The Romantic | Page 5

daughters, sulking; one married one, pink and proper, and the
son-in-law, sharp eyed and bald-headed. From their table in the centre
they stared at her where she dined by herself at her table in the bow.
Two days. She didn't think she could bear it one day more.
She could see herself as she came down the room; her knitted silk
sport's coat, bright petunia, flaming; thick black squares of her bobbed
hair hanging over eyebrows and ears. And behind, the four women's
heads turning on fat necks to look at her, reflected.
Gwinnie's letter was there, stuck up on the mantel-piece. Gwinnie could
come at the week-end; she implored her to hang on for five days longer,
not to leave Stow-on-the-Wold till they could see it together. A letter
from Gibson, repeating himself.
The family from Birmingham were going through the door; fat faces
straining furtively. If they knew--if they only knew. She stood, reading.
She heard the door shut. She could look in the glass now and amuse
herself by the sight they had stared at. The white face raised on the
strong neck and shoulders. Soft white nose, too thick at the nuzzling tip.
Brown eyes straight and wide open. Deep-grooved, clear-cut eyelids,
heavy lashes. Mouth--clear-cut arches, moulded corners, brooding. Her
eyes and her mouth. She could see they were strange. She could see
they were beautiful.
And herself, her mysterious, her secret self, Charlotte Redhead. It had
been secret and mysterious to itself once, before she knew.

She didn't want to be secret and mysterious. Of all things she hated
secrecy and mystery. She would tell Gwinnie about Gibson Herbert
when she came. She would have to tell her.
Down at the end of the looking-glass picture, behind her, the bow
window and the slender back of a man standing there.
* * * * *
She had got him clear by this time. If he went to-morrow he would stay,
moving about forever in your mind. The young body, alert and
energetic; slender gestures of hands. The small imperious head carried
high. The spare, oval face with the straight-jutting, pointed chin.
Honey-white face, thin dusk and bistre of eyelids and hollow temples
and the roots of the hair. Its look of being winged, lifted up, ready to
start off on an adventure. Hair brushed back in two sleek, dark wings.
The straight slender nose, with the close upward wings of its nostrils (it
wasn't Roman after all). Under it the winged flutter of his mouth when
he smiled.
Black eyebrows almost meeting, the outer ends curling up queerly, like
little moustaches. And always the hard, blue knife-blade eyes.
She knew his name the first day. He had told her. Conway. John Roden
Conway.
The family from Birmingham had frightened him. So he sat at her table
in the bow. They talked. About places--places. Places they had seen
and hadn't seen; places they wanted to see, and the ways you could get
to places. He trusted to luck; he risked things; he was out, he said, for
risk. She steered by the sun, by instinct, by the map in her head. She
remembered. But you could buy maps. He bought one the next day.
They went for long walks together. She found out the field paths. And
they talked. Long, innocent conversations. He told her about himself.
He came from Coventry. His father was a motor car manufacturer; that
was why he liked tramping.
She told him she was going to learn farming. You could be happy all
day long looking after animals. Swinging up on the big bare backs of
cart horses and riding them to water; milking cows and feeding calves.
And lambs. When their mothers were dead. They would run to you then,
and climb into your lap and sit there--sucking your fingers.
As they came in and went out together the family from Birmingham
glared at them.

"Did you see how they glared?"
"Do you mind?" he said.
"Not a bit."
"No more do I. It doesn't matter what people like that do. Their souls
are horrible. They leave a glairy trail everywhere they go. If they were
dead--stretched out on their death beds--you'd see their souls, like long,
fat white slugs stretched out too, glued to their bodies.... You know
what they think? They think we met each other on purpose. They think
we're engaged."
"I don't care," she said. "It doesn't matter what they think."
They laughed at the silliness of the family from Birmingham. He had
been there five days.
* * * * *
"I--, sa-ay--"
Gwinnie's voice drawled in slow meditative surprise.
The brooding curiosity had gone out of her face. Gwinnie's face, soft
and schoolgirlish between the fawn gold bands and plaited ear bosses
of her hair, the