Delighted chuckles from all sides.
‘And what of Parson, Seth?’
‘He dunnaw everything nuther.’
Roars of laughter.
From down the table a fresh voice joined in. ‘What daun’t a know, Seth?’
‘What daun’t who know, Mus Thatcher?’
‘What daun’t Squire know, Seth?’
Seth munched on in silence for a minute and a half. The conversation went on without him. Then he said: ‘I dunnaw what tis Squire dunnaw.’ After a pause he added: ‘But a dunnaw everything, stands to sense.’
Laughter was renewed. Growcock the blacksmith then took the matter up. ‘I know one thing Squire dunnaw. He dunnaw the games young Master Hugh be at wi’ Noke’s darter.’
‘And what be they?’ asked someone, with a sly grin.
Seth stared at his plate. His face slowly reddened. The things he heard moved him with a strange variety of passions. But they did not shake his resolve to go to Glatting Wood after drinking his fill; nor, when he had effected that much of his purpose, and was waiting by the tree where Charity Noke had promised to meet him, did their recollection diminish the ardour of his expectancy. That was talk, but this was real. Hugh Marden might or might not have done this or that: it mattered little. What mattered was that soon, unless she intended falsely by him, Charity would be in his sight and hearing. And what else? He attempted no conjecture. Late afternoon sunlight was sprinkled thriftily about the wood, amid masses of warm-smelling shadow. He took little enough notice of that, but it cheered and helped to excite him. Nothing as yet had passed between him and Charity beyond a few shy words and glances. Nothing to the point had been said. But she had agreed, as though casually, to meet him in this lonely intimate place; and ever since then, at intervals, his dreaming senses had foretasted the sweetness of her. She was more like a woman, more to be desired, than any other girl he had seen: that was all he knew, and even that was a dumb instinct rather than a conviction. He did not think far ahead. Being unread, and in the main unfanciful, the word love, and the conventional vocabulary of love, played no part in his thoughts. He wanted to see and touch her: that was enough.
He heard the sound of breaking twigs and trodden undergrowth, and went forward to meet the sound.
‘Hullo. You’m come then?’
‘Hullo.’
He did not speak her name, nor she his. The encounter was impersonal: male with female. She stared at him, her big bovine eyes wide with wonder and amorously mournful, her ripe mouth childishly pouted, the poise of her lush body languid and feline. She was bareheaded, and a clustering mass of black hair framed her plumpness with a suggestion of mystery. After that one word she said no more, but seemed content to stare and wait. The silence worked in him. The shyness he had felt at her first coming vanished away, leaving him free of all constraint, free to escape from himself into the bright sensual world that was opening before him. With a certain deliberation, as if doubting of her real existence, he put an arm about her shoulders. She smiled up at him and stroked his face, so that all his nerves vibrated with delight, and he became radiant with lust, a bright innocent animal. With a little growl he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the nearest covert, where, drenched in green shadow, they lay for a long while, wordless and passionate.
Dreams came crowding. Sometimes Seth caught himself absent in mind from the woman in whose arms he lay, and had no time to be astonished that this glory, in the moment of achievement, could be so painlessly, and in so rich an oblivion, lost to him. A little scrap of tune came murmuring in his head; a field of ripe corn floated into his vision. Sheep-bells tinkled on the green downs; and presently he was driving a plough along the base of a steep hill. The sun beat down on his bare arms with pulsing vigour. The broad buttocks of the mare swayed and plunged; the muscles of her thighs rippled and swelled; her tail lashed ceaselessly at the swarm of following flies. From such dreams he emerged from time to time into a waking life that was itself as dreamlike as any of them: woke to find two large eyes, brimming with dark light, shining upon him, and a blood-red amorous mouth near his own. The world and all its meaning lay within the circle of this small cool private place, this sun-freckled green. But with every kiss he tasted again of the lotus, and at last sank into the deep slumber of fulfilment.
When next he woke, he had travelled so far in sleep that he stared with dull eyes, wondering where he was, and at first could hardly believe the tale his memory pieced together. The woman, too, seemed stupid with sleep; and even at each other these lovers gazed blankly. They moved apart, and sat up. The silence between them persisted. Since their first greeting, neither had uttered an articulate word. Nor did this silence bring constraint: the artifice of speech was still something less than second nature to them.