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 stones grew up, like the wall of the
garden. It went higher and higher and a hole opened in it, a long slit.
She stuck her head through the hole to look out over the hills.
This was the watch-tower. She knew, as if she remembered it, that John
had told her to go up and wait for him there; she was keeping watch for
him on the tower.
Grey mist flowed over the field like water. He was down there in the
field. If she went to him he would take her in his arms.
She was walking now on the highway to Bourton-on-the-Hill. At the dip
after the turn shallow water came out of the grass borders and ran
across the road, cold to her naked feet. She knew that something was
happening to John. He had gone away and she had got to find him and
bring him back. She had got to find the clear hill where the battleship
sailed over the field.
Instead of the ship she found the Barrow Farm beeches. They stood in a
thick ring round a clearing of grey grass and grey light. John was
standing there with a woman. She turned and showed her sharp face, the
colour of white clay, her long evil nose, her eyes tilted corner and the
thin tail of her mouth, writhing. That was Miss Lister who had been in
Gibson's office. She had John now.
Forms without faces, shrouded white women, larvae slipped from the black
grooves of the beech trunks; they made a ring round him with their
bodies, drew it in tighter and tighter. The grey light beat like a pulse
with the mounting horror.
She cried out his name, and her voice sounded tragic and immense; sharp
like a blade of lightning screaming up to the top of the sky. A black
iron curtain crashed down before her and cut off the dream.
Gwinnie looked up over the crook of her knee from the boot she was
lacing.
"You made no end of a row in your sleep, Sharlie."
* * * * *
She had dreamed about him again, the next night. He was walking with her
on the road from the town to the Farm. By the lime kiln at the turn he
disappeared. He had never been there, really.
She had gone out to look for him. The road kept on curling round like a
snake, bringing her back and back to the white gate of the Farm.
When she got through the gate she stepped off the field on to the low
bridge over a black canal. The long, sharp-pointed road cut straight as a
dyke through the flat fields, between two lines of slender trees, tall
poles with tufted tops.
She knew she was awake now because the light whitened and the wind moved
in the tree tufts and the road felt hard under her feet. When she came to
the village, to the long grey walls with narrow shutters, she knew John
was there. He came down the street towards the canal bridge. A group of
women and children walked with him, dressed in black. Dutch women. Dutch
babies. She could see their overalls and high caps and large, upturned
shoes very black and distinct in the white light. This was real.
They pointed their fingers and stared at her with secretive, inimical
faces. Terror crept in over the street, subtle, drifting and penetrating
like an odour.
John's face was happy and excited; that was how she knew him. His face
was real, its happiness and excitement were real. But as he passed her it
changed; it turned on her with a look she didn't know. Eyes of hatred,
eyes that repudiated and betrayed her.
* * * * *
The third night; the third dream.
She had lost John and was looking for him; walking a long time through a
country she could no longer see or remember. She came out of blank space
to the river bridge and the red town. She could see the road
switchbacking over the bridge and turning sharp and slanting up the river
bank to the ramparts.
Red fortresses above the ramparts, a high red town above the fortresses,
a thin red tower above the town. The whole thing looked dangerous and
unsteady, as if any minute it would topple over. She knew John was there.
Something awful was happening to him, and he wanted her.
When she stepped on the bridge the river swelled and humped itself up to
the arch. It flooded. The bridge walls made a channel for the gush. It
curled over the bank and came curving down the slant road from the
ramparts, heavy and clear, like melted glass.
She climbed up and up through the water and round behind the fortress to
the street at the top. She could see the thin tower break and lean
forward like a red crane above the houses. She had to get to the top
before the street fell down. John was shut up in the last house. She ran
under the tower as it fell.
The house stood still, straight and tall. John was lying in the dark room
behind the closed shutters. He wanted her. She could hear him calling to
her "Jeanne! Jeanne!" She couldn't see in. She couldn't open the door.
"Jeanne!"
The wall split off and leaned forward.
She woke suddenly to the tapping and splashing of the rain.
V
Feeding time and milking time were done; in his jutting room over the
door-place John was washing and dressing for Sunday evening. He called
out to her through his window, "Go up to our seat and wait for me there."
He had come back again, suddenly, that morning, a day before they had
expected him.
Charlotte came out of the hot field into the cool room of the beech ring.
She sniffed up the clean, sharp smell of sap from the rough seat that she
and John had put up there, sawing and hacking and hammering all Sunday
afternoon. Every evening when the farm work was done they would sit there
together, inside the round screen of the beeches.
The farm people wouldn't disturb them; not even Mr. Burton, now, looking
in, smiling the fat, benevolent smile that blessed them, and going away;
the very calves were so well used to them that they had left off pushing
their noses through the tree trunks and staring.
John's window faced her where she sat; she could see his head passing and
passing across the black window space. To her sharp, waiting soul Barrow
Farm took on a sudden poignant and foreign beauty. The house was yellow
where the rain had soaked it, gold yellow like a sun-struck southern
house, under the black plume of the firs, a yellow that made the sky's
blue solid and thick. The grass, bright green after the rain, stretched
with the tight smoothness of velvet over the slopes and ridges of the
field. A stripe of darker green, where their feet had trodden down the
blades, led straight as a sheep's track from the garden gate to the
opening of the ring.
To think that she had dreamed bad dreams in a place like this. She
thought: "There must be something wrong about me, anyhow, to dream bad
dreams about John."
John was coming up the field, walking slowly, his hands thrust in his
pockets, his eyes fixed steadily on a point in front of him that his mind
didn't see, drawn back in some intense contemplation. He strolled into
the ring so slowly that she had time to note the meditative gestures of
his shoulders and chin. He stood beside her, very straight and tall, not
speaking, still hiding his hands in his pockets, keeping up to the last
minute his pose of indestructible tranquillity. He was so close that she
could hear his breathing and feel his coat brushing her shoulder.
He seated himself, slowly, without a break in the silence of his
meditation.
She knew that something wonderful and beautiful was going to happen. It
had happened; it was happening now, growing more certain and more real
with every minute that she waited for John to say something. If nothing
changed, if this minute that she was living now prolonged itself, if it
went on for ever and ever, that would be happiness enough.
If she could keep still like this for ever--Any movement would be
dangerous. She was afraid almost to breathe.
Then she remembered. Of course, she would have to _tell_ him.
She could feel the jerk and throb in John's breathing, measuring off the
moments of his silence. Her thoughts came and went. "When he says he
cares for me I shall have to tell him"--"This is going on for ever. If he
cared for me he would have said it before now."--"It doesn't matter. He
can care or not as he likes. Nothing can stop my caring."
Then she was aware of her will, breaking through her peace, going out
towards him, fastening on his mind to make him care; to make him say he
cared, now, this minute. She was aware of her hands, clenched and
unclenched, pressing the sharp edge of the seat into their palms as she
dragged back her will.
She was quiet now.
John was looking at his own loose clasped hands and smiling. "Yes," he
said, "yes. Yes." It was as if he had said, "This will go on. Nothing
more than this can ever happen. But as long as we live it will go on."
She had a sense almost of relief.
"Charlotte--"
"John--"
"You asked me why I came here. You must have known why."
"I didn't. I don't."
"Can't you think?"
"No, John. I've left off thinking. _My_ thinking's never any use."
"If you _did_ think you'd know it was you."
"_Me_?"
"If it wasn't you just at first it was your face. There are faces that do
things to you, that hurt you when they're not there. Faces of people you
don't know in the least. You see them once and they never let you alone
till you've seen them again. They draw you after them, back and back.
You'd commit any sin just to see them again once....
"... You've got that sort of face. When I saw you the first time--Do
you remember? You came towards me over the field. You stopped and
spoke to me."
"Supposing I hadn't?"
"It wouldn't have mattered. I'd have followed you just the same. Wherever
you'd gone I'd have gone, too. I very nearly turned back then."
She remembered. She saw him standing in the road at the turn.
"I knew I had to see you again. But I waited two days to make sure. Then
I came ...
"... And when I'd gone I kept on seeing your face. It made me come back
again. And the other day--I tried to get away from you. I didn't mean to
come back; but I had to. I can't stand being away from you. And yet--
"... Oh well--there it is. I had to tell you ... I couldn't if I didn't
trust you."
"You tried to get away from me--You didn't mean to come back."
"I tell you I _had_ to. It's no use trying."
"But you didn't want to come back.... _That's_ why I dreamed about you."
"Did you dream about me?"
"Yes. Furiously. Three nights running. I dreamed you'd got away and when
I'd found you a black thing came down and cut you off. I dreamed you'd
got away again, and I met you in a foreign village with a lot of foreign
women, and you looked at me and I knew you hated me. You wouldn't know
me. You went by without speaking and left me there."
"My God--you thought I could do that?"
"I dreamed it. You don't think in dreams. You feel. You see things."
"You see things that don't exist, that never can exist, things you've
thought about people. If I thought that about myself, Jeanne, I'd blow my
brains out now, so that it shouldn't happen."
"That wasn't the worst dream. The third was the worst. You were in a
dreadful, dangerous place. Something awful was happening, and you wanted
me, and I couldn't get to you."
"No, that wasn't the worst dream. I _did_ want you, and you knew it."
She thought: "He cares. He doesn't want to care, but he does. And he
trusts me. I shall have to tell him ..."
"There's something," she said, "I've got to tell you."
* * * * *
He must have known. He must have guessed.
He had listened with a gentle, mute attention, as you listen to a story
about something that you remember, that interests you still, his eyes
fixed on his own hands, his clear, beautiful face dreamy and inert.
"You see," he said, "you did trust me. You wouldn't tell me all that if
you didn't."
"Of course I trust you. I told you because you trusted me. I thought--I
thought you ought to know. I daresay you did know--all the time."
"No. No, I didn't. I shouldn't have believed it was in you."
"It isn't in me now. It's gone clean out of me. I shall never want that
sort of thing again."
"I know _that_." He said it almost irritably. "I mean I shouldn't have
thought you could have cared for a brute like that.... But the brutes
women _do_ care for ..."
"I suppose I did care. But I don't feel as if I'd cared. I don't feel as
if it had ever really happened. I can't believe it did. You see, I've
forgotten such a lot of it. I couldn't have believed that once, that you
could go and do a thing like that and forget about it. You'd have thought
you'd remember it as long as you lived."
"You couldn't live if you remembered...."
"Oh, John, do you think it was as horrible as all that?"
His face moved, flashed into sudden passion.
"I think _he_ was as horrible as that. He makes it
horrible--inconceivably horrible."
"But--he wasn't."
"You've told me. He was cruel to you. And he lied and funked."
"It wasn't like him--it wasn't _like_ him to lie and funk. It was my
fault. I made the poor thing jumpy. I let him run such whopping risks.
_The_ horrible thing is thinking what I made him."
"He was a liar and a coward, Charlotte; a swine."
"I tell you he _wasn't_. Oh, why are we so beastly hard on each other?
Everybody's got their breaking-point. I don't lie about the things he
lied about; I don't funk the things he funked. But when my time comes I
daresay I shall funk and lie."
"Charlotte--are you sure you don't care for him?"
"Of course I'm sure. I told you I'd forgotten all about it. _This_ is
what I shall remember all my life. Your being here, my being with you.
It's the _real_ thing."
"You wouldn't want to go back?"
"To him?"
"No. To that sort of thing."
"You mean with--just anybody?"
"I mean with--somebody you cared about. Could you do without it and go
on caring?"
"Yes. If _he_ could. If he could go on. But he wouldn't."
"'He' wouldn't, Charlotte. But _I_ would.... You know I _do_ care for
you?"
"I thought you _did_--I mean I thought you were beginning to. That's why
I told you what happened, though I knew you'd loathe me."
"I don't. I'm glad you told me. I'm glad it happened. I mean I'm glad
you worked it off on him.... You got it over; you've had your
experience; you know all about it; you know how long that sort of thing
lasts and how it ends. The baseness, the cruelty of it ... I'm like you,
Charlotte, I don't want any more of it.... When I say I care for you I
mean I want to be with you, to be with you _always_. I'm not happy when
you're not there....
"... I say, I wish you'd leave this place and come away and live with me
somewhere."
"Where?"
"There's my farm. My father's going to give me one if I stick to
this job. We could run it together. There are all sorts of jolly
things we could do together.... Would you like to live with me,
Charlotte, on my farm?"
"Yes."
"I mean--live with me without _that_."
"Yes; without that."
"It isn't that I don't care for you. It's because I care so awfully, so
much more than anybody else could. I want to go on caring, and it's the
only way. People don't know that. They don't know what they're
destroying with their blind rushing together. All the delicate,
exquisite sensations. Charlotte, I can get all the ecstasy I want by
just sitting here and looking at you, hearing your voice, touching
you--like this." His finger-tips brushed the bare skin of her arm. "Even
thinking of you ...
"... And all that would go. Everything would go....
"... But our way--nothing could end it."
"I can see one thing that would end it. If you found somebody you really
cared about."
"Oh _that_--You mean if I--It wouldn't happen, and if it did, what
difference would it make?"
"You mean you'd come back?"
"I mean I shouldn't have left you."
"Still, you'd have gone to her. John, I don't think I could bear it."
"You wouldn't have to bear it long. It wouldn't last."
"Why shouldn't it?"
"Because--You don't understand, Charlotte--if I know a woman wants me, it
makes me loathe her."
"It wouldn't, if you wanted _her_."
"That would be worse. I should _hate_ her then if she made me go to her."
"You don't know."
"Oh, don't I!"
"You can't, if you feel like that about it."
"You say you feel like that about it yourself."
"That's because I've been through it."
"Do you suppose," he said, "I haven't?"