The Romantic | Page 7

been bothering me. I thought it was just because you had
black hair bobbed like a fifteen century page. But it isn't that. It's her
forehead and her blunt nose, and her innocent, heroic chin. And the
thick, beautiful mouth.... And the look--as if she could see behind her
eyelids--dreadful things going to happen to her. All the butchery."
"I don't see any dreadful things going to happen to me."
"No. Her sight was second sight; and your sight is memory. You never
forget things.... I shall call you Jeanne. You ought to wear armour and a
helmet." His voice ceased and began again. "What are you thinking
of?"

"I don't know. I don't think much, ever."
She was wondering what he would think if he knew.
She wondered what the farm would be like without him. Would it be
what it was last autumn and winter and in the spring before he came?
But she had been happy all that time without him, even in the hard,
frost-biting winter. When you had gone through that you knew the
worst of Barrow Farm. It made your face coarse, though.
Joan of Arc was a peasant. No wonder she was beginning to look like
her. If John went--
"John, shall you stay on here?"
"I don't know. I shall stick to farming if that's what you mean. Though
it isn't what I wanted."
"What did you want?"
"To go into the Army."
"Why didn't you then?"
"They wouldn't have me. There's something wrong with my eyes.... So
the land's got me instead."
"Me too. We ought to have been doing this all our lives."
"We'll jolly well have to. We shall never be any good indoors again."
"Has old Burton said anything?"
"I'm getting on. I can drive as straight a furrow as any man in
Gloucestershire. I've told my father that. He detests me; but he'd say
you ought to work up from the plough-tail, if you must farm. He turned
all of us through his workshops before he took us into the business. He
liked to see us soaked in dirt and oil, crawling on our stomachs under
his engines. He'd simply love to see me here standing up to my knees in
wet cow-dung."
"He won't mind your leaving him?"
"Not if I make a good thing out of this. Anyhow he knows he can't keep
me off it. If I can't fight I'll farm. It's in my blood and nerves and
memory. He sits there selling motor cars, but his people were fighting
men. They fought to get land; they fought to keep it. My mother's
people, the Rodens, were yeoman farmers. That's why my furrow's so
straight."
"And that's why you came here?"
"No. That isn't why."
"Aren't you glad you came? Did you ever feel anything like the peace

of it?"
"It's not the peace of it I want, Charlotte,--Jeanne, I mean. It's the fight.
Fighting with things that would kill you if you didn't. Wounding the
earth to sow in it and make it feed you. Ploughing, Charlotte--Jeanne.
Feeling the thrust and the drive through, and the thing listing over on
the slope. Seeing the steel blade shine, and the long wounds coming in
rows, hundreds of wounds, wet and shining."
"What makes you think of wounds?"
"I don't know. I see it like that. Cutting through."
"I don't see it like that one bit. The earth's so kind, so beautiful. And the
hills--look at them, the clean, quiet backs, smoothed with light. You
could stroke them. And the fields, those lovely coloured fans opening
and shutting."
"They're lovely because of what's been done to them. If those hills had
been left to themselves there'd have been nothing on them but trees.
Think of the big fight with the trees, the hacking through, the cutting.
The trunks staggering and falling. You'd begin with a little hole in the
forest like that gap in the belt on the sky-line, and you'd go on hacking
and cutting. You'd go on.... If you didn't those damned trees would
come up round you and jam you between their trunks and crush you to
red pulp.... Supposing this belt of beeches drew in and got tighter and
tighter--No. There's nothing really kind and beautiful on this earth.
Except your face. And even your face--"
"My face?--"
"Could be cruel. But it never will be. Something's happened to it. Some
cruelty. Some damnable cruelty."
"What makes you think so?"
"Every kind and beautiful thing on earth, Jeanne, has been made so by
some cruelty."
"That's all rot. Utter rot. You don't know what you're talking about....
It's milking time. There's Gwinnie semaphoring. Do you know old
Burton's going to keep us on? He'll pay us wages from this quarter. He
says we