Chapter IX: Part TWO: Part Two (3)

“The most exquisite toy that ever came into the life of a sad and lonely man,” he said, with a return to his old manner, and he took her hand and began to play with the bangle on her wrist. He handled her much as he would handle his terra-cotta statuettes, and for a while she endured it, but presently sprang away and went to stand at the window where she might look out upon the prospect of shining snow.

“Always looking out, Clare? what liberty do you see out there? you think I ought to let you go, little caged bird, but you would soon perish,--your pretty limbs wouldn’t stand the cold,--better stay happily where you are, believe me,--don’t fret,--come back to me,--let me whisper how precious you are,--come back to our lovely idleness.”

“But I don’t like idleness, Richard; no use pretending I do; you should not have married some one so restless as I.” His hands were upon her shoulders; she wanted to shake them off.

“Did the poacher ...” began Calladine.

“Ah, leave Lovel alone,” she cried; “what impels you to speak of him this morning? Leave him alone, with his wife and his baby; they can very well look after themselves without any interest from us.”

“But, Clare, Mrs. Quince was speaking of them; it’s only natural that my thoughts should continue to run in that direction; and even you yourself....”

“You’re fascinated by the subject of Lovel,” she said, whirling round on him, “now, aren’t you? own to it. You always bring him in: the Downs, the circus, and now his baby,--everything’s an excuse for bringing in Lovel. And why? Is it because he took me out of the circus-tent that night? is it because I rode with him? why not speak out what’s at the back of your mind?”

“But, Clare, Clare! why so fierce and challenging suddenly? there’s nothing at the back of my mind.” (“There is,” she thought, “and you too great a coward to face it out.”) “Come now, don’t let us quarrel and we won’t speak of Lovel if it offends you,--will that satisfy you?”

“It’s of no importance whether we speak of a man in the village or not,” she said, turning away and hunching her shoulders.

They went back to sit by the fire, a bulk of hostility unspoken between them. Calladine felt peevish; his indolent, graceful, vaguely amorous morning had been spoilt; and spoilt by what? by the presence of Lovel. “You’ve never yet shaken off that lean rogue,” he broke out once, sudden and querulous after a spell of silence. They both sat staring into the fire, separate as they could be. They had not previously spoken of Lovel, not directly, not insistently; only to range round him with that nagging, niggling hesitation that seemed to pull at Calladine. But now his presence blocked every other road of conversation; he got in the way, he was near, he could not be got rid of. Almost, he was in the room.

Calladine looked at Clare; fair and slight, delicate even, but so unafraid. A touch, and she was instantly up and all-daring. She kindled at a spark. What was it that she and Lovel had in common? the same apparent frailty of body, the same flame of spirit,--Calladine had all the lyricism to clothe his perceptions with words. He had apprehended Lovel; on the rare occasion when he had seen him, he had apprehended him fully, to his own disquietude. And he apprehended Clare and their resemblance, with pain and resentment. They were two fine and vulnerable things, he thought; vulnerable and brave. But he thought it with only half of his brain, the lyrical, romantic half; with the other half he was peevish and irritated.

If only they were not so silent; Clare had never faltered or complained. Only she had wanted to go out; she had looked out of the window with a kind of homesickness. He was always catching her eyes at their straying, and being made aware how far removed she was from himself. But this, again, had been with half of his brain; with the other half he had known that she was his wife and that he had got her under his roof. And he had not allowed his lyrical self to call her a prisoner.

What if she were to escape? He would be without persuasion or authority.

“You stay with me out of apathy,” he cried. “If once your fancy changed, you would be gone.”

Clare, who had not been thinking of him, turned a mild glance of slight attention on him. He was glaring at her, frightened and angry.

“Yes,” he continued, “I don’t hold you; you’re kind to me, and you indulge my game of pretence. But you’re not really here. You’re indulgent to me as if I were a child,--‘yes, dear, very nice,’ between your own, grown-up preoccupations. But you ought to remember that I am your husband,” he said.

“When have I forgotten it?”

He sulked. It was true she had not forgotten it. He had no reproaches against her; she had been patient, gentle.

“I don’t hold you,” he grumbled.

It was a long time since she had seen him like this; usually he was assertive and complacent. How slight a thing it took to disturb him! His complacency was only a façade, a painted hoarding propped up by struts,--theatrical, like everything else about him. But she really bothered very little with him, now that she had found him out.

“Oh, yes, Richard,” she said, to pacify him and to be done with the argument.

“But I say no,” he cried, hitting his fist on the arm of his chair. “You’re for ever looking out of the window, and sometimes when I speak to you, you answer beside the point. I married you to get a wife, not a woman languishing like a captive in my house.”

She laughed at that, quite amusedly, and he felt he had been foolish. Still he would not abandon his point.

“That fellow would only have to beckon ...” he grumbled.

“Lovel again?” asked Clare.

“You enjoy saying his name.”

“I do not,” said Clare quietly.

“No,” he said, staring at her, “perhaps you do not.”

Perhaps she did not. Perhaps the very name was pain to her. But he must go wrangling on at her.

“Lovel wouldn’t keep you indoors, perhaps you think.--He would let you out into the snow,--take you out into it himself perhaps.”

She only looked at him. He went on, more judicial now; deliberate, less blatantly bad-tempered.

“Yet, after all, I don’t know why you hold such a good opinion of this fellow Lovel. He sticks to no trade,--he gets a country girl into trouble and has to marry her,--not a very creditable record, it seems to me.” He was leaning back in his chair, with his finger-tips together. “And, judging by his stock, he has no right to beget sons,--better if he did not associate with women at all,--such people should be allowed to die out.”

“So Mrs. Quince was saying. Perhaps he feels the same himself,” said Clare in a contained voice.

“It looks like it! a child born after four months of marriage. I am bound to say, my dear, your suggestion isn’t very convincing. But there, what should you know of the lusts of these country young men? Animals, merely. Forgive me if I seem self-righteous. I feel strongly,--very strongly.” He leaned forward and patted her. “You can understand that I don’t like to think of my Clare contaminated by such company.”

“You mean Lovel?”

“Most certainly I mean Lovel.--Why do you look at me so darkly, Clare?”

“Did I look at you darkly? I didn’t mean to. My thoughts were far away.”

“And where....”

“Ah, Richard, mayn’t I have my thoughts to myself?”

“By all means, Clare. I hope, my dear, that no one has ever accused me of being a tyrant. Of course your thoughts are your own.--But you don’t resent, do you, the things I have been saying of Lovel?”

“I am only tired of the whole subject.”

“Yes,--of course,--naturally,--I quite understand that. Mrs. Quince is an old gossip. I must tell her that it really doesn’t interest you to be informed every time a woman in the village has a baby. It doesn’t does it?”

“No, of course not,--but don’t say anything to Mrs. Quince, I beg you.”

“But I can’t have my wife bothered by my old gossip of a housekeeper. I daresay she meant it well, thinking you were interested in Lovel.”

“Richard, please,--let us leave Lovel now,--I shall begin to scream if I hear his name mentioned again, I warn you.”

“Clare. You try to joke, but the idea of saying that wouldn’t come into your head if there were not some truth in it.”

“Well, I told you I was tired of the subject.”

“You are talking now like an irritable woman.”

“Am I? But I _am_ a woman, and not a man, and therefore I daresay as irritable as all other women.”

“You mean that men can be every whit as irritable,--myself, for example.”

“Now you are putting words into my mouth that I never said. Is it a guilty conscience, Richard?”

“You persist in joking when I want you to be serious!”

“Oh, Richard, what a childish conversation. Instead of sitting here and talking, let us....”

“Well, what? Let us what?”

“Nothing, I’ve thought better of it.”

“Let us go out, you were going to say. Always the same folly! Have you any idea of the depth of the snow? Out, indeed!”

“I never said it.”

“No, but you thought it.--Ah, if I say that, you will ask again if you mayn’t have your thoughts to yourself. There are moments when I don’t know how to deal with you, Clare.” He knew his own injustice, but his querulous jealousy pricked him on. “Any other woman would be content to sit by her own fireside this bitter day with the man she had married so short a time ago.”

“Four months,--getting on for half a year.”

“I see,--you have found the time long. If you entered a little more into my interests, instead of having your own thoughts to yourself so much, my dear, perhaps you would find it pass quicker, and it would be more companionable.”

Clare thought that he looked at her almost with hatred. She was herself too indifferent to be interested either one way or the other.

“I shall be glad when this accursed snow is melted and gone,” he added, “and you will perhaps be a little less restless.”

At that moment Mrs. Quince came in, looking perturbed.

“There is Olver Lovel downstairs, madam, asking to see you,--I didn’t know what to say,--he seems so bent upon it,--but he looks like a scarecrow, that he does, with his coat torn and his hat stove in, and bits of straw all over him as though he had spent the night sleeping in a barn.”

Clare rose.

“Where is he, Mrs. Quince?”

Calladine started forward with a detaining hand.

“No, Clare, you can’t see this man,--let me speak to him first,--at least it’s not right, not safe, for you to see him.”

“And he says he must speak to Mrs. Calladine alone, sir,” Mrs. Quince put in.

“Of course I shall see him,” said Clare.

Calladine grew agitated. “Mrs. Quince, you need not wait; please leave the room. Now, Clare, understand: it is against my wishes that you see this man. Let me go down and find out what he wants, and then if I find that he is quiet and reasonable I will allow you to interview him in my presence. He has probably come to beg, in which case I can give him a few shillings as well as you can, and send him away.”

Clare faced him. “Please let me pass, Richard; I am sorry to do anything against your wishes, but I intend to speak to Olver,--and alone.”

“Let me make myself quite clear: it is not only against my wishes, but, since my wishes fail to touch you, also against my orders.”

“I am sorry, Richard, but I mean what I said.”

He blustered; she remained quiet; in their first encounter he was no match for her.

“You disobey me deliberately, then?”

“This is a case in which I must use my own judgment.”

“You will not expect me to receive you back into my favour afterwards.”

She smiled a little.

“Really, Richard, I am afraid I must take the risk of that.”

“Go, then,” he said, stepping dramatically aside, “go, in direct defiance.” Still he did not quite expect her to flout his authority, and remained amazed when she passed him and went swiftly out of the room.

Left to himself, he made a movement to follow her, but drew back. Let her go, to her Lovels and her secret life: he had never really held her. Let her go, to the summons which had come, and to which she had so instantly responded. He himself, from the moment Olver Lovel’s name had been pronounced, had dwindled to nullity; he had ceased, on the spot, to exist for her. All these months, she had lived with him, a stranger, away from her kind. And he recalled Mrs. Quince’s description of Olver,--“he looks like a scarecrow, that he does,”--this emissary from Nicholas Lovel to his, Calladine’s wife.

Calladine strode up and down the room. She was downstairs now with Olver; what was he saying to her? What was in the future, haunted by the presence of Lovel as the past had never been? How should they ever get rid of Lovel now, standing between them? That uncomfortable presence of Lovel in the past, at which Calladine had pecked and nagged, was nothing to his dominion over the future. Surely he had been mad not to take Clare’s acquaintance with the poacher as a matter of course? mad to harass her as he had harassed her that morning? By his own folly he had created the spectre, the giant, of the situation. He strode up and down, hitting fist against palm in his vexation. Then he grew afraid; what if the poacher should not restrict his poaching to game alone? What if he should entice Clare by the occult powers with which the countryside credited him? Occult powers, or human powers, it was all one. Calladine felt his helplessness; he was weak, wordy, he could be set aside. They would set him aside, those two.

He was an ill-used man. Self-pity nearly brought tears to his eyes. Life used him ill: first the woman who had fooled him, now Clare. Clare’s kindness to him had been a dalliance, while she had nothing better to do; it had evaporated at the mention of a name. He hated her, he hated Lovel, he hated the Downs and the snow. Glittering and cold, without compromise; he did not understand the Downs and the winter, but Clare and Lovel understood them. What was Olver saying to Clare? Calladine felt his life finished; and through his perfectly genuine anguish he did not fail to perceive the romantic value of his situation. He fell into a chair, and remained there with his legs extended as he gazed despondently on the floor before him.

Clare would tell him nothing. He foresaw that, and his foresight was justified. She came back, immeasurably far removed from him. He wanted to ignore her return, to remain stiff with dignity, but it was not long before his curiosity weakened him. “Well, you are not very communicative. I see that you have no desire to make amends for the distress you have caused me. Was the poacher’s message, then, too sacred,--too personal,--to be imparted to me?”

Clare’s eyes, when she turned them on him, were narrowed with pain.

“Richard, must you ask me questions now? I have come back to you; I ask you only to leave me to myself.”

But that was precisely what he could not do.

“You ask a good deal, don’t you, in asking that? I see you white and shaken, yet I am not to know the cause. You ask a good deal of my forbearance, indeed. I am not to know what messages another man sends you. I am not to know what is going on, nearly under my nose, but kept away from me. I am to be defied by my wife, and then kept in ignorance by her. This is the state of affairs we have come to in one short morning! What has happened to us? it bewilders me.... I insist upon knowing,--I _will_ know,--has that half-wit come to you with a message from his brother?”

“No,” said Clare.

“How you have to force even that one monosyllable from your lips! What, he came on his own initiative? Clare, you are not speaking the truth.--Yes, I am sure you are; I beg your pardon. You distract me by your coldness. Clare, forgive me, I scarcely knew what I was saying.”

“Don’t touch me,” said Clare, recoiling, “for pity’s sake don’t touch me now.”

“I am a very unhappy man,” said Calladine, falling again into his chair and taking his head between his hands. “I am indeed an unhappy man,--what am I to do with my life?”

He remained for some time with his head sunk between his hands, then, glancing up to see what effect his attitude might have had upon Clare, he found her gazing out of the window.

“I see,--you forget my very presence,” he said reproachfully, and his sense of injury was doubled. But because his distress was genuine, although he could not refrain from rhetoric, he followed her across the room in a tormented way, and tried to see into her face. “Clare, speak to me; I am not angry, only unhappy. There is something now in your mind which I do not share; you live in a half-hour which is secret from me.--Or have you always,” he cried suddenly, “lived in hours I knew nothing of?”

Mrs. Quince peeped in through the door.

“Ah, that’s good,” she said in a relieved tone; “I wasn’t easy so long as I thought Mrs. Calladine was with that scamp,” and she retired.

“Even the servants, you see, Clare, are concerned for you.”

“Mrs. Quince, far from being concerned,” Clare said, returning briefly to a consciousness of Calladine and of the house that held her, “is full of delight.”

“Clare, these bitter words from you! you are changed indeed, or am I seeing you as you are for the first time? I begin to look back at these four months as at a long delusion; I am utterly bewildered. You are withdrawn to an unbelievable distance from me; I feel it, yet I cannot say what has taken place. This morning, we were close to one another; we were, as it seemed, enclosed by our little room, leisured, snug, sheltered; now, I am striving to reach you, and am held off.” His words beat without meaning against Clare’s isolation; she could not emerge at all from the tumult of the terrible scene she had endured from Olver. She looked, indeed, at Calladine, intently, as though she were trying to bring herself back to the importance of his world, but her eyes were empty.

The day dragged away; Calladine continued to clamour fitfully. He could not leave her alone, and, though she clearly suffered, he, perverse, must torment her. By adding to her pain, he added to his own, but could not desist. She answered him very little; a negative, an affirmative now and then, was all he could get from her; for her part, all that she wished was that his voice might cease, so that she might have a lull, a silence, alone with her own mind. Yet it seemed to her that she had, indeed, a silence at the core of her being, still and inviolate against his ineffectual clamour, like the stillness in the heart of a cyclone, where birds poise and sing. At this core, this kernel, this patch of peace, she dwelt apart; Lovel was there, and so was Olver, Olver with the urgent hands and fanatical eyes, passing from Lovel to her and from her to Lovel, almost crushing them up against one another by the force of his urgency, Olver’s determination was like a menace, becoming almost malevolent by virtue of its very violence. He overwhelmed, he terrified her; she had nothing but weak refusal; she had tried to push him away with hands that had no strength in them. She had covered her eyes, but he had forced away her hands; she had shut her ears, but he had screamed past her defences. It was easy to remain deaf to Calladine’s whining; it had been impossible to shut out the ferocity of Olver’s attack. And yet, in spite of the din, she was aware of that core of silence, in which she and Lovel were, with Olver rushing between.

She and Calladine, Lovel and Daisy, there they were, the four of them, all separate; and Olver, like a firebrand, a trail of fire, working between them. They might have had some control, the four, but for this crazy creature, obsessed by the one idea, not to be reasoned with. He was the incalculable element; he made the others helpless, taking their intentions out of their hands and throwing them away.

The danger of Olver,--what if he should see Calladine? What if he should irrupt into the room and shout irreparable words before she had time to stop him? The danger of Olver,--what had he said to Lovel? what to Lovel’s wife? But Calladine and Lovel’s wife alike remained insignificant; she and Lovel were the two full of meaning, shut up with the wild, charging Olver in their core of silence.

Vaguely somewhere, she was sorry for Calladine, but he was insignificant; she could not pause to consider him; where she and Lovel came together, he faded into that poor wisp drained of blood, that he had dwindled to on the evening of the circus fire, when she and Lovel had stood together on the embankment. They shed him; he slipped off, and only his noise reached them intermittently, scarcely troublesome.

Daisy herself was less unreal than Calladine; Daisy knew suffering too, Clare supposed; in a clumsy, common way she knew it; blundering, but human; yes, she could be sorry for the other woman.

But they must be sacrificed, the two, Calladine and Daisy, if matters came to a head; sacrificed to the blazing reality of herself and Lovel.

Would Olver come again? Would he leave her alone now? Would he give her a chance to forget the words he had spoken? some of them remained, rang in her head, brassy, like beaten gongs; fell on her like big sparks from an anvil, burning. It had been a strange experience, to hear Olver voice the passion that had upreared itself, always mute, in Lovel.

Olver came again. He came like an avenging angel, inspired, the crazed creature, by the urgency of his message. Like a reproachful angel he came to rebuke her, grotesquely disguised in his scarecrow travesty; the beauty of his selflessness shone through the ramshackle of his appearance. She scarcely knew whether to find him pathetic or alarming; she wanted to pity, she could only be disturbed; he disturbed her to the darkest places of her soul. The fixity of his idea, the strength of his purpose, his devotion, his anger, raised his simplicity to the plane of nobleness. She could not answer him; she was abashed before him.

She was afraid of him, his image pursued her, his upraised hand denouncing her, his eyes and tongue pouring scorn upon her. At moments he seemed like fate itself, like a thing she could not escape from. She never knew at what hour of the day he would come, so all day, sometimes for two or three days on end, she waited, dreading and longing for his coming. She could have refused to see him, but had not the strength; but when she must crush Calladine’s protests, then she had strength in plenty.

The snow lay deeper than ever, after another heavy fall, upon the Downs, but although still a prisoner her restlessness had left her: the life she had wanted came now to her from without. Olver brought that life; he brought tumult, anguish, but it was life that he brought, besieging her. And although he was not Lovel’s envoy, still it was straight from Lovel that he came. His eyes, as they flamed on Clare, an hour earlier had been filled with Lovel; she could fancy Lovel’s image still lingering in them. And after he had left her, it was to Lovel’s presence that he would return; he would hear Lovel’s voice and see Lovel’s hands, that so haunted her. Once she broke her silence to ask about Lovel, “What does he do, these days of snow? does he get out? stay at home?” and Olver answered, “To-day he has been twisting new snares, and last night he brought home a lamb that still lies by our fire.”

She knew that an end must come; beleaguered, she knew that. She had pushed life away, but it had followed her, even into her retreat. It was useless; Calladine was not life; his need of her had not been life. He was a shadow, a man of pretence, sufficient to himself, with his own pretences for company. It was only the true solitaries, the really lonely people, like Lovel, who had absolute need of their chosen loves. The strong, clamping loves, that fastened on to one another, to lose their hold only when they lost their hold on life; the unalterable, ordained loves. She could not justify the argument; her selfishness towards Calladine remained unjustified. But she knew that that would not weigh with her; she and Lovel would reach one another when the day came, even through a stone wall.

Still she could not justify it. She tried to, perfunctorily. She sat frowning, and saying the words over to herself. Selfishness, duty. They remained mere words; she could not feel them in her blood, as she felt her need for Lovel and Lovel’s need for her; they were words pitted against instinct. Was it love, that need? Was it no more than that ordinary miracle, love? She thought that it was more. They had the Downs as a bond between them; the Downs, and all nature, of which Lovel seemed the spirit, the incarnation. He was the darkness of the Downs, their threat, their solitude, their intractability; she was their light, their windiness, their sunlit flanks, their springiness of turf. United, they formed a whole. There was an essential significance in Lovel, as there was an essential insignificance in Calladine.

Olver seemed to know these things; he had an untutored insight. Calladine seemed to know them too, but that was less surprising; with his subtle, lyrical mind he might well be expected to apprehend, and apprehending, to drape in wordiness; to give a name; to illuminate blind impulse by giving a name. Poor Calladine; she watched him, detached, as he rambled from discovery to definition, tormenting himself by the beauty of his own phrasing. At moments he viewed them, herself and Lovel, as a spectator, losing himself in the romanticism he wove around them; recalled to the fact that it was his own wife of whom he spoke, he relapsed into the gloom and terror of his pain. For he lived in terror, impotent terror. And Clare watched him, living herself in her hours with Olver and in her consciousness of Lovel.

There was the little round mirror she had given to Olver. He always brought it with him; he told her, chuckling, and tapping its bright surface with his finger, that he could see her in it even when she was not present. She did not believe this, but still she half believed it. “Look into it now,” he said, thrusting it under her eyes, “and you will see Nicholas.” She shrank back, afraid; he could not persuade her to look into it, he could not even deride her into looking into it. “You don’t believe me, yet you won’t look,” he said, “but if you don’t believe me, why then won’t you look?” He was for ever daring her to look into it, to find the image of Nicholas. She would not; she did not believe in the magical properties of the mirror, yet nothing would induce her to glance into its queer convexity. “I watched the circus in this, the night Nicholas took you out of the tent,” he said, and she wondered whether he knew how bound to Lovel she had felt herself that night; “I watched Nicholas’ wedding in this; I looked in this at him and Daisy sitting in the kitchen. Look into it now,” he said, offering it to her again: “maybe you’ll see Daisy nursing her baby; maybe you’ll see Nicholas twisting snares; maybe you’ll see him riding up on White Horse Hill, alone, in the snow.”

“Do you remember what I told you once?” he said to her another time, “that Nicholas could bring you out to him, even at midnight, if he gave his mind to it?”

She wondered how long this strange period would last; she was not even impatient; the core of peace and silence within her lay so certain, so quiet, that she dwelt already as it were serene in the fulfilment of herself and Lovel.

Calladine came to her door to find it locked against him. He shook the handle. “Clare! it is I.” A wild winter night; the wind blew along the passage, lifting the loose matting on the floor, the gas-jet on the stair flickered and below the well of the staircase was dark. “Clare!” said Calladine again, shaking the handle.

Her voice within answered him, faint, shut away.

“Yes, I am here; I am in bed.”

She was there! the house contained her at least; she had not fled.

“Let me come in, Clare.”

A long pause, and then her voice again.

“I cannot, Richard.”

“You have locked me out?”

“I am sorry, Richard; I can’t let you in.”

He stood irresolute. Then he started shaking the door, frightened by 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.