The Romantic | Page 6

pink, pushed out mouth, the little routing nose, the thick
grey eyes, suddenly turned on you, staring.
Gwinnie had climbed up on to the bed to hear about it. She sat hunched
up with her arms round her knees rocking herself on the end of her
spine; and though she stared she still rocked. She was happy and
excited because of her holiday.
"It can't make any difference, Gwin. I'm the same Charlotte. Don't tell
me you didn't know I was like that."
"Of course I knew it. I know a jolly lot more than you think, kid."
"I'm not a kid--if you are two years older."
"Why--you're not twenty-four yet.... It's the silliness of it beats me.
Going off like that, with the first silly cuckoo that turns up."
"He wasn't the first that turned up, I mean. He was the third that
counted. There was poor Binky, the man I was engaged to. And Dicky
Raikes; he wanted me to go to Mexico with him. Just for a lark, and I
wouldn't. And George Corfield. He wanted me to marry him. And I
wouldn't."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because Dicky's always funny when you want to be serious and
George is always serious when you want to be funny. Besides, he's so

good. His goodness would have been too much for me altogether.
Fancy beginning with George."
"This seems to have been a pretty rotten beginning, anyway."
"The beginning was all right. It's the end that's rotten. The really awful
thing was Effie."
"Look here--" Gwinnie left off rocking and swung herself to the edge
of the bed. Her face looked suddenly mature and full of wisdom. "I
don't believe in that Effie business. You want to think you stopped it
because of Effie; but you didn't. You've got to see it straight.... It was
his lying and funking that finished you. He fixed on the two things you
can't stand."
The two things. The two things.
"I know what you want. You want to kill him in my mind, so that I
shan't think of him any more. I'm not thinking. I only wanted you to
know."
"Does anybody else know?"
She shook her head.
"Well--don't you let them."
Gwinnie slid to her feet and went to the looking-glass. She stood there
a minute, pinning closer the crushed bosses of her hair. Then she
turned.
"What are you going to do with that walking-tour johnnie?"
"John--Conway? You couldn't do anything with him if you tried. He's
miles beyond all that."
"All _what_?"
"The rotten things people do. The rotten things they think. You're safe
with him, Gwinnie. Safe. Safe. You've only to look at him."
"I have looked at him. Whatever you do, don't tell him, Sharlie."

III
Charlotte sat on the top of the slope in the field below Barrow Farm.
John Conway lay at her feet. The tall beeches stood round them in an
unclosed ring.
Through the opening she could see the farmhouse, three ball-topped
gables, the middle one advancing, the front built out there in a huge
door-place that carried a cross windowed room under its roof.
Low heavy-browed mullions; the panes, black shining slits in the grey

and gold of the stone. All their rooms. Hers and Gwinnie's under the
near gable by the fir-trees, Mr. and Mrs. Burton's under the far gable by
the elms, John's by itself in the middle, jutting out.
She could see the shallow garden dammed up to the house out of the
green field by its wall, spilling trails of mauve campanula, brimming
with pink phlox and white phlox, the blue spires of the lupins piercing
up through the froth.
Sunday evening half an hour before milking-time. From September
nineteen-thirteen to December--to March nineteen-fourteen, to
June--she had been at the farm nine months. June--May--April. This
time three months ago John had come.
In the bottom of the field, at the corner by the yard-gate, under the elms,
she could see Gwinnie astride over the tilted bucket, feeding the calves.
It was Gwinnie's turn.
She heard the house door open and shut. The Burtons came down the
flagged path between the lavender bushes, leaving them to their peace
before milking time.
Looking down she saw John's eyes blinking up at her through their
lashes. His chest showed a red-brown V in the open neck of his sweater.
He had been quiet a long time. His voice came up out of his quietness,
sudden and queer.
"Keep your head like that one minute--looking down. I want your
eyelids.... Now I know."
"What?"
"What you're like. You're like Jeanne d'Arc.... There's a picture--the
photo of a stone head, I think--in a helmet, looking down, with big
drooped eyelids. If it isn't Jeanne it ought to be. Anyhow it's you....
That's what's