Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel

by V. Sackville-West

“Rounding up the wild beasts,” said Lovel, amused. “They won’t sacrifice them on the stones,—not they. They’ll all be chivvied back into their cages after a few louts have got a nip on the ankle. I wonder how many will remain at large? All the old women of the village will be going about to-morrow with umbrellas and pokers. See, now, they are beating out the fire.”

The last sparks flew large and red in the darkness.

“Fire and wild beasts and the stones,” murmured Lovel dreamily. “How many centuries is it, do you think, since those three things have met together here? The place will get a bad name among owners of circuses. They will say that it clamours for its natural prey; that the circle is under a curse; that it scents blood; and a hundred such fabulous things.” He laughed as he spoke, but Clare, looking at him, thought that the fantastic creature half believed it himself. “What will you say, when they want to know where you have been?” he asked. “You won’t dare own up to the gipsy fellow. You’ll say you watched the fire, and let it be understood that you were alone,—isn’t that so?”

“Of course I shall say I have been with you; why not?” said Clare.

“Ah, but I’d rather you didn’t,” he said earnestly. “Keep it a secret,—that we stood and talked unseen while the rest beat the fire out down below. I had not thought that I should see you again, and now I know that I shall not see you again,—in the distance, perhaps,—and hear the bells for your wedding,—and see you driving by,—Mrs. Richard Calladine,—but I shall never stand again with you alone as in this hour. Let us keep it a secret. I don’t care what you think of me. Look, the fire has gone out now, and it is quite dark, but the time I spent with you was lit by the fire. I will walk round with you to the Manor House, and let you go.”

In silence they started off to walk round the top of the earthwork towards the Manor House. The village lay below them in its strange cup, and around outside the circle lay the Downs hunched in the starlight. Where the road intersected the circle they ran down the slope and crossed it, their footsteps briefly crunching on the gravel, but on the opposite side they scrambled up again and silenced steps on the turf and continued side by side along the high ridge above the ditch. A breeze from the Downs blew cool against their cheeks; they knew it well, it was a friend pleading with them, calling them back to the open. They both knew the Downs so well that in their consciousness they were all the time aware of the country’s geography, stretching before them like a foreshortened map; the long roads, the little English towns with their broad main-street that was only a section of the Roman highway, the ancient green tracks over the hills, and the angular spatchcock landmark of the White Horse, straddling on the hillside. Neither of them had thought sufficiently beyond these things to be tormented by the further world. But, on the other hand, they had attained a degree of familiarity and concentration undiminished by any scattering of their faculties. They had not sprinkled their interest over other lands and other folk. They had dwelt only on their country and on themselves, so that the breeze came to them direct as a messenger from the Grey Wethers lying out derelict on the hills, and the sickness of the desire of each to respond to the call found an echo in the soul of the other.

So vivid was the call, so absurd the refusal, that as they reached the point above the trees of the Manor House garden, Lovel stood still and laughed out loud.

“So you go back to rooms,” he said, and laughed again, but more bitterly. “You!” he said, charged with contempt.

They were closer in understanding than ever they had been in their lives. He began to speak low and rapidly, “Clare,” he said, “there is no more softness in you or in me than there is in this soil. There is no flabby flesh, only bone. No trappings, only the hard skeleton. We’ve pared away.... If I had not taken shelter in the beechwood,—and it was the nearest approach to shelter I could get,—I might have taken you by the hand and galloped away with you; you would have come. That would have been mad. I have got my mother and Olver, and not only that, but I’ve got their blood in me. I want to have sons, and I may not, because of that blood. That was why I said I envied Calladine having only himself to overcome, when here am I as hard as flint, who might beget sons with that soft squelch in them that has rotted Olver. A bad stock, I said to myself; be strong; let it die out. And then the irony ... well, you know nothing about that, and even that seems not to matter now. Never be surprised, now, if you hear that I have been borne a son or a daughter, only don’t judge me too harshly. But how could I have brought you to my mother and Olver? and our children, yours and mine,—how could I, Clare? What chance had I but to cease from seeing you? Oh, if it had not been for them and my blood, then there would have been the Downs for you and me, Clare. Don’t share the Downs with Calladine; he lives among them, but he isn’t strong enough to endure them. There are some countries that it takes a strong man to endure. They don’t generate strength, and they crush weakness. Calladine should have lived in towns. But now that he has got you he may be rescued.”