Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel

by V. Sackville-West

“My brother.”

It was a little shock to her to find that Lovel, whom she knew only as a figure so detached and self-reliant, should own a childish name. It seemed to make him suddenly human; her eyes softened.

“Does he often have a black fit on him?” she pursued, but as soon as she had spoken the words her loyalty repented of them, and she said, “No, you should not tell me.”

“There is no harm,” said Olver, thinking that he saw a chance to interest her; and he went on, steering away from direct allusion to his brother until he should see a chance to draw round again insensibly to that subject. “My mother says always that our house is unlucky, and, according to her interpretation, ’tis because of the stones that built it,—sacrificial stones, you know they be, Miss Warrener, angered at the desecration. So says my mother, and she should know, seeing that her mother was hanged for a witch, as is common talk hereabouts, and for once the common talk is true. But for my part I have never been able to see that our house was unlucky; we have enough to eat, and a fire to warm ourselves by, though, indeed,” he added, as though the idea had but just now occurred to him, “that is thanks to my brother, and I do not know how my mother and myself would fare but for him,—hee! hee!”

Clare was far too honest to wish to play the spy upon Lovel, yet she was so much impressed by this suggestion of the half-wit youth and his bedridden mother being left to their own devices, and feeling moreover that the most scrupulous conscience could not accuse her of spying upon Lovel when she was to hear something to his credit, that she did not forbear from encouraging Olver, “I have heard that his devotion to you both was extreme.”

Olver needed no encouragement.

“Without him, I should die. It is true that sometimes he is stern, and he sits staring into the fire, and I can get no word from him, but I have learnt that at those times he is unhappy. But he is so gentle, Miss Warrener, you would not believe; at one moment he will seem withdrawn and angry, and the next moment he is all pity. He gives his life up to us; he does not say so, but I know he does. Once when I was a child the village boys threw stones at me, as they might at a dog, but Nicholas he came and beat them all with his fists and carried me home in his arms, and never left me till I was mended.”

“He has a great affection for you,” said Clare, not knowing what to say.

“Oh no,—that is quite impossible,” Olver replied naïvely, surprised at the suggestion.

Clare was touched by his humility, so obviously genuine. It seemed to him, indeed impossible that the demi-god who in his eyes was Lovel, should stoop to any feelings other than pity and obligation towards a poor contemptible burden like himself. Clare began to catch the infection of this idealisation of Lovel; she saw him through Olver’s eyes: humane where he need only have been conscientious; generous where he need only have been just; yet preserving always that aloofness and detachment which safeguarded him from all true contact with sordid things. When she had met him on the highway, or on the Downs, she had not wondered much about the background of his life; she had accepted him as an isolated and romantic figure, organic with the Downs themselves; to her, he was the rider on the skyline, the shepherd of the folds.