The Apple Tree

John Galsworthy

“The Apple-tree, the singing and the gold.”

Murray’s “Hippolytus” of Euripides

In their silver-wedding day Ashurst and his wife were motoring along the outskirts of the moor, intending to crown the festival by stopping the night at Torquay, where they had first met. This was the idea of Stella Ashurst, who was quite sentimental. She had long lost the blue-eyed, flower-like charm, the cool slim purity of face and form, the apple-blossom colouring, which had so swiftly and so oddly affected Ashurst twenty-six years ago, but she was still at forty-three an attractive and faithful companion.

Stella was looking for a place where they might lunch, for Ashurst never looked for anything; and this, with a view into the deep valley and up to the long moor heights, seemed fitting to the decisive nature of one who sketched in water-colours, and loved romantic spots. Grasping her paint box, she got out of the car.

“Won’t this do, Frank?”

Ashurst, rather like a bearded Schiller, tall, long-legged, with large remote grey eyes which sometimes filled with meaning and became almost beautiful, with nose a little to one side, and bearded lips just open – Ashurst, forty-eight, and silent, grasped the lunch basket, and got out too.

“Oh! Look, Frank! A grave!”

By the side of the road was a thin mound of turf, six feet by one, with a moorstone to the west, and on it someone had thrown a blackthorn spray and a handful of bluebells. Ashurst looked, and the poet in him moved. At crossroads – a suicide’s grave! Poor mortals with their superstitions! Whoever lay there, though, had the best of it, no clammy sepulchre among other hideous graves carved with futilities – just a rough stone, the wide sky, and wayside blessings!

Ashurst walked away up on to the road, dropped the lunch basket under a wall, spread a rug for his wife to sit on – she would turn up from her sketching when she was hungry – and took from his pocket Murray’s translation of the “Hippolytus.” He looked at the sky and watching the white clouds so bright against the intense blue, Ashurst, on his silver-wedding day, longed for – he knew not what. And suddenly he sat up. Surely there was something familiar about this view, that ribbon of road, the old wall behind him. While they were driving he had not been taking notice – never did; thinking of far things or of nothing – but now he saw! Twenty-six years ago, just at this time of year, from the farmhouse within half a mile of this very spot he had started for that day in Torquay whence it might be said he had never returned. He felt a sudden ache in his heart; he had stumbled on just one of those past moments in his life, whose beauty and rapture he had failed to check; whose wings had fluttered away into the unknown; he had stumbled on a buried memory, a wild sweet time, swiftly choked and ended. And, turning on his face, he rested his chin on his hands, and stared at the short grass…

1

And this is what he remembered.

On the first of May, after their last year together at college, Frank Ashurst and his friend Robert Garton were on a tramp. They had walked that day from Brent, intending to make Chagford, but Ashurst’s football knee hurt, and according to their map they had still some seven miles to go. They were sitting on a bank beside the road, resting the knee and talking of the universe, as young men will. Both were over six feet, and thin as rails; Ashurst pale, idealistic, full of absence; Garton simple, well-built, curly, like some primeval beast. Both were interested in literature; neither wore a hat.

Ashurst’s hair was smooth, pale, wavy, and had a way of rising on either side of his brow; Carton’s was a kind of dark mop. They had not met a soul for miles.

A cuckoo began calling from a tree. The sky, the flowers, the songs of birds! Robert was talking nonsense! Ashurst said:

“Well, let’s go on, and find some farm where we can put up.” Saying those words, he saw a girl coming down from the road just above them. She was outlined against the sky, carrying a basket. And Ashurst thought: ‘How pretty!’ The wind, blowing her dark frieze skirt against her legs, lifted her old tam-o’-shanter; her greyish blouse was worn, her shoes were split, her little hands rough and red, her neck browned. Her dark hair waved untidy across her broad forehead, her face was short, her upper lip short, showing a glint of teeth, her brows were straight and dark, her lashes long and dark, her nose straight; but her grey eyes were dewy as if opened for the first time that day. She looked at Ashurst – perhaps he struck her as strange, limping along without a hat, with his large eyes on her, and his hair falling back. He could not take off what was not on his head, but put up his hand in a salute, and said:

“Can you tell us if there’s a farm near here where we could stay the night? I’ve gone lame.”

“There’s only our farm near, sir.” She spoke without shyness, in a pretty soft clear voice.

“And where is that?”

“Down here, sir.”

“Would you put us up?”

“Oh! I think we would.”

“Will you show us the way?”

“Yes, Sir.”

He limped on, silent, and Garton asked:

“Are you a Devonshire girl?”

“No, Sir.”

“What then?”

“From Wales.”

“Ah! I thought you were a Celt; so it’s not your farm?”

“My aunt’s, sir.”

“And your uncle’s?”

“He is dead.”

“Who farms it, then?”

“My aunt, and my three cousins.”

“But your uncle was a Devonshire man?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Have you lived here long?”

“Seven years.”

“And how do you like it after Wales?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“I suppose you don’t remember?”

“Oh, yes! But it is different.”

“I believe you!”

Ashurst broke in suddenly: “How old are you?”

“Seventeen, Sir.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Megan David.”

“This is Robert Garton, and I am Frank Ashurst. We wanted to get on to Chagford.”

“It is a pity your leg is hurting you.”

Ashurst smiled, and when he smiled his face was rather beautiful.

Descending past the narrow wood, they came on the farm suddenly – a long, low, stone-built house in a farmyard. A short grass hill behind was crowned with a few pines, and in front, an old orchard of apple trees, just breaking into flower, stretched down to a stream and a long wild meadow. A little boy with dark eyes was shepherding a pig, and by the house door stood a woman, who came towards them. The girl said:

“It is Mrs. Narracombe, my aunt.”

Mrs. Narracombe had a quick, dark eye, like a mother wild-duck’s.

“We met your niece on the road,” said Ashurst; “she thought you might perhaps put us up for the night.”

Mrs. Narracombe, taking them in from head to heel, answered:

“Well, I can, if you don’t mind one room. Megan, get the spare room ready, and a bowl of cream. You’ll be wanting tea, I suppose.”

Passing through a sort of porch made by two yew trees and some flowering-currant bushes, the girl disappeared into the house.

“Will you come into the parlour and rest your leg? You’ll be from college, perhaps?”

“We were, but we’ve left it now.”

The parlour, brick-floored, with bare table and shiny chairs and sofa stuffed with horsehair, seemed never to have been used, it was so terribly clean. Ashurst sat down at once on the sofa, holding his lame knee between his hands, and Mrs. Narracombe gazed at him. He was the only son of a late professor of chemistry, but people found a certain lordliness in him.

“Is there a stream where we could bathe?”

“There’s the stream at the bottom of the orchard, but sitting down you’ll not be covered!”

“How deep?”

“Well, it is about a foot and a half, maybe.”

“Oh! That’ll do fine. Which way?”

“Down the lane, through the second gate on the right, and the pool’s by the big apple tree that stands by itself. There’ll be the tea ready when you come back.”

The pool, formed by the damming of a rock, had a sandy bottom; and the big apple tree, lowest in the orchard, grew so close that its boughs almost overhung the water; it was about to flower – its crimson buds just bursting. There was not room for more than one at a time in that narrow bath, and Ashurst waited his turn, rubbing his knee and gazing at the wild meadow. Every bough was swinging in the wind, every spring bird calling, and sunlight dappled the grass. He thought of Theocritus, and the river Cherwell, of the moon, and the maiden with the dewy eyes; of so many things that he seemed to think of nothing; and he felt absurdly happy.

2

During a late and sumptuous tea with eggs to it, cream and jam, and thin, fresh cakes, Garton descanted on the Celts. It was about the period of the Celtic awakening, and the discovery that there was Celtic blood about this family had excited one who believed that he was a Celt himself. Sprawling on a horse hair chair, with a hand-made cigarette in his lips, he had been staring at Ashurst and praising the refinement of the Welsh. To come out of Wales into England was like the change from china to earthenware! Frank, as an Englishman, had not of course perceived the exquisite refinement and emotional capacity of that Welsh girl! And, delicately stirring in the dark mat of his still wet hair, he explained how exactly that Welsh girl illustrated the writings of the Welsh bard Morgan-ap-Something in the twelfth century.

Ashurst, full length on the horsehair sofa, did not listen, thinking of the girl’s face when she brought in some cakes. It had been exactly like looking at a flower, or some other pretty sight in Nature – till, with a funny little shiver, she had lowered her glance and gone out, quiet as a mouse.

“Let’s go to the kitchen,” said Garton, “and see some more of her.”

The kitchen was a very clean room; there were flower-pots on the window-sill, and guns hanging on nails, queer mugs, china, and portraits of Queen Victoria. A long, narrow wooden table was set with bowls and spoons, under a string of high-hung onions; two dogs and three cats lay here and there. On one side of the fireplace sat two small boys, idle, and good as gold; on the other sat a stout, light-eyed, red-faced young man with hair and lashes the colour of the tow he was running through the barrel of a gun; between them Mrs. Narracombe dreamily stirred some tasty-scented stew in a large pot. Two other young men, dark-haired, rather sly-faced, were talking together and leaning against the wall; and a short, elderly, clean-shaven man in corduroys, seated in the window, was reading a journal. The girl Megan seemed the only active creature – pouring cider and passing with the jugs from cask to table. Seeing them thus about to eat, Garton said:

“Ah! If you’ll let us, we’ll come back when supper’s over,” and without waiting for an answer they withdrew again to the parlour.

“Regular gipsy type, those boys. There was only one Saxon – the fellow cleaning the gun. That girl is a very subtle study psychologically.”

Ashurst’s lips twitched. Garton seemed to him an ass just then. Subtle study! She was a wild flower. A creature it did you good to look at. Study!

Ashurst threw up the window and leaned out. Dusk had gathered thick. The farm buildings were all dim and bluish; the air smelled of woodsmoke from the kitchen fire. And away over there was the loom of the moor, and away and away the shy stars pricking white through the deep blue heavens. Ashurst drew a deep breath. What a night to wander out in! A bat went fluttering past, uttering its almost inaudible “chip, chip.” Ashurst held out his hand; on the upturned palm he could feel the dew. Suddenly from overhead he heard little boys’ voices, little thumps of boots thrown down, and another voice, clear and soft – the girl’s putting them to bed, no doubt; and nine words “No, Rick, you can’t have the cat in bed”; then came giggles and gurgles, a soft slap, a laugh so low and pretty that it made him shiver a little. Ashurst returned into the room and sat down; his knee pained him, and his soul felt gloomy.

“You go to the kitchen,” he said; “I’m going to bed.”