Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel

by V. Sackville-West

Half a dozen young men stood up on the platform, exposed to the jokes and encouragements of their friends; in their embarrassment they did not know what expression to assume; some scowled, some tried to stare with an indifferent gaze out over the distance, some sought the faces of their special friends among the audience and grinned awkwardly. All were in the same predicament as to how to dispose of their hands and feet; some stood stiff and erect, with arms folded severely across their chests; others thrust their hands down into the pockets of their breeches; others bent to fidget with a bootlace.

Some were for wrestling, others for the races; the bolder spirits, and the most admired, were for broadstick. Gorwyn himself, the broadstick champion of the village, was, as the last and principal event of the day, to challenge the winner.

Clare, growing interested, rode a little nearer; the young men touched their foreheads to her, some of the girls dropped a curtsy; her advance caused a little ripple in the crowd. Again she felt the slight regret that she might not mingle freely and on an equal footing with them; surely they were clean, English young men, honest enough if a trifle crude, and the girls were healthy and fresh in their muslins; but she was too simply a child to dream of disobeying Martha’s mandate. She sat her pony at her distance, looking on.

The first event was a bout of wrestling; not perhaps, a very scientific exhibition, but the rivals went at it with a will, good-tempered and full of zest, staggering about the platform, their fine, young-men’s bodies knotted together like a piece of ever-changing sculpture in a natural setting, not cooped into the dinginess of a studio or a gallery. Clare saw the shock heads imprisoned under an arm, or going to butt lowered like young rams; she could hear the deep breathing, and the muffled shock as limbs and torsos closed anew together.

And the audience of girls cried out and applauded, or uttered little screams when a fall seemed imminent; but the wrestlers themselves were silent, save for their heavy breathing; and the feminine cries and rustlings of admiration or dismay formed the natural accompaniment to the masculine concentration.

The wrestling over, the wrestlers descended to mix in with the girls, and the competition was eager and frank among the girls to get possession of one of these heroes and to keep him by her side for the rest of the afternoon. Only Annabel Blagdon, the belle, remained unexcited and scornful; she affected to despise the mere wrestlers: broadstick was the only game for her, as she had already advertised, and her smiles were reserved for some broadstick champion with his broken head. Therefore the wrestlers made for her all the more; made awkward advances towards her, neglecting the blandishments of the others which were lavished too cheaply upon them. But she scarcely answered; she knew her power, she knew and savoured the irritation of her sisters; she tapped her foot in its white stocking and black strapped shoe, and scorned the wrestlers for their undamaged skins, though secretly she could not help esteeming their broad shoulders and their narrow loins.

Job Lackland meanwhile had struck up a tune on his crazy fiddle, and made the air gay with his old jingling melody, until the tapping of Gorwyn’s little drum announced a fresh event; this was a race after a cheese down the steepest side of the hill, an all-but-perpendicular bank, round which the ordinary pedestrian would have skirted, but the lads started down it helter-skelter after the round cheese which was bowling down, bumping and jumping, after its send-off push. Some few of them kept their feet, others slithered down on their backsides, like boys on an ice-slide, some in their effort to keep upright tumbled head over heels; one, a wag, went down, rolled round in a ball, hands locked under knees, in a series of somersaults.

No one was hurt, and the girls peering after them over the top, laughed and danced in delight as the medley of arms and legs and bodies reached the bottom, and a scrum for the prize ensued. It was finally carried off by Olver Lovel, who, it was averred, crept in between the scrambling legs and fetched it away in a moment when the object of the race was forgotten, and only the fun of the scrimmage remembered.

No one quite knew in what spirit to take Olver’s success. It was too unpopular for congratulations to ring genuine, so most of the party turned aside and pretended to be busy with other things, sooner than betray their disappointment,—for they were kindly folk,—and to spare themselves the necessity of smiling to Olver. In fact, it was felt that a slight chill had been cast over the afternoon by the simpleton getting the better of the cheese.

As for Olver he was quite happy with his cheese, which was large and round, and beside which he sat at a little distance on the grass, occasionally patting it and stroking its smooth cool rotundity. Clare let her interest stray from the platform, in order to observe him; like most of the others he had put a wreath of sorrel and grasses round his hat, but whereas the others acquired thereby merely a merry-making, country appearance, Olver was made to look crazy and erratic, and twice as simple as usual. He sat now on the grass making a daisy-chain to go round the belly of his cheese; his legs were stretched out childishly straight in front of him, and his shovel hat with the waving wreath was bent down over his occupation.