Chapters (25)
“My love. You needn’t be anxious! There is more youth in you – more real youth, than in a girl of seventeen.”
“I believe that is true. Yes, somehow I know it here with you now,” she agreed simply, all her face bright. “How old are you Lawrence?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“So much younger than I! And yes: you look it. Alas!”
“Do you mind?”
“Not really. I don’t think so at least.”
“You shouldn’t,” he assured her “There was a time when I was too young for you … heaps too young. But I have made up since then. Soon I shall be far older than you, though I hope not too old. Compare the shape of our heads! I am of an older race. What you have come through would have made tatters of me long ago. Physically I might have held out. (I have a toughness of fibre – I found that out when I was ill.) But not a bit of freshness would have been left. If I had spent myself as you have, I could never have laughed as you laughed a moment ago. I’m a frail sort of being beside you, Joanna!”
“You do make me sound a tough old thing!” she protested.
“Not tough, – sturdy!” he corrected her, “ … like one of those sapling firs up there that shoot up all the stronger for being buffeted about by the wind.”
Later they climbed the grey dyke and went swinging in true lover’s rhythm down the hilly road toward the village where Carl would be waiting. As they came near it, they passed with their happiness between the new-scythed shocks of wheat that bent in their places meekly as if praying.
“Happy?” asked Lawrence, breaking a long unconscious silence.
Joanna laughed quietly in response. “I haven’t thought,” she admitted.
“But I have, though,” said he, “and I know you are, by your voice.”
“It is true, Lawrence,” she replied. “I think my heart never felt light till now.”
“Nor mine either.”
“See! The moon!”
Together at Joanna’s cry they wheeled to look. Amid the flock of little clouds behind them, a young, mis-shapen moon had been speeding up unseen. Now each cloud, holding fast its own seed of darkness, floated apart in a pale, transparent spume of light.
“Like the seeds of a passion flower, aren’t they?” murmured Joanna.
“Ay. No need to ask the moon if she is happy!” Lawrence mused. “She looks fulfilled … like a web of ripe seeds that has this moment been scattered.”