The Romantic Part 2

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 s.h.i.+fted 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 battles.h.i.+p, 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 battles.h.i.+p 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 gla.s.s 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-gla.s.s 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.