Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel

by V. Sackville-West

She woke to the realisation that the market was still proceeding, with its shouts, its jostlings, and its huddling of beasts, round her immobilised figure, and, bestirring herself, she went in search of the fat cob, meaning to follow (at a distance, and keeping out of sight), Lovel and Clare on their ponies, who, she calculated, must by now be driving the little flock before them over the crest of the hill.

And she saw them go, with the eyes of a jealous woman, and knew that during the two succeeding days, while Lovel kept the flock at pasture, Miss Warrener joined him again, and sat with him on the Grey Wethers; she saw all his length stretched on the grass at Miss Warrener’s feet, and saw their fingers close together over some cat’s cradle that they were playing. But she saw no more than that, though she watched so that there wasn’t much that her eyes could have missed.

Lovel rode slowly away along the back of the Down, the woolly flock tossing and huddling along in front of him, in a hurried, senseless way, controlled by the barking of the two sheepdogs, who were swift to chase up a straggler, or to straighten out any unseemly bulge at the side of the flock,—that same flock that he had bought at Marlborough fair for Farmer Morland. Lovel, knowing he could trust his dogs, rode in an abstraction. The afternoon sun cast fitful, fan-shaped gleams down through the thin clouds, like sunbeams passed through a sieve, or seen through a veil of the finest rain; it produced an effect of shadow and wet gold familiar to him in his comings and goings over the Downs, but now for the first time it occurred to him to compare the outside world with his own life; and, while his meetings with Clare might stand for that wet gold, the shadows fell mournfully into a yet more inevitable analogy.

He came down into the village by dusk, regretful as ever to exchange the heights for the hollow. Up there he seemed to shake off for a little the burden of his life, which as soon as he re-entered the ring of the village he resumed. He was, however, too well-accustomed to this sensation to pay any particular attention as he passed through the gap of the embankment. “Charmed circle,” his mother had often croaked to him, but he always shrugged disdainfully, knowing well that his imagination was all too ready to be led away along such lines, and being determined to keep his good sense wholesomely about him. The tossing woolly backs of the sheep preceded him now in a long wedge, four or five abreast, down the narrow road; they bleated uneasily, and tried to break through the hedge on either side. “Poor silly things, ye don’t like being penned up any better than the rest of us,” Lovel said to them, as he bent from his horse to open the gate into the field, and called to his dogs to head off the flock, which crowded back helter-skelter through the gate and then dispersed themselves in a sudden browsing content in the field among the monoliths.

Lovel called off his dogs and pulled the gate shut again, with the crook of his riding whip. He surveyed the sheep for a moment over the gate: they were already grazing, dim shapes in the dusk, on the comparatively rich pasture after the short turf of the Downs. “A good lot,” Lovel thought professionally, “and all for the butcher to-morrow,” but he had no sentiment to waste over the fate of the sheep. He rode on into the village, leaving the circle of the embankment with its few naked trees, behind him; ahead of him, the church spire rose up against the sky, and presently as he turned the corner the village street came fully into view, with all its necessary provisions for the conduct of existence: houses for folk to be born in, shops where they might purchase the paraphernalia of daily life, the tavern where they might be merry, the church where they might worship, be christened, married, or buried according to their passing needs, and the chapel where, if they were so inclined, they might differ as to their faith with their fellow-men. Church and Chapel Lovel ignored altogether, a work which his mother had begun for him by refusing flatly to have him made a Christian. “You’ll call him Nicholas Lovel for all that Parson don’t souse him,” she had said, arms akimbo, to the indignant deputation of the parish.

John Sparrow was turning into the Waggon of Hay as Lovel rode past it. “Come join us, neighbour?” he said half in mischief; the wits of the village lived in constant hope that some day, some day, a liquor potent or sufficient enough should be found to loosen the lips of Gipsy Lovel, and what secrets they would hear then! Lovel was briefly tempted, then he shook his head, and passed on: his mother and brother would be waiting for their meal for him, too helpless to begin without him since he had said he would be home by four. At that moment the Church clock struck six: he was two hours late, two hours he had idled away with Clare. He strung himself up to endure the reproaches with which he knew he would be greeted.

He left his horse in the small paddock at the back of the house, and, carrying the bridle and saddle over his arm, returned to the street and went into the house by the front door. The passage within was dark, but by long habit he found the hooks on which to hang up his gear, and at the noise he made in doing so, and the tread of his riding boots on the flagged floor, his brother came eagerly out into the passage, carrying a candle.

“Oh, Nicholas, is it you? Why, you promised to be home by four, and it is gone six; where in the world have you been all this time? I have been three times down the road to look for you.”

“I wish you would do nothing of the sort when I am late,” Lovel said curtly. He hated his brother at that moment, he hated the dark house and the implied reproach; his two hours with Clare flooded over him. “Is supper ready, at least?”

Olver whined, “I had forgotten about supper,—I thought only of you,—don’t be angry with me, Nicco,—I know I should have set it out.”