The Romantic | Page 8

was the antidote to caring. If she had let her mind play freely over Gibson Herbert in the beginning--But Gibson stopped her thinking, and John Conway made her think. That was the difference.
There was nothing about John that was like Gibson. Not a look, not a gesture, not the least thought in his mind. His mind was like his body, clean and cold and beautiful. Set on fire only by dreams; loving you in a dream, a dream that burned him up and left him cold to you. Cold and clean.
There were things she laid up against him, the poor dear; a secret hoard of grievances now clear to her in the darkness; she found herself turning them over and over, as if positively her mind owed his romantic apathy a grudge. Little things she remembered. Three things.
Yesterday in the hayfield, John pitching hay on to the cart, and she standing on the top of the load, flattening down the piles as he swung them up. Gwinnie came with a big fork, swanking, for fun, trying to pitch a whole haycock. In the dark of the room she could see Gwinnie's little body straining back from the waist, her legs stiffening, her face pink and swollen; and John's face looking at Gwinnie.
She shouted down at him, "Why can't you take the damned thing? She'll break her back with it." And he shouted up, "That's her look-out." (But he took it.) He didn't like Gwinnie.
That time. And the time Cowslip calved, the darling choosing the one night old Burton was away and Jim down with flu. She had to hold the lantern. Straw littered in the half-lighted shed. Cowslip swinging her bald-faced head round to you, her humble, sorrowful eyes imploring, between her groans and the convulsive heavings of her flanks. A noise between a groan and a bellow, a supreme convulsion. The dark wall, the white funnel of light from the lantern, and John's face in the flash....
But he had been sorry for Cowslip. Going out with the lantern afterwards she had found him in the yard, by the wall, bent double, shivering and retching. And she had sung out to him "Buck up, John. She's licked it clean. It's the dearest little calf you ever saw."
Pity. Pity could drag your face tight and hard, like Burton's when his mare, Jenny, died of colic.
But before that--the night they went to Stow Fair together; crossing the street at the sharp turn by the church gate, something happened. They hadn't heard the motor car coming; it was down on them before they could see it, swerving round her side of the street. He had had his hand tight on her arm to steer her through the crowd. When the car came ... when the car came ... he let go and jumped clean to the curb. She could feel the splash-board graze her thigh, as she sprang clear of it, quick, like a dog.
She was sure he jumped first. She was sure he hadn't let her go before the car came. She could see the blaze of the lamps and feel his grip slacken on her arm.
She wasn't sure. He couldn't have jumped. He couldn't have let go. Of course he hadn't. She had imagined it. She imagined all sorts of things. If she could make them bad enough she would stop thinking about him; she would stop caring. She didn't want to care.
* * * * *
"Charlotte--when I die, that's where I'd like to be buried."
Coming back from Bourton market they had turned into the churchyard on the top of Stow-hill. The long path went straight between the stiff yew cones through the green field set with graves.
"On the top, so high up you could almost breathe in your coffin here."
"I don't want to breathe in my coffin. When I'm dead I'm dead, and when I'm alive I'm alive. Don't talk about dying."
"Why not? Think of the gorgeous risk of it--the supreme toss up. After all, death's the most thrilling thing that happens."
"Whose death?"
"My death."
"Don't talk about it."
"Your death then."
"Oh, mine--"
"Our death, Jeanne."
He turned to her in the path. His mouth was hard now, but his eyes shone at her, smiling, suddenly warm, suddenly tender.
She knew herself then; she knew there was one cruelty, one brutality beyond bearing, John's death.

IV
John had gone away for a week.
If she could tire herself out, and not dream. In the slack days between hay-time and harvest she was never tired enough. She lay awake, teased by the rucking of the coarse hot sheet under her back, and the sweat that kept on sliding between her skin and her night gown. And she dreamed.
She was waiting in the beech ring on the top of the field. Inside the belt of the tree trunks a belt of