Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel

by V. Sackville-West

They came out of the room together, Clare and Mrs. Quince. Mrs. Quince drew back a little, respectfully, to let her go first, and closed the door gently behind her. “I wouldn’t have taken you in there miss,” she began, “if I’d known what that shameless baggage was to be at,—stitching away at her own baby’s clothes a fortnight before her marriage. Perhaps I should not say such things to you,—but there, you’ll be married yourself before the month’s out. And I wouldn’t have kept Daisy Morland here, knowing about her what I do know now, but that I wanted to have the house well set to rights against your coming, and, thought I, why not make use of a pair of hands that’ll never do a turn of work again for honest folks, but only for herself and a shame-begotten brat and a ’scape-the-gallows husband. It’s a hard bit of luck for Farmer Morland and his wife,” continued Mrs. Quince as she followed Clare down the stairs, “after they brought their girl up decent; but what can you expect with such poachers and loafers and gipsy-like stuff hanging about the village? ’Twas the easiest thing in the world for Daisy to go sweethearting on the hills, and what with shepherds’ huts and hurdles handy there was all the chance of a bit of trouble. Well, and now she’s got it, and lucky for her, I say, that Lovel’s ready to turn her into an honest woman, for there’s many stouter bred than him that hasn’t stuck to their girls, and I always say....” Here Calladine had come out of the sitting-room, hearing the sound of voices; he came pleasantly towards them, rubbing his hands together and bending towards Clare, “Tired, my dear? tired? a little bit, I think,—too bad, too bad, Mrs. Quince, we’ve tired her out between us; well, come in here and rest in this big chair....” he pressed her into the sitting-room, and Mrs. Quince with much solicitude settled cushions for her and placed her feet upon a footstool in spite of all Clare’s protests.

She had dreaded to find Daisy still at Starvecrow when she returned there after her marriage. It would have been simple for her to find out, but she lacked the courage to ask. And would Calladine know? would he know if one girl rather than another slept in the attic at the top of his house? She could have asked Martha Sparrow, but pride withheld her from making enquiries as to Lovel’s wedding. True, Mrs. Quince had mentioned a fortnight, but she did not trust Mrs. Quince; the elderly woman would relish laying a trap for her. But at the end of the fortnight she had known that Mrs. Quince had spoken accurately, for Martha Sparrow, coming into her room to call her that morning and whisking back the curtains along the curtain-rods, had said cheerfully, “A fine day for the gipsy’s wedding; and I wonder how many of the folk will turn out to see the customs a common Christian wouldn’t practise?”

But those folk, skulking round the church, had been disappointed. They had seen no swarthy women in scarlet handkerchiefs, no dark men with little gold rings in their ears. They had heard no gibberish, and seen no gestures of incantation or abracadabra. They had seen only Nicholas Lovel in his ordinary clothes, inaccessibly severe, with his young woman, all simpers and dimples, on his arm; and Olver Lovel in the nave, watching the scene at the altar, obliquely in that queer little round mirror he always seemed to carry. Not even the Lovels’ old mother had they seen; and for a glimpse of her they had greatly hoped, for surely, even of a witch and a gipsy, it might be expected that she would turn out to witness the marriage of her own son. But no, she had not caused herself to be wheeled as far as the church, the bedridden old woman; and, indignant because they were disappointed of their spectacle, the village folk muttered, “Unnatural,—but what would you expect?”

Disappointed though they were, they had remained to watch the ceremony. Some of the bolder spirits had gone to the church, edging their way, sheepish but defiant, along the pews; but the majority had crowded near the door, peeping, nudging, jostling backwards whenever Lovel up at the altar threatened to turn round. There had been none of the coarse, friendly atmosphere that surrounded most village weddings. There had been, instead, an atmosphere of curiosity and fear; and at Daisy looks were thrown, full of commiseration and a fearful respect, by the villagers as at one of their own comfortable number, about to cut herself adrift from them and to become enrolled among an alien community. They fully expected that Daisy, hitherto so plump and jolly and normal, would be initiated into dark rites beyond their imagination when once she had been swallowed up into the shadows of the dim, tunnel-like passage of the Lovels’ house and the Lovels’ door closed behind her. They never expected to see her emerge again in precisely the semblance of herself familiar to them. Or would Lovel deny his secrets even to his wife? Would he keep her there, in his dark house, as a servant and a convenience, to wait on his old mother, to cook his meals and obey his behests, and above all things to hold her tongue as to all the unexplained things she might happen to witness in the course of years? Would she be no more than a terrorized servant in that house they thought so vaguely sinister? There was Olver Lovel, too; was he a sort of accomplice to his brother, a sort of sly malignant accomplice, who in his brother’s absence would bully his brother’s wife by deputed authority, so that she would be at the mercy not only of the elder Lovel, who was an unknown quantity if ever there was one, but against whom nothing but his practices in defiance of the game laws was definitely known,—not only would she be at his hard mercy, but also at that of his younger brother, of whom the blackest and most cunning arts might be believed. There were a hundred ways, they decided, talking it over between a horrid fascination and a still more horrid relish, in which Olver might exercise his nasty talents upon Daisy. John Sparrow even went so far as to predict that the day would come when she would be found wandering, as crazy as Olver himself, upon the Downs, but others more sagely replied that if indeed she were to lose her wits she would never be allowed to escape from the house. And that opened up another series of pictures, in which Daisy, crazed and foolishly happy, went about her work singing little ditties, and the door of the dark house was closed daily by Lovel upon the three inmates, the mother, the brother, and the wife, and the key lay close within his pocket.

But in the meantime the spectacle before their eyes was quite different from those evoked by their imaginations. It might be true that Lovel looked lean and stern, and that Olver followed the ceremony in that slanting way within his little round mirror, but the words the clergyman uttered were the same that they were accustomed to hear at all respectable unions, and as for Daisy, she was the picture of all a bride ought to be, muslin flounces and coyness, and if her figure was a little oddly thickened, why, that also was a thing that had been seen before at village weddings. She looked pleased with her young man; she kept glancing proudly at his height; she sniggered with content as he repeated the beautiful threadbare words after the priest, repeated them gravely and firmly, but as though he were utterly indifferent to the obligations they imposed upon him. There was nothing very startlingly unusual about the wedding. True, neither Daisy’s father nor her mother were present, but the whole village knew that Lovel was marrying the girl because he had got her into trouble, and it was not likely that the Morlands, steady and decent folk, would be present to give the sanction of their approval. Perhaps later on, when the child was born, they might come round; for the moment, no doubt,—and very naturally,—they were sore over both the cause of the marriage and the son-in-law imposed upon them. Daisy did not seem to care. Ever since the publication of her banns she had gone about flaunting as though her marriage were a reason for pride rather than for shame and apology. Not that the village saw much shame in circumstances so common. It had, rather, a certain respect for Daisy, who, having set her heart on the gipsy,—a strange taste, but that was her business,—had at last got him to the altar. There was a tacit convention that a girl was justified in using all her weapons if she could not otherwise carry her point: and there was also, in the present instance, a peculiar satisfaction in feeling that the gipsy had been worsted. So grand, so stuck-up, Nicholas Lovel, but a girl had got the better of him in the end.

When the bridal pair came out of the vestry and proceeded down the aisle, there was a scattering in the little crowd at the church door; a lane opened, and Lovel and his wife passed out between the craning, curious faces. Lovel looked neither to left nor to right; his arm was crooked to allow Daisy’s hand to rest within it, but that was the only concession he made to his newly-married state. She, on the contrary, sought eagerly for the faces of her friends; she dragged upon Lovel’s arm, but he moved unyielding forward. Daisy, who was trying to lag, had to take a little run, like a child that cannot keep pace with the advance of a grown-up person. With her head half-turned, her eyes still lingered over the little crowd that was once more closing in behind them. There were not many girls in the party; she knew why, and a sense of triumph came over her; they might affect to despise Lovel, but for all that they did not care to see him married to one of their own number,—ah, how clever she had been!—not many girls; two men, doddering on their sticks; and a group of young men, the lounging, insolent handsome young men, with their hands stuck into the belts of their smocks, chewing straws for all the world as though they had been in the Waggon of Hay and not on the threshold of a church. It was then that an incident occurred, the recollection of which was frequently to dash Daisy’s triumph into a sinking of uneasiness; towering behind the group she caught sight of Peter Gorwyn’s grinning, good-humoured face on the top of his enormous proportions, and as she looked at him in a sort of terror of recognition that he of all men should have come to attend her wedding, he very slowly winked, so slowly that time seemed to be suspended between the beginning of the wink and the completion of it; and in that suspension of time, while her eyes had leisure to dwell in fascination upon the subtle and quite unambiguous process of a wink, her mind had leisure also to take in its whole significance: Peter Gorwyn knew. In that wink the day of the Scouring was evoked; the fun they had shared; the irresponsibility, the momentary drunkenness. There was no reproach in the wink; there was no reproof; there was not even a threat; there was simply the amusement of a confederate, of one who knew himself quite well to be a party to a hoax. There was humour in it too; in that broad, ruddy face and blue eyes there was humour; there was even congratulation, a kind of silent applause; and a hint of gratitude to Daisy for having let him off so easily,—for having got Lovel to stand there in his place. This was all very re-assuring; there was such a phrase as honour among thieves, and big Peter, with her, was a thief if he was willing to let Lovel take his place and pay the price which should have been exacted of his own responsibility. But at the same time that wink came as a sharp shock to her, the shock that a second person shared her hoaxing secret. She thought that presently, when she had had time to settle down a little in her new life, she would catch young Gorwyn for an interview, and, without giving herself away, make quite sure, that, although he had guessed what she had concealed, he was ready to grin and hold his tongue. She thought this in a flustered way, as she came out of the church on Lovel’s arm into the warmth of the sunny morning, and they proceeded down the path between the grave-stones, a stiff little group, robbed momentarily even of the slight relief of the bride’s simpering, with Olver bringing up the rear. Daisy shivered for the first time; this wedding was not being conducted according to her idea of weddings; there were no emotional relatives, no weeping mother, no bells pealing from the calm grey spire overhead, no bridesmaids, no best man,—only Olver shambling behind them as they proceeded between the grave-stones, Olver so slightly and indefinably mis-shapen, a solitary evil attendant, shambling as though he might at any moment break into a fawning gambol around them, a senseless dance full of irony and mischief. And Lovel, himself, dearly as she had set her heart upon him, was throwing a chill by his demeanour over the occasion; he had not once looked at her, he had offered her his arm in a coldly civil way,—less he could not do,—he had stood up stern and unbending; she was afraid of him, and discouragement began to cloud over her triumph.

They were walking now down the street towards his house, and the shopkeepers came to their doors to stare at them as they passed. Still Lovel marched on, undeviating, and Daisy began to feel herself a captive being led towards her prison. She clasped her fingers tighter round Lovel’s arm; it was hard and sinewy, typical of his lean strength. Here was a harshness she would find tough to propitiate; and jealousy shot through her; had he shown himself harsh towards Miss Warrener? or had she discovered an unguessed marvellous Lovel? What secret understanding had they shared? Daisy scarcely understood the pain. “The minx!” she muttered; it was the only analysis she could find of her sudden twist of anguish, blind and inarticulate. Up to the present she had been too much occupied with securing Lovel; in future she would have leisure to dwell upon those memories of his which would lie for ever concealed from her. “We’re married now, aren’t we, Nicholas? I’ve got you?” she said, looking up into his face.

He took her into his house, where during the whole time of their engagement he had never allowed her to come. They were in the dark cold passage, at the end of which, in the sun, opened the little square of garden where Lovel like any other cottager grew his cabbages, his patch of flowers, his gooseberries, and his beans. Daisy became excited again; she forgot Gorwyn, she forgot her discouragement and her jealousy; she was a woman brought for the first time to her home. She peered about her with interest, while Lovel shut the door, and the passage became quite dark but for the door at the further end opening bright arch-wise on to the garden. “Oh, Nicholas,” she said, “I can’t see and it’s cold; leave open the door.” “For all the village to spy in upon us?” he returned, and she perceived that in this as in everything else he would have his way. “It’s more friendly,” she ventured, but he did not move towards it, and she desisted: after all, she had got him, she had fooled him, the score so far was heavily in her favour; if she let him have his way now, she would get him more completely in the end. “It’s rather cold,” she said nevertheless, repressing a shiver, and, hearing a small chuckle in the shadows behind her, she turned and saw Olver crouched up against the wall.

“Take me into the kitchen!” she cried, pressing herself against Lovel.

Kitchen! the word was reassuring; her mother had kept a spruce, spacious kitchen, where bottled fruit stood ranged on shelves, and trays of floury scones stood on the scrubbed deal table, and the big Parliament clock tick-tocked in comfortable regularity against the wall. Very different was the room to which Lovel sarcastically admitted her; she stopped with the dismay of the conventional person suddenly confronted with rebel views. She was shocked as at something unseemly and profane. “Oh,” she cried, “but this isn’t a kitchen?”