaps less real? as lovely, but more
troublesome? a nymph that would not stay there quiet on her stand, but
whose draperies were blown by the wild wind from outside, and whose
feet stirred mutinous towards escape? Still he murmured over his books,
without that uneasy glance which meant that he was afraid of losing
her; he had forgotten, for the moment; it was providential how easily
he forgot, his excitability easily roused, and almost as easily abated.
But as for her, an oppression was on her, an exaltation. She rose.
“Richard, I am going to the door to look at the night; don’t come; it’s
cold outside.”
He was startled, but he had known her do this before, and he had no
desire to leave his books or the warmth of the room. “Take a coat,” he
said. She went up to him and kissed him lightly. He patted her shoulder
with affection, and watched her cross the room to the door. “Graceful
... graceful,” he murmured to himself in appreciation, turning again to
his shelves.
Clare passed downstairs to the hall. She moved as though her feet did
not touch earth. With a fur cloak thrown round her, she opened the door
and stepped out into the night, closing the door again behind her. The
Downs were there, white in the starlight. Overhead, in a black sky,
blazed the constellations, not yet sunk from the splendour of winter:
Orion, low in the west, the splendid Plough, and Sirius, single and
more brilliant than the rest. Clare passed down the dark path, swept
clear of snow, to the little gate; at the gate the dark shape of a man
came forward to meet her; it was Lovel.
“I knew you would be here,” she said without surprise.
“I have not been before,” he answered.
“No,” she replied, “I knew that.”
There was a little silence.
“Will you come with me now?” he said.
“What, out on the Downs?” she asked, trying to see his face through the
darkness.
“Well, we belong there, don’t we?” he said patiently.
“Then what has kept us apart, I wonder?” she said. She wondered
genuinely; their union seemed so large and simple. “Yes, I will come,”
she added then.
“I have tried not to come to you, Clare,” said Lovel. “The child is not
mine, you know,” he went on.
“I know; Olver told me. But what does it matter? Shall we go?”
He followed her through the gate, and they took the track up on to the
Downs.
Three days later Calladine rode into King’s Avon, turning in at the
Manor House gates at the slow walk which had been his pace for the
whole three miles of his journey. He rode slackly and without interest,
letting his horse stumble; even the instinctive check on the reins
seemed to have deserted him. He gave his horse to William Baskett, who
ran out from the stables, and, laying his gloves and crop on the bench
in the hall, trod wearily into Mr. Warrener’s presence. The old man
was surprised and delighted to see him. “My dear Calladine,--my dear
Richard, fancy your riding over in this snowy weather,--why, I thought
you scarcely stirred out of doors. And what brings you?” He peered
closer. “Dear me, there’s surely nothing the matter?”
“Clare has left me,” said Calladine. The phrase had been in his head
for three days now. It was a relief to him to pronounce it at last
aloud. “She has gone away with young Lovel.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Mr. Warrener. “Left you? gone away with
young Lovel? The shepherd fellow? But why? where have they gone to?
what for?”
Calladine raised his hands and let them fall again with a gesture of
hopelessness,--the hopelessness of explaining to Mr. Warrener. Yet in a
way he relished lacerating himself with the explanation.
“Clare and the shepherd fellow,” he said, “are lovers. Yes, it is as
I tell you. They have been lovers for many months, perhaps for many
years. They were in the habit of meeting on the Downs,--I don’t know
how often,--frequently,--perhaps every day. I can’t tell. Since Clare
has been married to me they had not, so far as I know, met at all. She
has only seen Lovel’s brother,--the simpleton. He has come over to
Starvecrow to see her. I don’t know what he has said to her. I can only
suppose that he engineered their meeting. All I can tell you is that
three evenings ago she went out, as she said, to look at the night, and
has not since returned.”
“Three evenings ago!” exclaimed Warrener. “But I knew nothing of all
this.”
“No,” said Calladine wearily, “I gave strict orders that you were not
to be told. I thought she would come back, you see. But as she has not
come back, I cannot keep it a secret from you any longer. We must take
some action, I suppose, if you think it necessary. Or shall we leave
them to themselves. If any one is capable of looking after her, Lovel
is the man. And he knows the Downs,--they both know the Downs,--surely
the Downs wouldn’t hurt them?”
Mr. Warrener took no notice of this pitiable cry wrung suddenly out of
his anxiety.
“Of course we must search for them,” he said, frightened and bewildered
and angry. “But,--really this is a most extraordinary story,--how do
you _know_ she has gone with young Lovel? Clare!” he said, indignant,
“whom I trusted to wander about at will,--to deceive me in this
fashion!--but she never came to any harm, whilst she was under my
care,--no, not until _you_ were responsible for her. Upon my word, sir,
you’ve fulfilled your charge very badly,--what excuse have you to give
to me?”
“You let her grow up into a wild thing,--the blame’s with you as much
as with me,--and as to responsibility, she’s my wife even if she _is_
your daughter.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Warrener, relapsing into his customary mildness,
“it won’t help matters if you and I start wrangling. But tell me
now, what makes you so certain she has gone with this ... his name
positively sticks in my throat,--this shepherd fellow?”
“What makes me so certain? What do you suppose I have been doing these
three days?” said Calladine querulously. “What do you suppose my state
of mind has been? I knew Clare was safe, in one sense, I know she was
with Lovel. Yes. His wife came to Starvecrow after him; she had guessed
where he was going. Oh, a pretty interview I had with her--I have Clare
to thank for that. She came crying to the door, and Mrs. Quince let her
in, so Mrs. Quince, at least, guesses the whole story. She brought the
woman up to my room, and left her alone with me, and I saw her smirk
as she went out of the door. A pretty business.... She cried to me,
this woman; she sat in Clare’s chair and cried. She owned up--a long
tale--how she had got Lovel to marry her and how her child was neither
his child nor his brother’s; I really don’t know what else--a long
tale. She talked very extravagantly--said she was dying for love of
him--and how he had never touched her,--a lot of nauseous detail. She
kept on saying that he was decent,--decent, decent to her,--that kept
on coming back,--and that she was sorry now,--she was being punished
for what she had done. He was civil to her always, she said, but as
cold as winter, and now he had gone. There was nothing left for her
now, she said, but to stay looking after his people,--his old mother
and his mad brother,--that was her idea of making amends. We went out
together and looked all over the Downs for Clare and Lovel; she sobbed
and cried all the time. She wanted me to raise a hue and cry, to put
the police on their trail, but of course I would not do that. ‘If they
want to go,’ I said, ‘let them go with as little noise as possible.’
But I looked for them myself, and if I had found them I would have
besought Clare to come back. She was with me nearly all the time, this
dreadful woman. I kept sending her away, but half an hour later there
she was again. She brought her child with her, wrapped in a shawl.
She said she felt like drowning it,--a shocking thing to hear a woman
say. Saxon fair it was, and I believed her when she told me Lovel had
nothing to do with it. She has been with me almost uninterruptedly now
for three days; I kept her at Starvecrow because I didn’t want the
story trumpeted over the whole village. Certain that she has gone with
Lovel, indeed! Of course I am certain. Besides, I found the tracks of
two persons’ feet in the snow--a man’s and a woman’s.”
“Well, why didn’t you follow those tracks?” asked Mr. Warrener, who had
been staring at Calladine all through his recital.
“You may be sure I did, and they led me to the top of the
Downs,--knee-deep in some places. Then snow began to fall again and the
tracks were blotted out,--I lost them,--I fancied the Downs and the
snow were conspiring against me with Clare and Lovel. Lovel’s wife grew
frantic when she saw the tracks blurring; she began running round and
round in a senseless circle. There was I, up on the height with that
common woman, she having lost her husband and I having lost my wife.
That is what your daughter, sir, has exposed me to.”
“Is that all you think about?” said Mr. Warrener.
“Heaven knows it isn’t!” cried Calladine. “I think horrible things,--I
think of Clare suffering from the cold, and then I think of her close
with Lovel, and upon my soul I don’t know whether to wish her dead or
alive. You don’t understand, Mr. Warrener, the passion they have for
one another. I suppose I knew it, a long way back, but I shut my mind
to it. It seemed preposterous. I put it away. And then, when it began
to come closer, I did not know how to fight it,--I knew how strong it
was. And Clare was like a little trapped thing all the while; gentle
to me, but always looking out of the window. I tried to tame her; she
pretended to be quite tame, but all the while she kept that poised look
about her,--ready to spread her wings.”
“You seem to have a good deal to say about it all,” Mr. Warrener
observed.
Calladine was silent; he felt rebuked.
“I have been crushing down my thoughts for three days,” he muttered
then, sulkily.
“But what are we to do?” said Mr. Warrener. He took out his big
handkerchief and began to mop his forehead, then, remembering that the
day was cold, he replaced it in his pocket. “Is it snowing now?” he
asked irrelevantly.
“No,” said Calladine. “It is bright and frosty, and there is no wind;
the wind has dropped ever since the night that Clare went. I used to
think the wind made her more restless, ‘Le vent qui vient à travers la
montagne,’ you know, ‘me rendra fou.’”
“But what are we to do?” said Mr. Warrener again. They were two
helpless beings, to confront such a problem. “At all events, she
is safe enough with young Lovel; I believe he is a capable sort of
creature; he won’t let her come to any harm.”
“Curse him,” said Calladine, resentful that the legend of Lovel’s
efficiency should have percolated even to Mr. Warrener’s secluded room.
“We must go out and look for them,” said Mr. Warrener. “Come,
Calladine,” he said, rousing himself, “you don’t seem able to take any
action. Bestir yourself; we must go out and look for them.”
“Must we?” said Calladine without interest. “But I don’t think it’s
any good, you know. I have a superstitious feeling about it; there was
something intangible about Clare. I never got hold of her,--she was my
joy, she tinkled about my house, in and out of my rooms, but it was
like having a linnet in a cage. You know how the men go out and snare
the larks under nets on the Downs; well, it was like that. She didn’t
mope; no, never; but I think she was only waiting for the day when she
should fly away.”
“Nonsense, nonsense,” said Mr. Warrener. “Don’t encourage such
ridiculous fancies, Richard.”
“I’ve seen her,” said Calladine, “looking out of the window, looking
out of the window....”
“Come,” said Mr. Warrener again; “if you won’t come with me I must go
alone.”
“And the man too,” said Calladine, obstinately; “he was always on the
Downs; he wouldn’t bind himself down to a master; he slipped free.”
“Are you coming?” asked Mr. Warrener, standing up. He cast a glance at
his writing-table. “Fancy Clare....” he said with a sigh. “She was a
help to me, Calladine, you don’t know. I made a sacrifice in giving her
to you. But I thought it was for the child’s happiness; and she hadn’t
a mother. I missed her more than anybody knew. You never realised how
much she helped me; why, look here....” and he showed Calladine a thick
note-book filled with Clare’s handwriting. “She had an instinct for
archæology,” he said, “and she wrote a beautiful hand--clear and pretty
both.”
“You make it sound like an epitaph,” said Calladine bitterly.
“Heaven forbid,” said Mr. Warrener, a little startled. “She’s safe
enough, never you fear. All we have to do is to get her back and
perhaps we’ll find your fears were groundless,--a burst of wildness,
only,--she was accustomed to liberty, you know,--perhaps it’s no worse
than that,--lovers, you said,--but oh, no, I can’t believe....”
“You and I, Mr. Warrener,” said Calladine, fixing the old man with a
gaze full of meaning, “have perhaps lived a little too remote from
life. Clare is alive, Lovel is alive; you and I are left behind.”
“But all the same....” said Mr. Warrener, greatly troubled, “all
the same.... Lovers, you said. Oh, no, surely not,” and he looked
embarrassed, uncomfortable, as at an indecency.
They went out together. They went on foot, with no very definite scheme
of action in their minds. Vaguely they intended to make their way up on
to the Downs, on to the topmost height if possible, and from there to
scan the rolling country. They went side by side, Calladine long and
spare, Mr. Warrener, round, short and bespectacled, and as they went
they tried to disguise their anxiety from one another, and to pretend
that they had gone out for no more serious purpose than to recall a
troublesome child from an escapade. But there were periods of silence
between them, broken with a jerk by Mr. Warrener with brisk questions,
“Now in what direction did she ride for choice, Calladine?” or “If the
fellow is a shepherd, he must have a hut up on these hills.” “Yes, I
have visited that: it was empty,” said Calladine, forced into a morose
reply.
They took the road out of the village, the only road cleared by the
snow-plough, and presently struck up into the hills, climbing with
caution, for they were afraid of sinking suddenly into a drift against
a bank. They climbed, prodding with long sticks before them, a long
wearisome climb, their feet sinking over the ankle at every step into
the soft snow; by now they had the excuse for speaking very little, for
their energies went all on their progress. “I have spent my time like
this for the last three days,” said Calladine, grimly.
It was noteworthy that neither of them considered for a moment that
Clare and Lovel might have moved on to another part of the country;
they took it for granted that they had remained among the Downs.
No paths were to be seen anywhere, only the rolling white hills, broken
by the sky-line beech-clumps. No sound; neither the tinkling of water,
nor the quivering of larks, nor the quaver of sheep, nor even the wind;
only the hush of quiet snow lying spread. It was a stillness that grew
as they climbed; a stillness, a shroud. There was the glitter of the
snow, and the black clubbed trees, and the white sky, and the silence.
It occurred to them that they might get lost, for all the hills looked
much the same, and the landmarks were all covered up; the White Horse,
the Grey Wethers. Still, Calladine was contemptuous of that; and as for
Mr. Warrener, he plodded on with an unrepining, pathetic obstinacy.
At last they came to the top, and stood on White Horse Hill, two puny
figures scanning the horizon. “There is Lovel’s hut,” said Calladine,
pointing it out. “We had better go down to it,” said Mr. Warrener, and
they began the descent, which was almost as trying as their climb, for
they had to hold themselves back, the snow being blown into deeper
drifts on that side of the hill.
The great scoops in the flank of the hill forced them to follow a
circular route which lengthened their road. The hut seemed to stand
always equally far ahead, and never to draw any nearer; nor had they
much hope of finding either Clare or Lovel within it. Mr. Warrener,
now that he had gained a few hours of experience, was beginning to
share Calladine’s hopelessness; before they started, it had seemed
comparatively simple an undertaking to go out and search and shout for
Clare over the Downs. Now, although he called her name tentatively on
approaching the hut, the quilted silence swallowed up the small echo
of his voice. Yet it was a bell-like name to call, “Clare! Clare!”
Calladine let Mr. Warrener go forward and peer into the hut, and he
felt a sudden tenderness for the old man. “If,” he said to himself,
“Clare should never return to me, Mr. Warrener and I must keep house
together,” but the idea of Clare not returning gave him a pang which
eclipsed the amenities of the prospect with Mr. Warrener, leading a
scholar’s life, and he was ashamed of the glimpse that had opened out
on to a life so congenial, so secure.
Mr. Warrener turned in the doorway and beckoned.
“They have been here,” he said.
Calladine drew near and looked. Yes, they had been there. The hut was
poor, a shepherd’s shelter, with a rough table arranged on a couple
of boxes, and a thick pallet of bracken on the floor; warm enough,
no doubt, and even snug, with the paraffin lamp burning and the door
closed against the cold. Mr. Warrener and Calladine looked in silence.
A horn mug stood on the table, beside a loaf of bread; two sugar-boxes
served as stools. A couple of blankets were thrown over the bracken; a
bag stuffed with bracken did for a pillow. There was nothing else.
“My God,” said Calladine, staring at the pallet, “they lay there last
night,--they lay there!” He looked round the pitiful cabin, and a groan
was forced from him. “He brought her here!” he said, “and I who gave
her everything she could desire,--comfort, even beauty, refinement....”
He sat down and buried his face, and touched perhaps the bitterest
moment he had yet gone through. “How much she must have loved him,” he
said, raising a suddenly haggard face to Mr. Warrener.
Mr. Warrener was deeply perturbed and distressed. Such things were
altogether beyond his experience and understanding.
“Hush,--don’t take it so much to heart,” he said, confused, but meaning
to be kind, and he touched Calladine on the shoulder with a gesture
singularly awkward. “Now let us think what is to be done. Shall we
remain here, and trust to their return at nightfall? It is true that we
could not, all four of us, spend the night in this hut, but probably
Lovel knows the way,--he can take us all home safely.”
“You seem to have a curious confidence in the fellow,” growled
Calladine.
Mr. Warrener blinked in his mild fashion.
“Yes,--I don’t quite know why,” he said, “except that I’ve seen
him about the village,--he seemed an alert, romantic kind of
creature.--Forgive me, I see that pains you.”
“Oh, not at all,” said Calladine, ironical.
“We must wait,--there is nothing else to be done,” said Mr. Warrener,
reluctantly.
“No,” said Calladine, rousing himself to a sudden determination,
“I will wait, but you, Mr. Warrener, must make your way home while
daylight lasts. You will only have to follow our own tracks in
the snow. Indeed, I should prefer it,” he said, seeing the old man
hesitate, and gently he took Mr. Warrener by the arm and urged him out
of the hut. A hard cruel sun was already setting red behind a clump of
beeches. The white sky became suffused with crimson in the west; on the
rounded tops of the hills the snow flushed to pink. But it was a hard,
cruel world that they saw, the hard red of the snow where the sunset
did not catch it. The line of the beech-clump curved already across the
slowly sinking sun, and presently hid it altogether from sight; the
tops of the hills lost their flush, and only a few red bars lingered
still in the sky.
“What a desolate spot!” exclaimed Mr. Warrener, impressed, “and what a
spot,” he went on, “for a shepherd to study the courses of the stars,
for such has been the tradition of shepherds since the days when the
known world was not one tithe of the size we now learn it to be. Think
of that, Calladine,” said the old man, warming to his subject, “those
early shepherds on the hills were more conversant with the cycle of the
heavenly bodies than with the distribution of their own planet. A fine
tradition among shepherds--for what else have they to do? They don’t
read in books, but they read in the heavens through the long, lonely
nights; and observe, Calladine, that in winter, when the pleasures
of the earth are less, the heavens in compensation treble their
magnificence. I don’t believe that a man who spends his nights alone
in the open remains similar to other men. He’s soaked in the sense of
space; and young Lovel....”
“Yes, yes,” said Calladine impatiently, “but there is no time to be
lost if you are to reach King’s Avon before dark. Follow our tracks;
there are no other tracks to confuse you, for it snowed a little this
morning; indeed, there is still snow about in the air.”
“I don’t like to leave you alone in this lonely place,” said Mr.
Warrener, still hesitating.
“Doubtless Clare and Lovel found no fault with its loneliness last
night,” Calladine replied harshly.
“My dear Richard,” said Mr. Warrener, vexed at his son-in-law’s harping
on this theme, “I am sure you distress yourself unnecessarily. Clare
will be able to reassure you,--and she is a very truthful child,”
he added, with a certain pleading pathos, as though to justify his
upbringing of her.
“Where, then, did the man sleep?” said Calladine, turning on him.
“Supposing he gave Clare the pallet, where did he pass the night
himself? Tell me that.”
“Why, I don’t know,--sitting up, I suppose,--he could lean his back
against the wall,” replied Mr. Warrener.