3

Though Ashurst seemed to be in a deep in sleep when his companion came up, he was really wide awake; and long after Carton was worshipping darkness with his upturned nose, he heard the owls. Barring the discomfort of his knee, it was not unpleasant for he had no cares of life; just enrolled a barrister, with literary aspirations, the world before him, no father or mother, and four hundred a year of his own. Did it matter where he went, what he did, or when he did it? His bed, too, was hard, and this preserved him from fever. He lay, sniffing the scent of the night which drifted into the low room through the open window close to his head. Except for a definite irritation with his friend, natural when you have tramped with a man for three days, Ashurst’s memories and visions that sleepless night were kindly and wistful and exciting. One vision, specially clear and unreasonable, for he had not even been conscious of noting it, was the face of the young man cleaning the gun; its intent, stolid, yet startled uplook at the kitchen doorway, quickly shifted to the girl carrying the cider jug. This red, blue-eyed, light-lashed, tow-haired face stuck as firmly in his memory as the girl’s own face, so dewy and simple. But finally, in the square of darkness through the uncurtained window, he saw day coming, and heard one hoarse and sleepy caw. Then followed silence, dead as ever. And, from staring at the framed brightening light, Ashurst fell asleep.

Next day his knee was badly swollen; the walking tour was obviously over. Garton had to go back to London and departed at midday with an ironical smile which left a scar of irritation – healed the moment his figure vanished round the corner of the steep lane. All day Ashurst rested his knee, in a green-painted wooden chair on the grass by the yew-tree porch. Beatifically he smoked, dreamed, watched.

A farm in spring is all birth – young things coming out of bud and shell, and human beings watching over the process with faint excitement feeding and tending what has been born. Now and again Mrs. Narracombe or the girl Megan would come and ask Ashurst if he wanted anything, and he would smile and say: “Nothing, thanks. It’s splendid here.” Towards tea-time they came out together, bearing a long poultice of some dark stuff in a bowl, and after a long scrutiny of his swollen knee, bound it on. When they were gone, he thought of the girl’s soft “Oh!” – of her pitying eyes, and the little wrinkle in her brow. And again he felt that unreasoning irritation against his departed friend, who had talked such rot about her. When she brought out his tea, he said:

“How did you like my friend, Megan?”

She forced down her upper lip, as if afraid that to smile was not polite. “He was a funny gentleman; he made us laugh. I think he is very clever.”

“What did he say to make you laugh?”

“He said I was a daughter of the bards. What are they?”

“Welsh poets, who lived hundreds of years ago.”

“Why am I their daughter, please?”

“He meant that you were the sort of girl they sang about.”

She wrinkled her brows. “I think he likes to joke. Am I?”

“Would you believe me, if I told you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, I think he was right.”

She smiled.

And Ashurst thought: ‘You are a pretty thing!’

“He said, too, that Joe was a Saxon type. What would that be?”

“Which is Joe? With the blue eyes and red face?”

“Yes. My uncle’s nephew.”

“Not your cousin, then?”

“No.”

“Well, he meant that Joe was like the men who came over to England about fourteen hundred years ago, and conquered it.”

“Oh! I know about them; but is he?”

“Garton’s crazy about that sort of thing; but I must say Joe does look a bit Early Saxon.”

“Yes.”

That “Yes” tickled Ashurst. It was so graceful, so conclusive, and politely acquiescent in what was evidently greek to her.

“He said that all the other boys were regular gipsies. He should not have said that. My aunt laughed, but she didn’t like it, of course, and my cousins were angry. Uncle was a farmer – farmers are not gipsies. It is wrong to hurt people.”

Ashurst wanted to take her hand and give it a squeeze, but he only answered:

“Quite right, Megan. By the way, I heard you putting the little ones to bed last night.”

She flushed a little. “Please to drink your tea – it is getting cold. Shall I get you some fresh?”

“Do you ever have time to do anything for yourself?” “Oh! Yes.”

“I’ve been watching, but I haven’t seen it yet.”

She wrinkled her brows in a puzzled frown, and her colour deepened.

When she was gone, Ashurst thought: ‘Did she think I was chaffing her? I wouldn’t for the world!’ He was at that age when to some men “Beauty’s a flower,” as the poet says, and inspires in them the thoughts of chivalry. Never very conscious of his surroundings, it was some time before he was aware that the young man whom Garton had called “a Saxon type” was standing outside the stable door in his soiled brown cords, muddy boots, and blue shirt; red-armed, red-faced, the sun turning his hair from tow to flax; immovably stolid, unsmiling he stood. Then, seeing Ashurst looking at him, he crossed the yard and disappeared round the end of the house towards the kitchen entrance. A chill came over Ashurst’s mood. Clods? With all the good will in the world, how impossible to get on terms with them! And yet – see that girl! Her shoes were split, her hands rough; but – what was it? Was it really her Celtic blood, as Garton had said? – she was a lady born, a jewel, though probably she could do no more than just read and write!

The elderly, clean-shaven man he had seen last night in the kitchen had come into the yard with a dog, driving the cows to their milking. Ashurst saw that he was lame.

“You’ve got some good ones there!”

The lame man’s face brightened. He had the upward look in his eyes which prolonged suffering often brings.

“Yeas; they’re proper beauties; good milkers too.”

“I bet they are.”

“Hope your leg’s better, sir.”

“Thank you, it’s getting on.”

The lame man touched his own: “I know what it is, myself; it is a main worrying thing, the knee. Mine’s been hurting for ten years”.

Ashurst made the sound of sympathy which comes so readily from those who have an independent income, and the lame man smiled again.

“Mustn’t complain, though – they might have had it off.”

“Ho!”

“Yes; and compared with what it was, it is almost good now.”

“They’ve put a bandage of splendid stuff on mine.”

“The maid she picks it. She’s a good maid with the flowers. Some people seem to know the healing in things. My mother was a rare one for that. Hope you’ll soon be better, sir. Go on, there!”

Ashurst smiled. “With the flowers!” A flower herself!

That evening, after his supper of cold duck, junket, and cider, the girl came in.

“Please, auntie says – will you try a piece of our Mayday cake?”

“If I may come to the kitchen for it.”

“Oh, yes! You’ll be missing your friend.”

“Not I. But are you sure no one minds?”

“Who would mind? We shall be very pleased.”

Ashurst rose too suddenly for his stiff knee, staggered, and fell down. The girl held out her hands. Ashurst took them, small, rough, brown; checked his impulse to put them to his lips, and let her pull him up. She came close beside him, offering her shoulder. And leaning on her he walked across the room. That shoulder seemed quite the pleasantest thing he had ever touched.

That night he slept like a top, and woke with his knee of almost normal size. He again spent the morning in his chair on the grass patch, writing down verses; but in the afternoon he wandered about with the two little boys Nick and Rick. It was Saturday, so they were early home from school; quick, shy, dark little rascals of seven and six, soon talkative, for Ashurst had a way with children. By four o’clock they had shown him all their methods of destroying life, except the tickling of trout; and with trosers tucked up, lay on their stomachs over the trout stream. They tickled nothing, of course, for their giggling and shouting scared every fish away. Ashurst, on a rock at the edge of the beech clump, watched them, and listened to the cuckoos, till Nick, the elder and less persevering, came up and stood beside him.

“The gipsy bogle sits on that stone,” he said.

“What gipsy bogle?”

“Dunno; I’ve never seen him. Megan says he sits there; and old Jim saw him once. He was sitting there the night before our pony kicked in father’s head. He plays the fiddle.”

“What tune does he play?”

“Dunno.”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s black. Old Jim says he’s all over hair. He’s a proper bogie.” The little boy’s dark eyes slid round. “Do you think he might want to take me away? Megan’s afraid of him.”

“Has she seen him?”

“No. She’s not afraid of you.”

“I should think not. Why should she be?”

“She says a prayer for you.”

“How do you know that?”

“When I was asleep, she said: ‘God bless us all, and Mr. Ashes.’ I heard her whispering’.”

“You’re a little rascal to tell what you hear when you’re not meant to hear it!”

The little boy was silent. Then he said aggressively:

“I can skin rabbits. Megan, she can’t bear skinning them. I like blood.”

“Oh! you do; you little monster!”

“What’s that?”

“A creature that likes hurting others.”

The little boy scowled. “They’re only dead rabbets, what we eat.”

“Quite right, Nick. I beg your pardon.”

“I can skin frogs, too.”

But Ashurst had become absent. “God bless us all, and Mr. Ashes!” And puzzled by that sudden inaccessibility, Nick ran back to the stream.

When Megan brought his tea, he said:

“What’s the gipsy bogle, Megan?”

She looked up, startled.

“He brings bad things.”

“Surely you don’t believe in ghosts?”

“I hope I will never see him.”

“Of course you won’t. There aren’t such things. What old Jim saw was a pony.”

“No! There are bogles in the rocks; they are the men who lived long ago.”

“They aren’t gipsies, anyway; those old men were dead long before gipsies came.”

She said simply: “They are all bad.”

“Why? If there are any, they’re only wild, like the rabbits. The flowers aren’t bad for being wild; the thorn trees were never planted – and you don’t mind them. I shall go down at night and look for your bogle, and have a talk with him.”

“Oh, no! Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes! I shall go and sit on his rock.”

She clasped her hands together: “Oh, please!”

“Why! What does it matter if anything happens to me?”

She did not answer; and he added:

“Well, I daresay I shan’t see him, because I suppose I must be off soon.”

“Soon?”

“Your aunt won’t want to keep me here.”

“Oh, yes! We always let lodgings in summer.”

Fixing his eyes on her face, he asked:

“Would you like me to stay?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to say a prayer for you tonight!”

She flushed crimson, frowned, and went out of the room. He sat, cursing himself, till his tea was prepared. It was as if he had hacked with his thick boots at a clump of bluebells. Why had he said such a silly thing? Was he just like Robert Garton, as far from understanding this girl?

Ashurst spent the next week confirming the restoration of his leg, by exploration of the country within easy reach. Spring was a revelation to him this year. It was certainly different from any spring he had ever known, for spring was inside him, not outside. In the daytime he hardly saw the family; and when Megan brought in his meals she always seemed too busy in the house or among the young things in the yard to stay talking long. But in the evenings he installed himself in the window seat in the kitchen, smoking and chatting with the lame man Jim, or Mrs. Narracombe, while the girl sewed, or moved about, clearing the supper things away. And sometimes, with the sensation a cat must feel when it purrs, he would become conscious that Megan’s eyes – those dew-grey eyes – were fixed on him with a sort of lingering soft look which was strangely flattering.

It was on Sunday in the evening, when he was lying in the orchard listening to a blackbird and composing a love poem, that he saw the girl come running among the trees, with the red-cheeked, stolid Joe in swift pursuit. About twenty yards away it ended, and the two stood fronting each other, not noticing the stranger in the grass – the boy pressing on, the girl fending him off. Ashurst could see her face, angry, disturbed. Painfully affected by that sight, Ashurst jumped up. They saw him then. Megan dropped her hands, and shrank behind a tree trunk; the boy gave an angry grunt and vanished. Ashurst went slowly up to her. She was standing quite still, biting her lip – very pretty, with her fine, dark hair blown loose about her face, and her eyes cast down.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.

She gave him one upward look, from eyes much dilated; then, catching her breath, turned away. Ashurst followed.

“Megan!”

But she went on; and taking hold of her arm, he turned her gently round to him.

“Stop and speak to me.”

“Why do you beg my pardon? It is not to me you should do that.”

“Well, then, to Joe.”

“How dare he come after me?”

“In love with you, I suppose.”

She stamped her foot.

Ashurst uttered a short laugh. “Would you like me to punch his head?”

She cried with sudden passion:

“You laugh at me – you laugh at us!”

He caught hold of her hands, but she shrank back, till her passionate little face and dark hair were caught among the pink clusters of the apple blossom. Ashurst raised one of her imprisoned hands and put his lips to it. He felt how chivalrous he was, and superior to that clod Joe – just brushing that small, rough hand with his mouth. She seemed to tremble towards him. A sweet warmth overtook Ashurst from top to toe. This slim maiden, so simple and fine and pretty, was pleased, then, at the touch of his lips! And, yielding to a swift impulse, he put his arms round her, pressed her to him, and kissed her forehead. Then he was frightened – she went so pale, closing her eyes, so that the long, dark lashes lay on her pale cheeks; her hands, too, lay inert at her sides. The touch of her breast sent a shiver through him. “Megan!” he sighed out, and let her go. In the perfect silence a blackbird shouted. Then the girl seized his hand, put it to her cheek, her heart, her lips, kissed it passionately, and ran away among the trunks of the apple trees, till they hid her from him.

Ashurst sat down on a twisted old tree growing almost along the ground, and, all throbbing and puzzled, gazed vacantly at the blossom which had crowned her hair – those pink buds with one white open apple star. What had he done? How had he let himself be thus captivated by beauty – pity – or – just the spring! He felt curiously happy, all the same; happy and triumphant, with shivers running through his limbs, and a vague alarm. This was the beginning of – what? The mosquitoes bit him, the dancing gnats tried to fly into his mouth, and all the spring around him seemed to grow more lovely and alive; the songs of the cuckoos and the blackbirds, the slanting sunlight, the apple blossom which had crowned her head! He got up from the old trunk and walked out of the orchard, wanting space, an open sky, to get on terms with these new sensations.

Of man – at any age from five years on – who can say he has never been in love? Ashurst had loved his partners at his dancing class; loved his nursery governess; girls in school-holidays; perhaps never been quite out of love, cherishing always some more or less remote admiration. But this was different, not remote at all. Quite a new sensation; terribly delightful, bringing a sense of completed manhood. To be holding in his fingers such a wild flower, to be able to put it to his lips, and feel it tremble with delight against them! What intoxication, and – embarrassment! What to do with it – how meet her next time? His first caress had been cool, pitiful; but the next could not be, now that, by her burning little kiss on his hand, by her pressure of it to her heart, he knew that she loved him.

And up there among the hills he felt the passionate desire to revel in this new sensation of spring fulfilled within him, and a vague but very real anxiety. At one moment he gave himself up completely to his pride at having captured this pretty, trustful, dewy-eyed thing! At the next he thought: ‘Yes, my boy! But look out what you’re doing! You know what comes of it!’

Dusk dropped down without his noticing. And the voice of Nature said: “This is a new world for you!” As when a man gets up at four o’clock and goes out into a summer morning, and beasts, birds, trees stare at him and he feels as if all had been made new.

He stayed up there for hours, till it grew cold, then groped his way back into the lane, and came again past the wild meadow to the orchard. There he lit a match and looked at his watch. Nearly twelve! It was black and unstirring in there now, very different from the lingering, bird-befriended brightness of six hours ago! And suddenly he saw this idyll of his with the eyes of the outer world – had mental vision of Mrs. Narracombe’s snake-like neck turned, her quick dark glance taking it all in; saw the gipsy-like cousins mocking and distrustful; Joe stolid and furious; only the lame man, Jim, with the suffering eyes, seemed tolerable to his mind. And the village pub! – the gossiping matrons he passed on his walks; and then – his own friends – Robert Carton’s smile when he went off that morning ten days ago; so ironical and knowing! Disgusting! For a minute he literally hated this earthy, cynical world to which one belonged, willy-nilly.

He went up the lane which smelled of the night and young leaves. He opened the farm gate stealthily. All was dark in the house. He looked up at Megan’s window. It was open. Was she sleeping, or lying awake perhaps, disturbed – unhappy at his absence? An owl hooted while he stood there peering up, and the sound seemed to fill the whole night, so quiet was all else, save for the never-ending murmur of the stream running below the orchard. The cuckoos by day, and now the owls – how wonderfully they voiced this troubled ecstasy within him! And suddenly he saw her at her window, looking out. He moved a little from the yew tree, and whispered: “Megan!” She drew back, vanished, reappeared, leaning far down. He moved the chair, and noiselessly mounted it. By stretching up his arm he could just reach. Her hand held the huge key of the front door, and he clasped that burning hand with the cold key in it. He could just see her face, the glint of teeth between her lips, her hair. She was still dressed – poor child, sitting up for him, no doubt! “Pretty Megan!” Her hot, roughened fingers clung to his; her face had a strange, lost look. To have been able to reach it – even with his hand! The owl hooted, a scent of roses crept into his nostrils. Then one of the farm dogs barked; her grasp relaxed, she shrank back.

“Good-night, Megan!”

“Good-night, sir!”

She was gone! With a sigh he dropped back to earth, and sitting on that chair, took off his boots. For a long while he sat unmoving, his feet chilly in the dew, drunk on the memory of her lost, half-smiling face, and the clinging grip of her burning fingers, pressing the cold key into his hand.