The Romantic Part 3

"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 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 d.i.c.ky 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 d.i.c.ky'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-gla.s.s. 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, br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 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.