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 Daddy left, doing nothing. She could pay.
She would go down to the farm now, this minute, and see if they
would take her.
As she crossed the field she heard the farmyard gate open and shut.
The man came up towards her in the narrow path. He was looking at her as
he came, tilting his head back to get her clear into his eyes under the
shade of his slouched hat.
She called to him. "Is this your farm?" And he halted.
He smiled; the narrow smile of small, fine lips, with a queer, winged
movement of the moustache, a flutter of dark down. She saw his eyes, hard
and keen, dark blue, like the blade of a new knife.
"No. I wish it was my farm. Why?"
She could see now it wasn't. He was out tramping. The corner of a
knapsack bulged over his right shoulder. Rough greenish coat and
stockings--dust-coloured riding breeches--
But there was something about him. Something tall and distant; slender
and strange, like the fir-trees.
"Because whoever's farm it is I want to see him."
"You won't see him. There isn't anybody there."
"Oh."
He lingered.
"Do you know who he is?" she said.
"No. I don't know anything. I don't even know where I am. But I hope it's
Bourton-on-the-Hill."
"I'm afraid it isn't. It's Stow-on-the-Wold."
He laughed and shifted his knapsack to his left shoulder, and held up his
chin. His eyes slewed round, raking the horizon.
"It's all right," she said. "You can get to Bourton-on-the-Hill. I'll
show you." She pointed. "You see where that clump of trees is--like a
battleship, sailing over a green hill. That's about where it is."
"Thanks. I've been trying to get there all afternoon."
"Where have you come from?"
"Stanway. The other side of that ridge."
"You should have kept along the top. You've come miles out of your way."
"I like going out of my way. I did it for fun. For the adventure."
You could see he was innocent and happy, like a child. She turned and
went with him up the field.
She wouldn't go to Bourton-on-the-Hill. She would go back to the hotel
and see whether there was a wire for her from Gwinnie.... He liked going
out of his way.
"I suppose," he said, "there's _something_ the other side of that gate."
"I hate to tell you. There's a road there. It's your way. The end of the
adventure."
He laughed again, showing small white teeth this time. The gate fell to
with a thud and a click.
"What do I do now?"
"You go north. Straight ahead. Turn down the fifth or sixth lane on your
right--you'll see the sign-post. Then the first lane on your left.
That'll bring you out at the top of the hill."
"Thanks. Thanks most awfully." He raised his hat, backing from her,
holding her in his eyes till he turned.
He would be out of sight now at the pace he was going; his young,
slender, skimming stride.
She stood on the top of the rise and looked round. He was halting down
there at the bend by the grey cone of the lime kiln under the ash-tree.
He had turned and had his face towards her. Above his head the battleship
sailed on its green field.
He began to come back, slowly, as if he were looking for something
dropped on his path; then suddenly he stopped, turned again and was gone.
There was no wire from Gwinnie. She had waited a week now. She
wondered how long it would be before Gwinnie's mother's lumbago gave
in and let her go.
* * * * *
She knew it by heart now, the long, narrow coffee-room of the hotel. The
draped chimney piece and little oblong gilt-framed mirror at one end; at
the other the bowed window looking west on to the ash-tree and the
fields; the two straight windows between, looking south on to the street.
To-night the long table down the middle was set with a white cloth. The
family from Birmingham had come. Father and mother, absurd pouter-pigeons
swelling and strutting; two putty-faced unmarried daughters, sulking; one
married one, pink and proper, and the son-in-law, sharp eyed and
bald-headed. From their table in the centre they stared at her where she
dined by herself at her table in the bow.
Two days. She didn't think she could bear it one day more.
She could see herself as she came down the room; her knitted silk sport's
coat, bright petunia, flaming; thick black squares of her bobbed hair
hanging over eyebrows and ears. And behind, the four women's heads
turning on fat necks to look at her, reflected.
Gwinnie's letter was there, stuck up on the mantel-piece. Gwinnie could
come at the week-end; she implored her to hang on for five days longer,
not to leave Stow-on-the-Wold till they could see it together. A letter
from Gibson, repeating himself.
The family from Birmingham were going through the door; fat faces
straining furtively. If they knew--if they only knew. She stood, reading.
She heard the door shut. She could look in the glass now and amuse
herself by the sight they had stared at. The white face raised on the
strong neck and shoulders. Soft white nose, too thick at the nuzzling
tip. Brown eyes straight and wide open. Deep-grooved, clear-cut eyelids,
heavy lashes. Mouth--clear-cut arches, moulded corners, brooding. Her
eyes and her mouth. She could see they were strange. She could see they
were beautiful.
And herself, her mysterious, her secret self, Charlotte Redhead. It had
been secret and mysterious to itself once, before she knew.
She didn't want to be secret and mysterious. Of all things she hated
secrecy and mystery. She would tell Gwinnie about Gibson Herbert when she
came. She would have to tell her.
Down at the end of the looking-glass picture, behind her, the bow window
and the slender back of a man standing there.
* * * * *
She had got him clear by this time. If he went to-morrow he would
stay, moving about forever in your mind. The young body, alert and
energetic; slender gestures of hands. The small imperious head carried
high. The spare, oval face with the straight-jutting, pointed chin.
Honey-white face, thin dusk and bistre of eyelids and hollow temples
and the roots of the hair. Its look of being winged, lifted up, ready
to start off on an adventure. Hair brushed back in two sleek, dark
wings. The straight slender nose, with the close upward wings of its
nostrils (it wasn't Roman after all). Under it the winged flutter of
his mouth when he smiled.
Black eyebrows almost meeting, the outer ends curling up queerly, like
little moustaches. And always the hard, blue knife-blade eyes.
She knew his name the first day. He had told her. Conway. John
Roden Conway.
The family from Birmingham had frightened him. So he sat at her table in
the bow. They talked. About places--places. Places they had seen and
hadn't seen; places they wanted to see, and the ways you could get to
places. He trusted to luck; he risked things; he was out, he said, for
risk. She steered by the sun, by instinct, by the map in her head. She
remembered. But you could buy maps. He bought one the next day.
They went for long walks together. She found out the field paths. And
they talked. Long, innocent conversations. He told her about himself. He
came from Coventry. His father was a motor car manufacturer; that was why
_he_ liked tramping.
She told him she was going to learn farming. You could be happy all day
long looking after animals. Swinging up on the big bare backs of cart
horses and riding them to water; milking cows and feeding calves. And
lambs. When their mothers were dead. They would run to you then, and
climb into your lap and sit there--sucking your fingers.
As they came in and went out together the family from Birmingham
glared at them.
"Did you see how they glared?"
"Do you mind?" he said.
"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 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."