The Romantic | Page 3

than that. Except that one dreadful minute last year when he had wanted to raise her salary--afterwards--and she had said "What _for_?" And their faces had turned from each other, flaming with the fire of her refusal.
What had he really thought of her? Did he think she wanted to get anything out of their passion? What could you want to get out of it, or give, but joy? Pure joy. Beauty.
At the bend of the road the trees parted. A slender blue channel of sky flowed overhead between the green tops.
If not joy, then truth; reality. The clear reality of yourself, Charlotte Redhead. Of Gibson Herbert. Even now it would be all right so long as you knew what it was and didn't lie about it.
That evening in the office when he came to her--she could remember the feeling that shot up suddenly and ran over her and shook her brain, making her want him to take her in his arms. It was that. It had never been anything but that. She had wanted him to take her, and he knew it. Only, if he hadn't come to her and looked at her she wouldn't have thought of it; she would have gone on working for him without thinking. That was what he didn't know, what he wouldn't have believed if you had told him.
She had come to the top of the hill. At the crossroads she saw the grey front of her inn, the bow window jutting, small black shining panes picked out with the clean white paint of the frame-work.
Upstairs their breakfast table stood in the window bow as they had left it. Bread he had broken on the greasy plate. His cup with the coffee he couldn't drink. Pathetic, if you hadn't remembered.
"You might as well. If it isn't you, it'll be another woman, Sharlie. If it isn't me, it'll be another man."
That was what he had thought her.
It didn't matter.

II
She stood at the five roads, swinging her stick, undecided.
The long line of the beeches drew her, their heads bowed to the north as the south wind had driven them. The blue-white road drew her, rising, dipping and rising; between broad green borders under grey walls.
She walked. She could feel joy breaking loose in her again, beating up and up, provoked and appeased by the strong, quick movement of her body. The joy she had gone to her lover for, the pure joy he couldn't give her, coming back out of the time before she knew him.
Nothing mattered when your body was light and hard and you could feel the ripple and thrill of the muscles in your stride.
She wouldn't have to think of him again. She wouldn't have to think of any other man. She didn't want any more of that again, ever. She could go on and on like this, by herself, without even Gwinnie; not caring a damn.
If she had been cruel--if she had wanted to hurt Effie. She hadn't meant to hurt her.
She thought of things. Places she had been happy in. She loved the high open country. Fancy sitting with Gibson in his stuffy office, day after day, for five years. Fancy going to Glasgow with him. Glasgow--
No. No.
She thought: "I can pretend it didn't happen. Nothing's happened. I'm myself. The same me I was before."
Suddenly she stood still. On the top of the ridge the whole sky opened, throbbing with light, immense as the sky above a plain. Hills--thousands of hills. Thousands of smooth curves joining and parting, overlapping, rolling together.
What did you want? What did you want? How could you want anything but this for ever?
Across the green field she saw the farm. Tall, long-skirted elms standing up in a row before the sallow ricks and long grey barns. Under the loaded droop of green a grey sharp-pointed gable, topped by a stone ball. Four Scotch firs beside it, slender and strange.
She stood leaning over the white gate, looking and thinking.
Funny things, colts grazing. Short bodies that stopped at their shoulders; long, long necks hanging down like tails, pushing their heads along the ground. She could hear their nostrils breathing and the scrinch, scrinch of their teeth tearing 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