Romantic-May Sinclair

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1:01Chapter one of the Romantic. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by ex-patriot in Bangor, Maine. The Romantic by Mason Claire, epigraph. Every kind and beautiful thing on Earth has been made so by some cruelty, saying of the Romantic. Book one, Charlotte Redhead. Chapter one. They turned again at the end of the platform. The tale of her long averted stare was conscious of him, of his big, tweed-suited body and its behavior, squaring and swelling and tightening in its dignity, of its heavy swing to her shoulder as they turn. She could stave off the worse by not looking at him, by looking at other things in personal innocent things. The bright yellow, sharp-gabled station,

2:03the black girders of the bridge, the white signal post beside it holding out a stiff black banded arm, the two rails curving there with a flat white glitter and sweep of sives, pointed blades coming together, buried in the bend of the cutting. Small three-cornered fields, clean edge like the pieces of a puzzle, red brown and pure bright green, dovetailed under the high black bar of the bridge. She suppose you could paint that. Turn. Clear stillness after the rain. She caught herself smiling at the noise her boots made, clanking on the tiles, with the harsh joyous candor that he hated. He walked noiselessly with a jerk of bluff-nicker-bockered hips, raising himself on his toes like a cat. She could see him moving about in her room like that, in the half-darkness, feeling for his things with shamed, helpless gestures. She could see him tiptoeing down her staircase, furtive, afraid.

3:04Always afraid they would be found out. That would have ruined him. Oh, well, why should he have ruined himself for her? Why? But she had wanted, wanted to ruin herself for him, to stand superb and reckless facing the world with him, if that could have been the way of it. Turn. That road over the hill, under the yellow-painted canopy, sticking out from the good station, it would be the searing-sister road, the fossy way, he would trample along it when he was gone. Turn. He must have seen her looking at the clock, three minutes more. Suddenly, round the bend, under the bridge, the train, he was carrying it off fairly well, with his tight red face and his stare over her head when she looked at him, his straight smile when she said goodbye and good luck. And her silly hand clutching the window-ludge, she let go, quick, afraid he would turn sentimental at the end, but no, he was settling down heavily in his corner,

4:05blinking and puffing over his cigar. That was her knapsack lying on the seat there. She picked it up and slung it over her shoulder. Searing-sister are back to stow on the wall. If only he hadn't come there last night. If only he had let her alone. She meditated, she would have to wire to Gwini Denning to meet her at Searing-sister. She wondered whether Gwini's mother's lumbgo would last over the weekend, it was Friday. Perhaps Gwini had started, perhaps there would be a wire from her at the hotel. Going on to Searing-sister when you wanted to be in stow on the old, what was it but a cowardly retreat, driven out of stow on the wall by Gibson, not she? Dust get ten o'clock in the morning under the trees, on the mile-long hill. You climbed up and up a steep green tunnel. The sun would be blazing at its mouth on the top. Nothing would matter. Certainly not this affair with Gibson Herbert. She could see clearly her immense, unique passion

5:07thus diminished. Surprising what a lot of it you could forget, clean forget, she supposed you forgot because you couldn't bear to remember. But there were days that stood out, hours, little minutes that thrilled you even now and stung. This time two years ago, that hot August, the day in the office when everything went wrong all at once and the clicking of her typewriter maddened him and he center out of his room. The day when he kept her over time, the others had gone and they were there by themselves, the big man in his big room and she and her den, the door open between. Suddenly she saw him standing in the doorway looking at her. She knew then she could feel the blood rushing in her brain, the stabbing click of the typewriter set up little whirling currents that swamped her thoughts. Her wet fingers kept slipping from the keys. He came and took her in his arms. She lay back in his arms crying, crying because she was happy. Because she knew.

6:09She remembered now what he had said then. You must have known. You must have thought of me. You must have wanted me to take you in my arms. And her answer, no, I didn't. I didn't think of it. And his smile is unbelieving smile. He thought she was lying. He always thought people were lying. Women. He thought women always lied about what they wanted. The first time in her bloomsberry room one evening and the compact they made then sitting on the edge of the sofa like children holding each other's hands and swearing never to go back on it, never to go back on themselves or on each other. If it ever had to end, a clean cut, now going back on that either. The first night in the big gloomy bedroom of the hotel in Glasgow the thick gray daylight oozing in at the window out of the black street and Gibson lying on his back beside her sleeping. The sheet drags sideways across his great chest, his innocent eyelids.

7:09In the morning after the happiness, all day the queer exalted feeling that she was herself, Charlotte redhead, at last, undecieved and undecieving. The day his wife came into the office, her unhappy eyes and small sharp pointed face, shrinking into her fur's, her name was Effie. He had told her in the beginning that he had left off caring for his wife. They couldn't hurt her, she didn't care enough. She never had cared. There was another fellow, Effie would be alright. Yet after she had seen Effie had never been the same thing. She couldn't remember quite how it had been. She could remember the ecstasy, how it would come swinging through you, making you blind and deaf to impersonal innocent things while it lasted. Even then there was always something beyond it, something you looked for and missed, something you thought would come that never came. There was something he did she couldn't remember. That would be one of the things you wanted to forget.

8:10She saw his thick fingers at dessert, peeling the peaches, perhaps his way of calling her poor Charlotte, things he let out, and never thought I could have loved a girl with bob hair, a white and black girl. There must have been other girls then, a regular procession, before he married Effie. She could see them, pink and gold girls, fluffy and fat, girls with red hair, brown haired girls with wide slippery mouths, then Effie, then herself with her thick bob mane and white face, and the beautiful mouth he prays so. Was it the disgusted knowing that you were only one of a procession? Or was it that Effie's sad, sharp face slipped between? In the end of it, the breakdown when Effie was ill. It's hysterical cries, my wife, Charley, my wife, we oughtin' to have done it. I can't forgive myself, Charley. I'd been a brute, a beast, a stupid animal. When I think of what we've done to her, a little innocent thing,

9:11the awful unhappiness I could kill myself. Do you mean she knows? She thinks. That's bad enough if she knew it would kill her. You said she wouldn't care. You said there was another man. There wasn't. You lied then? Of course I lied. You wouldn't have come to me if I hadn't. You told me you didn't care for her. He had met that with his, well, what did you want? She went over and over it, turning it round and round, to see if there was any sort of light. It would look a bit better in. She had been going to give him up so beautifully. The end of it was to have been wonderful, quiet, like a heavenly death, so that you would get a thrill out of that beauty when you remembered all the beauty of it from the beginning, taken up and held together, safe at the end. You wouldn't remember anything else and he had killed it, with his conscience suddenly sick, whining, slaubering, vomiting remorse, turning on her. I can't think what you wanted with me. Why couldn't you have let me alone?

10:12Her own voice, steady and hard. If you feel dirty, go and wash yourself outside. Don't try and rub it off on me. I want to keep clean. Isn't it a bit too late? Not if you clear out at once, this minute. He called her a cruel little devil. She could forgive him for that. She could forgive him ending it in any beastly way he liked, provided he did end it. But not last night, to come crawling back three months after wanting to begin again, thinking it was possible? There had been nothing worse than that. Except that one dreadful minute last year when he had wanted to raise her salary afterwards. And she had said, what for? And their faces had turned from each other, flaming with a fire of her refusal. What did he really thought of her? Did he think she wanted to get anything out of their passion? What could you want to get out of it? Or give but joy, pure joy, beauty? At the bend of the road, the trees parted,

11:13a slender blue channel of sky flowed overhead between the green tops. If not joy, then truth, reality, the clear reality of yourself, Charlotte Redhead, of Gibson Herbert, even now it would be all right so long as you knew what it was and didn't lie about it. That evening in the office when he came to her, she could remember the feeling that shot up suddenly and ran over her and shook her brain, making her want him to take her in his arms. It was that. It had never been anything but that. She had wanted him to take her, and he knew it. Only if he hadn't come to her and looked at her, she wouldn't have thought of it. She would have gone on working for him without thinking. That was what he didn't know. What he wouldn't have believed if he had told him. She had come to the top of the hill. At the crossroads, she saw the gray front of her in, the bow window jutting, small black shining panes, picked out with the clean white paint of the framework. Upstairs their breakfast tables stood in the window bow

12:15as they had left it. Bread he had broken on the greasy plate. His cup with the coffee he couldn't drink. Pathetic if you hadn't remembered. You might as well, if it isn't you, it'll be another woman, Charlie. If it isn't me, it'll be another man. That was what he had thought her. It didn't matter. End of chapter one, recording by ex-Patria in Bangor, Maine. Chapter two of the Romantic by Mace and Claire. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by ex-Patria in Bangor, Maine. Chapter two. She stood at the five roads, swinging her stick undecided. The long line of the beaches drew her, their heads bowed to the north as a south wind had driven them. The blue white road drew her, rising, dipping and rising between broad green borders under gray walls.

13:18She walked. She could feel joy breaking loose in her again, eating 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 men. She didn't want any more of that again ever. She could go on and on like this by herself without even guinea, not carrying a dam. 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.

14:19Nothing'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 plane. 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 forever? Across the green field she saw the farm. Tall, long-skirted elm, standing up in a row before the salo ricks and long gray barns. Under the loaded droop of green, a gray, sharp-pointed gable, topped by a stone ball. Four scotch fur is beside it, slender and strange. She stood leaning over the white gate, looking and thinking. Funny things, cults grazing, short bodies that stopped at their shoulders, long, long necks hanging down like tails, pushing their heads along the ground.

15:20She could hear their nostrils breathing in the scrunch, scrunch 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 200 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 farm yard 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.

16:21Premier hosts on Verbo deliver quality vacation rental stays with fast responses and clear instructions. So you don't have to worry about surprises. I asked our host a question about the house last night and he got back to me super quick. See, that's the Premier host move right there. I'll wish I had a Premier group chat. I asked them where we should have dinner last night and they left me on red. I know you saw it. It says it. Classic group chat move. Don't walk into a surprise. Book a top rated Verbo stay with a Premier host. If you know, you Verbo. 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 mustache, 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,

17:22dust-colored riding bridges. But there was something about him, something tall and distant, slender and strange like the fur 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 Borton on the hill. I'm afraid it isn't. It's still on the wall. 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 Borton 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? Standway, the other side of that ridge. You should have kept along the top. You've come miles out of your way.

18:24I 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 Borton on the hill. She would go back to the hotel and see whether there was a wire for her from guinea. 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 too 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 signpost. Then the first lane on your left. That'll bring you out on the top of the hill. Thanks. Thanks most awfully. He raised his hat backing from her, holding her in his eyes until 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.

19:25He was holding down there at the bend by the grey cone of the limekilm 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 guinea. She had waited a week now. She wondered how long it would be before guinea's mother's Lombago 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 guilt-frame mirror at one end. At the other the bowed window looking west onto the ash tree and the fields, the two straight windows between looking south onto the street. Tonight the long table down the middle was set with a white cloth. The family from Birmingham had come. Father and mother observed powder pigeons swelling and strutting.

20:29Two putty faced unmarried daughters sulking. One married one pink and proper, and the sun-in-law sharp-eyed and bold-headed. From their table in the center 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 sportscoat, 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. guinea's letter was there stuck up on the mantelpiece. Gini could come at the weekend. She implored her to hang on for five days longer, not to leave stow on the wall 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.

21:29She 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, clear-cut arches molded 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. She 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 Gwini 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.

22:31If he went tomorrow, 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 a straight jutting pointed chin. Honey white face, thin dusk and bister of eyelids and hollow temples in the roots of the hair. Its look of being winged, lifted up, ready to start off on an adventure. Their brushback and 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 clearly 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.

23:34They 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 bear backs of cart horses and riding them to water. Melking 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.

24:36As 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 glary trail everywhere they go. If they were dead, stretched out on their deathbeds, 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 say, when he's voice drooled in slow meditative surprise, the brooding curiosity had gone out of her face. When he's face soft and school-gurlish between the fawn gold bands and plated earbosses of her hair, the pink pushed out mouth, the little routing nose, the thick gray eyes suddenly

25:40turned on you staring. When he had climbed up onto 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, Gwynn. 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. But 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 Dickie Rakes, 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 Dickie's always funny when you want to be serious, and George is always serious

26:40when you want to be funny. Besides he's so good, his goodness would have been too much for me altogether. Bancy 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. When he 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 fulking 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 can't think of him anymore. I'm not thinking. I only wanted you to know. Does anybody else know? She shook her head. Well, don't you let them. When he slid to her feet and went to the looking glass, she stood there a minute, pinning

27:42closer the crushed bosses of her hair than she turned. What are you going to do with that walking tour, Johnny? 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, Gwynny. Safe. Safe. You've only to look at him. I have looked at him. Whatever you do, don't tell him, Charlie. Report of chapter 2, Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 3 of the Romantic by Mason Claire. This leave revoked recording is in the public domain. Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 3. Charlotte sat on the top of the slope in the field below Barrow Farm. John Conway lay at her feet.

28:43The tall beaches 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, broude millions, the pains, black shining slits in the gray and gold of the stone. All their rooms, burrs and guineys under the near gable by the furtries, Mr. and Mrs. Burton's under the far gable by the Elms, johns by itself in the middle, jutting out. She could see the shallow garden, damned up to the house out of the green field by its wall, spilling trails of mow, campanula, brimming with pink flocks and white flocks, the blue spire of the loop-ins piercing up through the froth. One day evening half an hour before milking time, from September 1913 to December to March 1914 to June, she had been at the farm nine months.

29:46June, 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 Gwini a stride over the tilted bucket, feeding the cows. It was Gwini's turn. She heard the house door open and shut. The Burton came down the flag 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. It 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 Jendar. 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 Jend, it ought to be anyhow, it's you.

30:50That's what's been bothering me. I thought it was just because you had black hair, bob like a 15th 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 blitchery. 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 Jend. You ought to wear armor 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. She wondered what the farm would be like without him. Would it be what it was last autumn and winter and in the spring before he came? But she had been happy all that time without him, even in the hard, frostbiting winter.

31:52When you had gone through that, you knew the worst of barrel farm. It made your face coarse, though. Joan of Arc was a peasant. No wonder she was beginning to look like her. If John went, John, shall you stay on here? I don't know. I shall stick to farming if that's what you mean, though it isn't what I wanted. What did you want to go into the army? Why didn't you then? They wouldn't have me. There's something wrong with my eyes, so the lands got me instead. Me too, we ought to have been doing this all our lives. Will Jolly well have to, which will never be any good indoors again? As old Burton said anything? I'm getting on. I can drive as straight a furrow as any man in Gloucestershire. I've told my father that. He'd detest me, but he'd say you ought to work up from the plough tail if you must farm. He turned all of us through his workshop before he took us into the business. He liked to see us soaked in dirt and oil, crawling on our stomachs under his engines.

32:54He'd simply love to see me here standing up to my knees in wet cow dung. He wouldn't mind you leaving him? Not if I make a good thing out of this. Anyhow, he knows he can't keep me off it. If I can't fight Alpharam, it's in my blood and nerves and memory. He sits there selling motorcars, but his people were fighting men. They fought to get land. They fought to keep it. My mother's people, the rodents, were yeoman farmers. That's why my furrows so straight. And that's why you came here? No, that isn't why. Aren't you glad you came? Did you ever feel anything like the piece of it? It's not the piece of it I want, Charlotte. Gen, I mean. It's the fight. Fighting with things that would kill you if you didn't. Loomting the earth to sow in it and make it feed you. Plowing, Charlotte, Gen. Feeling the thrust and the drive through and the thing listing over on the slope. Seeing the steel blade shine and the long wounds coming in rows, hundreds of wounds, wet

33:57and shining. What makes you think of wounds? I don't know. I see it like that cutting through. I don't see it like that one bit. The earth's so kind, so beautiful. And the hills look at them. The clean, quiet, back smooth with light. You could stroke them. And the fields, those lovely colored fans opening and shutting. They're lovely because of what's been done to them. If those hills had been left to themselves, there'd have been nothing on the but trees. Think of the big fight with the trees, the hacking through the cutting, the trunk staggering and falling. You'd begin with a little hole in the forest like that gap in the belt on the skyline and you'd go on hacking and cutting. You'd go on. If you didn't, those damned trees would come up around you and jam you between their trunks and crush you to red pulp. Supposing this belt of beaches drew in and got tighter and tighter. No, there's nothing really kind and beautiful on this earth.

34:57Accept your face and even your face. My face? Could be cruel, but it never will be. Something's happened to it. Some cruelty. Some damnable cruelty. What makes you think so? Every kind and beautiful thing on earth, Joan, has been made so by some cruelty. That's all rot. Outer rot. You don't know what you're talking about. It's milking time. There's guinea semiforing. Do you know old burdens going to keep us on? You'll pay us wages from this quarter. He says we will worth our keep from the third day. You want to stay on here? Rather? Very well then, so do I. That settles it. Get up, she said, and come along. Gwynne's frantic. He sat up, bowed forwards, his hands hanging loose over his knees. She stood and looked down at him at the arch of his long slender back dropping to the narrow hips. He could feel the sudden crush of her breath in her chest and the sighing throb in her

36:00throat in her lips parting. He grasped the hand she stretched out to him at arm's length. She set her teeth and pressed her feet to the ground and leaned back her weight against his weight tugging. He came up to his feet, alert, laughing at the heavy strength of her pull. As they ran down the field, he still held loosely like a thing forgotten her right hand. After the long June night on her bed in the room under the gable, the hot room that smelt of plaster and of the apples stored in the loft behind it, she lay thinking. Gwynne had turned her back, burrowing into her pillow, with a final shrug of her hips. She was asleep now in her corner. If I were you, I wouldn't think about him, Charlie. She knew what Gwynne meant. The thinking was one thing and caring was another. Thinking was the antidote to caring. She had let her mind play freely over Gibson Herber in the beginning, but Gibson stopped her thinking, and John Conway made her think that was the difference.

37:05There was nothing about John that was like Gibson, not a look, not a gesture, not the least thought in his mind. His mind was like his body, clean and cold and beautiful. Set on fire only by dreams, loving you and a dream, a dream that burned him up and left him cold to you, cold and clean. There were things she laid up against him, the poor deer. A secret hoard of grievances now clear to her in the darkness. She found herself turning them over and over, as if positively her mind owed his romantic apathy a grudge. Little things she remembered, three things. Yesterday in the hayfield, John pitching hay onto the cart, and she standing on the top of the load, flattening down the piles as he swung them up. Gwynny came with a big fork swanking for fun, trying to pitch a whole haycock. In the dark of the room she could see Gwynny's little body, straining back from the waist, her legs stiffening, her face pink and swollen, and John's face looking at Gwynny.

38:10She shouted down at him, why can't you take the damn thing? She'll break her back with it, and he shouted up, that's her look out, but he took it. He didn't like Gwynny. That time, in the time Cowslip Cab, the darling choosing the one night Old Burton was away and ginned down with flu. She had to hold the lantern, straw littered in the half-lighted shed. Cowslip swinging her bold face head round to you, her humble, sorrowful eyes imploring, between her groans and the convulsive heavings of her flanks. A noise between a groan and a bellow a supreme convulsion, the dark wall, the white funnel of light from the lantern, and John's face in the flash. But he had been sorry for Cowslip, going out with the lantern afterward she had found him in the yard by the wall bent double, shivering and wretching, and she had sung out to him bunk up John, she's licked it clean, it's a dearest little calf you ever saw.

39:12Pity, pity could drag your face tight and hard, like Burton's when his mare Jenny died of colic. But before that, the night they went to stow fair together, crossing the street at the sharp turn by the church gate, something happened. They hadn't heard the motor car coming, it was down on them before they could see it, swirving round her side of the street. He had had his hand tight on her arm, who steered her through the crowd. When the car came, when the car came, he let go and jumped clean to the curb. She could feel the splashboard graze her thigh as she sprang clear of it quick, like a dog. She was sure he jumped first, she was sure he hadn't let her go before the car came, she could see the blaze of the lamps and feel his grip slacking on her arm. She wasn't sure, he couldn't have jumped, he couldn't have let go, of course he hadn't. She had imagined it, she imagined all sorts of things, if she could make them bad enough, she would stop thinking about him, she would stop caring, she didn't want to care.

40:16Charlotte, when I die that's where I'd like to be buried. Coming back from Borton Market, they had turned into the church yard on the top of Stohill. The long path went straight between the stiff eucones through the green fields set with graves. On the top so high up you could almost breathe in your coffin here, I don't want to breathe in my coffin. When I'm dead I'm dead and when I'm alive I'm alive don't talk about dying. Why not? Think of the gorgeous risk of it, the supreme toss up. After all death's the most thrilling thing that happens. Who's death? My death. Don't talk about it. Your death then. Oh mine. Our death is en. He turned to her in the path. His mouth was hard now, but his eyes shone at her smiling, suddenly warm, suddenly tender. She knew herself then. She knew there was one cruelty, one brutality beyond bearing. John's death.

41:17End of chapter 3. Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 4 of the Romantic by Mason Claire. This leave revox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 4. John had gone away for a week. If she could tire herself out and not dream. In the slack days between haytime 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 nightgown. And she dreamed. She was waiting in the beach 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 a long slit. She stuck her head through the hole to look out over the hills.

42:17This was the watchtower. 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. Gray missed, 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 Borton 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 barrel-farm beaches. They stood in a thick ring, round a clearing of gray grass and gray light. John was standing there with a woman. She turned and showed her sharp face, the color 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.

43:20She had John now. Forms without faces shrouded white women. Larvai slipped from the black grooves of the beach-trunks. They made a ring round him with their bodies. Drew it in tighter and tighter. The gray 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. Gwini looked up over the crook of her knee from the boot she was lacing. You made no end of a row in your sleep, Charlie. 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 line-killing 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 onto the low bridge over a black

44:25canal. The long sharp pointed road cut straight as a dike through the flat fields. Between two lines of slender trees, tall poles with tough-ded tops. She knew she was awake now because the light whitened and the wind moved in the tree tuffs and the road felt hard under her feet. When she came to the village to the long gray 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 odor. John's face was happy and excited. That was how she knew him. His face was real.

45:25Its 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 roads switch backing over the bridge, and turning sharp and slanting up the riverbank 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.

46:28It 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. Jan, Jan. She couldn't see in. She couldn't open the door. Jan. The wall split off and leaned forward. She woke suddenly to the tapping and splashing of the rain. Report of chapter 4, Recording by X Patriot and Bangor Main

47:30Chapter 5 of the Romantic by Mason Claire Thisly revoked recordings in the public domain, Recording by X Patriot and Bangor Main. Chapter 5 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 her 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 beach 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 beaches. 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.

48:32The 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 furs, a yellow that made the skies 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 trunned 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. 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

49:37fixed steadily on a point in front of him that his mind didn't see, drawn back in some intense contemplation. He strolled into the rings 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 tranquility. 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 forever and ever, that would be happiness enough. If she could keep still like this forever, any movement would be dangerous.

50:40She 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 forever. 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, classed pants and smiling. Yes, he said. Yes. Yes. It was as if he had said, this will go on.

51:41Nothing 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 ask 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 until 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.

52:43Wherever 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 that 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.

53:44You 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, Jan, 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 listened to a story about something that you remember that interests you still.

54:44His 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 you want to know. I dare say 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 brute's 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.

55:46Oh, 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 faked. It wasn't like him. It wasn't like him to lie and f**k. He 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 dare say I shall funk in 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.

56:46You're 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. 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 loath 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've 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.

57:50Where? 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 fingertips 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.

58:51You 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 than 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? End of chapter 5, Recording by X Patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 6 of the Romantic by Mason Claire. This Librivox recording is in the public domain.

59:54Recording by X Patriot in Bangor, Maine. Book 2 John Rodin Conway, Chapter 6. It was an hour since they had left New Haven. The boat went steadily, inflexibly, without agitation, cutting the small, crisp waves with the sound like the flowing of stiff silk. For a moment after the excited rushing and hooding of the ambulance car, there had been something not quite real about this motion. Till suddenly you caught the rhythm, the immense throb and tremor of the engines. Then she knew. She was going out with John and Goenny Denning in a man called Sutton, Dr Sutton, to belge him to the war. She wondered whether any of them really knew what it would be like when they got there. She was vague herself. She thought of the war mostly in two pictures, one very distant, hanging in the air to her white, colorless as an illustration in the papers. Gray figures tumbled in a gray field, white puff bursts of shrapnel in a gray sky.

1:00:57And one very near, long lines of stretchers, wounded men and dead men on stretchers, passing and passing before her. She saw herself in John carrying a stretcher, John at the head and her at the foot, and Goenny and Dr Sutton with another stretcher. Looking for her and John in Goenny but fieldwork, the farm had spoiled them incurably for life indoors, but it had hardened their muscles and their nerves. It had fitted them for the things they would have to do, the things they would have to see. There would be blood, she knew there would be blood, but she didn't see it. She saw white, very white bandages in grayish white, salo white faces that had no features that she knew. She hadn't really thought so very much about the war. There had been too many other things to think about. There are seven weeks training at Coventry, the long days in Rodin and Conway's motorworks, the long evenings in the ambulance classes, field practice in the meadow that John's father had lent to the Red Cross, runs along the warwick-shyah roads with John sitting beside her, teaching

1:02:03her to steer and handle the heavy ambulance car, an endless preparation. Even under it all, like a passion, like a hidden illness, they're impatient, they're intolerable longing to be out there. If there had been nothing else to think about, there was John. Always John, not that you could think about him without thinking about the war, he was so thoroughly mixed up with it. You couldn't conceive him as left out of it or as leaving himself out. It had been an obsession with him to get into it, to get into it at once without waiting. That was why there were only four of them. He wouldn't wait for more volunteers. They could get all the volunteers they wanted afterwards, and all the cars his father would send out any number. She suspected John of not really wanting the volunteers, of not even wanting Gwiny and Dr. Sutton. She could see he would have liked to have gone with her alone. Queer that so long as she had thought he would be going without her, she had been afraid, she had felt certain he would be killed or die of wounds.

1:03:04The one unbearable thing was that John should die. But after it had been settled that she was to go with him as his chauffeur, she hadn't been afraid anymore. It was as if she knew that she would keep him safe, or perhaps all the time she had been afraid of something else, though separation. She had had visions of John without her in another country. They were colored vaguely with the horror of her dreams. It had been just that. Anyhow she hadn't thought anymore about John's dying. It was the old man, his father, who had made her think of it now. She could see him the grey, kind, silent man. At the last minute, standing on the key and looking at John with a queer, tight look, as though he were sorry about something. Oh, but unbearably sorry about something he'd thought or said or done. He was keeping it all in. It was a thing he couldn't speak about, but you could see it made him think John wasn't coming back again. He had gutted into his head that she was going out because of John. He remembered before that his kind, funny look at her when he said to John, mind you take

1:04:08care of her, and John's no fear, and her own, that's not what he's going out for. She had a slight pang when she thought of John's father. He had been good to guinea into her at Coventry. But as for going out because of John, whether he went or not she would have had to go, so keen that she hated those seven weeks at Coventry, although John had been there. With every thought of the engines her impatience was appeased. And all the time she could hear Gwynny's light, cool voice explaining to Dr. Sutton that the British Red Cross wouldn't look at them and their field ambulance, but the Belgians' poor things, you know, weren't in a position to refuse. They would have taken almost anything. Her mind turned to them, to Gwynny dressed in their uniform, khaki tunic and bridges and patees, her fawn-colored overcoat belted clothes, round her to hide her knees. Gwynny looked solid and good, with her face the face of an innocent, intelligent, routing animal, stuck out between the clothes wings of her motor cap and the turned up collar

1:05:11of her coat. She would go through it all, right? Gwynny was a little plotter. She would plot through the war as she had plotted through her training, without any fear of tests. And Dr. Sutton, from time to time she caught him looking at her across the deck. When Gwynny's talk dropped, he made no effort to revive it, but stood brooding, a square, thick set man. His head leaned forward a little from his heavy shoulders, in a perpetual short-sighted endeavor to look closer. You could see his eyes large and clear under the watery wash of his glasses. His features slightly flattened, or laid quietly back on his composed, candid face. The dab of docked mustache rising up in it, like a strange note of wonder of surprise. There he was looking at her again, but whether he looked or listened or stood brooding, his face kept still all the time. Still and sad, his mouth hardly moved as he spoke to Gwynny. She turned from him to the contemplation of their fellow passengers.

1:06:14The two Belgian boy scouts and capes and tilted caps, with tassels bobbing over their foreheds. They tramped the deck, seizing attention by their gay, excited gestures. You could see that they were happy. The group, close by her in the stern, establishing itself there, apart, with an air of righteous possession. Five, six, seven men, three young, four-middle-aged, rather shy and awkward on its fringe. In its center, two women in slender, tailor-made suits and motor veils, looking like bored, uninterested travelers used to the adventure. They were talking to a little man in shabby tweeds, and in all of green velvet hat, two small for his head. His smooth, innocent pink face carried its mustache like an accident, a mistake. Once when he turned, she met the arch-stair of small China blue eyes. It passed over her without seeing, cold, dreamy and different. She glanced again at his women. The tall one drew you every time by her raking eyes.

1:07:15Her handsome, arrogant face, the gesture of her small head, alert, and at the same time set, the predatory poise of an enormous bird. But the other one was, rather charming. Her features had a curious, sweet bluntness. Her eyes were decorations deep-set blue in the flush gold of her sunburn. The little man straddled as he talked to them, bobbing forward now and then with a queer jerking movement from his hips. She wondered what they were and decided that they were part of the commission for relief in Belgium bound for Austin. All those people had the look that John had of having found what they had wanted of being satisfied, appeased. Even Sutton had it, lying on the top of his sadness like a light. They felt precisely as she was feeling all those people. And through her wonder, she remained aware of John Conway as he walked the deck, passing and passing in front of her. She got up and walked with him. The two women stared at them as they passed.

1:08:16One the tall one whispered something to the other. John, do my knees show awfully as I walk? No, of course they don't. Gwynny's do. She doesn't know what to do with them. He looked down at her and smiled. I like you. I like you in that cap. You look as if you were sailing fast against a headwind as if you could cut through anything. Their turn brought him again under the women's eyes. He took her arm and drew her aside to the rail of the boat's stern. They stood there watching the wake, boiling and breaking and thinning, a white lace of froth on the glassy green. Sutton passed them. What's the matter with him, she said? The war. He's gutted on his mind. It's no use taking it like that, Jen, as one consummate tragedy. How are you feeling about it? I don't think I'm feeling anything except wanting to get there and wanting, wanting frightfully to help. Unless you can go into it as if it was some tremendous happy adventure, that's the only way to take it.

1:09:17I shouldn't be any good if I didn't feel it was the most romantic thing that ever happened to me. To have let everything go, to know that nothing matters, that it doesn't matter if you're killed or mutilated. Of course I want to help, but that would be nothing without the gamble, the danger. He stopped suddenly in his turning and held her with his shining, excited eyes. What is the most romantic thing that ever happened? False romance, my father calls it. Jolly little romance about him, he'll simply make pots of money out of the war, selling motors to the government. It's rather romantic of him to give us those two ambulances and pay for us. Is it? Think of the kudos he gets out of it, and the advertisement for Rodin and Conway, the stinking paragraphs he'll put in the papers about himself. This second son, Mr. John Rodin Conway, is taking out two Rodin field ambulance cars which he will drive himself. Mr. John Rodin Conway and his field ambulance car, a Rodin, 30 horsepower.

1:10:17He makes me sick. She saw again with a renewal of her pang, the old man, the poor kind man, perhaps he wouldn't put the paragraphs in the paper. False romance, he lied. There's no such thing as false romance. This is a state of mind. A state of mind can't be false or true, it simply exists. It hasn't any relation to reality. It is reality, the most real part of us, when it's dead, we're dead. Yes, but it was funny to talk about it, about romance and danger, it made her hot and shy. She suppose that was because she couldn't take things in, her fat headedness. It was easy not to say things if you didn't feel them. The more John felt them, the more he had to say them. Besides he never said them to anybody but her. It was really saying them to himself a quiet secret thinking. He stood close, close in front of her, tall and strong in handsome in his tunic, knee bridges and patees. She could feel the vibration of his intense ardent life with his excitement.

1:11:22And suddenly before his young manhood she had it again, the old feeling, shooting up and running over her, swamping her brain. She wandered with a sort of terror, whether he would see it in her face, whether if she spoke he would hear it thickening her throat. He would loathe her if he knew. She would loathe herself if she thought she was going into the war because of that, because of him, women did. She remembered Gibson Herbert, Glasgow, but this was different. The sea was in it, magic was in it, and romance. And if she had to choose between John and her wounded, it should not be John. She had sworn that before they started. Standing there close beside him she swore again secretly to herself that it should not be John. John glanced at Sutton as he passed them. It gave my soul to be a surgeon, he said. That's what I wanted. You wanted to be a soldier. It would have been the next best thing. Did you notice in the list the number of army medical men killed and missing out of all proportion?

1:12:23That means that there is much exposed as the combatants. More really. Jean, do you realize that if we have any luck, any luck at all, we shall take the same risks? It's all very well for us, if it was only being killed, but there's killing. Of course there's killing. If a man's willing to be killed, he's Johnny well earned his right to kill. It's the same for the other Johnny. If your life doesn't matter, a hang, his doesn't either. He's got his feeling, he's got his romance. If he hasn't, yes, if he hasn't, he's better dead. Oh no, he might simply go slogging on without feeling anything from a sense of duty. That would be beautiful. It would be the most beautiful thing. There you are then, his duties, his romance. You can't get away from it. No. But she thought supposing he went, loathing it, shivering sick, frightened. Well, of course it would be there too, simply because he went. Only you would feel it, not he.

1:13:24Supposing he didn't go. Supposing he stuck and had to be pushed on by bayonets from behind. It didn't bear thinking of. John hadn't thought of it, he wouldn't. He couldn't see that some people were like that. I don't envy, he said, the chaps who come out to soft jobs in this war. They had found the little man in tweeds asleep behind the engine house. His chin sunk on his chest, his hands folded on his stomach. He had taken off his green velvet hat, and a crust of grayish hair rose up from his bold forehead, light and fine. The sun was setting now. The foam of the wake had the pink tinge of red wines built on a white cloth. A highway of gold and rose, edged with purple, went straight from it to the sun. Under the sunset, land, the sunk lines of the flammish coast. There was a stir among the passengers. They plunged into the cabins and presently returned, carrying things. The group sorted themselves.

1:14:24The commission people standing apart with their air of arrogance and distinction. The little man in tweeds had waked up from his sleep behind the engine house, and strolled with a sort of dreamy swagger to his place at their head. Everybody moved over to the starboard side. They stood there in silence, watching the white wolves and domes and towers of Ostend. Charlotte and Conway had moved close to each other. She looked up into his face, searching his thoughts there. Suddenly from somewhere in the bows, a song spurred it and dropped and spurred it again, and shot up in the stillness, slender and clear, like a rod of white water. The Belgian boys were singing the Marcellet. On the deck, their feet beat out the thud of the march. Charlotte looked away. End of chapter 6. Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 7 of the Romantic by Mace and Claire.

1:15:28This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 7. Recording by Charlotte. It seemed to her that they had waited hours in the huge grey hole of the hotel hospital. She and Sutton and Gwynny, while John talked to the president of the Red Cross in his bureau. Everybody looked at them. The doorkeeper, the lift orderly, the ward men and nurses hurrying past. Wide stairs and sharp glances falling on her and Gwynny, slanting downward to their bridges and patees, then darting upwards to their English faces. Sutton moved, putting his broad body between them and the batteries of them used in interested eyes. They stood close together at the foot of the staircase. Above them, the gigantic flora leaned forward, holding out her flowers to preoccupied people who wouldn't look at her. She smiled foolishly. Too stupid to know that the flandria was no longer in hotel but a military hospital.

1:16:31John came out of the president's bureau. He looked disgusted and depressed. They can put it as a peep said, but I'd get to break it to you that we're not the only field ambulance in Gent. Charlotte said, oh well, we'd no business to suppose we were. We've got to share our quarters with the other one. It calls itself the McLean Corps. Shall we have to sleep with it? Sutton said? We shall have to have it in our mess room. I believe it's up there now. Well, that won't hurt us. What will hurt us is this. It'll be sent out before we are. McLean was here hours ago. He's been to headquarters. Sutton's gloom deepened. How do you know? President says so. They went following the matron up the gray, tessilated stairs. At each landing, the long gray corridors were tunnels for the passage of strange smells, ether and iodine and carbolic, and the faint odor of drains seeking their outlet at the well of the staircase. On the third floor at the turn of the corridor, a small vestibule between two glass doors led

1:17:34to a room flooded with a blonde light from the south. Beyond the glass doors, their figures softened by the deep, doubled shimmer of the pains. They saw the little man in shabby tweeds, the two women and the seven other men. This, Madame explained, was Dr. Donald McLean's field ambulance corps. You could see it had thought it was the only one. As they entered, they met the swoop of two beautiful, indignant eyes, a slow turning and abrupt stiffening of shoulders. The movement of the group was palpable, a tremor of hostility and resentment. It lasted with no abatement while Madame, standing there in her gaunt, flammish graciousness, murmured names. Mrs. Rankin? Mrs. Rankin nodded insolently and turned away. Miss Bartram? Miss Bartram, the rather charming one, bowed, drawing the shadow of grave eyebrows over sweet eyes. Dr. Donald McLean. As he bowed, the commandant stair arched up at them, then dropped suddenly innocent, suddenly

1:18:37indifferent. They looked around. Madame and her graciousness had gone. Nobody made a place for them at the two long tables set together in the middle of the room. McLean core had spread itself over all the chairs and benches in obstinate possession. They passed out through the open French windows onto the balcony. It looked south over the railway towards the country where they thought the fighting must be. They could see the lines where the troop trains ran, going northwest in southeast, and the railway station and post office all in one long red brick building that had a flat roof with a crenellated parapet. This grew on the roof, and beyond the black railway lines, miles upon miles of flat open country, green fields, rows of poplars standing up in them very straight, little woods. Here and there, a low rise bristling and dark with trees. The fighting must be over there. Under the balcony, the white street ran south eastward, and scouting cars and ammunition wagons

1:19:41in long lines of troops were all going that way. While they talked, they remained aware of the others. They could see McLean rubbing his hands. They heard his brief laugh that had no amusement in it, and his voice saying, anyhow, we've got in first. When they came back into the room, they found the tables drawn apart with a wide space between. The Belgian orderlies were removing plates and cups from one to the other, establishing under the commandant's directions a separate mess. By tea-time, two chauffeurs had added themselves to the McLean Corps. Twelve to four, and they would have to live together nobody knew how long, as long as the war lasted. That evening, in the bedroom that John shared with Sutton, they sat on the two beds discussing their prospects. When he was valuable, they've driven us out of our mess room with their beastliness. We shall have to sit in our bedrooms all the time. We'd better let the office know where here, said Sutton, in case we're sent for.

1:20:44Any house had Charlotte. I'm not going to bed. John smiled, a struggling, dejected smile. My dear child, I've told you they're not going to send us out first. I don't know, Sid Gwynny. I do know. We shall be lucky if we get a look in when McLean's cars break down. That's it. Have you seen their cars? I overhauled them this morning in the yard. Nothing but old lorries converted, and one of them's got solid tires. Well? Well you wait. They waited. Even the McLean Corps had to wait. I don't care, said Charlotte. How beastly they are to me. Provided they leave John alone. What can they do, he said? They don't matter. There's such a lot of them, said Gwynny. It's when they're all together. They're so poisonous. It's when they're separate, Charlotte said. I think Mrs. Rankin does things, and there's McLean swearing he'll get us out of Belgium, but he won't. She didn't care. She had got used to it as she had got used to the mess room in its furnishings, the basket

1:21:47chairs and backless benches, the two long tables covered with white marbled American leather, the photograph to the king and queen of the Belgians above the chimney-piece. The atmosphere of hostility was thick and penetrating, something that you breathed in with the smells of ether and iodine and disinfectant, that hung about the gray leaking corridors and floated in the blonde light of the room. She could feel a secret threat in it, as if at any minute it might work up to some pitch, still more malignant, some supreme disaster. There were moments when she wondered whether McLean had prejudiced the authorities against them. At first she had regarded the little man as negligible. It was the women who had fascinated her as if they had or might come to have for her some profound importance and significance. She didn't like McLean. He straddled too much, but you couldn't go on ignoring him. His dreamy and innocent full face with its arching eyes was a mask, the mask of dangerous

1:22:49inimical intentions. His profile was rough cut, brutal, energetic, you guessed the upper lip thin and hard under the hanging mustache. The lower one stuck out like a sucker. That was his real face. It showed an adhesive, exhausting will, that squeezed and sucked till they had got what it wanted out of people. He could work things. So could Mrs. Rankin. She had dined with the kernel. Charlotte didn't care. She liked that beastliness, that hostility of theirs. It was something you could put your back against. It braced her to defiance. It brought her closer to John, to John and Gwynny, and shut them in together more securely. Sutton, she was not quite so sure about. Through all their depression, he seemed to stand apart somehow by himself in a profound or discontent. There are only four of us, he said. We can't call ourselves a core. You could see the way his mind was working. Then suddenly the atmosphere lifted at one point.

1:23:49Mrs. Rankin changed her attitude to John. You could see her beautiful hawks eyes pursuing him about the room. When she found him in the corridors or on the stairs, she stopped him and chattered, under her breath because of the hushed words. He told Charlotte about it. That Mrs. Rankin seems inclined to be a bit too friendly. I haven't noticed it. Not with you, with Sutton and me. Well, I can't answer for Sutton, but I don't like it. That isn't what we're out here for. They were going into the mess room together towards dinner time. Mrs. Rankin and Alice Bartram were there alone, seated at their tables ready. Mrs. Rankin called out in her stressed vibrating voice across the room. Mr. Conway, you people ought to come in with us. Why? Because there are only four of you and we're twelve. Sixteen is the proper number for a unit. Alice didn't I say the minute I saw Mr. Conway with that car of his. Didn't I say we ought to have him?

1:24:51You did. Thanks. I'd rather take my order from the Colonel. And I'd rather take mine from you than from McLean. Fancy coming out at the head of a field ambulance looking like that. Tell you what, Mr. Conway. If you'll join up with us, I'll get the Colonel to make you our commandant. Alice Bartram opened her shadowed eyes. Trixie, you can't. Can't I? I can make the old boy do anything I like. John Stiffen. You can't make me do anything you like, Mrs. Rankin. You'd much better stick to McLean. What do any of us know about McLean? What do you know about me? You can see how he hated her. I know you mean business. Doesn't he? Don't ask me what he means. She shrugged her shoulders violently. Come over here and sit by me. I want to talk to you seriously. She had shifted her seat and made a place for him beside her on the bench. Her flushed handsome face covered him with its smile. You could see she was used to being obeyed when she smiled like that, when she sent that

1:25:53light out of her eyes, men did what she wanted. All her life, the men she knew, had obeyed her, all except McLean. She didn't know John. He raised his head and looked at her with cool, concentrated dislike. I'd rather stay where I am if you don't mind. I want to talk to Miss Redhead. Oh! Mrs. Rankin's flush went out like a blown flame. Her lips made one pale, tight thread above the set square of her chin. All her light was in her eyes. They stared before her at the glass door where McLean was entering. He came swaggering and slipped into his place between her and Alice Bartram with his air of not seeing Mrs. Rankin, of not seeing Charlotte and John, of not seeing anything he didn't want to see. Presently he bobbed round in his seat so as to see Sutton and began talking to him excitedly. At the end of it Charlotte and Sutton found themselves alone, smiling into each other's faces. Do you like him, she said?

1:26:53I'm not sure. All the same that isn't a bad idea of Mrs. Rankin's. It was Sutton who tried to work at the next morning, sounding McLean. Charlotte was in the space between the glass doors, arranging their stores in their own cupboard. McLean's stores had overflowed into it on the lower shelves. She could hear the two men talking in the room. Sutton's low persuasive voice she couldn't hear what he was saying. Suddenly McLean brought his fist down on the table. I'll take you, and I'll take your women, and I'll take your ambulances, I could do with two more ambulances, but I won't take Conway. You can't tell him that. Can't I? What can you say? I can say she pushed open the glass door and went in. McLean was whispering furtively. She saw Sutton stop him with a look. They turned to her and Sutton spoke. Come in, Miss Redhead. This concerns you. Dr. McLean wants you and Miss Denning in me to join his corps. And how about Mr. Conway?

1:27:53Well, McLean was trying to look innocent. Mr. Conway is just the difficulty. There can't be two Commandants in one corps, and he says he won't take orders from me. Mrs. Rankin must have talked about it then. Is that what you told Dr. Sutton? Yes. His cold innocent blue eyes supported him. He was lying. She knew he was lying. That was not what he had said when he had whispered. You don't suppose she said I should leave Mr. Conway, and if I stick to him, guineal stick. And Dr. Sutton, he can please himself. If Miss Redhead stays, I shall stay. John will let you off like a shot if you don't want to. She turned to go, and McLean called after her. My offer remains open to you three. Through the glass door she heard Sutton saying, if you're right, McLean, I can't very well leave her with him, can I? Sutton was stupid. He didn't understand. Lying on her bed that night, Charlotte made it out. Guineal, you know why McLean won't have John?

1:28:56I suppose because Mrs. Rankin's keen on him. McLean isn't keen on Mrs. Rankin. Can't you see he's trying to hoof John out of Belgium because he wants all the glory to himself? We wouldn't do that to one of them even if we were mean enough not to want them in it. He wanted Sutton. Oh Sutton, he wasn't afraid of him when you think of the war and think of people being like that, jealous, hating each other. You might not like Mrs. Rankin, Mrs. Rankin and McLean, but you couldn't say they weren't splendid. Five days had passed. On the third day the McLean Corps had been sent out. Mrs. Rankin had not dined with the colonel for nothing. It went again and again. By the fifth day they knew that it had distinguished itself at a loss and termed and catracked. The names sounded in their brains like a song with an exciting maddening refrain. October's stretch before them, golden and blank, a volume of tents vibrating time. Nothing for it but to wait and wait.

1:29:58The summons might come any minute. Charlotte and Gwynne had begun by sitting on their driver's seats. In the ambulance's standing in the yard, ready to start the very instant it came. Their orders were to hold themselves in readiness. They held themselves in readiness and saw McLean's cars swing out from the rubbered sweep in front of the hospital three and four times a day. They stood on their balcony and watched them rush along the road that led to the battlefield southeast of the city. The sight of the flat, flimish land and the sadness of lovely days oppressed them. She felt that it must be partly that. The incredible loveliness of the days. They sat brooding over the map of Belgium, marking down the names of the places, at loss, tarmone and catracked, that McLean had gone to that he would talk about on his return when an awful interest would impell them to listen. He and Mrs. Rankin would come in about tea time, swaggering and excited, telling everybody that they had been in the line of fire. In Alice Bartram would move about the room, quiet and sweet, cutting bread and butter

1:31:03and pretending to be unconcerned in the narration. And in the evening, after dinner, the discussion went on and on in John's bedroom. He raged against his infernal luck. If they thought he was going to take it lying down, McLean can keep me out of my mess room, but he can't keep me out of my job. There's room in the line of fire for both of us. Are you going to get into it, said Sutton? Same way as McLean. If he can go to headquarters so can I. I wouldn't, Sutton said. It might give a bad impression. Our turn will come before long. Gwyny laughed. It won't unless Charlotte dines with a colonel. It certainly may, and said Charlotte. They may commandeer our cars and give them to McLean. They can't said Gwyny were volunteers. They can do anything they choose, military necessity. Gwyny was thoughtful. John she said, can I have one of the cars tomorrow afternoon? What for? Never mind, can I? You can have both the damn things if you like. They're no good to me.

1:32:04The next afternoon they looked on, while Gwyny, who wore a look of great wisdom and mystery, slipped her car out of the yard into a side street and headed for the town. She came back at tea-time, bright-eyed and faintly flushed. You'll find we shall be sent out tomorrow. Oh shall we, John said. Yes, I've worked it for you. You? Me. They've seen my car. Who have? The whole lot of them. General staff. First of all I paraded it all around the blessed town. Then I turned into the ploss dorms. I kept it standing two solid hours outside the hotel delo post where the blooming brass hats all hang out. In five minutes it collected a small crowd. First it was only refugees and war correspondents. When the colonel came out and stuck his head in at the back, he got quite excited when he saw we could take five stretcher cases. I showed him our tires and the electric light and I'd ran the stretchers in and out for him. He'd never seen them with wheels before. He said it was magmy-feak.

1:33:05The old bird wanted to take me into the hotel and stand me tea. Didn't you let him? No. I said I had to stay with my car and I took jolly good care to let him know it hadn't been out yet. Whatever made you think of it. I don't know. It just sort of came to me. Next afternoon John had orders to go to bear lair to fetch wounded. End of chapter 7. Recording by X Patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 8 of the Romantic by Mace and Claire. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by X Patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 8. At the turn of the road they heard the guns. A solemn boom, boom, coming up out of hush spaces. They saw white puffs of smoke rising in the blue sky. The French guns somewhere back of them. The German guns in front southwards beyond the river.

1:34:08Charlotte looked at John. He was brilliantly happy. They smiled at each other as if they said, now it's beginning. Outside the village of Berlera they were held up by two centuries with rifles, thrilling that. Their Belgian guide leaned out and whispered the password. John showed their passports and they slipped through. Where the road turned on their left into the street, they saw a group of soldiers standing at the door of a house. Three of them, a Belgian lieutenant and two non-commissioned officers, advanced hurriedly and stopped the car. The lieutenant forbade them to go on. Not John said, we've got orders to go on. A shrog intimated that their orders were not the lieutenant's affair. They couldn't go on. But we must go on. We've got to fetch some wounded. There aren't any wounded said the lieutenant. Charlotte had an inspiration. You tell us that tale every time she said, and there are always wounded. The Belgian guide and the lieutenant exchange glances.

1:35:09I've told you there aren't any the lieutenant said. You must go back. Here you explain. But instead of explaining the little Belgian backed up to lieutenant by a refusal on his own part to go on. He can please himself. We're going on. You don't imagine, Charlotte, said, by any chance that we're afraid. The lieutenant smiled. A smile that lifted his ferocious upturn mustache. First sign that he was yielding. He looked at the sergeant and the corporal and they nodded. John had his foot on the clutch. Her due, he said, at the dressing station by three o'clock. She thought he's magnificent. She could see that the lieutenant and the soldiers thought he was magnificent. Supposing she had gone out with some meek fool who would have gone back when they told him. The lieutenant skipped aside before the advancing car. You can go, he said, to the dressing station. They always do that as a matter of form, sort of warning us that it's our own risk. They won't be responsible.

1:36:11She didn't answer. He was thinking that when they turned, John's driving place would be towards the German guns. I wish you'd let me drive. You know I like driving. Not this time. At the dressing station, a deserted store, they found a Belgian Army Medical Officer engaged with a tired and flushed and dirty soldier. He was bandaging his left hand which had made a trail of blood splashes from the street to the counter. The right hand hung straight down from a neck in the dropped wrist where a tendon had been severed. He told them that they had grasped the situation. Seven men waited there for transport. The best thing, perhaps, he looked outfully at Charlotte would be for them to take these men back at once. The tired soldier murmured something, a protest, or an entreaty. Though they were not exactly urgent cases, they could wait. Charlotte suspected a serious reservation. You mean you have others more urgent? The soldier got in his word, much more.

1:37:13His lips and eyes moved excitedly in the flush and grime. Well yes, the doctors admitted that they had. Not in the village, but in a hamlet about a mile outside of it, in outpost. This man and three others had been holding it with two machine guns. He had had a finger shot away and his wrist cut open by a shell-burst. The other three were left there badly wounded. All right, we'll go and fetch them. Monsieur, the place is being shelled. You have no orders. We've no orders not to. The doctors spread out helpless poems, poems that disclamed responsibility. If you go, you go at your own risk. I will not send you. That's all right. Oh well, but certainly Madame Wazelle must be left behind. Madame Wazelle is much too useful. Frantic gestures of eyebrows and poems. He must not stay there more than three minutes. Three minutes. He turned to the cut tendon with an air of integrity. His conscience appeased by laying down this time limit.

1:38:14John released the clutch and the soldiers shouted out something. They couldn't make out what that ended with Mitre uses. As they ran down the street, the solemn boom, boom, came right and left. They were now straight between the two batteries. Are you all right, Charlie? Rather, the little Belgian by her side muttered protesting. We're not really in any danger. It's all going on over our heads. You suppose she said they'll get our range? Rather not. Why should they? They've got their range and they'll stick to it. The firing on their right ceased. They're quiet enough now, she said. The little Belgian informed her that if they were quiet so much the worst, they were finding their range. She thought we were safe enough before, but supposing she said they alter their range. They won't alter it just for the fun of killing us. They haven't spotted the batteries yet. It's the batteries they're trying for, not the street. But the little Belgian went on protesting.

1:39:17What's the matter with him? He's getting a bit jumpy, she said, that's all. Tell him to buck up. Tell him it's all right. She translated. The little Belgian shook his head, mournfully persistent. Monsieur he said, didn't know. Oh yes, he does know. It was absurd of the little man to suppose you didn't know when the noise of the French guns told them how near they were to the enemy's target. She tried not to listen to him. His mutterings broke up the queer stillness that held her after she had heard the guns. It was only by keeping still that you felt, waved by wave, the rising thrill of the adventure. Only by keeping still she was aware of what was passing in John's mind. He knew. He knew. They were one in the almost palpable excitement that they shared. Locked close. Closer than their bodies could have joined them in the strange and poignant ecstasy of danger. There was a sound of an explosion somewhere in front of them beyond the houses.

1:40:17Did you hear that, Madame Mousel? I did. Miles away said John. She knew it wasn't. She thought he doesn't want me to know. He thinks I'll be frightened. I mustn't tell him. But the Belgian had none of John's scruples. The shell was near, he said, very near. It had fallen in the place they were going to. But that's the place where the wounded men are. He admitted that it was the place where the wounded men were. They were out of the village now. Their road ran through the flat open country. A causeway raised a little above the level of the fields. No cover anywhere from the fire if it came. The Belgian had begun again. What's that he's saying now? He says we shall give away the position of the road. It's the one they told us to take. We've got to go on it. He's an abeously funk. That's what's the matter with him. The Belgian shrugged his shoulders as much as to say he had done his duty, and things might now take their course. They were mistaken if for one minute they supposed he was afraid.

1:41:19But they had not gone fifty yards before he begged to be put down. He said it was absolutely necessary that he should go back to the village and collect the wounded there and have them ready for the ambulance on its return. They let him go. Charlotte looked around the corner of the hood and saw him running with brief jerky strides. He's got a nerve, said John, to be able to do it. What excuse do you think he'll make? Oh, he'll say we sent him. The straight dike of the road went on and on. Seen from the sunk German lines, the heavy ambulance car would look like a house on wheels running along the wall. She thought again of John on his exposed seat. If only he had let her drive, but that was absurd. Of course he wouldn't let her. If he were to keep on thinking of the things that might happen to John, meanwhile nothing could take from them, the delight of this dangerous run across the open. She had to remind herself that the adventure, the romance of it, was not what mattered most.

1:42:20It was not the real thing, the thing they had gone out for. When they came to the wounded, when they came to the wounded, then it would begin. The hamlet began to show now. It sat on one side of the road, low and alone in the flat land, an open field in front of it, and at the bottom of the field the river and a line of willows, and behind the willows the Germans hidden. Right smoke curled among the branches. You could see it was an outpost, one of the points at which the Germans, if they broke through, would come into the village. They supposed that the house where the wounded men were, would be the last of the short row. Here on their right there were no houses, only the long, high flank of a barn. The parts that had been built out into the field were shelled away, but the outer wall by the roadside still held. It was all that stood between them and the German guns. They drew up the car under its shelter and got down. They could see all the houses of the hamlet at once on their left, whitewashed walls,

1:43:23slender grey doors and shutters. The three that looked out onto the barn were untouched. A few yards ahead, a small empty wine shop faced the open field. Its doorstep in the path in front of its windows, glittered with glass dust, with spikes and splinters, and heaped shell of glass that slid and cracked under your feet. Beyond it a house with its doors and all its windows and the front slope of its roof blown in. A broken shutter sag from the wall. Then the shell of the last house, it pricked up one plastered gable, white and hard against the blue. They found the men in the last house but one, the house with the broken shutter. They went carrying their stretchers and the haversack of dressings under the slanted lintel into the room. The air in there was hot and stifling and thickened with a grey powdery swarm. Their feet sank through a layer of pinkish greyish dust. The three wounded men lay stretched out on this floor, among brick-bats and broken pains

1:44:24and slabs of dropped plaster. A thin grey powder had settled on them all, and by the side of each man the dust was stiffened into a red cake with a glary pool in the middle of it, fed from the raw wound, and where two men lay together their pools had joined and overflowed in a thin red stream. John put down his stretcher and stood still. His face was very white, and his upper lip showed in drawn and dry, and tightened as though it were glued to his teeth. John, you aren't going to faint or be sick or anything. I'm alright. He went forward, clenching his fists, moving in a curious drawn way like a sleepwalker. They were kneeling in the dust now looking for the wounds. We must do this chap with the arm first, he'll want to turn a cut. He spoke in a husky whisper as if he were half asleep. The wounded head stuck to the floor, they scraped round it, digging with their hands. It came up wearing a crust of powdered lime.

1:45:25A pad and a bandage. They couldn't do anything more for that. The third man with a fractured shin bone in the big flesh wound in his thigh must have splints and addressing. She wondered how John would set about his work, but his queer hypnotized actions were effectual and clean. Between them they had fixed the turnicate. Through all her preoccupation and the quick dexterous movement of her hands, she could feel her pitties tightening her throat, pittie that hurt like love that was delicious and exquisite like love. Nothing mattered. Nothing existed in her mind, but the three wounded men. John didn't matter, John didn't exist. He was nothing but a pair of hands working quickly and dexterously with her own. She looked up. John's mouth kept its hard glued look. His eyes were feverish behind a glaze of water and red rimmed. She thought it's awful for him. He mines too much. It hurt her to see how he minded. After all he did matter.

1:46:26Deep inside her he mattered more than the wounded men. He mattered more than anything on earth. Only there wasn't time. There wasn't time to think of him. She turned to the next man and caught sight of the two machine guns with their tilted muzzles standing in the corner of the room by the chimney. They must remember to bring away the guns. John's hypnotic whisper came again. You might get those splints, Charlotte. As she crossed the road, a shelf fell in the open field beyond and burst, throwing up a great splash and spray of brown earth. She stiffened herself in an abrupt gesture of defiance. Her mind retorted, you've missed that time. You needn't think I'm going to put myself out for you. To show that she wasn't putting herself out in case they should be looking, she strolled with dignity to her car, selected carefully the kind of splint she needed and returned. She thought, oh well, supposing they do hit, we must get those men out before another comes.

1:47:27John looked up as she came to him. His face glistened with pinheads of sweat. He panted in the choking air. Where did that shell burst? Miles away. Are you certain? Rather? She lied. Why not? John had been lying all the time. Lying was part of their defiance, a denial that the enemy's effort had succeeded. Nothing mattered but the fixing of the splints and the carrying of the men. John was cranking up the engine when she turned back into the house. I say, what are you doing? Going for the guns. There was, she noticed, a certain longish interval between shells. John and the wounded men would be safe from shrapnel into the shelter of the wall. She brought out the first gun and stowed it at the back of the car. Then she went in for the other. It stood on the seat between them with its muzzle pointing down the road. Carlet put her arm around it to steady it. On the way back to the dressing station she sat silent, thinking of the three wounded men in there behind, rocked and shaken by the jolting of the car on the uneven causeway.

1:48:32John was silent too, absorbed by his steering. But as they ran into Gent, the romance of it, the romance of it came back to her. It wasn't over yet. They would have to go out again for the wounded they had had to leave behind at Berlera. John, John, it's like nothing else on earth. I told you it would be. Slowly realization came to her. They had brought in their wounded under the enemy's fire, and they had saved the guns. You mind John said if Sutton goes instead of me, he hasn't been out yet. No, not if I can go too. Do you want to? Offly. She had drawn up the ambulance in the square before the hospital and sat in her driver's seat waiting. Sutton came to her there. When he saw her, he stood still. You going? Rather, do you mind? Sutton didn't answer. All the way out to Berlera, he sat solid and silent, not looking at anything they passed and taking no more notice of the firing than if he hadn't noticed it.

1:49:36As the car swung into Berlera, she was aware of his voice low under the noise of the engine. What did you say? Conway told me it was you who saved the guns. Suddenly, she was humbled. It was the men who saved them. We just brought them away. Conway told me what you did, he said quietly. Going out with Sutton was a quiet affair. You know he said presently it was against the Hague Convention. Good heavens, so it was. I never thought of it. You must think of it. You gave the Germans the right to fire on all our ambulances. You see, this isn't just a romantic adventure. It's a disagreeable necessary, rather dangerous job. I didn't do it for swank. I knew the guns were wanted and I couldn't bear to leave them. I know it would have been splendid if you'd been a combatant, but he said sadly, this is a field ambulance, not an armored car. End of chapter 8. Recording by Ex-Patriot in Bangor, Maine.

1:50:42Chapter 9 of the Romantic by Mason Claire. This lead revoked recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ex-Patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 9. She was glad they had been sent out with the McLean Court to Mela. She wanted McLean to see the stuff that John was made of. She knew what had been going on in the commandant's mind. He had been trying to persuade himself that John was no good, because, from the minute he had seen him with his ambulance on the warfare Austin, from the minute he had known his destination, he had been jealous of him and afraid. Why, he must have raised them all the way from Austin to get in first. Afraid in jealous. Afraid of John's youth with its secret of triumph and of courage. The purpose of John's face and body that men and women turn back to look at as they passed. Even the soldiers going up to the battlefields, going up to wounds and death, turned to look at this creature of superb and brilliant life. Even on the boat he must have had a dreadful wonder whether John was bound for a gent.

1:51:47He must have known from the beginning that wherever Conway placed himself, he would stand out and make other men look small and insignificant. If he wasn't jealous and afraid of Sutton, she supposed it was because John had had that rather diminishing effect on poor Billy. If Billy Sutton distinguished himself, that would open McClean's eyes a little wider too. She wondered why Billy kept on saying that McClean was a great psychologist. If it was true that would be very awful for McClean. He would see everything going on inside people, then all the things he didn't want to see, he wouldn't miss anything and he would know all the time what John was like. The little man was willfully shutting his eyes because he was so mean that he couldn't bear to see John as he really was. Now he would have to see. The thought of McClean's illumination consoled her for her own inferior place in the adventure. This time the chauffeurs would have to stay at the end of the village with their cars. The three were drawn up at the side street, close under the house walls McClean's first.

1:52:52McClean Sutton's with Gwynny, then hers, behind it the short straight road where the firing would come down. John stood in the roadway waiting for the others. He had his hand beside her hand, grasping the arm of the driver's seat. I wish you could take me with you, she said. Can't. The orders are, all chauffeurs to stand by the cars. His eyebrows nodded and twitched in sudden anxiety. You know, Charlie, you'll be fired on. I know. I don't mind John, I don't really. I shall be alright. Yes, you'll be alright. But by the way, he kept on glancing up and down the road, he could see he was uneasy. If you could have stood in front of those cars, you're in the most dangerous place here. Somebody's got to be in it. He looked at her and smiled. Jean, he said, in her armor. Oh, rock. And they were silent. I say, John, my car does cover Gwynny's a bit, doesn't it? Yes, he said abruptly. That's alright. You must go now.

1:53:52They're coming for the stretchers. His face quivered. He thrust out his hand quickly and as she took it, she thought, he thinks he isn't coming back. She was aware of Mrs. Rankin and two of the McLean men with stretchers passing. She could see Mrs. Rankin looking at them as she came on, smiling over her shoulder, drawing the men's attention to their leave-taking. She thought, they don't shake hands when they're going out. They don't think whether they're coming back or not. They don't think at all. But then none of them were lovers as she and John were lovers. John, you'd better go and carry Mrs. Rankin's stretcher for her. He went. She watched them as they walked together up to short, straight road to the battlefield at the top. Sutton followed with Alice Bartram. Then the McLean men, they nodded to her and smiled. Then McLean, late, running, trying to overtake John and Mrs. Rankin to get to the head of his unit. Perhaps he was afraid that John, in his khaki, would be mistaken for the commandant.

1:54:53How childish he was with his fear and jealousy. Childish. She thought of his petulant refusal to let John come in with them, as if he could really keep him out. When it came to action, they were one core. They couldn't very well be divided, since McLean had more men than stretchers and John had more stretchers than men. They would all be infinitely happier, working together like that instead of standing stupidly apart, glaring and hating. Yet she knew what McLean and Mrs. Rankin had been playing for. McLean, if he could, would have taken their fine rodent cars from them. He would have taken Sutton. She knew that Mrs. Rankin would have taken John from her, Charlotte Redhead, if she could. And when she thought of the beautiful arrogant woman, marching up to the battlefield with John, she wondered whether, after all, she didn't hate her. No. No, it was horrible to hate a woman, who at any minute might be killed. They said McLean didn't look after his women. He didn't care how they exposed themselves to the firing.

1:55:55He took them into unnecessary danger. He didn't care. He was utterly cold, utterly indifferent to everybody and everything, except his work of getting in the wounded. Well, perhaps, if he had been decent to John, she wouldn't have believed a word of it. And anyhow, they hadn't come out there to be protected. Chad of vision of John and McLean carrying Mrs. Rankin between them on a stretcher. That was what would happen if you hated. Hate could kill. Then John and she were safe. They were lovers. Lovers. Neither of them had ever said a word, but they owned the wonderful immaterial fact in secret to each other. The thought of it moved in secret behind all their other thoughts. On the moment just past when they held each other's hands, she knew that John loved her, not in a dream, not in coldness, but with a queer, unearthly ardor. He had her in his incredible immaterial way, a way that none of them would understand. From the Barrow Hill farm time or from yesterday, she didn't know.

1:56:58Perhaps today gone on all the time, but it would be only since yesterday that he really knew it. A line of soldiers marched by going up to the battlefield. They looked at her and smiled, a flashing of bright eyes and teeth all down the line. When they had passed, the street was deserted. That rattle on the stones was the firing. It had come at last. She saw Gwini looking back around the corner of the hood to see what it was like. She called to her, don't stick your head out, you silly cuckoo. You'll be hit. She said to herself, if I think about it, I shall feel quite jumpy. It was one thing to go tearing along between two booming batteries and excitement with an end in view, and quite another thing to sit tight and still on a motionless car to be fired on. A bit trying to the nerve she thought if it went on long. She was glad that her car stood next to the line of fire, sheltering Gwini's, and she wondered how John was getting on up there. The hands of the ambulance clock pointed to half past three. They had been waiting forty minutes then.

1:58:00She got down to see if any of the stretcher bearers were in sight. They were coming back, straggling, lurching forms, white bandages, the wounded who could walk came first, then the stretchers. Alice Bartram stopped as she passed Charlotte. The red had gone from her sunburn, but her face was undisturbed. You've got to wait here, she said, from Mr. Conway and Suttie, and Trixie and Mack. They may not be back for ages, they'd gone miles up the field. She waited. The front cars had been loaded, had driven off and returned three times. It was six o'clock before John appeared with Mrs. Rankin. She heard Mrs. Rankin calling sharply to her to get down and give a hand with the stretcher. John and Mrs. Rankin were disputing. Can't you shove it in that the bottom he was saying? No, the first case is must go on top. Her mouth snapped like a clamp. Her eyes were blazing. She was struggling with the head of the stretcher while John heaved at the foot.

1:59:00He staggered as he moved and his face was shallow white and drawn and glistening. When Charlotte took the shafts from him they were slippery with his sweat. Is he hurt, she whispered? Very badly hurt, said Mrs. Rankin. John, I mean. Mrs. Rankin snorted. You'd better ask him. John was slouching round to the front of the car, anxious to get out of the sight and sound of her. He went with an uneven dropping movement of one hip. Charlotte followed him, get into your seat, Charlotte. We've got to wait for Billy and McLean. He dragged himself awkwardly into the place beside her. John she said, are you hurt? No, but I think I've strained something. That's why I couldn't lift that damn stretcher. The windows stood open to the sweet sharp air. She heard Mrs. Rankin and Sutton talking on the balcony. In that dreadful mess room you heard everything. What do you suppose it was then Mrs. Rankin said? And Sutton, oh I don't know, something upset him.

2:00:02If he's going to be upset like that every time he'd better go home. They were talking, she knew they were talking about John. Hello Charlotte, we haven't left you much tea. It doesn't matter. Her hunger left her suddenly. She stared would disgust at the remains of the tea the McLean Corps had eaten. When he went on he hasn't been sleeping properly. I've made him go to bed. If you can keep him in bed for the duration of the war. Are you talking about John? We are. I don't know what you're driving at, but I suppose he was sick on that beastly battlefield. It's all very well for you to. You're a trained nurse and Billy's a surgeon. You aren't taking that way when you see blood. Blood? Said Mrs. Rankin? Yes, blood. He was perfectly alright yesterday. Mrs. Rankin laughed. Yesterday he couldn't see there was any danger. You could tell that by the idiotic things he said. I saw it. And if I could, he could. Funny kid. You'd better get on with your tea.

2:01:03You'll be sent out again before you know where you are. Charlotte settled down. Sutton was standing beside her now, cutting bread and butter. Hold on, he said. That tea's all stewed and cold. I'll make you some of mine. She drank the hot fragrant china tea he brought her. Presently she stood up. I think I'll take John some of this. Best thing you can give him, Sutton said. He got up and opened the doors for her, the glass doors in the door of the bedroom. She sat down beside John's bed and watched him while he drank Sutton's tea. He said he was all right now. No, he hadn't ruptured anything. He only thought he had, but Sutton had overhauled him and said he was all right. In all the time his face was still vexed and drawn. Something must have happened out there, something that hurt him to think of. John she said, I wish I'd gone with you instead of Mrs. Rankin. I wish to God you had, everything's all right when you're with me and everything's all wrong when you're not.

2:02:04How do you mean wrong? He shook his head frowning slightly as a sign for her to stop. Sutton had come into the room. You needn't go, he said. I've only come from my coat and my case. I've got to help with the operations. He slipped into the white linen coat. There were thin smears of blood on the sleeves and breasts. He groped about the room, peering short-sightedly for his case of instruments. John was Mrs. Rankin any good she asked presently? John lay back and closed his eyes as if to shut out the sight of Mrs. Rankin. Don't talk to me, he said, about that horrible woman. Sutton had turned abruptly from his search. Good, he said. She was magnificent. I was Miss Bartram, so was McClain. John opened his eyes, so was Charlotte. I quite agree with you. Sutton had found his case. His face was hidden by the raised lid as he peered examining his instruments. He spoke abstractly, magnificent.

2:03:04When he left the room Charlotte followed him. Billy, well he stopped in his noiseless course down the corridor. What was it she said? What happened? He didn't pretend not to understand her. Oh, nothing, Conway and Mrs. Rankin didn't hit it off very well together. They spoke in low, rapid tones, conscious always of the wards behind the shut doors. Her feet went fast and noiseless beside his as he hurried to the operating theatre. They came out onto the wide landing and waited there by the brass lattice of the lift. How do you mean hit it off? Oh, well, she thought he didn't come up quick enough with a stretcher, and she pit etched into him. But he was deadbeat, done. Couldn't she see that? No, I don't suppose she could. She was a bit excited. She was horrible. Now that Mrs. Rankin was back safe, she hated her. She knew she hated her. A bit cruel perhaps. All the same he said, she was magnificent.

2:04:04The lift had come, hissing and wailing up behind him. The orderly stood in it, staring at Sutton's back, obsequious yet impatient. She thought of the wounded men in the theatre downstairs. You mustn't keep them waiting, she said. He stepped back into the lift, it lowered him rapidly. His chin was on a level with the floor when his mouth tried again and succeeded, magnificent. And she knew that she had followed him out to hear him say that John had been magnificent too. Gwynny was looking in at the messroom door and saying, do you know where Charlotte is? Mrs. Rankin's voice called out. I think you'll find her in Mr. Conway's bedroom. One of the chauffeurs laughed, Charlotte knew what they were thinking. Gwynny failed to retort. She was excited, shaken out of her stolidity. Oh, there you are, I've got something ripping to tell you. Not in here. They slouched with their arms slung affectionately round each other's waist into their own room. Behind the shut door Gwynny began.

2:05:05The colonel's most frightfully pleased about Bear Lair. Does he think they'll hold it? It isn't that. He's pleased about you. Me? You and John, what you did there, and you're bringing back the guns. Who told you that? Mac, your old boy was going on to him like anything about you last night. It means you'll be sent out every time. Every time there's anything big on. Oh, let's go and tell John. I suppose she added. That's what was the matter with Mrs. Rankin. She wondered whether it had been the matter with Billy Sutton too. If he too were jealous and afraid. That night Mrs. Rankin told her what the colonel really had said. Say magnifi, messeine pas la croirouche. If you're all sent home tomorrow, it'll serve you jolly well right, she said. But somehow, she couldn't make a sound as if he had been angry. End of chapter 9. Recording by ex-patriot in Bangor, Maine.

2:06:13Chapter 10 of the Romantic by Mason Claire. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by ex-patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 10. She waited. John had told her to stay there with the wounded men up the turn of the stable yard while he went for the stretcher. His car, packed with wounded, stood a little way up the street, headed for Ghent. Sutton's car, with one of McLean's chauffeurs, was in front of it, ready. She could hear the engine purring. Instead of going at once for the stretcher, John had followed Sutton into the house opposite. The house with the narrow gray shutters, and he had called to her again across the road to wait for him. In her in the yard, the wounded man sat on the cobblestones, his back propped against the stable wall. He was safe there, safer than he would have been outside in the ambulance. It was awful to think that he would have been left behind if they had not found him in

2:07:13the last minute among the straw. She went and stood by the yard entrance to see whether John were coming with the stretcher. A soldier came out of the house with the narrow shutters, wounded, limping, his foot bound to a splint. Then Sutton came, hurrying to help him. He shouted to her, come on, Charlotte, hurry up! And she called back, I've got to wait here for John. She watched them go on slowly up the road to Sutton's car. She saw them get in. She saw the car draw out and rush away. Then she saw John come out of the door of the house and stand there, looking up and down the street. Once she saw him glance back over his shoulder at something behind him in the room. The same instant she heard the explosion and saw the shell burst in the middle of the street, not fifty yards from the ambulance. Half a minute after she saw John dash from the doorway and run, run at an incredible pace towards his car. She heard him crank up the engine. She supposed that he was going to back towards the yard and she wondered whether she could lift

2:08:16up the Belgian and carry him out. She stooped over him, put her hands under his armpits, raising him and wondering, better not. He had a bad wound. Better wait for the stretcher. She turned suddenly, arrested. The noise she heard was not the grating noise of a car backing. It was the scream of a car getting away. It dropped to a heavy wor and diminished. She looked out. Up the road she saw John's car rushing furiously towards Gent. The Belgian had heard it. His eyes moved. Black hair's eyes terrified. It was not possible he said that they had been left behind. No, it was not possible. John had forgotten them, but he would remember he would come back in five minutes, seven minutes she had waited fifteen. The Belgian was muttering something. He complained of being left there. He said he was not anxious about himself, but about Madame Ozzell. Madame Ozzell ought not to have been left.

2:09:16She was sitting on the ground now beside him. It'll be alright she said. He'll come back. When he remembered he would come back. She'd waited half an hour. Another shell. It had burst over there at the backs of the houses beyond the stable. She wondered whether it would be safer to drag her man across the street under the wall of the town hall. They would be sure to aim at it and miss it. Whereas any minute they might hit the stable. At the moment while she wondered there was a third tremendous explosion. The crash and roar of brickwork falling like coal down an enormous chute. It came from the other side of the street a little way down. It couldn't be far from the town hall. That settled it. Much better stay where they were. The Belgian had put his arm around her, drawing her to him, away from the noise and shock of the shell. It was clear now that John was not coming back. He had forgotten them. The Belgian's hold slackened. He dozed, falling against her, and recovering himself with a jerk and begging her pardon.

2:10:18She drew down his head onto her shoulder and let it rest there. Her mind was soaked in the smell of his rank breath, of the warm sweat that oozed through his tunic, the hot, fetted smell that came through his unlace boots. She didn't care. She was too sorry for him. She could feel nothing but the helpless pressure of his body against hers, nothing but her pity that hurt her and was exquisite like love. Yesterday she had thought it would be good to die with John. Now she thought it would be good to die with the wounded Belgian, since John had left her there to die. And again she had a vehement desire for life, a horror of the unjust death John was bringing on them. But of course there wouldn't be any death. If nobody came she would walk back to get and bring out the ambulance. If only he had shouted to her to carry the wounded man and come, in the minute between the concussion of the shell and the cranking of the engine, but she could see him rushing. If only she knew why he had left them. She wanted to get back to get to see John to know.

2:11:21To know if John really was, nothing could be worse than not knowing. It didn't matter so much as forgetting her. The awful thing was his forgetting the wounded man. How could you forget a wounded man? When she remembered the Belgian's terrified hair's eyes, she hated John. And as she sat there supporting his head with her shoulder, she thought again. There must have been a wounded man in the house John had come out of. Was it possible that he had forgotten him too? He hadn't forgotten. She could see him looking back over his shoulder, looking at something that was lying there that couldn't be anything but a wounded man. Or a dead man, whatever it was, it had been the last thing he had seen, the last thing he had thought of before he made his dash. It wasn't possible that he had left a wounded man in there alive. It was not possible. At all the time, while she kept on telling herself that it was not possible, she saw a wounded man in the room John had left. She saw his head turning to the doorway, and his eyes frightened.

2:12:25She felt his anguish in the moment that he knew himself abandoned. Not forgotten, abandoned. She would have to go over to the house and see. She must know whether the man was there or not there. She raised the Belgian's head gently from her shoulder. He would have to wake him and tell him what she was going to do so that he might think she had left him and be frightened. But the Belgian roused himself to a sudden, virile determination. Manon was almost not crossed the road. It was too dangerous. Manon was almost hit. He played on her pity with an innocent, cunning, cajolary. Manon was almost not leaving me. I do not want to be left. Only for one minute, one little minute, I think there is a wounded man like you, Monsieur, in that house. Ah, a wounded man? He seemed to acknowledge the integrity of her purpose. If only I were not wounded. Only I could crawl an inch. I would go instead of Manon was ill. The wounded man lay on the floor of the room in his corner by the fireplace where John had

2:13:25left him. His coat was rolled up under his head for a pillow. He lay on his side with humped hips and knees drawn up, and one hand half clenched, half relaxed on his breast under the droop chin, so that at first she thought he was alive, sleeping. She knelt down beside him and clasped his wrist. She unbuttoned his tunic and put in her hand under his shirt, above the point of his heart. He was certainly dead. No pulse, no beat, no sign of breathing, yet his body was warm still and limp as if with sleep. He couldn't have been dead very long, and he was young. A boy, not more than sixteen, John couldn't have left him. She wasn't certain. She was no nearer certainty so long as she didn't know when the boy had died. If only she knew. They hadn't unfastened his tunic and shirt to feel over his heart if he were dead, so he couldn't have been dead when they left him. But there was Sutton. Billy wouldn't have left him unless he had been dead.

2:14:27Her mind worked rapidly jumping from point to point, trying to find some indorable resting place. He was so young, so small, so light. Light. It wouldn't take two to carry him. She could have picked him up and carried him herself. Billy had had the lame man to look after. He had left the boy to John. She saw John looking back over his shoulder. She got up and went through the house through all the rooms to see if there were any more of them that John had left there. She felt tired out and weak, sick with her belief, her fear of what John had done. The dead boy was alone in the house. She covered his face with her handkerchief and went back. The Belgian waited for her at the entrance to the yard. He had dragged himself there, crawling on his hands and knees. He smiled when he saw her. I was coming to look for you, Madame Ozzell. She had him safe beside her against a stable wall. He let his head rest on her shoulder now, glad of the protecting contact.

2:15:28She tried not to think about John. John closed down between them, black, black, shutting him off, closing her heart against him, leaving her heart hard and sick. The light went slowly out of the street, out of the sky. The dark cane, the dark sounding with a boom-boom of the guns lit with spiked diamond flashes like falling stars. The Belgian had gone to sleep again when she heard the ambulance coming down the street. Is that you, Charlotte? Billy, what made you come? Conway, he's in a frantic fuck, said he'd lost you, he thought you'd gone on with me. How awful it would be if Billy knew. It was my fault, she lied. He told me to go on with you. She could hear him telling her to wait for him in the stable yard. I'd have come before only I didn't see him soon enough. I had an operation. Is that a wounded man you've got there? I suppose he lost him, too? He didn't know he was here.

2:16:29I see. Then she remembered, Billy would know, Billy would tell her. Billy, was that boy dead when you left him, the boy in the house over there? He was stooping to the Belgian, examining his bandages, and he didn't answer all at once. He seemed to be meditating. Was he, she repeated? It struck her that Billy was surprised, because she stopped there. She couldn't say to him, I want to know whether John left him dead or alive. He was dead all right. Sutton's voice came up slow and muffled out of his meditation. It was all right, she might have known. She might have known. Vagely for a moment she wondered why Billy had come for her and not John. Then she was frightened. Billy, John isn't hurt, is he? No, rather not. A bit done up. I made him go and lie down. Look here, we must get out of this. The McClain Corps were gathered on their side of the messroom. They greeted her with shouts of joy, but their eyes looked at her quickly as if they knew

2:17:29something dreadful had happened to her. You should have stood in with us, Charlotte, Mrs. Rankin was saying, then you wouldn't get misled among the shells. She was whispering. Dr. McClain, if you took Charlotte out among the shells, would you run away and leave her there? I'd try not to. Oh yes, he wouldn't run away and leave her, but he wouldn't care where he took her. He wouldn't care whether a shell got her or not, but John cared if only she knew why. Their queer faces sobered her and suddenly she knew. She saw Sutton coming out of the house with a narrow shutters. She heard him shouting to her, come on Charlotte, hurry up. John must have heard him. He must really have thought that she had gone with him, but he must have known too that she wouldn't go. He must have known that if he told her to wait for him, she would wait. Still that, the voices of the McClain women ceased abruptly. One of them turned round. Charlotte saw John standing between the glasses of the two doors. He came in and she heard Mrs. Rankin calling out in her hard, insolent voice, well, Mr.

2:18:33Conway. So you've got in safe. She was always like that, hard and insolent with her damned courage as if courage were ever anything more than just being decent, and as if other people couldn't be decent too. She hated John because she couldn't make him come to her, could make him look with pleasure at her beautiful, arrogant face. She disliked Sutton in McClain for the same reason, but she hated John. He treated her face with a hardness and insolence like her own. You can see her waiting for her revenge, watching every minute for a chance to stick her blade into him. He was pretending that he hadn't heard her. His hair stood up and pointed tough, rumpled from his pillow. His eyes had a day's stupid look as if he were not perfectly awake. But at the sound of the rousing voice his mouth had tightened. It was pinched and sharp with pain. He didn't look at Mrs. Rankin. He came to her, Charlotte readhead, straight, straight as if she had drawn him from his sleep. The McClain people got up one after another and went out.

2:19:37Charlotte, he said, did you really think I'd left you? I thought you'd left me, but I knew you hadn't. You knew it wasn't possible. Yes, inside me I knew. I'm awfully sorry. Sutton told me you were going on with him, and I thought you'd gone. End of chapter 10. Recording by X Patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 11 of the Romantic by Mace and Claire. The Sleabrivox recording is in the pelvic domain. Recording by X Patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 11. She would remember forever the talk they had on the balcony that day while Antwerp was falling. They were standing there, she and John Conway and Sutton, looking over the station and the railway lines to the open country beyond. The fields, the tall slender trees, the low mounds of the little hills bristling

2:20:38and dark. Around the corner of the balcony they could see into the ploss below. It was filled with a thick black cloud of refugees. Antwerp was falling. Presently the ambulance train would come in and they would have to go over there to the station with their stretchers and carry out the wounded. Meanwhile they waited. John brooded. His face was heavy and sombre with discontent. No, he said, no, it isn't good enough. What isn't? What we're doing here, going to all those little tinpot places, the real fighting isn't down there, they ought to send us to Antwerp. I suppose they send us where they think we're most wanted. I don't believe they do. We were fools not to have insisted on going to Antwerp instead of letting ourselves be stuck here in a rotten side show. We've had enough to do anyhow, Sutton. And there isn't anybody by us and Mack to do it, Charlotte said. John's eyebrows twisted. Yes, but we're not in it. I want to be in it in the big thing, the big dangerous thing.

2:21:42Sutton sighed and got up and left them. John waited for the closing of the door. Does it strike you, he said, that Billy isn't very keen? No, it doesn't. What do you mean? I notice that he's jolly glad when he can get an indoor job. That's because they're short of surgeons. He only wants to do what's most useful. I didn't say he had cold feet. Of course he hasn't. Billy would go to Antwerp like a shot if they'd let him. He feels just as we do about it. That's why he got up and went away. He'd go, but he wouldn't enjoy it. Oh, don't talk about enjoying. Charlotte, you don't mean to say that you're not keen. No, it's only that I don't care as much as I did about what you call the romance of it. You do care more about the solid work. It seems to me that it doesn't matter who does it so long as it's done. I very much rather I did it than McLean, so would you. Yes, I would, but I'd be sorry if poor little Mac didn't get any of it. And all the time I know it doesn't matter which of us it is.

2:22:44It doesn't matter whether we're in danger or out of danger or whether we're in the big thing or a little one. Don't you want to be in the big thing? Yes, I want, but I know my wanting doesn't matter. I don't matter. None of us matters. That was how she felt about it now that it had come to defeat. Now that Antwerp was falling, yesterday they, she and John, had been vivid entities, intensely real, living and moving in the war as in a containing space that was real enough since it was there, but real like hell or heaven or God, not to be grasped or felt in its reality. Probably the stretch of it that they covered was real. The roads round Ghent, the burning villages, the places where they served, Bairlera and Mele, Catra and Zele. The wounded men. Yesterday her thoughts about John had mattered, her doubt and fear of him and her pain, her agony of desire that he should be, should be always what she loved him for being, and

2:23:46her final certainty had been the one important, the one real thing. Today she had difficulty in remembering all that, as if they hadn't really been. Today they were unimportant to themselves and to each other, small, not quite real existences enveloped by an immense reality that closed in on them, alive, black, palpitating defeat. It made nothing of them, of their bodies nothing but the parts they worked with, feet and hands. Nothing mattered, nothing existed but the war, and the armies, the Belgian army beaten. The war went to work was falling, and afterwards it would be Ghent and then Ostend, and then there would be no more Belgium. But John wouldn't hear of it, Ghent wouldn't fall. It won't fall because it isn't a fortified city she objected, but it'll surrender, it'll have to. It won't. If the Germans come anywhere near, we shall drive them back. They are near, they are all round in a ring with only a little narrow opening up there,

2:24:46and the rings getting closer. It's easier to push back a narrow ring than a wide one. It's easier to break through a thin ring than a thick one and who's going to push. We are, the British, who'll come pouring in hundreds of thousands of us through that little narrow opening up there. If we only would, of course we shall. If I thought we wouldn't, if I thought we were going to let the Belgians down, if we'd betray them, my God, I'd kill myself. No, no I wouldn't. That wouldn't hurt enough. I'd give up my damned country and be a naturalized Belgian. Why they trust us, they trust us to save Antwerp. If we don't, that wouldn't be betrayal. It would, the worst kind. It would be like betraying a wounded man or a woman, like me betraying Yuzhan. You needn't look like that, it's so bad that it can't happen. Through the enveloping sadness she felt the prick of joy, seeing him so valiant, so unbeaten in his soul.

2:25:46It supported her certainty. His soul was so big that nothing could satisfy it but the big thing, the big dangerous thing. He wouldn't even believe that Antwerp was falling. She knew. She knew there was not the smallest doubt about it anymore. She saw it happen. It happened in the village near Lokaran, the village whose name she couldn't remember. The Germans had taken Lokaran that morning, they were in Lokaran. At any minute they might be in the village. You had to pass through a little town to get to it, and there they had been told that they must not go on, and they had gone on. And in the village they were told that they must go back and they had not gone back. They had been given five minutes to get in there wounded and they had been there three quarters of an hour. She and John were working together and Trixie Rankin with McClain and two of his men. Charlotte had been sorry for Sutton and Gwynny and the rest of McClain's corps who would not come out with them to this new place, but had been set back again to Meila where things had been so quiet all morning that they hadn't filled their ambulances, and half

2:26:51of them had hung about doing nothing. She had fredded at the stupidity which had sent them where they were not wanted, but here they were not enough hands for the stretchers, and Charlotte was wanted every second of the time. From the first minute you could see what you were in for, the retreat. And for an instant in the blind rush and confusion of it, she had lost sight of John. She had turned the car around and left it with its nose pointing towards Gwyn. Trixie Rankin and the McClain men were at the front cars taking out the stretchers. John and McClain were going up the road. She had got out her own stretcher and was following them when the battery came tearing down the road and cut them off. It tore headlong, swirving and careening with great rattling and crashing noises. She could see the faces of the men thrown back swaying. There was no terror in them, only a sort of sullen anger and resentment. She stood on the narrow sandy track beside the causeway to let it pass, and when a gap came in the train she dashed through to get to John.

2:27:54And John was not there. When all the artillery had passed he was not there, only McClain going on up the middle of the street by himself. She ran after him and asked him what had happened to John. He turned, dreamy and deliberate, utterly unperturbed. John he said had gone on to look for a wounded man who was said to have been taken into one of those houses there on the right in the lane. She went down the lane with her stretcher and McClain waited for them at the top. The doors of the houses were open, Flemish women stood outside looking up to the street. There was one house with a shut door, a tall green door. She thought that would be the one that John had gone into. She wrapped and he opened the door and came striding out, holding his head high. He shut the door quietly and looked at her, in odd look piercing and grave. "'Dead,' he said. And when McClain met them he said it again, "'Dead.'" The wounded were being brought down from Lokaran in trams that ran onto a siding behind a

2:28:56little fur plantation outside the village. At the wide top of the street a table of boards and trussles stood by the foot track, and the stretchers were laid on it as they came in, and the wounded had their first bandaging and dressings there. McClain took up his place by this table, and the stretcher bearers went backwards and forwards between the village and the plantation. Beyond the plantation the flagged roads stretched flat and grey, then bent in a deep curve, and on the wider sweep of the curve a row of tall slender trees stood up like a screen. It would be round the turn of the road under the trees that the Germans would come when they came. You couldn't lose this sense of them, coming on behind there, not yet seen, but behind, coming on, pursuing the retreat of the batteries. Every now and then they found themselves looking up towards the turn. The grey bending sweep and the screen of tall trees had a fascination for them, a glamour,

2:29:56and above the movements of their hands and feet, their minds watched, intent, excited, but without fear. There was no fear in the village. The women came out of their houses carrying cups of water for the men's thirst. They seemed to be concerned not with the coming of the Germans, but with the bringing in of the wounded in the presence of the English ambulance in their street. And the four stretcher bearers came and went from a house to house, and between the village and the plantation, working, working steadily. Yet they were aware all the time of the pursuing terror, behind the turn of the road they were held still in their intentness. Over all of them was a quiet, fixed serenity. McClean's body had lost its eager bustling energy and was still. His face was grave, preoccupied and still. Only Trixi Rankin went rushing and calling out to her quiet man in a fierce dominating excitement. And in John's face and in his alert body there was happiness.

2:30:56Happiness it was almost ecstasy. It ran through and shone from him firm and still, like a flame that couldn't go out. It penetrated her and made her happy and satisfied and sure of him. She had seen it leap up in him as he swung himself into the seat beside her when they started. He was restless, restless every day until they were sent out. He couldn't wait in peace before they had set off on the adventure, as if he were afraid that at the last minute something would happen to dash his chance from him. She couldn't find this passionate uneasiness in herself. She waited with a solid trust in the event, but she had something of his feeling. After all it was there, the romance, the fascination, the glamour. You couldn't deny it any more than you could deny the beating of the blood in your veins. It was their life. They had been in the village three quarters of an hour. John and Charlotte waited while McLean at his table was putting the last bandage on the last wound. In another minute they would be gone.

2:31:57It was then that the Belgian red crossman came running to them. Had they taken a man with a wound in his back, a bad wound, as big as that? No. Then he was still here and he had got to take him to the ambulance. No, he didn't know where he was. He might be in one of those houses where they took in their wounded, or he might be up there by the tramway in the plantation. Would they take a stretcher and find him? He had to go back to the tramway. The last tram was coming in from Lokaran. He ran back, fussy, and a little frightened. John shouted out, hold on McLean, there's another tram coming, and set off up the street. They had taken all the men out of the houses. Therefore the man with a bad wound must have been left somewhere by the plantation. They went there carrying their stretcher, going, going up to the last minute in delight, in the undying thrill of the danger. The wounded man was not in the plantation. As they looked for him the tram from Lokaran slid in, red crossman on the steps clinging.

2:32:57The doors were flung open and the wounded man came out stumbling, falling, pushing each other. Somebody cried, no stretchers, damned bad management, with the Germans on our backs. A red crossman with a puffed white face stood staring at John and Charlotte's stupified. Are they coming, John said? Coming, they'll be here in ten minutes, five minutes. He snarled a terrified animal. He had caught sight of their stretcher and snatched at it, thrusting out his face, the face of a terrified animal, open mouth and round, palpitating eyes. He lifted his hand as though he would have struck at Charlotte, but John pushed him back. He was brutalized, made savage and cruel by terror. He had a lust to hurt. You can't have our stretcher, Charlotte said. She could see they didn't want it. This was the last tram. The serious cases had been sent on first. All these men could walk or hobble along somehow with help, but they were the last in the retreat of the wounded.

2:33:58They were the men who had been nearest to the enemy and they had known the extremity of fear. You can't have it. It's wanted for a badly wounded man. Chrissy, we don't know, we're looking for him. Ah, pa, we can't wait till you find him. You think we're going to stand here to be taken for one man? They went on through the plantation, stumbling and growling, dragging the wounded out into the road. If Charlotte said we only knew where he was, John stood there silent. His head was turned towards the far end of the wood, the locaran end. The terror of the wood held him. He seemed to be listening, listening but only half awake. Here were the lines stopped and narrow track led downwards out of the wood. Charlotte started to go along it. Come on she said. She saw him coming quickly but withdrawn, sleepwalking feet. The track led into a muddy alley at the back of the village. There was a house there and a woman stood at the door beckoning. She ran up to them. He's here she whispered.

2:34:58He's here. He lay on his side on the flagged floor of the kitchen. His shirt was ripped open and in his white back below the shoulder-bloid there was a deep red wound like a pit with a wide mouth gaping. He was ugly a flamon. He had a puff face with pushed out lips and a scrub of red beard but Charlotte loved him. They carried him out through the wood onto the road. He lay inert, humped up heavy. They had to go slowly, so slowly that they could see the wounded and the red crossmen going on far before them down the street. The flagged roads swayed and swung with the swinging bulge of the stretcher as they staggered. The shafts kept on slipping and slipping. Her grass closed tighter and tighter, her arms ached in their sockets, but her fingers in the palms of her hands were firm and dry, they could keep their hold. They had only gone a few yards along the road when suddenly John stopped and sank his end of the stretcher, compelling Charlotte to lower hers too.

2:36:01What did you do that for? We can't Charlotte, he's too damned heavy. If I can, you can. He didn't move. He stood there staring with his queer hypnotized eyes at the man lying in the middle of the road at the red pit in the white back at the wide ragged lips of the wound gaping. Your goodness, say, pick him up. It isn't the moment for resting. Look here, it isn't good enough. We can't get him there in time. You're not going to leave him. We've got to leave him. We can't let the whole lot be taken just for one man. We'll be taken if you stand here talking. He went on a stepper to slouching, then stood still waiting for her ashamed. He was changed from himself, seized and driven by the fear that it possessed the men in the plantation. She could see it in his retreating eyes. She cried out. Her voice sounded sharp and strange. John, you can't leave him. The wounded man who had lain inert, thinking that they were only resting, now turned his head

2:37:05at her cry. She saw his eyes shaking, palpitating with terror. You frighten him, she said. I won't have him frightened. She didn't really believe that John was going. He went slowly still ashamed and stopped again and waited for her. Come back she said this minute and pick up that stretcher and get on. I tell you it isn't good enough. Oh go then if you're such a damned coward and send Mac to me or Trixie. They'll have gone. He was walking backwards, his face set towards the turn of the road. Come on you little fool, you can't carry him. I can and I shall if Mac doesn't come. You'll be taken he shouted. I don't care if I'm taken I'm taken I shall carry him on my back. While John still went backwards she thought it's alright. If he sees I'm not coming he won't go. He'll come back to the stretcher. John had turned and was running. Even then she didn't realize that he was running away, that she was left there with the wounded man.

2:38:06Things didn't happen like that. People ran away all of a sudden in panics because they couldn't help it. They didn't begin by going slowly and stopping to argue and turning round and walking backwards. They were gone before they knew where they were. She believed that he was going for the ambulance. One moment she believed it and the next she knew better. As she waited in the road conscious of the turn, the turn with its curving screen of toll trees, her knowledge, her dreadful knowledge came to her dark and evil creeping up and up. John wasn't coming back. He would no more come back than he had come back the other day. Sutton had come. The other day had been like today. John was like that. Her mind stood still in amazement, seeing, seeing clearly what John was like. For a moment she forgot about the Germans. She thought I don't believe Max gone. He wouldn't go until he got them all in. Max would come. Then she thought about the Germans again.

2:39:07All this was making it much more dangerous for Mac and everybody with the Germans coming around the corner any minute. She had no business to stand there thinking. She must pick that man up on her back and go on. She stooped down and turned him over on his chest. Then with great difficulty she got him up onto his feet. She took him by the wrists and stooping again swung him onto her shoulder. These acts requiring attention and drawing on all her energy dulled the pain of her knowledge. When she stood up with him she saw John and Macclaim coming to her. She lowered her man gently back onto the stretcher. The Flemon thinking that she had given it up and that he was now abandoned to the Germans groaned. It's all right she said, he's coming. She saw Macclaim holding John by the arm and in her pain there was a sharper pain. She had the illusion of his being dragged back unwillingly. Macclaim smiled as he came to her. He glanced at the Flemon lying heaped on his stretcher. He's been too much for you has he?

2:40:10Too much? Oh yes. Instantly she saw that John had lied and instantly she backed his lie. She hated Macclaim thinking she had failed but anything was better than his knowing the truth. John and Macclaim picked up the stretcher and went on quickly. Charlotte walked beside the Flemon with her hand on his shoulder to comfort him. Again her pity was like love. On the top of the village she could see the opening of the lane. Down there was the house with the tall green door where the dead man was. John had said he was dead. Supposing he wasn't. Or supposing he was still warm and limp like the boy at Mela. She must know. It was a thing she must know for certain or she would never have any peace. And when the Flemon was laid out on Macclaim's table while Macclaim dressed his wound she slipped down the lane and opened the green door. The man lay on a row of packing cases with his feet parted. She put one hand over his heart and the other on his forehead under the lock of blood-stained

2:41:12hair. He was dead. Stiff dead and cold. His tunic and shirt had been unbuttoned to ease his last breathing. She had a queer baffled feeling of surprise and incompleteness as if some awful sense in her would have been satisfied if she had seen that he had been living when John had said that he was dead. Today would then have been linked on firmly to the other day. John stood at the top of the lane. He scowled at her as she came. What do you think you're doing, he said? I went to that house to see if the man was dead. You'd know business too. I told you he was dead. I wanted to make sure. Not even she had just gone to her room and somebody knocked at her door. McLean stood outside, straggling, his way when he had got something important on hand. He asked if he might come in and speak to her for a minute. She sat down on the edge of her bed and he sat on guineas. Elbows croaked out, hands planted on wide-parted knees.

2:42:14He leaned forward looking at her, his face innocent and yet astute. His thick, expressionless eyes clear now and penetrating. He seemed to be fairly humming with activity left over from the excitement of the day. He was always either dreamy and withdrawn or bursting, bursting with energy, and at odd moments he would drop off suddenly to sleep with his chin doubled on his breast, recovering from his energy. Perhaps he had just waked up now to this freshness. Look here he said, you didn't break down, that man wasn't too heavy for you. He was, he was an awful weight I couldn't have carried him a yard. I won't do Charlotte, I saw you take him on your back. She could feel the blood rising up in her face before him, he was hurting her with shame. He persisted merciless, it was Conway who broke down. She had tears now. He knows he said gently but you and me, I want to talk to you about him.

2:43:15He must be got away from the front, he must be got out of Belgium. You always wanted to get him away? Only because I saw he would break down. How could you tell? I'm a psychotherapist, it's my business to tell. But she was still on the defensive. You never liked him. I neither liked nor disliked him. To me Conway is simply a sick man. If I could cure him, can't you? Not as you think. I can't turn his cowardice into courage. I might turn it into something else but not that. That's why I say he ought to go home, you must tell him. I can't. Couldn't Billy tell him? Well hardly, he's his commandant. Can't you? Not I, you know what he thinks about me. What? Then I've got to grudge against him, then I'm jealous of him. You thought it yourself. Did I? You did. Look here, I say. I wanted to take you three into my core and you'd have been sent home after the bear letter affair if I hadn't spoken for you.

2:44:16So much for my jealousy. I only thought you were jealous of John. Why it was I who got him sent out that first day? Was it? Yes. I wanted to give him his chance and he added meditatively. I wanted to know whether I was right. I wanted to see what he would do. I don't think it now, she said, reverting. That's all right. He laughed his brief, merciless laugh, the ascent of his egoism, but his satisfaction had nothing personal in it. He was pleased because justice, abstract justice, had been done. But she suspected his sincerity. He did things for you, not because he liked you, but for some other reason. And he would be so carried away by doing them that he would behave as though he liked you when he didn't. When all the time you couldn't for one minute rouse him from his immense indifference. She knew he liked her for sticking to her post and for taking the wounded man on her back because that was the sort of thing he would have done himself. And he had only helped John because he wanted to see what he would do.

2:45:19Therefore she suspected his sincerity. But no, he wasn't jealous. And now he went on, you must get him to go home at once or he'll have a bad breakdown. We've got to tell him, Charlotte. She stood up ready. Where is he? By himself in his room. She went to him there. He was sitting at his little table. He had been trying to write a letter, but he had pushed it from him and left it. You could see he was absorbed in some bitter meditation. She seated herself at the head of his bed on his pillow where she could look down at him. John she said, you can't go on like this. Like what? He held his head high, but the excited happy light had gone out of his eyes. They stared, not as though they saw anything but withdrawn as though he were contemplating the fearful memory of his fear. And she was sorry for him. So sorry that she couldn't bear it. She bit her lip, lest she should sob out with pain. Oh, she said, and her pain stopped her.

2:46:21I don't know what you're talking about going on like this. I'm going on. What's the good? You've had enough. If I were you, I should go home. You know you can't stand it. What? Go and leave my cars to Sutton? McClain could take them. I don't know how long McClain signed on for. I signed on for the duration of the war. There wasn't any signing on. Well, if you like, I swore I wouldn't go back till it was over. Yes. And supposing it happens again. What should happen again? What happened this afternoon and it wasn't the first time? Do you know what happened? I saw what happened. You simply went to pieces. My dear Charlotte, you went to pieces if you like. I know that's what you told Mac, and he knows how true it is. Does he? While he shan't have my ambulances, you don't suppose I'm going to let McClain fire me out of Belgium. I suppose he put you up to this.

2:47:22He stood up as a sign to her to leave him. I don't see that there's anything more to be said. There's one thing. She slid to her feet. You swore you'd stick to the wars over. I swore if I had to choose between you and the wounded, it shouldn't be you. You haven't got to choose. You've only got to obey orders. His face stiffened. He looked like some hard commander imposing an unanswerable will. The next time he said, you'll be good enough to remember that I settled what risks are to be taken not you. Her soul stiffened too and was hard. She stood up against him with her shoulder to the door. It sounds alright, she said, but the next time I'll carry him on my back all the way. She went to bed with her knowledge. He funk'd and lied. The two things she couldn't stand, his funk and his lying were a real part of him, and it was as if she had always known it as if all the movements of her mind had been an effort

2:48:23to escape her knowledge. She opened her eyes, something hurt them. Gwini coming late to bed had turned on the electric light, and as she rolled over turning her back to the light and to Gwini, her mind shifted. It saw suddenly the flame leaping in John's face, his delight in danger that happiness he felt when he went out to meet it. In a springing of bright and new every day, that was a real part of him. She couldn't doubt it. She knew, and she was left with her queer, baffled sense of surprise and incompleteness. She couldn't see the nature of the bond between these two realities. That was his secret, his mystery. chapter 11 Chapter 12

2:49:27Chapter 12 She woke very early in the morning with one clear image in her mind, what John had done yesterday. Her mind seemed to have watched all night behind her sleep to attack her with it in the first moment of waking. She had got to come to a clear decision about that. If Billy Sutton had done it, or one of McLean's chauffeurs, her decision would have been very clear. She would have said he was a filthy coward and dismissed him from her mind. But John couldn't be dismissed. His funk wasn't like other people's funk. Coupled with his ecstatic love of danger, it had an unreal, fantastic quality. How she couldn't regard his love of danger as an unreal, fantastic thing. It had come to near her. It had moved her too profoundly and too long. She had shared it as she might have shared his passion. So that even in the sharp waking day she felt his fear as a secret, mysterious thing. She couldn't account for it. She didn't, considering the circumstances, she didn't judge the immanence of the Germans

2:50:29to be a sufficient explanation. It was as incomprehensible today as it had been yesterday. But there was fear and fear. There was the cruel animal fear of the Belgians and the plantation, fear that was dark to itself and had no sadness in it. And there was John's fear that knew itself and was sad. The unbearable, inconsolable sadness of John's fear. After all you could think of him as a gentle thing, caught unaware in a trap and tortured, and who was she to judge him. She and her armor, and he and his coat of nerves. His knowledge and his memory of his fear would be like a raw open wound in his mind. And her knowledge of it would be a perpetual irritant, rubbing against it and keeping up the sore. Last night she hadn't done anything to heal him. She had only hurt. And if she gave John up, his wound would never heal. She owed a sort of duty to the wound. Of course like John she would go on remembering what had happened yesterday.

2:51:30She would never get over it any more than he would. Yet after all yesterday was only one day out of his life. There might never be another like it. And to set against yesterday there was their first day at Berlera and the day afterwards at Mele. There was yesterday morning and there was that other day at Mele. She had no business to suppose that he had done then what he did yesterday. They had subtle that once for all at the time. When he said Billy Sutton had told him she was going back with him. It all hung on that. If that was right the rest was right. Supposing Billy hadn't told him anything of the sort though, she would never know that. She couldn't say to Billy, did you tell John I was going back with you? Because if you didn't, she would have to leave that as it was, not quite certain. And she couldn't be quite certain whether the boy had been dead or alive. And no, she couldn't get over it John's cowardice. It had destroyed the unique beautiful happiness she had had with him. There was no use saying that courage, physical courage, didn't count.

2:52:31She could remember a long conversation she had had with George Corfield, the man who wanted to marry her about that. He had said courage was the least thing you could have. That only meant that whatever else you hadn't, you must have that. It was a sort of trust. You were trusted not to betray defenseless things. A coward was a person who betrayed defenseless things. George had said that the world's adoration of courage was the world's cowardice, its fear of betrayal. That was a question for cowardice to settle among themselves. The obligation not to betray defenseless things remained. It was so simple and obvious that people took it for granted. They didn't talk about it. They didn't talk about it because it was so deep and sacred, like honor and like love. So that when John had talked about it, she had always felt that he was her lover, saying the things that other men might not say, things he couldn't have said to any other woman. It was inconceivable that he, it couldn't have happened. As he had said of the defeat of Belgium, it was so bad that it couldn't happen.

2:53:34Odd that the other day she had accepted at once a thing she didn't know for certain. While now she fought fiercely against the things she knew, and always the memory of it returning beat her down. She had to make up her mind and what terms she would live with it and whether she would live with it at all. Supposing it happened again. Supposing you had always to go in fear of it's happening. It might not happen. Funk might be a thing that attacks you like in illness or like drink, and fits with long calm intervals between. She wondered what it would feel like to be subject to attacks. Perhaps you would recover. You would be on the lookout, and when you felt another fit coming on, you could stave it off or fight it down. And the first time wouldn't count because you had no warning. It wouldn't be fair to give him up because of the first time. He would have given her up. He would have left her to the Germans, yes. But if she broke with him now she would never get beyond that thought. She would never get beyond yesterday. She would always see it. The flagged roads swinging with a swinging bulge of the stretcher.

2:54:37The sudden stopping. The flammong with his wound, the shafts of the stretcher suddenly naked sticking out, and then all the fantastic incredible movements of John's flight. Her mind would separate from him on that, closing everything down, making his act eternal. And after all the Germans hadn't come round the corner. Perhaps he wouldn't have left her if they had really come. How did she know what he wouldn't have done? No, that was thin. Thin. She couldn't take herself in quite in that way. It was the way she had tried with Gibson Herbert. When he did anything she loved, she used to pretend he hadn't done it. But with John, if she didn't give him up, her eyes must always be open. Perhaps they would get beyond yesterday. Perhaps they would see other things. Go on with him to something new, forgetting. Her unique beautiful happiness was smashed. Still, there might be some other happiness, beautiful, though not with the same beauty. If John had got the better of his fear, she thought of all the men she had ever heard

2:55:39of who had done that. Looking out in the end, heroic triumphant. Three things. Three little things that happened that morning that showed the way his mind was working. Things that she couldn't get over that she would never forget. John, standing on the hospital steps, watching Trixi Rankin and Alice Bartram as they started with the ambulances, the fierce fling of his body turning away, his voice saying, I loathe those women. Here's Alice Bartram. I saw her making eyes at Sutton over a spouting artery. As for Mrs. Rankin, they ought to intern her. She oughtn't to be allowed within ten miles of any army. That's one thing I like about McLean. He can't stand that sort of thing any more than I can. How about Gwynny and me? Gwynny hangs her beastly legs about all over the place, so do you. John, standing at the foot of the stairs, looking at the Antwerp men. Their heads and faces were covered with a white mask of cotton wool, like a diver's helmet, three small holes in each white mask for mouth and eyes.

2:56:43They were the men whose faces had been burned by fire at Antwerp. Come away, she said, but he still stood, fascinated, hypnotized by the white masks. If I were to stick there doing nothing, looking at the wounded, I should go off my head. My God, so should I, those everlasting wounds. They make you dream about them, disgusting dreams. I never really see the wound, but I'm just going to see it. I know it's going to be more horrible than any wound I've ever seen, and then I wake. That's why I don't look at them more than I can help. You're looking at them now, she said. Oh, them, that's nothing. Cotton wool. And she, putting her hand on his arm to draw him up the stairs away. When shaking her hands off in his queer voice rising, I wish he wouldn't do that, Charlotte. You know I hate it. He had never said anything to her like that before. It hadn't struck her before, that changed to himself he would change to her. He hadn't got over last night. She had hurt him.

2:57:43Her knowledge of his cowardice hurt him, and this was how he showed his pain. She thought, here's Antwerp falling and Belgium beaten, and all those wounded and the dead, and here am I, bothering about these little things as if they mattered. Three little things. The fire from the battlefield had raked the village street as they came in, but it had ceased now. The Qray had been through it all going up and down, helping with the stretchers. John was down there in the wine shop where the soldiers were, looking for more wounded. They had found five in the stable yard waiting to be taken away. They had moved four of them into the ambulance. The fifth, shot through the back of his head, still lay on the ground on a stretcher that dripped blood. Charlotte stood beside him. The Qray came to her there. He was slender and lean in his black casak. He had a red cross-pressard on his sleeve, and in one hand he carried his missile, and in the other the host and the holy oils in a little bag of purple silk.

2:58:47He looked down at the stretcher and he looked at Charlotte smiling faintly. For as Monsieur he said, in the wine shop looking for wounded, she thought he isn't looking for them. He's skulking there out of the firing. He'll always be like that. It had begun again. The bullets whistled in the air and wrapped on the stone causeway and ceased. The Qray glanced down the street towards the place they had come from and smiled again. She liked his lean, dark face, and the long lines that came in it when it smiled. It despised the firing. It despised death. It despised everything that could be done to him there, and it was utterly compassionate. Then he said, it is for you and me to carry him, Madame Ozil. He stooped to the stretcher. Between them they lifted him very slowly and gently into the ambulance. There Monsieur at the bottom. At the bottom because of the steady drip-drip that no bandaging could staunch. He lay straight and stiff, utterly unconcerned, and his feet in their enormous boots slightly

2:59:49parted, stuck out beyond the stretcher. The four others sat in a row down one side of the car and stared at him. The Qray climbed in after him carrying the host. He knelt there where the blood from the smashed head oozed through the bandages and through the canvas of the stretchers to the floor and to the skirts of his casak. The last sacrament, Charlotte waited till it was over, standing stalledly by the tail of the car. He could have cried then because of the sheer beauty of the Qray's act, even while she wondered whether perhaps the wafer on his tongue might not choke the dying man. The Qray hovered on the edge of the car, stooping with a certain awkwardness. She took from him his missile in his purple bag, as he gathered his casak about him and came down. Can I do anything, Monsieur? No matter what's else, it is done. His eyes smiled at her, but his lips were quivering as he took again his missile in his purple bag. She watched him going on slowly down the street till he turned into the wine shop.

3:00:52She wondered had he seen? Did he know why John was there? In another minute John came out, hurrying to the car. He glanced down to blood stains by the back step, then he looked in, and when he saw the man lying on the stretcher he turned on her infuri. What are you thinking of? I told you you weren't to take him. I had to. I couldn't leave him there. I thought, you've no business to think. Well, but the Qray, the Qray doesn't know anything about it. I don't care if he's in a clean bed if they take his boots off. I told you, they can't spare clean beds for corpses. He'll be dead before you can get him there. Not if we're quick. Nonsense. We must get him out of that. He sees the handle of the stretcher and began pulling. She hung onto his arm and stopped that. No, no she said. You shan't touch him. He flung her arm off and turned. You fool he said. You fool. She looked at him steadily, a long looked at remember that made him remember.

3:01:55There isn't time she said. They'll begin firing in another minute. Damn you. But he had turned, slinking round the corner of the hood to the engine. While he cranked it up, she thought of the kit that one of the men had left there in the yard. She made a dash and fetched it, and as she threw it on the floor, the car started. She snatched at the rope and swung herself up onto the step. The dying man lay behind her straight and stiff. His feet in their heavy boots stuck out close under her hand. The four men nodded and grinned at her. They protected her. They understood. If only she could get him into a clean bed. If only she had had time to take his boots off, it would be alright if only she could bring him in alive. He was still alive when they got into Gent. She had forgotten John, and it was not until they came to take out the stretcher that she was again aware of him. They had drawn up before the steps of the hospital. He had got down and was leaning sideways, staring under the stretcher. What is it?

3:02:55You can see what it is. Blood. From the hole in the man's head through the soaked bandages, it's still dripped. It's dripped with a light sound. It had made a glary pool on the floor of the ambulance. Don't look at it, she said. It'll make you sick. You know you can't stand it. Oh, I can't stand it, can't I? He straightened himself. He threw back his head. His upper lip lifted, stretched tight and thin above the clean white teeth. His eyes looked down at her narrowed, bright slits under dropped lids. John, I want to get him in before he dies. Alright. Get in under there, take his head. Hadn't I better take his feet? Better take what you're told to. She stiffened to the weight, heaved up her shoulder. Two men came running down the steps to help her as John pulled. They'll be glad, he said, to see him. She was in the yard of the hospital swapping out the car when John came to her. The back inside of the hospital, the long barracks of the anacs in the wall at the bottom

3:03:59and closed a waste place of ocherish clay. A long wooden shed, straw white and new, was built out under the red brick of the anacs. She thought it was a garage. John came out of the door of the shed. He beckoned to her as he came. Come here, he said, I want to show you something. They went close together, John gripping her arm in the old way to steer her. As they came to the long wall of the shed, his eyes slewed round and looked at her out of their corners. He had seen that side-long attentive look once before, when she was a little girl, in the eyes of a schoolboy who had taken her away and told her something of horrid. The door of the shed stood a jar. John half-led, half pushed her in. Look there, he said. The dead men were laid out in a row on their backs. Greyish white, salo white faces upturned. Body's straight and stiff on a thin litter of straw. Hail grey light hovered, filtered through dust. It came from some clearer place of glass beyond that might have been a carpenter's shop

3:05:02partitioned off. If you couldn't see what was going on there, he didn't see anything but the dead bodies, the dead faces, and John's living face. He leaned against the wall. His head was thrown back. His eyes moved glistening under the calm lids. The corners of his mouth and the wings of his nostrils were lifted as he laughed. A soft thin laugh breathed out between the edges of his teeth. He pointed. There's your man. Shows how much they wanted him, doesn't it? He lay there. The last comeer in his uniform and bloody bandages. His stiff peaked mouth open. His legs stretched apart as they had sprung in his last agony. Oh, John! She cried out in her fright and put her hands over her eyes. She had always been afraid of the dead bodies. He didn't want to know where they put them and nobody told her. John gripped her wrist so that he hurt her and dragged down her hands. He looked into her eyes, still laughing. I thought you weren't afraid of anything, he said.

3:06:03I'm not afraid when we're out there. I'm only afraid of seeing them. You know I am. She turned, but he had put himself between her and the door. She wrenched at the latch, sobbing. How could you be so cruel? What did you do it for? What did you do it for? I wanted you to see what they've done with him. There's his clean bed. They haven't even taken his boots off. You brute! You utter brute! A steely sound like a dropped hammer came from behind the glass partition. Then the sliding of a latch. John opened the door a little way and she slipped out past him. Next time he said, perhaps you'll do as you're told. She wanted to get away by herself, not into her own room where Gwynny, who had been unloading ambulance trains half the night now rested. The McClane Corps was crowding into the mess room for tea. She passed through without looking at any of them and out to the balcony closing the French window behind her. She could hide there beyond the window where the wall was blank.

3:07:05She leaned back, flattening herself against the wall. Something would have to be done. They couldn't go on like this. Her mind went too and fro quickly, with short, jerky movements distressed. It had to do so much thinking in so short a time. She would always have to reckon with John's fear. In John's fear was not what she had thought it. A sad, helpless, fatal thing, sad because it knew itself doomed like in helpless. It was cruel, with a sort of mental violence in it, worse than the cruel animal fear of the men in the plantation. She could see that his cowardice had something to do with his cruelty, and that his cruelty was somehow linked up with his cowardice, but she couldn't for the life of her imagine the secret of the bond. She only felt that it would be something secret and horrible, something that she would rather not know about. And she knew that since yesterday he had left off caring for her. His love had died a sudden, cruel, and violent death. His cowardice had done that too, and he had left off caring for the wounded.

3:08:07It was almost as if he hated them because they lay so still, keeping them back, keeping them out under the fire. Clear, but all those other cowardly things that he had done had seemed to her unreal even when she had seen him doing them. And afterwards, when she thought about them, they were unreal as if they hadn't happened, as if she had just imagined them. Incredible, and yet the sort of thing you could imagine if you tried, but that last devilish thing he did, it had a hard, absolute reality, just because it was inconceivable because you couldn't have imagined it, you couldn't doubt that it had happened. It was happening now, as long as she lived, it would go on happening in her mind, she would never get away from it. There were things that men did, bestial things, cruel things, things they did to women, but not things like this. They didn't think of them because this thing wasn't thinkable. Why had John done it? Why? She suppose he wanted to hurt her and frighten her because he had been hurt, because he

3:09:10had been frightened, and because he knew she loved her wounded men, perhaps he wanted to make her hate him and have done with it. Well she did hate him. Oh yes, she hated him. She heard the window open and shut, and a woman's footsteps swishing on the stone floor. Trixie Rankin came to her with her quick look that fell on you like a bird swooping. She stood facing her upright and stiff in her sharp beauty. Her lips were pressed together as though they had just closed on some biting utterance, but her eyes were soft and intent. What she done this time, she said? He hasn't done anything. Oh yes, he has. He's done something perfectly beastly. It was no use lying to Trixie. She knew what he was like even if she didn't know about yesterday, even if she didn't know what he had done now. Nobody could know that. She looks straight at Trixie with broad open eyes that defied her to know. What makes you think so? Your face. Damn my face. It's got nothing to do with you, Trixie.

3:10:11Yes it has. If it gives this show away, I can't help seeing, can I? You can help talking. Yes, I can help talking. The arrogance had gone out of her face. It could change in a minute from the face of a bird of prey to the face of a watching angel. It looked at her as it looked at wounded men, tender and protective. But Trixie couldn't see that you didn't want any tenderness and protection just then, or any recognition of your wound. You run little blighter, she said. Come along. Nobody's going to talk. There was a stir as Charlotte went in. People shifting their places to make room for her. McClayne calling out to her to come and sit by him. Alice Bartram making sweet eyes. The men getting up and cutting bread and butter and reaching for her cup to give it her. She could see they were all determined to be nice to show her what they thought of her. They had sent Trixie to bring her in. There was something a little deliberate about it and exaggerated. They were getting it up, a demonstration in her favor, a demonstration against John Conway.

3:11:14She talked, but her thoughts ran by themselves on a line separate from her speech. We got in six wounded. That Cure was there again. He was splendid. They didn't know anything. They condemned him on the evidence of her face. The face she had brought back to them coming straight from John. Her face had the mark of what he had done to her. Much firing? Not so very much. She remembered what he had said to her about her face. Somethings happened to it. Some cruelty. Some damnable cruelty. We'll have to go out there again. They were all listening and Alice Bartram had made fresh tea for her. McClayne was setting down her cup. She was thirsty. She longed for the fresh fragrant tea. She was sued by the kind listening faces. Suddenly they drew away. They weren't listening anymore. John had come into the room. It flashed on her that all these people thought that John was her lover, her lover in the way they understood love. They were looking at him as if they hated him.

3:12:15The John's face was quiet and composed and somehow triumphant. It held itself up against all the hostile faces. It fronted McClayne and his men as their equal. It was the face of a man who was satisfied a lust. His whole body had a look of assurance and accomplishment as if his cruelty had given him power. And with it all he kept his dreadful beauty, it hurt her to look at him. She rose, leaving her tea untasted and went out of the room. She couldn't sit there with him. She had given him up. Her horror of him was pure absolute. It would never return on itself to no pity or remorse. Chapter 12 Recording by X Patriot in Bangor, Maine Chapter 13 of the Romantic by Mace and Claire This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by X Patriot in Bangor, Maine.

3:13:19Chapter 13 And the next day as if nothing had happened, he was excited and eager to set out. He could sleep off his funk in the night like drink and get up in the morning as if it had never been. He was more immune from memory than any drunkard. He woke to his romance as a child wakes to the renewed wonder of the world. It was so real to him that however hardly you judged him you couldn't think of him as a humbug or a hypocrite. No, he was not that. He was not that. His mind truly lived in a glorious state for which none of his disgraceful deeds were ever done. It created a sort of innocence for him. She could forgive him even after yesterday. She could almost believe in him again when she saw him coming down the hall to the ambulance with his head raised in his eyes shining gallant and keen. They were to go to Berlera. Percy Rankin had gone on before them with Gernie, McClein's best chauffeur.

3:14:19McClein and Sutton were at Mele. They had not been to Berlera since that day. The first time they had gone out together. That time at least had been perfect. It remained secure. Nothing could ever spoil it. She could remember the delight of it their strange communion of ecstasy without doubt, without misgiving. You could never forget. You might have been better if you could, instead of knowing that it would exist in you forever, to torment you by its unlikeness to the days, the awful, incredible days that had come afterwards. There was no way of thinking that John had been more real that day than he had been yesterday. She was simply left with the inscrutable mystery of him on her hands. But she could see clearly that he was more real to himself. Yesterday and the day before had ceased to exist for him. He was back in his old self. There was only one sign of memory that he gave. He was no longer her lover. He no longer recognized her even as his comrade.

3:15:20He was her commandant. It was his place to command and hers to be commanded. He looked at her when he looked at her at all with a stern coldness. She was a woman who had committed some grave fault when he no longer trusted. So masterly was his playing of this part, so great in a way, was still his power over her, that there were moments when she almost believed in the illusion he created. She had committed some grave fault. She was not worthy of his trust. Somewhere at some time forgotten in some obscure and secret way she had betrayed him. She had so mixed her hidden self with his in love that even now with all her knowledge of him, she couldn't help feeling the thing as he felt it and seeing as he saw. Her mind kept on passing in and out of the illusion with little shocks of astonishment. And yet all the time she was acutely aware of the difference. When she went out with him she felt that she was going with something dangerous and uncertain.

3:16:24She knew what fear was now. She was afraid all the time of what he would do next of what he would not do. Her wounded were not safe with him, nothing was safe. She wished that she could have gone out with Billy, with Billy there wouldn't be any excitement, but neither would there be this abominable fear. On the other hand you couldn't let anybody else take the risk of John, and you simply couldn't let him go alone. Can see him going alone, the things that might happen, she could at least see that something didn't. It was odd that John had never shown the smallest desire to go without her. If he hadn't liked it he could easily have taken Sutton or Gwynny or one of the McLean men. It was as if in spite of his hostility he still felt as he had said that where she was everything would be right. And it looked as if this time nothing could go wrong. When they came into the village the firing had stopped. It was concentrating further east towards Zéla.

3:17:25Lucy's ambulance was packed, and Trixie was excited and triumphant. Her gestures waved them back as useless, much too late. Without them they had got in all the wounded. But in the end they took over two of them, slight cases that Trixie resigned without a pang. She had had to turn them out to make room for poor Gernie the chauffeur, who had heard himself, ruptured something, slipping on a muddy bank with his stutter. Mr. Conway she said could drive her back to Gent, and Charlotte could follow with the two men. She had settled it all in her bright, domineering way in a second, and now swung herself up on the back step of her car. They had got round the turn of the village, and Charlotte was starting to follow them when she heard them draw up. In another minute John appeared walking back slowly down the street with a young Belgian lieutenant. They were talking earnestly together. So soon as Charlotte saw the lieutenant, she had a sense of something happening, something fatal that would change Trixie's safe, easy program.

3:18:29John, as he came on, looked perturbed and thoughtful. They stopped. The lieutenant was saying something final. John nodded ascent and saluted. The lieutenant sketched a salute and hurried away in the opposite direction. John waited till he was well out of sight before he came to her. She noticed that. He had the look at first of being up to something, as if the devil of yesterday was with him still. It passed. His voice had no devil in it. I say I've got a job for you Charlotte, something you'll like. There was no devil in his voice, but he stared away from her as he spoke. I don't want you to go to Gent. I want you to go on to Zala. Zala, do I know the way? It's quite easy. You turn round and go the way we went that first day, remember? It's the shortest cut from here. Pretty bad going though. And we better go on and strike the main road. Yes, if you want to go miles round and get held up by the transport. All right, if we can get through, you'll get through all right.

3:19:32His voice had the tone of finality. I'm to go by myself then. Well, if I've got to drive Mrs. Rankin, she thought it's going to be dangerous. By the way, I haven't told her I'm sending you. You don't want her budding in and going with you. No, I certainly don't want Trixi. And look here, I don't particularly want those men. Much better leave them here, whether safe and send in again for them. I don't know that I can send in again. We're supposed to have finished this job. The cars may be wanted for anything. They'll be all right. I don't like taking them. You're making difficulties, he said. He was irritable and hurried. He had kept on turning and looking up the street, as though he thought the lieutenant might appear again at any minute. When will you learn that you've simply got to obey orders? All right. She had in the chance with him. Whatever she said and did, he could always bring it round to that, her orders. She thought she knew what his orders had been.

3:20:34He cranked up the engine. She could see him stooping and rising to it, a rhythmic elastic movement. He was cranking energetically with a sort of furious, flushed enjoyment of his power. She backed and turned and he ran forward with her as she started. He shouted, don't think about the main road, get through, and hurry up, you haven't got too much time. She knew it was going to be dangerous and he funked it. He hadn't got to drive Trixie into Gantt. When the worst came to the worst, Trixie could drive herself. She thought he didn't tell her because he'd derrant. He knew she wouldn't let him send me by myself. She'd make him go. She'd stand over him and bully him till he had to. Still, she could do it. She could get through. Going by herself was better than going with a man who funked it. Only she would have liked it better without the two wounded men. She thought of them jostled, falling against each other, falling forward and recovering, shaken by the jolting of the car, and perhaps brought back into danger.

3:21:37She suspected that not having too much time might be the essence of the risk. Everything was quiet as they ran along the open road from the village to the hamlet that sat low and humble on the edge of the fields. A few houses in the long wall of the barn still stood, but by this time the house she had brought the guns from had the whole of its roof knocked in, and the stripped gable at the end of the road no longer prepped up its point against the sky. The front of the hollow shell had fallen forward and flung itself across the road. For a moment she thought the way was blah. She thought, if I can't get round I must get over. She backed, charged, and the car rocking a little struggled through, and there where the roads swirled slightly, the high wall of a barn undermined, bulge forward, toppling. It answered the vibration of the car with a visible tremor. So soon as she passed it fell with a great crash and rumbling, and sprawled in a smoky heap that blocked her way behind her.

3:22:39After that they went through quiet country for a time, but further east near the town, the shelling began. The road here was opened up into great holes with ragged hollow edges. She had to skirt them carefully, and sometimes there would not be enough clear ground to move in. And one wheel of the car would go unsupported hanging over space. That she had got through. As she came into the sailor she met the last straggling line of the refugees. They cried out to her not to go on. She thought, I must get those men before the retreat begins. Returning with her heavy load of wounded on the pitch black road, halfway to get she was halted. She had come up with a tail end of the retreat. Frixie Rankins stood on the hospital steps looking out. The car turned in and swung up the rubber incline, but instead of stopping before the porch it ran on towards the downward slope. Charlotte jammed on the brakes with a hard jerk and back to the level.

3:23:42She couldn't think how she had let the car do that. She couldn't think why she was slipping from the edge of it into Trixie's arms, and stumbling in that ignominious way on the steps, with Trixie holding her up on one side. It didn't last. Where she had drunk the hot black coffee that Alice Bartram gave her she was all right. The men had gone out of the mess room leaving them alone. I'm all right, Trixie, only a bit tired. Tired? I should think you were tired. That Conway man's a perfect devil. Fancy scooting back himself on a safe trip, and sending you out to Zela. Zela. McClain doesn't much care where he sends you. Oh, Mac, as if he could stop us, but he'd draw the line at Zela with the Germans coming into it. Rot. They weren't coming in for hours and hours. Well anyhow, he thought they were. He didn't think anything about it. I wanted to go, and I went. He couldn't stop me. It's no good lying to me, Charlotte.

3:24:43I know too much. I know he had orders to go to Zela himself, and the damned coward funked it. I have a good mind to report him to headquarters. No, you won't do that. You wouldn't be such a putrid beast. If I don't, Charlotte, it's because I like you. You're the pluckiest little blighter in the world. But I'll tell you what I shall do. Next time your Mr. Conway's ordered on a job he doesn't fancy, I'll go with him, and hold his nose down to it by the scruff of his neck. If he was my man, I'd bloody well tell him what I thought of him. It doesn't matter what you think of him. You were pretty well gone on him yourself once. When? When? When you wanted to turn Mac out and make him commandant. Oh, then! I was a jolly fool to be taken in by him, so were you. She stopped on her way to the door. I admit he looks everything he isn't, but that only shows what a beastly humbug the man is. No, he isn't a humbug. He really likes going out, even if he can't stand it when he gets there.

3:25:46I've no use for that sort of courage. It isn't courage, but it isn't a humbug. I've no use for your fine distinctions, either. She heard Alice Bartram's voice calling to Trixie as she went out. It's jolly decent of her not to go back on him. The voice went on. You needn't mind what Trixie says about cold feet. She said about everybody, about Sutton and Mac and all our men and me. She thought, what's the good of lying when they all know? Still, there were things they wouldn't know if she kept on lying, things they would never guess. Trixie doesn't know anything about him, she said. No more do you. You don't know what he was. Whatever he is, whatever he's done, Charlotte, you mustn't let it hurt you. It hasn't anything to do with you. We all know what you are. Me. I'm not bothering about myself. I tell you it's not what you think about him. It's what I think. Yes, said Alice Bartram. Then Gwynne Denning and John Conway came in and she left them.

3:26:50John carried himself very straight and again Charlotte saw about him that odd look of accomplishment and satisfaction. So you got through, he said? Yes, I got through. They kept their eyes from each other as they spoke. Gwynne struck in. Are you all right? Yes, rather. The little Belgian army doctor was there. He was adorable sticking on, working away with his wounded in a sort of heavenly piece with the Germans just outside. How many did you get? 11. 13. Oh good, I've had the rottenest luck. I'd have given my head to have gone with you. I'm glad you didn't. It wasn't what you'd call a lady's tea party. Who wants a lady's tea party? I ought to have gone in with a Mack Core than I'd have had a chance. Not this time, Mack draws the line somewhere. Look here, Gwynne. I wish you'd clear out a minute and let me talk to John. Gwynne went, grumbling. For a moment silence came down between them.

3:27:51John was drinking coffee with an air of being alone in the room, pretending that he hadn't heard and didn't see her. John, I didn't mind driving that car. I knew I could do it and I did it. I won't say I didn't mind the shelling because I did. Still, shelling's all in the day's work. And I didn't mind you're sending me because I'd rather have gone myself and let you go. I don't want you to be killed. Somehow that's still the one thing I couldn't bear. But if you'd sent Gwynne, I'd have killed you. I didn't send Gwynne. I gave you your chance. I knew you wanted to cut Mrs. Rankin out. I, I never thought of such a rotten thing. Well you talked about dangers if you liked it. So did you. Oh, go to hell. I've just come from there. Oh, so you were frightened, were you? Yes, I was horribly frightened. I had thirteen wounded men with me. What do you suppose it feels like driving a heavy ambulance car by yourself?

3:28:51You can't sit in front and steer and look after thirteen wounded men at the same time. I had to keep hopping in and out. That isn't nice when there's shells about. I shall never forgive you for not coming to give a hand with those men. There's funk you can forgive. And she thought, it's John. John, I'm saying these disgusting things too. I'm as bad as Trixi, telling him what I bloody well think of him going back on him. And there's funk. You'd better take care, Charlotte. Do you know I could get you fired out of Belgium tomorrow? Not after tonight I think. It was horrible. He got up and opened the door. Anyhow, you'll clear out of this room now, damn you. I wish you'd heard that army doctor damning you. Why didn't he go back with you himself then? He couldn't leave his wounded. He slammed the door hard behind her. That was just like him. Wounded men everywhere trying to sleep, and he slammed doors. He didn't care.

3:29:51She would have to go online. She had made up her mind to that. So long as it would keep the others from knowing, so long as John's awfulness went beyond their knowledge, so long as it would do any good to John she would lie. Her time had come. She remembered saying that, she could hear herself talking to John at Barrow Hill Farm. Everybody's got their breaking point. I dare say when my time comes I shall funk and lie. Well, didn't she? Funk. The everlasting funk of wondering what John would do next and lying. Having it every turn to save him, he was her breaking point. She had lied the first time they went out about the firing. She wondered whether she had done it because then, even then, she had been afraid of his fear. Hadn't she always somehow in secret been afraid? She could see the car coming around the corner by the church in the narrow street of Stowe. She could feel it grazing her thigh in John letting her go, jumping safe to the curb.

3:30:52She had pretended that it hadn't happened. But that first day, no, he had been brave then. She had only lied because she was afraid he would worry about her. Brave then, could war tire you and wear you down and change you from yourself in two weeks? Change him so that she had to hate him? Half the night she lay awake wondering, do I hate him because he doesn't care about me or because he doesn't care about the wounded? You can see all their faces, the face of the wounded man at Mele. He had crawled out on his hands and knees to look for her, the face of the dead boy who hadn't died when John left him. The flim on they brought back from Lokaran, lying in the road, the face of the dead man in the shed, in John's face. How could you care for a thing like that? How could you want a thing like that to care for you? And she, she didn't matter, nothing mattered in all the world but them.

3:31:53End of chapter 13 Recording by X Patriot in Bangor, Maine Chapter 14 of the Romantic by Mace and Claire This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by X Patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 14 It was Saturday the 10th of October, the day after the fall of Antwerp. The Germans were pressing close around Gent, they might march in any day. She had been in Belgium a hundred years, she had lived a hundred years under this doom. But at last she was free of John, utterly free. His mind would have no power over her anymore, nor yet his body. She was glad that he had not been her lover. Supposing her body had been bound to him so that it couldn't get away, the struggle had been hard enough when her first flash came to her.

3:32:54And when she had fought against her knowledge and denied it, unable to face the truth that did violence to her passion, and when she had given him up and was left with just that, the beauty of his body, and it had hurt her to look at him. Oh well, nothing could hurt her now. And anyhow, she would get through today without being afraid of what might happen. John couldn't do anything awful. It had been ordered on an absolutely safe expedition, taking medical stores to the Convent Hospital at Bruges, and convoying Gernie the Sixth Shofurr to Austin for England. Charlotte was to go out with Sutton, and Gwynnie was to take poor Gernie's place. She was glad she was going out with Billy. Whatever happened, Billy would go through it without caring, his mind fixed on the solid work. In John, for an hour before he started, had been going about in gloom, talking of death, his death. They were looking over the last letter from his father, which he had asked her to answer

3:33:54for him. It seemed that John had told him the chances were he would be killed, and had asked whether in this case he would allow the rodent ambulances to be handed over to McLean, and the old man had given his consent. Isn't a pity to frighten him, she said? He's no business to be frightened, it's my death, if I can face it he can, I'm simply making necessary arrangements. She could see that, at the same time it's struck her that he wanted you to see that he exposed himself to all the risks of death, to see how he faced it. She had no patience with that talk about death, that pitiful bolstering up of his romance. If McLean says much more, you can tell him. He was counting on this transfer of the ambulances to get credit with McLean to silence him. There were other letters which he had told her to answer. As soon as he had started she went into his room to look for them. If they were not on the chimney-piece they would be in the drawer with his razors and pocket

3:34:55handkerchiefs. It was John's room, after she had gone through it that showed her what he was doing. Sutton looked in before she had finished. He called him, Billy, you might come here a minute. He came in, eyebrows lifted at the inquisition. What's up? I'm afraid John isn't coming back. Not coming back. Of course he's coming back. No, I think he's got off. You mean he's, yes, bolted. What on earth makes you think that? He's taken all sorts of things. Pajamas, razors, all his pocket handkerchief. I had to look through his drawers to find those letters he told me to answer. Sutton had gone through into the slip of white-tiled lavatory beyond. She followed him. My God, he said, yes. He's taken his toothbrush and his sleeping draft. You know he tried to get leave yesterday and they wouldn't give it him. No, that makes it simply awful. Pretty awful. Billy, we must get him back.

3:35:57I don't know about that. He isn't much good, is he? I think we better let him go. Don't you see how awful it'll be for the core? The core, does that matter? McClain would take us all on tomorrow. I mean for us, you and me and Gwynny, he's our core and we're it. Charlie, with the Germans coming into Gent, do you honestly believe anybody will remember what he did or didn't do? Yes, we're going to stick on with the Belgian army. It'll be remembered against us. Besides, it'll kill his father. He'll do that anyway. He's rotten through and through. No, he was splendid in the beginning. He might be splendid someday again, but if we let him go off and do this, he's done for. He's done for anyhow. Isn't it better to recognize that he's rotten? McClain wouldn't have him. He saw what he was. He didn't see him at Berlera. He was splendid there. My dear child, don't you know why?

3:36:57He didn't see there was any danger. He was too stupid to see it. I saw it. You're not stupid. He did see it at the end. At the end, yes, when he let you go back for the guns. She remembered. She remembered his face, the little beads of sweat glittering. He couldn't help that. Look here. From the time he realized the danger, did he go out or did he stay undercover? She didn't answer. There he said. You see? Oh, Billy, won't you leave him one shred? No. Not one shred. Yet even now, if he could only be splendid, if he could only be it, why shouldn't Billy leave him one shred? After all, he didn't know all the awful things John had done and she would never tell him. He did know two things. The two things she didn't know. She had got to know them. The desire that urged her to the completion of her knowledge pursued her now. She would possess him in her mind if in no other way.

3:37:58Billy, do you remember that day at Mele when John lost me? Did you tell him I was going back with you? No, I didn't. Then he had left her and he had lied to both of them. Was the boy dead or alive when he left him? He was alive all right. We could have saved him. He had died. He had died of fright then. You said he was dead. I know I did. I lied. And before that, when he was with you and tricksy on that battlefield, did he? Yes. Then too. You see, there aren't any shreds. The only thing you can say is that he can't help it. Nobody had been hard on him if he hadn't gased so much about danger. That's the part you can't understand. But Billy, why did you lie about him? Because I didn't want you to know then. I knew it would hurt you. I knew it would hurt you more than anything else. That was rather wonderful of you. Wasn't wonderful at all. I knew because what you think, what you feel matters more to me than anything else.

3:39:01Except perhaps my job. I have to keep that separate. Her mind slid over that, not caring, returning to the object of its interest. Look here, Billy. You may be right. It probably doesn't matter to us, but it'll be perfectly awful for him. They can't do anything to him, Charlie. It's what he'll do to himself. Do a side, not he. I don't mean that. Can't you see that when he gets away to England safe and the funk settles down, he'll start romancing all over again? He'll see the whole war again like that. And then he'll remember what he's done. He'll have to live all his life remembering. He won't. You'll remember. You'll suffer. You're feeling the shame he ought to feel and doesn't. Well somebody's got to feel it. And he'll feel it too. He won't be let off as long as he lives he'll remember. I don't want him to have that suffering. He's brought it on himself, Charlie. I don't care. I don't want him to have it. I couldn't bear it if he got away.

3:40:03Of course, if you're going to be unhappy about it, the only thing is, can we go after him? Can we spare a car? Well yes, I can manage that all right. The fact is the Germans may really be in tomorrow or Monday, and we're thinking of evacuating all the British wounded today. There are some men here that we ought to take to Austin. I've been talking to the President about it. And in the end, they went with their wounded less than an hour after John had started. I don't say I'll bring him back since Sutton, but at any rate we can find out what he's up to. He meditated. We may and have to bring him. I shouldn't wonder if he came back on his own. He's like that. He can't stand danger yet he keeps on coming back to it. Can't leave it alone. I know. He isn't quite an ordinary coward. I'm not sure. I've known chaps like that. Can't keep away from the thing. But she stuck to it. John's cowardice was not like other people's cowardice. Other cowards going into danger had the imagination of horror.

3:41:06He had nothing but the imagination of romantic delight. It was the reality that became too much for him. He was either too stupid or too securely wrapped up in his dream to reckon with reality. It surprised him every time. And he had no imaginative fear of fear. His fear must have surprised him. He'll have got away from brews, she said. I don't think so. You'll have to put up at the convent for a bit to let Gernie rest. They had missed the convent and were running down a narrow street towards the marketplace when they found John. He came on across a white bridge over a canal at the bottom. He was escorted by some Belgian women dressed in black. They were talking and pointing up the street. He said he had been to lunch in the town and had lost himself there, and they were showing him the way back to the convent. He had seen all that before somewhere. John coming over the canal bridge with the women in black. She remembered that was in one of her three dreams.

3:42:07Only what she saw now was incomplete. There had been something more in the dream, something had happened. It happened half an hour later when she went out to find John in the convent garden where he was talking with the nuns. The garden shimmered in a silver mess from the canal, the broad grass plots, the clipped hedges, the cones and spikes of you, the tall feathery chrysanthemums, the trailing bowers and arches were netted and laced in a web with the silver mist. Even at the bottom of the path the forms of John and the three women showed blurred and insubstantial and still. Presently they emerged solid and clear, the nuns and their black habits and the raking white caps like wings that set them sailing along. They were showing John their garden, taking a shy, gentle, absorbed possession of him. And as she came towards him, John passed her without speaking. His face had turned to her with the look she had seen before, eyes of hatred, eyes that

3:43:08repudiated and betrayed her. The nuns had stopped courteously to greet her, she fell behind with one of them, the two others had overtaken John who had walked on, keeping up his stiff, repudiating air. The air, the turn of the head, the look that she had dreamed, only in the dream it had hurt her and now she was hard and had no pain. He was in the convent garden that they played it out in one final astounding conversation. The nuns had brought two chairs out onto the flag terrace and set a small table there covered with a white cloth. Thus invited John had no choice but to take his place beside her, still he retained his mood. The nuns had left them, Sutton was in one of the wards helping with an operation. I thought he said that I was going to have peace. They seemed to her that they had peace, they had been so much at the mercy of chance moments that this secure hour given to them in the closed garden seemed in its quietness immense.

3:44:12But first it Sutton then it's you. We needn't say anything unless you like, there isn't much to be said. Oh isn't there? Not she said if you're coming back. Of course I'm coming back. Look here Charlotte, you didn't suppose I was really going to bolt did you? Were you going to change into your pajamas at Austin? My pajamas, I brought them for gurney. And your sleeping draft was for gurney? Of course it was. And your razors and your toothbrush too? Oh John, what's the good of lying? You forgot that I helped Alice Bartram the pack gurney's things. You forget that Billy knows. Do I? I shan't forget you're going back on me, you're betraying me he said. But for the first time she realized how alone he was, how horribly alone he had nobody but her. Who have I betrayed you to? To Sutton, to McLean, to everybody you talk to? No, no. Yes, and you betrayed me in your thoughts, that's worse.

3:45:16People don't always mean what they say, it's what they think. Was I to think? Why did all the damnable things you said about me weren't true? I didn't say anything. You betrayed me by the things you didn't say. Why should I have betrayed you? You know why? When a woman betrays a man, it's always for one reason. He threw his head back to strike at her with his eyes, hard and keen, dark blue like the blade of a new knife, because he hasn't given her what she wants. Oh, what I want, I thought we'd settled that long ago. You've never settled it. It isn't in you to settle it. I can't talk to you about that, you're too horrible, but I didn't betray you. You listen to people who betrayed me. If you cared for me in any decent way, you'd have stood by me. I have stood by you through thick and thin. I've lied your lies. There isn't one of your lies I haven't backed. I've done everything I could think of to keep people from knowing about you.

3:46:18Yet you go and tell Sutton that I bolted, that I'm a deserter. Yes, when it was all over, if you'd got away, everybody'd have known. As it is only Billy and I know, and he's safe. You insist that I was trying to get away. I own, I thought of it, but one doesn't do everything one thinks of. No, don't imagine I was sick of the war or sick of Belgium. It's you I'm sick of. Me? Yes you. You had your warning. I told you what would happen if you let me see you wanted me. You think you've seen that? I've seen nothing else. Once perhaps, twice, once when you came to me on Barrow Hill, and when we were crossing once, and each time you never saw it, anybody can see it. In your face, in your eyes and mouth, you can't hide your lust. My lust. Don't you know I only cared for you because I'd done with that? They stopped. The nuns were back again bringing great cups of hot black coffee, coming quietly and going

3:47:22quietly away. It was wonderful. All that beauty and gentleness and peace existing in the horror of the war, and through this horror within horror that John had made. They drank their coffee slowly, greedily, prolonging this distraction from their torment. Charlotte finished first. You say I want you. I own, I did once, but I don't now. Why I care more for the scrubbiest little Belgian with a smashed finger than I do for you. I suppose you can satisfy your erotic susceptibilities that way? I haven't any. I tell you. I only cared for you because I thought you were clean. I thought your mind was beautiful and you aren't clean. And your mind's the ugliest thing I know. And the cruelest. Let's get it right, John. I can forgive your fulking. If your nerves are jumpy, they're jumpy. I dare say I shall be jumpy if the Germans come into gant before I'm out of it. I can forgive everything you've done to me. I see there's nothing left for you but to lie.

3:48:24But I can't forgive you not caring for the wounded. That's cruel. You didn't care for that boy at Mela. John's mouth opened as if he were going to say something. He seemed to gasp. No you didn't or you wouldn't have left him. Whatever your funk was like, you couldn't have left him if you'd cared any more than I could have left you. He was dead when I left him. He was still warm when I found him. Billy thought you were bringing him away. He says he wasn't dead. He lies then. But you'll take his word against mine. Yes, she said simply. And he says he didn't tell you I was going on with him. You don't care for me. If you'd cared, you couldn't have left me. I thought you said if it was a toss up between you and a wounded man, there were wounded men in that car. There was a wounded man with me. You left him. Don't imagine I cared about myself, whether I lived or died. It was because I cared about you. I cared so awfully.

3:49:24He jerked out a laugh. One light short sound of dismissal and contempt. End of chapter 14. Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 15 of the Romantic by Mason Claire. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 15. That light sound he made had ended it. He remembered it afterwards, not as a thing that hurt her, but as an unpleasant incident of the day, like the rudeness of a stranger and yet not to be forgotten. It had the importance of extreme finality, his answer to everything unanswerable. She didn't care. She had ended it herself and with so clean a cut that she could afford to let him have that inarticulate last word. She had left him nothing to do but keep up his pretense that there had never been so

3:50:28much as a beginning. He gave no sign of anything having been between them unless his attitude to Sutton was a sign. It showed the next day the terrible Sunday that was ending everything. Yesterday he had given orders that Charlotte should drive Sutton while he drove by himself. Today he had changed all that. Gwynny was to drive Sutton and Charlotte was to go out alone and he had offered himself to McClean. To McClean. That gave her the measure of his resentment. She could see that he coupled her with Sutton while he yet tried to keep them apart. He was not going to have more to do with either of them than he could help. So that she had hardly seen or heard of him that day. And when the solid work began she found that she could turn him out of her mind as if he had never been there. The intolerable burden of him slipped from her. All morning she had a sense of cold clearness and lightness and she judged that her deliverance was complete. He had waited a long time with her car drawn up close under the house wall in the long

3:51:32street at Mele. McClean's car stood in front of her waiting for John. He was up there on the battlefield with Sutton and McClean. McClean had kept him off at all day. He had come to her when they started and told her not to worry. Conway would be all right. He would see that he didn't get into places where he... Well, unsuitable places. He would keep him driving. But in the end one of the stretcher bearers had given in and John had to take his turn. He had been keen to go. Keen. She could see him swinging along up the road to the battlefield and McClean with him running to keep up with his toll stride. She had taken her turn too and she knew what it was like up there. Endless turnip fields, turnips thrown up as if they had been pulled, livid roots that rotted, and the wounded and the dead men lying out among them. She went stumbling the turnips rolled and slipped under your feet, seeing things. Her mind looked the other way, frightened. She was tired out, finished.

3:52:34She could have gone to sleep now, sitting up there on the car. It would be disgraceful if she went to sleep. She mustn't think about the battlefield. She couldn't think. She could only look on at things coming up in her mind. Howing turnips at Barrow Hill Farm? Supposing you found dead men lying out on the fields at Stowe. He would mind that more. It would be more horrible. She saw herself coming over the fields, carrying a lamb that she had taken from its dead mother. Then she saw John coming up the field to their seat in the beach ring. That hurt her. She couldn't bear it. She mustn't think about that. John was alright. He wasn't shirking. They had been away so long now that she knew they must have gone far down the battlefield. Deep into it. The edges and all the nearer places had been gleaned. It would be dark before they came back. It was getting dark now. And she was afraid that when the light went, she would go to sleep. If only she wasn't so tired. She was so drowsy that at first she didn't hear McClellan speaking.

3:53:37She hadn't seen him come to the step of the car. McClellan's voice sounded soft and unnatural and a little mysterious. I'm afraid something's happened. Who too? Now the muffled draw irritated her. Why couldn't he speak out? Is John hurt? I'm afraid so. Is he killed? Well I don't know that he can live. A Germans put a bullet into him. Where is he? She jumped down off the car. McClellan laid his hand on her arm. Don't. We shall bring him in. He's dead then? I think so. You'd better not go to him. Of course I'm going to him. Where is he? He steered her very quickly and carefully across the street. Then led her with his arm in hers, pressing her back to the dark shelter of the houses. They heard the barking of machine guns from the battlefield at the top and the rattle of the bullets on the causeway. These sounds seem to her to have no significance.

3:54:38As if they had existed only in some unique relation to John Conway, his death robbed them of vitality. The door of the house opened a little way. He slipped into the long narrow room, lighted by a few oil lamps at one end. At the other, John's body lay on a stretcher set up on a trussled table. His feet turned outwards to the door, ready. The corners at this end were so dark that the body seemed to stretch across the whole width of the room. A soldier came forward with a lighted candle and gave it to McClellan. And she saw John's face. The bridge of his nose with its wing nostrils lifted. His head was tilted upwards at the chin. That gave it a noble look. His mouth was open ever so slightly open. McClellan shifted the light so that it fell on his forehead. Black eyebrows curling up like little moustaches. The half-dropped eyelids guarded the dead eyes. She thought of how he used to dream. All his dream was in his dead face.

3:55:40His dead face was cold and beautiful like his dream. As she looked at him, her breath closed down on her heart as though it would never lift again. Her breath shuddered there under her tightened throat. She could feel McClellan's hand pressing heavily on her shoulder. She had no strength to shake it off. She was even glad of it. She felt small and weak and afraid. Afraid not of the beautiful thing that lay there but of something terrible and secret that it hid. Something that any minute she would have to know about. Where was he hit? In the back. She trembled and McClellan's hand pressed closer. The bullet passed clean through his heart. He didn't suffer. He was getting in Germans. I don't quite know. McClellan measured his words out one by one. What he was doing. Sutton was with him. He knows. Where is Billy? Over there do you want him? Not yet. A soldier brought a chair for her.

3:56:40She sat down with her back to the trestle table. At the lighted end of the room she saw Sutton stooping over a young Belgian captain, butting his tunic under the sling he had adjusted. The captain's face showed pure enhanceum like a girls, like a young nuns, bound round and chin-rapped in the white bandages. He sat on the floor in front of Sutton's table with his legs stretched out flat. His back was propped against the thigh of a Belgian soldier seated on an upturn barrel. Her hurt eyes saw them very plain and with detail in the light of Sutton's lamp. That part of the room was full of soldiers. She noticed that they kept clear of the trestle table as they went in and out. Only one of them, the soldier who supported the young captain, kept on looking, raising his head and looking there as if he couldn't turn his eyes away. He faced her. His rifle stood steadied by his knees, the bayonet pointing up between his eyes. She found herself thinking. She was Sutton's back that made her think.

3:57:42John must have been stooping over the German like that. John's wound was in his back, but if he was stooping it couldn't have come that way. The bullet would have gone through his chest. Perhaps he had turned to pick up his stretcher Billy was there. He would tell her how it had happened. She thought, no, I've had enough. I shall give it up, I won't ask him. But she knew that she would ask him. John started having gone so far, flash by flash and step by step, she couldn't give it up. She would go on even now till her knowledge was complete. Then she was aware again of the soldier's eyes. They were very large and bright and black in his smooth boy's face. He had a small innocent boy's mouth that seemed to move, restless and fascinated like his eyes. Presently she saw that he was looking at her, that his eyes returned to her again and again, as if he were aware of some connection between her and the thing that fascinated him, as if he were somehow connected.

3:58:43He was listening to her now as Sutton spoke to her. We must get him away quick. Yes, do let's get him away. Sutton shook his head. He was thinking of the wounded captain. We can't yet. I'll come back for him. Then I'll wait with him here. Oh no, I think I can't leave him. It isn't safe. The place may be taken. I won't leave him. Sutton hesitated. I won't, Billy. McLean, she says she won't leave him. Then McLean said we must take him now. We'll have to make room somehow. To make room for him somehow? Sutton and the soldier carried the captain out and came back for John's body. The Belgian sprang forward with eager subservient alacrity to put himself at the head of the stretcher, but Sutton thrust him aside. The Belgian shrugged his shoulders and picked up his rifle with an air of exaggerated unconcern. Sutton and McLean carried out the stretcher. Charlotte was following them when the soldier stopped her.

3:59:46Madam was ill. He had prompt his rifle against the trussels and stood there, groping in his pocket. A dirty handkerchief dragged up by his fumbling hung out by its corner. All along the sharp crease there was a slender smear of blood. He looked down at it and pushed it back out of her sight. He had taken something out of his pocket. I will give you this, I found it on the battlefield. He handed her a small leather pocketbook that was John's. It had her photograph in it and his, taken together. They were putting him out of sight under the hood of the ambulance, and she waited there when the war correspondent came up. Can you tell me the name of the volunteer who's been killed? Conway. John rode in Conway. What? That man? The man who raced the Germans into Tsele? Yes, she said, that man. She was in John's room packing, gathering together the things she would have to take to his father. Sutton came to her there.

4:00:46They had orders to be ready for the retreat any time that night. Billy had brought her John's wristwatch and cigarette case. Billy she said, that soldier gave me this. She showed him the pocketbook. What soldier? The one who was with the captain. He gave it you? Yes. He said he found it on the battlefield. It must have dropped out of John's pocket. It couldn't have dropped. I wonder why he kept that. But he didn't keep it. He gave it to me. He was going to keep it or he'd have handed it over to me with the other things. Doesn't matter? She thought, why can't he leave it alone? They had all his things, his poor things. But Sutton was still thoughtful. I wonder why he gave it you? I think he was sorry. Was he? Sorry for me, I mean. Sutton said nothing. He was absorbed in contemplating the photograph. They had been taken standing by the hurdle of the sheepfold. She with the young lamb and her arms and John looking down at her.

4:01:49That was taken at Barrow Hill Farm, she said, where we worked together. He looked just like that. Oh Billy, do you think the past really passed? Isn't there some way he could go on being what he was? I don't know, Charlie. I don't know. Why couldn't he have stayed there? Then he'd always have been like that. We should never have known. You're not going to be unhappy about him. No, I think I'm glad. It's a sort of relief. I shan't ever have that awful feeling of wondering what he'll do next. Billy, you were with him, weren't you? Yes. Was he alright? Would it make you happier to think that he was or to know that he wasn't? Oh, just to know. Well, I'm afraid he wasn't quite. He paid for it, Charlie. If he hadn't turned his back, he wouldn't have been shot. She nodded. What? You knew? No. No, I wasn't sure. He was possessed of this craving to know, to know everything. Short of that, she would still be bound to him.

4:02:50She could never get free. Billy, what did happen, really? Did he leave the German? The German? Yes. Was that why he shot him? The German didn't shoot him. He was too far gone, poor devil, to shoot anybody. It was the Belgian captain that he left. He was lying there horribly wounded. His servant was with him. They were calling out to Conway. Calling to him? Yes. And he was going all right when some shrapnel fell, a regular shower bath quite near, like it did with you and me. That scared him, and he just turned and ran. The servant shouted to him to stop, and when he wouldn't, he went after him and put a bullet through his back. That Belgian boy? Yes. I couldn't do anything. I had the German. It was all over in a second. When I got there, I found the Belgian standing up over him, wiping his bayonet with his pocket handkerchief. He said his rifle went off by accident. Couldn't it? Rifles do. Bayonets don't.

4:03:51I suppose I could get him court martial if I tried, but I shan't. After all, it was his captain. I don't blame him, Charlotte. No. It was really you and me, Billy. We brought him back to be killed. I don't know that we did bring him, that he wasn't coming by himself. He couldn't keep off it. Even if we did, you wouldn't be sorry for that, would you? No. It was the best thing we could do for him. But at night, lying awake in her bed, she cried. For then she remembered what he had been, on Barrow Hill, on their seat in the beach ring, through the Sunday evenings when feeding time and milking time were done. At four o'clock in the morning she was waked by Sutton, standing beside her bed. The orders had come through to evacuate the hospital. Three hours later, the ambulances had joined the Great Retreat. End of chapter 15. Recording by ex-patriot in Bangor, Maine.

4:04:58Chapter 16 of the Romantic by Mace and Claire. This LibriVox recordings in the public domain. Recording by ex-patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 16. They had halted in Bruge, and there their wounded had been taken into the convent wards to rest. Charlotte and Sutton were sitting out, alone together on the flag terrace in the closed garden. The nuns had brought out the two chairs again, and set again the little table covered with the white cloth. Again, the silver mist was in the garden, but thin now to the clearness of still water. They had been silent after the nuns had left them. Sutton's sad, short-sighted eyes stared out at the garden without seeing it. He was lost in melling collie. Presently he came to himself with a long sigh. Charlotte, what are we going to do now? Do you know? I know. I'm going into Max' corps. So am I. That isn't what I meant.

4:05:58For a moment she didn't stop to wonder what he did mean. She was too full of what she was going to do. Is that wise? I don't altogether trust old Mac. He'll use you till you drop. He'll wear you till the last shred of your nerves. I want to be used till I drop. I want to be worn. Besides I know I'm safe with Mac. His cold heart in difference made her feel safe. She wasn't really safe with Billy. His goodness might disarm her any minute. His sadness might conceivably move her to attend her weakness. But for McLean she would never have any personal feeling, never any fiery affection, any exalted devotion. Neither need she be afraid of any profound betrayal. Small betrayals perhaps, superficial disasters to her vanity, while his ego is em' rode over it in triumph. He didn't want affection or anything fiery, anything that John had had. He would leave her in her hardness. He would never ask anything but hard, steel-cold loyalty and a willingness to share his risks.

4:07:03What can I do? I should have come out of Johnheadin. Of course I was glad we could go together, but you mustn't suppose I only went because of him. I don't. I only thought perhaps you wouldn't want to stay on now he's dead. More than ever now he's dead. Even if I didn't want to stay I should have to now to make up. For what? For what he did? All those awful things, and for what he didn't do, his dreams, I've got to do what he dreamed, but more than anything I must pay his debt to Belgium to all those wounded men. You're not responsible for his debt's charlotte? No? Sometimes I feel as if I were, as if he and I were tied up together. I could get away from him when he was alive, but now he's dead he's got me. It doesn't make him different. It makes me different. I tell you I can't get away from him, and I want to. I want to cut myself loose and this is the way. Isn't it the way to tie yourself tighter?

4:08:05No, not when it's done, Billy. I can see a much better way if you married me. She turned to him astonished and a little anxious as though she thought something odd and dangerous had happened to him. Well, Billy, I couldn't do that, but made you think of it. I've been thinking of it all the time. All the time? Well, most of the time anyhow, but I've loved you all the time. You know I loved you. That's why I stuck to Conway. I wouldn't even leave you to McLean. I didn't know. I should have thought it was pretty obvious. It wasn't. I'd have tried to stop it if I'd known. You couldn't have stopped it. I'm sorry. But about that, it isn't any good. It really isn't. Why isn't it? I know I'm rather a queer chap and I've gotten ugly face. Oh, I love your face. She loved it with its composure and its candor. It's slightly flattened features laid back.

4:09:05It's little surprised mustache. It's short-sighted eyes and it's sadness. It's the dearest face, but I suppose, he said, it sounds a bit startling and sudden. But if you'd been bottling it up as long as I have, why I loved you the first time I saw you on the boat. So you see it's you. It isn't just anything you've done. If you knew what I have done, my dear, if you only knew you wouldn't want to marry me. She would have to tell him. That would put him off. That would stop him. If she had loved him, she would have had to tell him as she had told John. I'm going to tell you. He wondered whether he had really listened. A queer smile played about his mouth. He looked as if he had been thinking of something else all the time. What are you smiling at? You're supposing that that would make any difference, doesn't it? Not a bit. Not a little bit. Besides I knew it. Who told you? The only other person who knew about it, I suppose, Conway.

4:10:06He betrayed me? He betrayed you. Is there any vile thing he didn't do? It was it had been before. The nuns came out again, bringing the great cups of hot black coffee, coming and going gently. Only this time she couldn't drink. It's awful of us, she said, to talk about him this way when he's dead. He isn't dead as long as he makes you feel like that, as long as he keeps you from me. A long pause. And then, Billy, he wasn't my lover. I know that, he said fiercely. He took good care to tell me. I brought it all on myself. I ought to have given him up instead of hanging on to him that way. Plotonic love. It's all wrong. People aren't really made like that. It was every bit as bad as going to Gibson Herbert, worse. That was honest. This was all lying. Lying about myself. Lying about him. Lying about love. Then he said, you don't really know what it is. I know John's sort, and I know Gibson's sort, and I know there's a heavenly sort, Billy,

4:11:11in between, but I'm spoiled for it. I think I could have cared for you if it hadn't been for John. I shan't ever get away from him. Yes, if you can see it, of course I see it. I can see everything now. All that war romancing. I see how awful it was when I think how we went out and got thrills, fancy getting thrills out of this horror. Oh well, I think you earned your thrill. You can't earn anything in this war. At least I can't. It's paying, paying all the time. I've got more things than John to pay for. There was little Fee. Fee? Gibson's wife. I didn't want to hurt her. Billy, are you sure it makes no difference? What I did? I've told you it doesn't. You mustn't go on thinking about it. No, but I can't get over his betraying me. You see, that's the worst thing he did to me. The other things, well, he was mad with fright, and he was afraid of me because I was I knew. I can't think why he did this.

4:12:13Same reason. You knew. He was degraded by your knowing, so you had to be degraded. At least I suppose that's how it was. She shook her head. He was darker to her than ever, and she was no nearer to her peace. She knew everything, and she understood nothing, and that was worse than not knowing. If only I could understand, then I believe I could bear it. I wouldn't care how bad it was as long as I understood. Ask McLean, then. He could explain it to you. It's beyond me. McLean? He's a psychotherapist. He knows more about people's souls than I know about their bodies. He probably knows all about Conway's soul. Silence drifted between them, dim and silvery like the garden mist. Charlotte, are we never to get away from him? Is he always to stick between us that dead man? It isn't that. What is it then? All this I'd give anything to care for you, Billy Deer, but I don't care.

4:13:13I can't. I can't care for anything but the war. The war won't last forever. And afterwards, I can't see any afterwards. Sutton smiled, and yet he said, there will be one. End of chapter 16. Recording by ex-patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 17 of the Romantic by Mace and Claire. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by ex-patriot in Bangor, Maine. Chapter 17. The boat went steadily, cutting the waves with its sound like the flowing of stiff silk. Charlotte and Sutton and McLean, stranded at Duncurk on their way to England, had been taken on board the naval transport Victoria. They were the only passengers besides some young soldiers, and these had left them a clear space on the deck.

4:14:15Charlotte was sitting by herself under the lee of a cabin when McLean came to her there. He was straddling and rubbing his hands. Something had pleased him. I knew he said that someday I should get you three, and that I should get those ambulances. She couldn't tell whether he meant that he always got what he wanted, or that he had foreseen John Conway's fate, which would ultimately give it him. The ambulances, yes, you always wanted them. Not more than I wanted you and Sutton, he seemed aware of her secret antagonism, yet without resentment, waiting till it had died down before he spoke again. He was sitting beside her now. What are you going to do about Conway? Nothing except lie about him to his father. That's all right as long as you don't lie about him to yourself. I've lied about him to other people, never to myself. I was in love with him if that's what you mean, but he finished that. What's finished is finished. I have an escrap of feeling for him left.

4:15:16Are you quite sure? Quite. And not even sorry he's dead. You've forgiven him? Not always sure about that, but I'm trying to forget him. McClean looked away. Do you ever dream about him, Charlotte? Never. Not now. I used to. I dreamed about him once three nights running. He looked at her sharply. Could you tell me what you dreamed? She told him her three dreams. You don't suppose they meant anything, she said? I do. They meant that part of you was kicking. It knew all the time what he was like and was trying to warn you. You keep me off him? To keep you off him. I see the middle one was funny. It happened. The day we were in Bruges. But I can't make out the first one with that awful woman in it. You may have been dreaming something out of his past, something he remembered. Well, anyhow, I don't understand the last one. I do. But I dreamed he wanted me frightfully and he didn't. He did. He wanted you frightfully all the time.

4:16:19He went to pieces if he weren't there. Don't you know why he took you out with him everywhere? Because if he hadn't, he couldn't have driven half a mile out of get. That's one of the things I'm trying to forget. It's one of the things you should try to remember. He grasped her hand and Charlotte, look here. I want you to forgive him for your own sake. She stiffened under his touch, his look, his voice of firm intimate authority, his insincereity repelled her. Why should you? You don't care about him. You don't care about me. If I was blown to bits tomorrow, you wouldn't care. He laughed his worthless assenting laugh. You don't care about people at all. You only care about their diseases and their minds and things. I think I care a little about the wounded. You don't really. Not about them. You care about getting in more of them and quicker than any other field ambulance on the front. I can't think why you're bothering about me now. That's why.

4:17:19If I'm to get in more wounded, I can't have anybody in my core who isn't fit. I'm fit. What's the matter with me? Not much. Your body's alright. And your mind was alright till Conway upset it. Now it's unbalanced. Unbalanced. Just the least little bit. There's a fight going on in it between your feeling for Conway and your knowledge of him. I've told you I haven't any feeling. Your memory of your feeling then, same thing. You know he was cruel and a liar and a coward and you loved him. With you, those two states are incompatible. They struggle. And that's bad for you. If it goes on, you'll break down. If it stops, you'll be alright. The way to stop it is to know the truth about Conway. The truth won't clash with your feeling. Don't I know it? Not all. Not the part that matters most. You know he was all wrong morally. You don't know why. Conway was an out and out degenerate. He couldn't help that. He suffered from some physical disability.

4:18:21It went through everything. It made him so that he couldn't live a man's life. He was afraid to enter a profession. He was afraid of women. He wasn't afraid of me, not in the beginning. Because he felt your strength. Your very strong Charlotte. You gave him your strength. And he could feel passion mind you, though he couldn't act it. I suppose he could feel courage too, only somehow he couldn't make it work. If you got it clear, she nodded. So clear that it seemed to her he was talking about a thing she had known once and had forgotten. All the time she had known John's secret, she knew what would come next. McClellan's voice saying, well then, think. Think. And his excited gestures bobbing forward suddenly from the hips. He went on. The balance had to be righted somehow. His whole life must have been a struggle to write it. Unconscious of course, instinctive. His platonics were just a glorifying of his disability. And all that romancing was a gorgeous transformation of his funk.

4:19:24So that his very lying was a sort of truth. I mean it was part of the whole desperate effort after completion. He jumped at everything that helped him to get compensation, to get power. He jumped at your feeling for him because it gave him power. He jumped at the war because the thrill he got out of it gave him the sense of power. He sucked manhood out of you. He sucked it out of everything out of blood and wounds. He'd have been faithful to you forever, Charlotte, if you hadn't found him out. That upset all his delicate adjustments. The war upset him. I think the sight of blood and wounds whipped up the naked savage in him. But no, he was afraid of that. He was afraid of himself, of what was in him. That fear of his was his protection like his fear of women. The war broke it down, then he was cruel to you. Yes, he was cruel. Her voice sounded flat and hard without feeling. She had no feeling. She had exhausted all the emotions of her suffering.

4:20:27And her knowledge of his cruelty was absolute. To McLean's assertion of the fact, she had no response beyond that toneless acquiescence. Looking you into that shed, he had roused her. How on earth did you know that? I've never told a single soul. It was known in the hospital. One of the carpenters saw the whole thing. He told one of our orderlies. He told my chauffeur a gurney who told me. It doesn't matter what he did to me, I can't get over his not caring for the wounded. He was jealous of them because you cared for them. Oh no, he'd left off caring for me by then. And he gave a little soft, wise laugh. What makes you think so? That is cruelty. Love can be very cruel. Not as cruel as that, she said. Yes as cruel as that. Remember it was at the bottom of the whole business of his dreams. In a sense the real John Conway was the man who dreamed.

4:21:27If you're right, he was the man who was cruel too. And it's his cruelty I hate. Don't hate it. Don't hate it. He wants you to understand his cruelty. It wasn't just savagery, it was something subtler, a supreme effort to get power. Remember he couldn't help it. He had to write himself. Supposing his funk extinguished something in him that could only be revived through cruelty. You'll say he could help betray you. To you too? To me too. When you lost faith in him, you cut off his main source of power. You had to be discredited so that it shouldn't count. He mustn't imagine that he did anything on purpose. He was driven. It sounds horrible, but I want you to see it was just his way of saving his soul. The only way open to him. You mustn't think of it as a bad way or a good way. It wasn't even his way. It was the way of something bigger than he was. Bigger than anything he could ever be. Bigger than badness or goodness.

4:22:28Did it do cowardly things to save itself? No. If Conway could have played the man, it would have been satisfied. It was always urging him. Try he said, and she knew that now at any rate he was sincere. He really wanted to help her. He was giving her his best. His voice was very quiet now. His excited gestures had ceased. Try and think of it as something more real, more important and necessary than he was, or you and I. Something that is always struggling to be, to go on being. Something that degeneracy is always trying to keep under. Power. A power in retreat. Fighting to get back its lost ground. Then what she had loved was not John Conway. What she had hated was not he. He was this something tremendous and necessary that escaped your judgment. You couldn't hurt it with your loving or hating or your ceasing to love and hate. Something that tortured you and betrayed you because that was the only way it knew to

4:23:31save itself. Something that couldn't save itself altogether, that clung to you and called to you to save it. But that was what she had loved. Nothing could touch it. For a moment while McLean was talking, she saw in the flash he gave her that it was real. And when the flash went, it slipped back into her darkness. But on the deck in front of her, she could see John walking up and down. She could see the wide road of gold and purple that stretched from the boat stern to the sun. John's head was thrown back. He looked at her with his shining, adventurous eyes. He was happy and excited, going out to the war. And then she saw them again, the batteries, the cars and the wagons, dust like blown smoke, and passing in at the long lines of beaten men, reeling slowly to the footway, passing slowly andlessly, regiment by regiment in retreat.

4:24:33End of chapter 17. Recording by Expatriot in Bangor, Maine. End of the Romantic by May Sinclair.