Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel

by V. Sackville-West

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.

Shortly after nightfall a man with red and yellow streamers pinned on to his coat and tied round the crown of his hat, passed down the village street beating a drum as a signal that the performance was about to begin. There proceeded already a stream of the population towards the fields, by twos or in families, and between the gate of the field and the tent the grass was already trampled into a track. Night was come; and within the opening of the tent the interior lighting glowed warm and fulvid; towards this square of light in the centre of the field, thus inviting, the procession of villagers made its way, inwardly eager, outwardly sheepish, and drew together at the entrance, where a rude box-office had been erected, and another man with red and yellow streamers dispensed tickets in return for the coppers and six-pences paid across his little counter.

Inside the tent, the newcomers herded, uncertain. Most of the benches immediately around the central oval of grass were already filled up, and the rows of faces and hands were uniformly lit by the two gas-flares, one on either side of the supporting pole. The grass oval, under this light, appeared most brilliantly green. The roof and sides of the tent swept away into shadow,—shadow dimly peopled by the audience on the rising tiers of benches, of whom only the first two or three rows were illuminated, and the rest indistinguishable, save as vague rings of buff-coloured hands and faces, over which the light sometimes flickered fitfully. Over in one corner stood one of the yellow carts, its shafts propped up somewhat foolishly into the air, and its body, on which was painted in large black letters the single word, ORCHESTRA, filled by members of the company with bassoons and other wind instruments, the lower parts of their persons concealed by the sides of the cart, and the upper emerging like so many jacks in the box. Beside this cart was the opening for the entrance and exit of the performers.

Into this scene of flaming light, strong colours, and deep shadows, came Lovel and his brother, the former so scowling and dark,—for he detested this appearance in public,—that he might rather have been a member of the traveling mountebanks than of the yokel audience. As he stepped out into the light, followed by Olver, this defiance was almost absurdly evident in his manner. He knew that the light was full on his face and on the figure that shambled behind him, and that the eyes of the audience were turned with a mild curiosity towards the pair; he felt himself to be an incident of the show they had all come to see. He looked round for a place. A few kindly neighbours made room on one of the front benches, so that, although Lovel would have preferred a more retiring seat, he was obliged to take his place there with Olver, at his side. Olver was gazing all round with the fascination of a child. He had never seen so many people gathered all together before, and his neighbours, familiar to him as individuals, acquired a new impressiveness when seen thus together in their numbers; he had never seen a circus ring, or an illumination so strange or so effective as that cast by the gas-flares; and as for the performance itself, he had nothing but vague and fantastic ideas of what he was about to behold. Very furtively he brought out from his coat pocket the round mirror which Clare had given him, and bent over it; reflected in it, he saw the lights, and the ring of faces, the thin scarlet rope, the shadows, the green grass, the yellow cart, according as he turned it. Lovel sat stiff and erect beside him, staring straight ahead, his arms folded across his chest. Olver bent lower over his mirror. He chuckled softly over it. The orchestra now stood up in the cart and began to play, brassily, noisily, but to the great delight of the audience.