The Romantic | Page 4

the grass.
You could be happy living on a farm, looking after the animals.
You could learn farming. People paid.
Suddenly she knew what she would do. She would do that. It wasn't
reasonable to go on sitting in a stuffy office doing work you hated
when you could pack up and go. She couldn't have stuck to it for five
years if it hadn't been for Gibson--falling in love with him, the most
unreasonable thing of all. She didn't care if you had to pay to learn
farming. You had to pay for everything you learned. There were the
two hundred pounds poor dear Daddy left, doing nothing. She could
pay.
She would go down to the farm now, this minute, and see if they would
take her.
As she crossed the field she heard the farmyard gate open and shut.
The man came up towards her in the narrow path. He was looking at
her as he came, tilting his head back to get her clear into his eyes under
the shade of his slouched hat.
She called to him. "Is this your farm?" And he halted.
He smiled; the narrow smile of small, fine lips, with a queer, winged
movement of the moustache, a flutter of dark down. She saw his eyes,
hard and keen, dark blue, like the blade of a new knife.
"No. I wish it was my farm. Why?"
She could see now it wasn't. He was out tramping. The corner of a
knapsack bulged over his right shoulder. Rough greenish coat and
stockings--dust-coloured riding breeches--
But there was something about him. Something tall and distant; slender
and strange, like the fir-trees.
"Because whoever's farm it is I want to see him."
"You won't see him. There isn't anybody there."
"Oh."
He lingered.
"Do you know who he is?" she said.

"No. I don't know anything. I don't even know where I am. But I hope
it's Bourton-on-the-Hill."
"I'm afraid it isn't. It's Stow-on-the-Wold."
He laughed and shifted his knapsack to his left shoulder, and held up
his chin. His eyes slewed round, raking the horizon.
"It's all right," she said. "You can get to Bourton-on-the-Hill. I'll show
you." She pointed. "You see where that clump of trees is--like a
battleship, sailing over a green hill. That's about where it is."
"Thanks. I've been trying to get there all afternoon."
"Where have you come from?"
"Stanway. The other side of that ridge."
"You should have kept along the top. You've come miles out of your
way."
"I like going out of my way. I did it for fun. For the adventure."
You could see he was innocent and happy, like a child. She turned and
went with him up the field.
She wouldn't go to Bourton-on-the-Hill. She would go back to the hotel
and see whether there was a wire for her from Gwinnie.... He liked
going out of his way.
"I suppose," he said, "there's something the other side of that gate."
"I hate to tell you. There's a road there. It's your way. The end of the
adventure."
He laughed again, showing small white teeth this time. The gate fell to
with a thud and a click.
"What do I do now?"
"You go north. Straight ahead. Turn down the fifth or sixth lane on
your right--you'll see the sign-post. Then the first lane on your left.
That'll bring you out at the top of the hill."
"Thanks. Thanks most awfully." He raised his hat, backing from her,
holding her in his eyes till he turned.
He would be out of sight now at the pace he was going; his young,
slender, skimming stride.
She stood on the top of the rise and looked round. He was halting down
there at the bend by the grey cone of the lime kiln under the ash-tree.
He had turned and had his face towards her. Above his head the
battleship sailed on its green field.
He began to come back, slowly, as if he were looking for something

dropped on his path; then suddenly he stopped, turned again and was
gone.
There was no wire from Gwinnie. She had waited a week now. She
wondered how long it would be before Gwinnie's mother's lumbago
gave in and let her go.
* * * * *
She knew it by heart now, the long, narrow coffee-room of the hotel.
The draped chimney piece and little oblong gilt-framed mirror at one
end; at the other the bowed window looking west on to the ash-tree and
the fields; the two straight windows between, looking south on to the
street.
To-night the long table down the middle was set with a white cloth.
The family from Birmingham had come. Father and mother, absurd
pouter-pigeons swelling and strutting; two putty-faced unmarried