Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel

by V. Sackville-West

“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.