Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel

by V. Sackville-West

Simple, thought Clare; but how quick and cunning were his fingers! that was no unmixed simplicity.

He reached out his daisy-chain to measure against the cheese; he was engrossed and took no notice of any one or of anything. She wondered whether Nicholas Lovel knew that Olver was up here; usually he kept his brother away from any gathering of the villagers, lest he annoy them in any way. She had already noticed that Nicholas was not of the party and smiled to imagine him as one of that hearty gang. She even wondered the more, so aloof did he keep himself from the rest of the village, that he allowed his brother to join with them. But she remembered then that he made laws for himself only, and did not expect others to keep them; he was too indifferent, rather than too tolerant, for that.

Clare thought that she would wait to see the broadstick contest, which apparently was about to take place, and that she would then ride away, for she knew that as the afternoon advanced, and especially as the discreet twilight arrived to throw its veil over the passions aroused by the prowess of the games, the party would become less rowdy, less athletic, and more sentimental, more inclined to break up into couples and to dispose itself thus about the grass, where no cover existed, but where privacy was guaranteed by a tacit convention that all wore blinkers. Clare remembered then,—what Martha Sparrow, gossiping, had told her,—that Olver Lovel sometimes made himself very unpopular by creeping up noiselessly behind some pair just as they were circling round the most critical stages of their courtship, either to shout loudly in their ears or else to tickle the backs of their necks with a straw, so that it had even been discussed in the Waggon of Hay whether he should be ostracised from the festival of the scouring. The threat of ostracism, however, had not been carried out. They were all too much afraid of Olver and of the tricks he might play in revenge on them, worse than shouting in their ears, or tickling the backs of their necks, or even than putting caterpillars up girl’s legs, which he had been known to do; and in a less degree they were also afraid of his brother Nicholas, not to mention the old mother, whom none of them had ever seen, and for whose continued existence they had to take Nicholas’ word for granted.

Perhaps this fear of the Lovels, and of the queer powers they were reputed to possess, weighed even more with the ignorant village folk than the rough, kindly pity they felt for Nicholas in the affliction put upon him.

Clare was eager to watch the broadstick play, which she had never seen; Martha had told her that those who had taken part were to be seen going about for days afterwards with bandaged heads, and even kept the bandage on for longer than they need, as a badge that they practised the old sturdy sport, and that he who carried off the honours was entitled to the respect of the men in the Waggon of Hay, be they natives or strangers passing through, and that there wasn’t a girl in the parish would refuse him her lips. Martha, quite carried away, had given her these accounts with enthusiasm. Clare had teased her, “I believe you remember a scouring when you were young, Martha,” and Martha had blushed and bridled, and declared she saw no harm in having once been as young as Miss Clare herself, and went on to relate that once she had been to the scouring of the great White Horse of White Horse Vale, where teams of the Wiltshire men met teams of the Berkshire men at wrestling and broadstick, so that it was not the little family affair of the King’s Avon White Horse, but a great celebration that lasted two days, and included roundabouts and side-show booths. But broadstick play was dying out, and young men were not so keen to get their heads broken as once they had been, which was a pity, for it showed up their manliness, in spite of what the parsons might say; that was Martha’s view.

Therefore Clare was especially anxious to see the play, for she thought she might never have an opportunity of seeing it again.

Just then she heard the trot of a horse on the turf behind her, turf baked so hard that it rang hollow. She did not turn round, but sat waiting for the horseman to come up beside her. “So,” she thought to herself, as a little expectant smile parted her lips, “Lovel has come after all to have a look at the scouring.” The trot slackened into a walk, and the head of a horse came alongside that of her own pony. A voice said, “Good afternoon, Miss Warrener,” and looking round she saw a man with iron-grey hair in the act of lifting his hat to her; but he was not the man she had expected.

“Mr. Calladine,” she said, smiling after her first little shock of surprise and disappointment.

“So you, too, have come to look on at the scouring,” he began. “Whenever I hear of a scouring in the neighbourhood I am enticed to watch it, and every time I go home realising that I have wasted my time. But, after all, as well ride here as anywhere else, and better, if I am to have the good fortune of meeting you.”

Clare was far too unpolished and simple to know how to reply to such compliments. She only blushed, was angry with herself for blushing, and stared the harder in silence at the party on the grass. Calladine saw her deepened colour, and savoured to the full its unconscious charm; he leant forward with a creaking of saddle-leather, his gloved hand resting with the bunch of reins on the peak of his saddle.