Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel

by V. Sackville-West

A small remorse came over her when he was kind like this, a compunction for having tricked him: would he have been so kind, so long-suffering about the child had he not believed without question in his own brother’s guilt? She tried to edge closer to him; “Nicholas, if anything happened to me, you wouldn’t think too hardly of me, would you?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” said Lovel, weary of the discussion, but still patient and kind.

“You won’t go far, Nicco, will you?”

“No, if that comforts you.”

He was committed now, having given his promise; there would be no more roamings for him; but he was willing to forgo their small solace, negligible in the midst of his desolation, if thereby he might reassure the poor contemptible creature.

“Nicco,” she said timidly, with an impulse of honesty, prompted by his gentleness, “’tisn’t fair to ask you, hardly ... ’tisn’t your child, after all’s said and done.”

“I’m responsible for my brother,” said Lovel, and she turned away from him and wept, overcome.

“You’re an upright man, Lovel,” she cried through her tears, “too upright for such as me.”

He had not understood her full meaning, of course; he had told her again not to distress herself, he had assured her again that he would not go far from home, he had even patted her shoulder, letting her see nothing of the effort it cost him, and he had gone out then, to a house down the street where he had a small carpentering job to finish. Daisy remained alone in the kitchen, alone with the satisfaction of having gained her point that he would abandon his long absences, but still she was not satisfied as she expected; she sat on where he had left her, bluntly probed by conscience, she whose conscience had never troubled her until this contact with Lovel and his standards: what was she doing to Lovel, she asked herself now? she had got him, but was that all? was that enough for her? to have got him and to know she had caught him by a trick? to see him inert under his dull unhappiness? never to hear him complain, never to catch him at fault, but to see him quiet as though his spirit was ebbing daily from him? Even she, in her blundering insensitiveness, stirred uneasily at the thought of his injuries. “But what was I to be at?” she cried to herself in self-justification; “I wanted him, and all’s fair....” She moved in her chair and twisted her hands. “Nicco, Nicco,” she moaned. “If he knew how I wanted him he’d forgive me,” and with this reflection came a deeper stab: it was probably true that he would indeed forgive her,—that she had indeed broken him down to the extent of that saint-like clemency. What would put anger and mettle back into him? what would put life back into him? Clare, nothing but Clare, without whom he was incomplete, only a gentle husk; and for a passing moment her thoughts travelled to Clare, living out her life in some fashion or another by Calladine’s side at Starvecrow. What, in her ignorance, had she helped to bring about? She paused and drew back on the brink of things she did not understand, taking refuge again in her own miseries, comfortably familiar by reason of the many times she had pored over them, with no dark corners or frightening perspectives, but all close, small and personal, under the range of her poor niggling microscope. And she was in the right frame of mind for such brooding, feeling herself oppressed and full of foreboding, as she sat in the kitchen big with the child, and big with the failure of her life, waiting indeed for deliverance from the child, but seeing no solution to the greater oppression, which she might expect to continue until she should grow as spiritless and broken as Lovel and their existence should dwindle to a grey twilight of apathy unenlivened even by anger or revolt. She had rarely felt so dejected; the very stones of the kitchen walls crushed her with their rude size; the child within her, usually so active, so ironically vigorous, was so quiet to-day that she began to wonder whether it were dead; the old woman overhead made no sound; and all round the house lay the thick soft deadening pall of snow that muffled the country from Thames to Severn. She wished that Lovel had not gone out; disheartened though she now was, she still clung to the tormenting comfort of his presence; it was almost a consolation to see him suffering beside her. Since life held neither hope nor joy for either of them, let her in her own pain at least be able to sneer at the sight of his; let them be together in their separation. She grew frightened at the wildness and virulence of her thoughts. They were not so much thoughts, as impulses that floated a little crazily across her mind. She was not well to-day; it was not surprising; it was cruel of Nicholas to leave her alone. She stirred, and looked round, saw no one, but fancied that eyes watched her. “Olver!” she cried out, although she had seen nothing.