The Romantic

below Barrow Farm. John Conway lay at her feet. The

gables, the middle one advancing, the front built out there in a

ne. All their rooms. Hers and Gwinnie's under the near gable by the fir-trees, Mr. and Mr

ld by its wall, spilling trails of mauve campanula, brimming with pink phlox

irteen to December-to March nineteen-fourteen, to June-she had been at the

e, under the elms, she could see Gwinnie astride over the

came down the flagged path between the lavender bush

is chest showed a red-brown V in the open neck of his sweater. He had been

e minute-looking down. I wan

ha

e. 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

readful things goi

orget things…. I shall call you Jeanne. You ought to wear armour and a

. I don't thi

g what he would

the spring before he came? But she had been happy all that time without him, even in the hard, frost-bitin

t. No wonder she was beg

ohn

ll you sta

farming if that's what you mean.

did yo

into th

dn't yo

something wrong with my eyes….

o have been doing t

to. We shall never be a

urton said

to work up from the plough-tail, if you must farm. He turned all of us through his workshops before he took us into the business. He liked to see

ind your le

my blood and nerves and memory. He sits there selling motor cars, but his people were fighting men. They fought to get

s why you

at isn'

? Did you ever feel anyth

ounding the earth to sow in it and make it feed you. Ploughing, Charlotte-Jeanne. Feeling the thrust and the drive through, and the th

you think

see it like that.

hills-look at them, the clean, quiet backs, smoothed with light. You could s

staggering and falling. You'd begin with a little hole in the forest like that gap in the belt on the sky-line, and you'd go on hacking and cutting. You'd go on…. If you didn't those damned trees would come up round you and

fa

be. Something's happened to it. S

kes you

ing on earth, Jeanne, has be

time. There's Gwinnie semaphoring. Do you know old Burton's going to keep us on? He'

nt to stay

the

n, so do I. Th

, "and come along.

t him, at the arch of his long, slender back dropping to the narrow hips. She could feel the s

ngth. She set her teeth and pressed her feet to the groun

rength of her pull. As they ran down the field he still

*

r the gable-the hot room that smelt of plaster and of t

nto her pillow with a final shrug of her

d caring was another. Thinking was the antidote to caring. If she had let her mind play freely over Gibson Her

ght in his mind. His mind was like his body, clean and cold and beautiful. Set on fire only by d

clear to her in the darkness; she found herself turning them over and over, as if positiv

wung 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 G

ng? She'll break her back with it." And he shouted up, "Tha

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

im in the yard, by the wall, bent double, shivering and retching. And she had sung out t

tight and hard, like Burton's wh

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

let her go before the car came. She could see the bla

. She had imagined it. She imagined all sorts of things. If she could make them bad en

*

ie, that's where I'

yard on the top of Stow-hill. The long path went straight betwe

you could almost breat

e in my coffin. When I'

live. Don't tal

it-the supreme toss up. After all, death

se d

de

talk ab

death

, m

eath,

was hard now, but his eyes shone at her,

there was one cruelty, one bruta