4

He awoke feeling as if he had eaten heavily overnight, instead of having eaten nothing. And far off, unreal, seemed yesterday’s romance! Yet it was a golden morning. From his window he could see apple blossoms covering the orchard as with a rose and white quilt. He went down almost dreading to see Megan; and yet, when not she but Mrs. Narracombe brought in his breakfast, he felt upset and disappointed.

“So you went walking last night, Mr. Ashurst! Did ye have your supper anywheres?”

Ashurst shook his head.

“We kept it for you, but I suppose you were too busy in your brain to think of such a thing as that?”

Was she mocking him? If she knew! And at that moment he thought: ‘No, no; I’ll clear out. I won’t put myself in such a beastly false position.’

But, after breakfast, the longing to see Megan began and increased with every minute, together with fear lest something should have been said to her which had spoiled everything. And the love poem, whose manufacture had been so important and absorbing yesterday afternoon under the apple trees, now seemed so trivial that he tore it up. What had he known of love, till she seized his hand and kissed it! And now – what did he not know? But to write of it seemed mere insipidity! He went up to his bedroom to get a book, and his heart began to beat violently, for she was in there making the bed. He stood in the doorway watching; and suddenly, with turbulent joy, he saw her bend down and kiss his pillow, just at the hollow made by his head last night.

How let her know he had seen that pretty act of devotion? And yet, if she heard him slipping away, it would be even worse. She took the pillow up, dropped it, and turned round.

“Megan!”

She put her hands up to her cheeks, but her eyes seemed to look right into him. He had never before realised the depth and purity and touching faithfulness in those dew-bright eyes, and he stammered:

“It was sweet of you to wait up for me last night.”

She still said nothing, and he stammered on:

“I was wandering about on the moor; it was such a jolly night. I–I’ve just come up for a book.”

Then, the kiss he had seen her give the pillow afflicted him with sudden excitement, and he went up to her. Touching her eyes with his lips, he thought with queer excitement: ‘I’ve done it! Yesterday all was sudden – anyhow; but now – I’ve done it!’ The girl let her forehead rest against his lips, which moved downwards till they reached hers. That first real lover’s kiss – strange, wonderful, still almost innocent – in which heart did it make the most disturbance?

“Come to the big apple tree tonight, after they’ve gone to bed. Megan – promise!”

She whispered back: “I promise.”

Then, scared at her white face, scared at everything, he let her go, and went downstairs again. Yes! He had done it now! Accepted her love, declared his own! He went out to the green chair without a book; and there he sat staring vacantly before him, triumphant and remorseful, while under his nose and behind his back the work of the farm went on. How long he had been sitting in that curious state of vacancy he had no notion when he saw Joe standing a little behind him to the right. Joe had evidently come from hard work in the fields, and stood breathing loudly, his face coloured like a setting sun. His red lips were open, his blue eyes with their flaxen lashes stared fixedly at Ashurst, who said ironically:

“Well, Joe, anything I can do for you?”

“Yeas.”

“What, then?”

“Yu can go away from here. We don’t want you.”

Ashurst’s face, never too humble, assumed its most lordly look.

“Very good of you, but, do you know, I prefer the others should speak for themselves.”

The young man moved a pace or two nearer, and the scent of his honest heat afflicted Ashurst’s nostrils.

“What do you stay here for?”

“Because it pleases me.”

“It won’t please you when I’ve bashed your head in!”

“Indeed! When would you like to begin that?”

Joe answered only with the loudness of his breathing, but his eyes looked like those of a young and angry bull. Then a sort of spasm seemed to convulse his face.

“Megan doesn’t want you.”

A rush of jealousy, of contempt, and anger with this thick, loud-breathing rustic got the better of Ashurst’s self-possession; he jumped up, and pushed back his chair.

“You can go to the devil!”

And as he said those simple words, he saw Megan in the doorway with a tiny brown spaniel puppy in her arms. She came up to him quickly:

“Its eyes are blue!” she said.

Joe turned away; the back of his neck was literally crimson.

Ashurst put his finger to the mouth of the little brown creature in her arms. How cosy it looked against her!

“It’s fond of you already. Ah Megan, everything is fond of you.”

“What was Joe saying to you, please?”

“Telling me to go away, because you didn’t want me here.”

She stamped her foot; then looked up at Ashurst. At that adoring look he felt his nerves tremble.

“Tonight!” he said. “Don’t forget!”

“No.” And hugging the puppy’s little fat, brown body, she slipped back into the house.

Ashurst wandered down the lane. At the gate of the wild meadow he came on the lame man and his cows.

“Beautiful day, Jim!”

“Ah! It is brave weather for the grass. The ashes be later than the oaks this year. ‘When the oak before the ash – ”

Ashurst said idly: “Where were you standing when you saw the gipsy bogle, Jim?”

“It might be under that big apple tree, as you might say.”

“And you really do think it was there?”

The lame man answered cautiously:

“I shouldn’t like to say rightly that it was there. It was in my mind as it was there.”

“What do you make of it?”

The lame man lowered his voice.

“They say old master, Mr. Narracombe came of gipsy stock. But that’s talk. They’re wonderful people, you know, for claiming their own. Maybe they knew he was going, and sent this fellow along for company. That’s what I’ve thought about it.”

“What was he like?”

“He had hair all over his face, and going like this, he was, as if he had a fiddle. They say there’s no such thing as bogies, but I’ve seen the hair on this dog standing up of a dark night, when I couldn’t see nothing, myself.”

“Was there a moon?”

“Yeas, very near full, but it was only just risen.”

“And you think a ghost means trouble, do you?”

The lame man pushed his hat up; his aspiring eyes looked at Ashurst more earnestly than ever.

“It is not for me to say that but they’re so unresting. There’re things we don’t understand, that’s certain, for sure. There’re people that see things, too, and others that don’t never see nothing. Now, our Joe – you might put anything under his eyes and he’d never see it; and they other boys, too. But you take and put our Megan where there’s something, she’ll see it, and more too, or I’m mistaken.”

“She’s sensitive, that’s why.”

“What’s that?”

“I mean, she feels everything.”

“Ah! She’s very loving-hearted.”

Ashurst, who felt colour coming into his cheeks, held out his tobacco pouch.

“Have a fill, Jim?”

“Thank you, sir. She’s one in an hundred, I think.”

“I expect so,” said Ashurst shortly, and folding up his pouch, walked on.

“Loving-hearted!” Yes! And what was he doing? What were his intentions – as they say towards this loving-hearted girl? The thought followed him, wandering through fields bright with buttercups, where the swallows flying high. Yes, the oaks were before the ashes, brown-gold already; every tree in different stage and hue. The cuckoos and a thousand birds were singing; the little streams were very bright. The ancients believed in a golden age… A queen wasp settled on his sleeve. Each queen wasp killed meant two thousand fewer wasps to thieve the apples which would grow from that blossom in the orchard; but who, with love in his heart, could kill anything on a day like this? He entered a field where a young red bull was feeding. It seemed to Ashurst that he looked like Joe. But the young bull took no notice of this visitor, a little drunk himself, perhaps, on the singing and the magic of the golden pasture, under his short legs. Ashurst crossed out to the hillside above the stream. He threw himself down on the grass. The change from the buttercup glory and oak-goldened charms of the fields to this ethereal beauty filled him with a sort of wonder; nothing the same, save the sound of running water and the songs of the cuckoos. He lay there a long time, watching the sunlight wheel till the trees threw shadows over the bluebells, his only companions a few wild bees. He was not quite sane, thinking of that morning’s kiss, and of tonight under the apple tree. In such a spot as this, fauns and dryads surely lived; nymphs, white as the apple blossom, retired within those trees. The cuckoos were still calling when he woke, there was the sound of running water; but the sun had couched behind the tor, the hillside was cool, and some rabbits had come out. ‘Tonight!’ he thought. Just as from the earth everything was pushing up, unfolding under the soft fingers of an unseen hand, so were his heart and senses being pushed, unfolded. He got up and broke off a spray from a crab-apple tree. The buds were like Megan – shell-like, rose-pink, wild, and fresh; and so, too, the opening flowers, white, and wild; and touching. He put the spray into his coat. And all the rush of the spring within him escaped in a triumphant sigh.