Chapter V: Part ONE: Grey Wethers (5)

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.”

“For God’s sake, spare me that at least, for God’s sake spare me that,” 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.”

The arrival of the circus created an excitement in the village, poor 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.