“Well enough; these country girls make nothing of it. Lightly born as lightly come by, I always say. Yet at one time it was a question whether they could save the baby.” Mrs. Quince added some details. “Yes, madam. Her husband had to ride to Marlborough and brought the doctor out a-pillion, and how he could ha’ done it with the night as black as pitch, and the snow falling, and the roads hedge-deep in snow, is what the folk are all asking themselves. They saw him start, but no one saw him come back, but sure enough when they went to unbar their doors this morning there were the tracks of a horse up the street. A fine boy, they say. It’s fortunate he hasn’t taken after his Uncle Olver.”
“Yes,” said Clare.
“It’s my opinion, madam, I don’t know if it’s yours too,—that people like that have no business to get children. ’Tisn’t fair, as a matter of conscience, when you don’t know what dark blood you may be handing on. Anybody has only got to look at the Lovels to know there’s no good in them,—well, they ought to restrain themselves, that’s what I say.”
Seeing that Clare did not reply, Mrs. Quince resumed after a moment, “There always were things about those Lovels that weren’t natural. Now here’s another thing: how did he ride from King’s Avon to Marlborough and back on a night like last night, if something unholy wasn’t in league with him? No other man in the village could have done it, and there’s not many that would have tried. No, let the baby go, they’d have said, and the woman too, if need be. And he’s always out on those hills; if he had to go after sheep there would be some sense in it, but he just goes straying alone when most men are glad enough to keep their fireside. He’s been seen on the top of White Horse Hill, in the middle of a blizzard fit to cut you in half. And I have heard it told, that after he’s passed by, the Grey Wethers have been found uncovered; yes, even though they were at the bottom of the deepest drift there they’ll be, sticking up black in the middle of the snow.”
“You can’t believe everything you’re told, Mrs. Quince.”
“Well, that’s as it may be, madam. All the same, I stick to it that there is something unholy about those Lovels; it’s easy to say the younger one is daft, but there’s nothing daft about Nicholas,—far from it. So why does he look so dark and queer? and why must he pass on his sly Egyptian blood to an English girl? if he must get children, let him get them on one of his own sort, that’s what I say.”
Here Calladine came in.
“Secrets?” he asked in his most urbane manner, seeing Mrs. Quince become silent in the midst of garrulity.
“No,” said Clare. “Mrs. Quince was telling me that Lovel’s wife has had a son, and that Lovel had to go to Marlborough in the middle of the night to fetch the doctor.”
“Dear me, that’s a daring, uncomfortable thing to do,” said Calladine, smiling in a patronising way.