When the man had gone, he thought: 'I should have liked an oyster--too

late now!' and going over to his bureau, he fumblingly pulled out the top

drawer. There was little in it--Just a few papers, business papers on

his Companies, and a schedule of his debts; not even a copy of his

will--he had not made one, nothing to leave! Letters he had never kept.

Half a dozen bills, a few receipts, and the little pink note with the

blue forget-me-not. That was the lot! An old tree gives up bearing

leaves, and its roots dry up, before it comes down in a wind; an old

man's world slowly falls away from him till he stands alone in the night.

Looking at the pink note, he thought: 'Suppose I'd married Alice--a man

never had a better mistress!' He fumbled the drawer to; but still he

strayed feebly about the room, with a curious shrinking from sitting

down, legacy from the quarter of an hour he had been compelled to sit

while that hound worried at his throat. He was opposite one of the

pictures now. It gleamed, dark and oily, limning a Scots Grey who had

mounted a wounded Russian on his horse, and was bringing him back

prisoner from the Balaclava charge. A very old friend--bought in

'fifty-nine. It had hung in his chambers in the Albany--hung with him

ever since. With whom would it hang when he was gone? For that holy

woman would scrap it, to a certainty, and stick up some Crucifixion or

other, some new-fangled high art thing! She could even do that now if

she liked--for she owned it, owned every mortal stick in the room, to the

very glass he would drink his champagne from; all made over under the

settlement fifteen years ago, before his last big gamble went wrong. "De

l'audace, toujours de l'audace!" The gamble which had brought him down

till his throat at last was at the mercy of a bullying hound. The pitcher

and the well! At the mercy---! The sound of a popping cork dragged him

from reverie. He moved to his seat, back to the window, and sat down to

his dinner. By George! They had got him an oyster! And he said:

"I've forgotten my teeth!"

While the man was gone for them, he swallowed the oysters, methodically

touching them one by one with cayenne, Chili vinegar, and lemon. Ummm!

Not quite what they used to be at Pimm's in the best days, but not

bad--not bad! Then seeing the little blue bowl lying before him, he

looked up and said:

"My compliments to cook on the oysters. Give me the champagne." And he

lifted his trembling teeth. Thank God, he could still put 'em in for

himself! The creaming goldenish fluid from the napkined bottle slowly

reached the brim of his glass, which had a hollow stem; raising it to his

lips, very red between the white hairs above and below, he drank with a

gurgling noise, and put the glass down-empty. Nectar! And just cold

enough!

"I frapped it the least bit, sir."

"Quite right. What's that smell of flowers?"

"It's from those 'yacinths on the sideboard, sir. They come from Mrs.

Larne, this afternoon."

"Put 'em on the table. Where's my daughter?"

"She's had dinner, sir; goin' to a ball, I think."

"A ball!"

"Charity ball, I fancy, sir."

"Ummm! Give me a touch of the old sherry with the soup."

"Yes, sir. I shall have to open a bottle:"

"Very well, then, do!"

On his way to the cellar the man confided to Molly, who was carrying the

soup:

"The Gov'nor's going it to-night! What he'll be like tomorrow I dunno."

The girl answered softly:

"Poor old man, let um have his pleasure." And, in the hall, with the

soup tureen against her bosom, she hummed above the steam, and thought of

the ribbons on her new chemises, bought out of the sovereign he had given

her.

And old Heythorp, digesting his osyters, snuffed the scent of the

hyacinths, and thought of the St. Germain, his favourite soup. It would

n't be first-rate, at this time of year--should be made with little young

home-grown peas. Paris was the place for it. Ah! The French were the

fellows for eating, and--looking things in the face! Not hypocrites--not

ashamed of their reason or their senses!

The soup came in. He sipped it, bending forward as far as he could, his

napkin tucked in over his shirt-front like a bib. He got the bouquet of

that sherry to a T--his sense of smell was very keen to-night; rare old

stuff it was--more than a year since he had tasted it--but no one drank

sherry nowadays, hadn't the constitution for it! The fish came up, and

went down; and with the sweetbread he took his second glass of champagne.

Always the best, that second glass--the stomach well warmed, and the

palate not yet dulled. Umm! So that fellow thought he had him beaten,

did he? And he said suddenly:

"The fur coat in the wardrobe, I've no use for it. You can take it away

to-night."

With tempered gratitude the valet answered:

"Thank you, sir; much obliged, I'm sure." So the old buffer had found

out there was moth in it!

"Have I worried you much?"

"No, sir; not at all, sir--that is, no more than reason."

"Afraid I have. Very sorry--can't help it. You'll find that, when you

get like me."

"Yes, sir; I've always admired your pluck, sir.

"Um! Very good of you to say so."

"Always think of you keepin' the flag flying', sir."

Old Heythorp bent his body from the waist.

"Much obliged to you."

"Not at all, sir. Cook's done a little spinach in cream with the

soubees."

"Ah! Tell her from me it's a capital dinner, so far."

"Thank you, sir."

Alone again, old Heythorp sat unmoving, his brain just narcotically

touched. "The flag flyin'--the flag flyin'!" He raised his glass and

sucked. He had an appetite now, and finished the three cutlets, and all

the sauce and spinach. Pity! he could have managed a snipe fresh shot!

A desire to delay, to lengthen dinner, was strong upon him; there were

but the souffle' and the savoury to come. He would have enjoyed, too,

someone to talk to. He had always been fond of good company--been good

company himself, or so they said--not that he had had a chance of late.

Even at the Boards they avoided talking to him, he had noticed for a long

time. Well! that wouldn't trouble him again--he had sat through his last

Board, no doubt. They shouldn't kick him off, though; he wouldn't give

them that pleasure--had seen the beggars hankering after his chairman's

shoes too long. The souffle was before him now, and lifting his glass, he

said:

"Fill up."

"These are the special glasses, sir; only four to the bottle."

"Fill up."

The servant filled, screwing up his mouth.

Old Heythorp drank, and put the glass down empty with a sigh. He had

been faithful to his principles, finished the bottle before touching the

sweet--a good bottle--of a good brand! And now for the souffle!

Delicious, flipped down with the old sherry! So that holy woman was

going to a ball, was she! How deuced funny! Who would dance with a dry

stick like that, all eaten up with a piety which was just sexual

disappointment? Ah! yes, lots of women like that--had often noticed

'em--pitied 'em too, until you had to do with them and they made you as

unhappy as themselves, and were tyrants into the bargain. And he asked:

"What's the savoury?"

"Cheese remmykin, sir."

His favourite.

"I'll have my port with it--the 'sixty-eight." The man stood gazing with

evident stupefaction. He had not expected this. The old man's face was

very flushed, but that might be the bath. He said feebly:

"Are you sure you ought, sir?"

"No, but I'm going to."

"Would you mind if I spoke to Miss Heythorp, Sir?"

"If you do, you can leave my service."

"Well, Sir, I don't accept the responsibility."

"Who asked you to?"

"No, Sir...."

"Well, get it, then; and don't be an ass."

"Yes, Sir." If the old man were not humoured he would have a fit,

perhaps!

And the old man sat quietly staring at the hyacinths. He felt happy, his

whole being lined and warmed and drowsed--and there was more to come!

What had the holy folk to give you compared with the comfort of a good

dinner? Could they make you dream, and see life rosy for a little? No,

they could only give you promissory notes which never would be cashed. A

man had nothing but his pluck--they only tried to undermine it, and make

him squeal for help. He could see his precious doctor throwing up his

hands: "Port after a bottle of champagne--you'll die of it!" And a very

good death too--none better. A sound broke the silence of the closed-up

room. Music? His daughter playing the piano overhead. Singing too!

What a trickle of a voice! Jenny Lind! The Swedish nightingale--he had

never missed the nights when she was singing--Jenny Lind!

"It's very hot, sir. Shall I take it out of the case?"

Ah! The ramequin!

"Touch of butter, and the cayenne!"

"Yes, sir."

He ate it slowly, savouring each mouthful; had never tasted a better.

With cheese--port! He drank one glass, and said:

"Help me to my chair."

And settled there before the fire with decanter and glass and hand-bell

on the little low table by his side, he murmured:

"Bring coffee, and my cigar, in twenty minutes."

To-night he would do justice to his wine, not smoking till he had

finished. As old Horace said:

"Aequam memento rebus in arduis Servare mentem."

And, raising his glass, he sipped slowly, spilling a drop or two,

shutting his eyes.

The faint silvery squealing of the holy woman in the room above, the

scent of hyacinths, the drowse of the fire, on which a cedar log had just

been laid, the feeling of the port soaking down into the crannies of his

being, made up a momentary Paradise. Then the music stopped; and no

sound rose but the tiny groans of the log trying to resist the fire.

Dreamily he thought: 'Life wears you out--wears you out. Logs on a

fire!' And he filled his glass again. That fellow had been careless;

there were dregs at the bottom of the decanter and he had got down to

them! Then, as the last drop from his tilted glass trickled into the

white hairs on his chin, he heard the coffee tray put down, and taking

his cigar he put it to his ear, rolling it in his thick fingers. In

prime condition! And drawing a first whiff, he said:

"Open that bottle of the old brandy in the sideboard."

"Brandy, sir? I really daren't, sir."

"Are you my servant or not?"

"Yes, sir, but---"

A minute of silence, then the man went hastily to the sideboard, took out

the bottle, and drew the cork. The tide of crimson in the old man's face

had frightened him.

"Leave it there."

The unfortunate valet placed the bottle on the little table. 'I'll have

to tell her,' he thought; 'but if I take away the port decanter and the

glass, it won't look so bad.' And, carrying them, he left the room.

Slowly the old man drank his coffee, and the liqueur of brandy. The

whole gamut! And watching his cigar-smoke wreathing blue in the orange

glow, he smiled. The last night to call his soul his own, the last night

of his independence. Send in his resignations to-morrow--not wait to be

kicked off! Not give that fellow a chance!

A voice which seemed to come from far off, said:

"Father! You're drinking brandy! How can you--you know it's simple

poison to you!" A figure in white, scarcely actual, loomed up close. He

took the bottle to fill up his liqueur glass, in defiance; but a hand in

a long white glove, with another dangling from its wrist, pulled it away,

shook it at him, and replaced it in the sideboard. And, just as when Mr.

Ventnor stood there accusing him, a swelling and churning in his throat

prevented him from speech; his lips moved, but only a little froth came

forth.

His daughter had approached again. She stood quite close, in white

satin, thin-faced, sallow, with eyebrows raised, and her dark hair

frizzed--yes! frizzed--the holy woman! With all his might he tried to

say: 'So you bully me, do you--you bully me to-night!' but only the word

"so" and a sort of whispering came forth. He heard her speaking. "It's

no good your getting angry, Father. After champagne--it's wicked!" Then

her form receded in a sort of rustling white mist; she was gone; and he

heard the sputtering and growling of her taxi, bearing her to the ball.

So! She tyrannised and bullied, even before she had him at her mercy,

did she? She should see! Anger had brightened his eyes; the room came

clear again. And slowly raising himself he sounded the bell twice, for

the girl, not for that fellow Meller, who was in the plot. As soon as

her pretty black and white-aproned figure stood before him, he said:

"Help me up."

Twice her soft pulling was not enough, and he sank back. The third time

he struggled to his feet.

"Thank you; that'll do." Then, waiting till she was gone, he crossed the

room, fumbled open the sideboard door, and took out the bottle. Reaching

over the polished oak, he grasped a sherry glass; and holding the bottle

with both hands, tipped the liquor into it, put it to his lips and

sucked. Drop by drop it passed over his palate mild, very old, old as

himself, coloured like sunlight, fragrant. To the last drop he drank it,

then hugging the bottle to his shirt-front, he moved snail-like to his

chair, and fell back into its depths. For some minutes he remained there

motionless, the bottle clasped to his chest, thinking: 'This is not the

attitude of a gentleman. I must put it down on the table-on the table;'

but a thick cloud was between him and everything. It was with his hands

he would have to put the bottle on the table! But he could not find his

hands, could not feel them. His mind see-sawed in strophe and

antistrophe: "You can't move!"--"I will move!" "You're beaten"--"I'm not

beat." "Give up"--"I won't." That struggle to find his hands seemed to

last for ever--he must find them! After that--go down--all

standing--after that! Everything round him was red. Then the red cloud

cleared just a little, and he could hear the clock--"tick-tick-tick"; a

faint sensation spread from his shoulders down to his wrists, down his

palms; and yes--he could feel the bottle! He redoubled his struggle to

get forward in his chair; to get forward and put the bottle down. It was

not dignified like this! One arm he could move now; but he could not

grip the bottle nearly tight enough to put it down. Working his whole

body forward, inch by inch, he shifted himself up in the chair till he

could lean sideways, and the bottle, slipping down his chest, dropped

slanting to the edge of the low stool-table. Then with all his might he

screwed his trunk and arms an inch further, and the bottle stood. He had

done it--done it! His lips twitched into a smile; his body sagged back

to its old position. He had done it! And he closed his eyes ....

At half-past eleven the girl Molly, opening the door, looked at him and

said softly: "Sirr! there's some ladies, and a gentleman!" But he did

not answer. And, still holding the door, she whispered out into the

hall:

"He's asleep, miss."

A voice whispered back:

"Oh! Just let me go in, I won't wake him unless he does. But I do want

to show him my dress."

The girl moved aside; and on tiptoe Phyllis passed in. She walked to

where, between the lamp-glow and the fire-glow, she was lighted up. White

satin--her first low-cut dress--the flush of her first supper party--a

gardenia at her breast, another in her fingers! Oh! what a pity he was

asleep! How red he looked! How funnily old men breathed! And

mysteriously, as a child might, she whispered:

"Guardy!"

No answer! And pouting, she stood twiddling the gardenia. Then suddenly

she thought: 'I'll put it in his buttonhole! When he wakes up and sees

it, how he'll jump!'

And stealing close, she bent and slipped it in. Two faces looked at her

from round the door; she heard Bob Pillin's smothered chuckle; her

mother's rich and feathery laugh. Oh! How red his forehead was! She

touched it with her lips; skipped back, twirled round, danced silently a

second, blew a kiss, and like quicksilver was gone.

And the whispering, the chuckling, and one little out-pealing laugh rose

in the hall.

But the old man slept. Nor until Meller came at his usual hour of

half-past twelve, was it known that he would never wake.

THE APPLE TREE

"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, whose character contained a streak of sentiment. If 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, she was still at forty-three a

comely and faithful companion, whose cheeks were faintly mottled, and

whose grey-blue eyes had acquired a certain fullness.

It was she who had stopped the car where the common rose steeply to the

left, and a narrow strip of larch and beech, with here and there a pine,

stretched out towards the valley between the road and the first long high

hill of the full moor. She was looking for a place where they might

lunch, for Ashurst never looked for anything; and this, between the

golden furze and the feathery green larches smelling of lemons in the

last sun of April--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.

"Won't this do, Frank?"

Ashurst, rather like a bearded Schiller, grey in the wings, 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

luncheon basket, and got out too.

"Oh! Look, Frank! A grave!"

By the side of the road, where the track from the top of the common

crossed it at right angles and ran through a gate past the narrow wood,

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 cross-roads--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! And, without comment, for he had learned not to

be a philosopher in the bosom of his family, he strode away up on to the

common, dropped the luncheon 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 had soon finished reading of "The Cyprian" and her

revenge, and looked at the sky instead. And watching the white clouds so

bright against the intense blue, Ashurst, on his silver-wedding day,

longed for--he knew not what. Maladjusted to life--man's organism!

One's mode of life might be high and scrupulous, but there was always an,

undercurrent of greediness, a hankering, and sense of waste. Did women

have it too? Who could tell? And yet, men who gave vent to their

appetites for novelty, their riotous longings for new adventures, new

risks, new pleasures, these suffered, no doubt, from the reverse side of

starvation, from surfeit. No getting out of it--a maladjusted animal,

civilised man! There could be no garden of his choosing, of "the

Apple-tree, the singing, and the gold," in the words of that lovely Greek

chorus, no achievable elysium in life, or lasting haven of happiness for

any man with a sense of beauty--nothing which could compare with the

captured loveliness in a work of art, set down for ever, so that to look

on it or read was always to have the same precious sense of exaltation

and restful inebriety. Life no doubt had moments with that quality of

beauty, of unbidden flying rapture, but the trouble was, they lasted no

longer than the span of a cloud's flight over the sun; impossible to keep

them with you, as Art caught beauty and held it fast. They were fleeting

as one of the glimmering or golden visions one had of the soul in nature,

glimpses of its remote and brooding spirit. Here, with the sun hot on

his face, a cuckoo calling from a thorn tree, and in the air the honey

savour of gorse--here among the little fronds of the young fern, the

starry blackthorn, while the bright clouds drifted by high above the

hills and dreamy valleys here and now was such a glimpse. But in a

moment it would pass--as the face of Pan, which looks round the corner of

a rock, vanishes at your stare. And suddenly he sat up. Surely there

was something familiar about this view, this bit of common, 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. And a

sudden ache beset his heart; he had stumbled on just one of those past

moments in his life, whose beauty and rapture he had failed to arrest,

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 where the little blue milkwort was growing....

I

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 had given out, and according to their map they had still some seven

miles to go. They were sitting on a bank beside the-road, where a track

crossed alongside a wood, 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 queer, round-the-corner,

knotted, curly, like some primeval beast. Both had a literary bent;

neither wore a hat.

Ashurst's hair was smooth, pale, wavy, and had a way of rising on either

side of his brow, as if always being flung back; Carton's was a kind of

dark unfathomed mop. They had not met a soul for miles.

"My dear fellow," Garton was saying, "pity's only an effect of

self-consciousness; it's a disease of the last five thousand years. The

world was happier without."

Ashurst, following the clouds with his eyes, answered:

"It's the pearl in the oyster, anyway."

"My dear chap, all our modern unhappiness comes from pity. Look at

animals, and Red Indians, limited to feeling their own occasional

misfortunes; then look at ourselves--never free from feeling the

toothaches of others. Let's get back to feeling for nobody, and have a

better time."

"You'll never practise that."

Garton pensively stirred the hotch-potch of his hair.

"To attain full growth, one mustn't be squeamish. To starve oneself

emotionally's a mistake. All emotion is to the good--enriches life."

"Yes, and when it runs up against chivalry?"

"Ah! That's so English! If you speak of emotion the English always

think you want something physical, and are shocked. They're afraid of

passion, but not of lust--oh, no!--so long as they can keep it secret."

Ashurst did not answer; he had plucked a blue floweret, and was twiddling

it against the sky. A cuckoo began calling from a thorn tree. The sky,

the flowers, the songs of birds! Robert was talking through his hat!

And he said:

"Well, let's go on, and find some farm where we can put up." In uttering

those words, he was conscious of a girl coming down from the common just

above them. She was outlined against the sky, carrying a basket, and you

could see that sky through the crook of her arm. And Ashurst, who saw

beauty without wondering how it could advantage him, thought: 'How

pretty!' The wind, blowing her dark frieze skirt against her legs,

lifted her battered peacock tam-o'-shanter; her greyish blouse was worn

and old, 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 the wonder-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 crisp 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 took up the catechism.

"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 d'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 dwelling with casement windows, in a farmyard where pigs

and fowls and an old mare were straying. A short steep-up grass hill

behind was crowned with a few Scotch firs, 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 oblique 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, my aunt," had a quick, dark eye, like a mother

wild-duck's, and something of the same snaky turn about her neck.

"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, her

peacock tam-o'-shanter bright athwart that rosy-pink and the dark green

of the yews.

"Will you come into the parlour and rest your leg? You'll be from

college, perhaps?"

"We were, but we've gone down now."

Mrs. Narracombe nodded sagely.

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 one who was often so sublimely unconscious of them.

"Is there a stream where we could bathe?"

"There's the strame at the bottom of the orchard, but sittin' down you'll

not be covered!"

"How deep?"

"Well, 'tis about a foot and a half, maybe."

"Oh! That'll do fine. Which way?"

"Down the lane, through the second gate on the right, an' the pool's by

the big apple tree that stands by itself. There's trout there, if you

can tickle them."

"They're more likely to tickle us!"

Mrs. Narracombe smiled. "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 in leaf, and all but in 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, all rocks and thorn trees and feld

flowers, with a grove of beeches beyond, raised up on a flat mound.

Every bough was swinging in the wind, every spring bird calling, and a

slanting 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 touched with saffron, 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 dribbling from the corner of his curly lips, he had been

plunging his cold pin-points of eyes into Ashurst's and praising the

refinement of the Welsh. To come out of Wales into England was like the

change from china to earthenware! Frank, as a d---d 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 she illustrated the writings of the

Welsh bard Morgan-ap-Something in the twelfth century.

Ashurst, full length on the horsehair sofa, and jutting far beyond its

end, smoked a deeply-coloured pipe, and did not listen, thinking of the

girl's face when she brought in a relay of 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 white-washed room with rafters, to which were attached

smoked hams; there were flower-pots on the window-sill, and guns hanging

on nails, queer mugs, china and pewter, and portraits of Queen Victoria.

A long, narrow table of plain wood was set with bowls and spoons, under a

string of high-hung onions; two sheep-dogs and three cats lay here and

there. On one side of the recessed fireplace sat two small boys, idle,

and good as gold; on the other sat a stout, light-eyed, red-faced youth

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

savoury-scented stew in a large pot. Two other youths, oblique-eyed,

dark-haired, rather sly-faced, like the two little boys, were talking

together and lolling against the wall; and a short, elderly, clean-shaven

man in corduroys, seated in the window, was conning a battered journal.

The girl Megan seemed the only active creature-drawing 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. But the colour

in the kitchen, the warmth, the scents, and all those faces, heightened

the bleakness of their shiny room, and they resumed their seats moodily.

"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!

Garton went on:

"Emotionally she would be wonderful. She wants awakening."

"Are you going to awaken her?"

Garton looked at him and smiled. 'How coarse and English you are!' that

curly smile seemed saying.

And Ashurst puffed his pipe. Awaken her! That fool had the best opinion

of himself! He threw up the window and leaned out. Dusk had gathered

thick. The farm buildings and the wheel-house were all dim and bluish,

the apple trees but a blurred wilderness; the air smelled of woodsmoke

from the kitchen fire. One bird going to bed later than the others was

uttering a half-hearted twitter, as though surprised at the darkness.

From the stable came the snuffle and stamp of a feeding horse. And away

over there was the loom of the moor, and away and away the shy stars

which had not as yet full light, pricking white through the deep blue

heavens. A quavering owl hooted. Ashurst drew a deep breath. What a

night to wander out in! A padding of unshod hoofs came up the lane, and

three dim, dark shapes passed--ponies on an evening march. Their heads,

black and fuzzy, showed above the gate. At the tap of his pipe, and a

shower of little sparks, they shied round and scampered. 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 burring boys' voices, little thumps of

boots thrown down, and another voice, crisp and soft--the girl's putting

them to bed, no doubt; and nine clear words "No, Rick, you can't have the

cat in bed"; then came a skirmish of giggles and gurgles, a soft slap, a

laugh so low and pretty that it made him shiver a little. A blowing

sound, and the glim of the candle which was fingering the dusk above,

went out; silence reigned. Ashurst withdrew 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."

3

For Ashurst the wheel of slumber was wont to turn noiseless and slick and

swift, but though he seemed sunk in sleep when his companion came up, he

was really wide awake; and long after Carton, smothered in the other bed

of that low-roofed room, was worshipping darkness with his upturned nose,

he heard the owls. Barring the discomfort of his knee, it was not

unpleasant--the cares of life did not loom large in night watches for

this young man. In fact he had none; 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 casement 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 youth 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 at

last, in the square of darkness through the uncurtained casement, he saw

day coming, and heard one hoarse and sleepy caw. Then followed silence,

dead as ever, till the song of a blackbird, not properly awake,

adventured into the hush. 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, due back in London on the morrow, departed at midday with an

ironical smile which left a scar of irritation--healed the moment his

loping figure vanished round the corner of the steep lane. All day

Ashurst rested his knee, in a green-painted wooden chair on the patch of

grass by the yew-tree porch, where the sunlight distilled the scent of

stocks and gillyflowers, and a ghost of scent from the flowering-currant

bushes. 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. So still the young man sat, that a

mother-goose, with stately cross-footed waddle, brought her six

yellow-necked grey-backed goslings to strop their little beaks against

the grass blades at his feet. Now and again Mrs. Narracombe or the girl

Megan would come and ask 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 and solemn 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 crisp and 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 youth whom Garton had called "a Saxon type" was standing

outside the stable door; and a fine bit of colour he made in his soiled

brown velvet-cords, muddy gaiters, and blue shirt; red-armed, red-faced,

the sun turning his hair from tow to flax; immovably stolid, persistent,

unsmiling he stood. Then, seeing Ashurst looking at him, he crossed the

yard at that gait of the young countryman always ashamed not to be slow

and heavy-dwelling on each leg, 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'm praaper buties; gude milkers tu."

"I bet they are."

"'Ope as yure leg's better, zurr."

"Thank you, it's getting on."

The lame man touched his own: "I know what 'tes, meself; 'tes a main

worritin' thing, the knee. I've a-'ad mine bad this ten year."

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 mighty near 'ad it off."

"Ho!"

"Yeas; an' compared with what 'twas, 'tes almost so gude as nu."

"They've put a bandage of splendid stuff on mine."

"The maid she picks et. She'm a gude maid wi' the flowers. There's

folks zeem to know the healin' in things. My mother was a rare one for

that. 'Ope as yu'll zune be better, zurr. Goo ahn, therr!"

Ashurst smiled. "Wi' 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 subsided.

The girl gave a little gasp, and 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. But, he had presence of mind

enough to catch his stick out of the rack, and withdraw his hand before

arriving at the kitchen.

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,

scribbling 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 breeches tucked up, lay on their stomachs over the trout

stream, pretending they had this accomplishment also. They tickled

nothing, of course, for their giggling and shouting scared every spotted

thing 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 zets on that stone," he said.

"What gipsy bogie?"

"Dunno; never zeen 'e. Megan zays 'e zets there; an' old Jim zeed 'e

once. 'E was zettin' there naight afore our pony kicked--in father's

'ead. 'E plays the viddle."

"What tune does he play?"

"Dunno."

"What's he like?"

"'E's black. Old Jim zays 'e's all over 'air. 'E's a praaper bogle. 'E

don' come only at naight." The little boy's oblique dark eyes slid

round. "D'yu think 'e might want to take me away? Megan's feared of

'e."

"Has she seen him?"

"No. She's not afeared o' yu."

"I should think not. Why should she be?"

"She zays a prayer for yu."

"How do you know that, you little rascal?"

"When I was asleep, she said: 'God bless us all, an' Mr. Ashes.' I yeard

'er whisperin'."

"You're a little ruffian 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 rabbets. Megan, she can't bear skinnin' 'em. I like blood."

"Oh! you do; you little monster!"

"What's that?"

"A creature that likes hurting others."

The little boy scowled. "They'm only dead rabbets, what us eats."

"Quite right, Nick. I beg your pardon."

"I can skin frogs, tu."

But Ashurst had become absent. "God bless us all, and Mr. Ashes!" And

puzzled by that sudden inaccessibility, Nick ran back to the stream where

the giggling and shouts again uprose at once.

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 bogies 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 bogie, 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 in a sort of pet 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 to-night!"

She flushed crimson, frowned, and went out of the room. He sat, cursing

himself, till his tea was stewed. 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 a towny college ass 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. In a kind of intoxication he would watch the pink-white

buds of some backward beech tree sprayed up in the sunlight against the

deep blue sky, or the trunks and limbs of the few Scotch firs, tawny in

violent light, or again, on the moor, the gale-bent larches which had

such a look of life when the wind streamed in their young green, above

the rusty black underboughs. Or he would lie on the banks, gazing at the

clusters of dog-violets, or up in the dead bracken, fingering the pink,

transparent buds of the dewberry, while the cuckoos called and yafes

laughed, or a lark, from very high, dripped its beads of song. It was

certainly different from any spring he had ever known, for spring was

within him, not without. 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 week in the evening, when he was lying in the orchard

listening to a blackbird and composing a love poem, that he heard the

gate swing to, and saw the girl come running among the trees, with the

red-cheeked, stolid Joe in swift pursuit. About twenty yards away the

chase 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; and the youth's--who would

have thought that red-faced yokel could look so distraught! And

painfully affected by that sight, he jumped up. They saw him then.

Megan dropped her hands, and shrank behind a tree trunk; the boy gave an

angry grunt, rushed at the bank, scrambled over 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 loose 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 I Her shrinking

ceased suddenly; 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

utter silence a blackbird shouted. Then the girl seized his hand, put it

to her cheek, her heart, her lips, kissed it passionately, and fled away

among the mossy 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 bewildered, 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 stampeded 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 midges 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 laughter of the yaflies, the level-slanting sunlight, the

apple blossom which had crowned her head! He got up from the old trunk

and strode out of the orchard, wanting space, an open sky, to get on

terms with these new sensations. He made for the moor, and from an ash

tree in the hedge a magpie flew out to herald him.

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. Some natures are coarsened by love bestowed on them; others,

like Ashurst's, are swayed and drawn, warmed and softened, almost

exalted, by what they feel to be a sort of miracle.

And up there among the tors he was racked between the passionate desire

to revel in this new sensation of spring fulfilled within him, and a

vague but very real uneasiness. 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 with factitious solemnity: 'Yes,

my boy! But look out what you're doing! You know what comes of it!'

Dusk dropped down without his noticing--dusk on the carved,

Assyrian-looking masses of the rocks. 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 down

the stones and heather roots to the road, back into the lane, and came

again past the wild meadow to the orchard. There he struck 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, her shrewd face

hardening; saw the gipsy-like cousins coarsely 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. The gate where he was

leaning grew grey, a sort of shimmer passed be fore him and spread into

the bluish darkness. The moon! He could just see it over the bank be

hind; red, nearly round-a strange moon! And turning away, he went up the

lane which smelled of the night and cowdung and young leaves. In the

straw-yard he could see the dark shapes of cattle, broken by the pale

sickles of their horns, like so many thin moons, fallen ends-up. He

unlatched the farm gate stealthily. All was dark in the house. Muffling

his footsteps, he gained the porch, and, blotted against one of the yew

trees, 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 stole forward on the grass patch, hit

his shin against the green-painted chair, and held his breath at the

sound. The pale blur of her stretched-down arm and face did not stir; 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 tumbled 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 sweetbriar 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. Nothing for it but to

creep in and go to bed; yet 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.

5

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. Full spring had burst at last--in one night the

"goldie-cups," as the little boys called them, seemed to have made the

field their own, and 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 vexed and disappointed. The woman's quick eye and

snaky neck seemed to have a new alacrity this morning. Had she noticed?

"So you an' the moon went walkin' last night, Mr. Ashurst! Did ye have

your supper anywheres?"

Ashurst shook his head.

"We kept it for you, but I suppose you was too busy in your brain to

think o' such a thing as that?"

Was she mocking him, in that voice of hers, which still kept some Welsh

crispness against the invading burr of the West Country? 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. Sinister that she had not appeared,

not given him even a glimpse of her! And the love poem, whose

manufacture had been so important and absorbing yesterday afternoon under

the apple trees, now seemed so paltry that he tore it up and rolled it

into pipe spills. 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

stoop 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 stealing away, it would be even worse. She took the pillow

up, holding it as if reluctant to shake out the impress of his cheek,

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

headiness, 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 to-night, 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 as devoid of a book as

ever; 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. The youth had evidently come from hard work in the fields, and

stood shifting his feet, breathing loudly, his face coloured like a

setting sun, and his arms, below the rolled-up sleeves of his blue shirt,

showing the hue and furry sheen of ripe peaches. 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 goo away from yere. Us don' want yu."

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 youth moved a pace or two nearer, and the scent of his honest heat

afflicted Ashurst's nostrils.

"What d'yu stay yere for?"

"Because it pleases me."

"Twon't please yu when I've bashed yure 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 don' want yu."

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 bullfrog of a

creature in her arms. How cosy it looked against her!

"It's fond of you already. Ah I 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 quiver, just as if he had seen a moth scorching its

wings.

"To-night!" he said. "Don't forget!"

"No." And smothering her face against 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! 'Tes brave weather for the grass. The ashes be later than th' oaks

this year. 'When th' oak before th' ash---'"

Ashurst said idly: "Where were you standing when you saw the gipsy bogie,

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 't was there. 'Twas in my mind as

'twas there."

"What do you make of it?"

The lame man lowered his voice.

"They du zay old master, Mist' Narracombe come o' gipsy stock. But

that's tellin'. They'm a wonderful people, yu know, for claimin' their

own. Maybe they knu 'e was goin', and sent this feller along for

company. That's what I've a-thought about it."

"What was he like?"

"'E 'ad 'air all over 'is face, an' goin' like this, he was, zame as if

'e 'ad a viddle. They zay there's no such thing as bogies, but I've

a-zeen the 'air on this dog standin' up of a dark naight, when I couldn'

zee nothin', meself."

"Was there a moon?"

"Yeas, very near full, but 'twas on'y just risen, gold-like be'ind them

trees."

"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.

"'Tes not for me to zay that but 'tes they bein' so unrestin'like.

There's things us don' understand, that's zartin, for zure. There's

people that zee things, tu, an' others that don't never zee nothin'. Now,

our Joe--yu might putt anything under'is eyes an e'd never zee it; and

them other boys, tu, they'm rattlin' fellers. But yu take an' putt our

Megan where there's suthin', she'll zee it, an' more tu, or I'm

mistaken."

"She's sensitive, that's why."

"What's that?"

"I mean, she feels everything."

"Ah! She'm very lovin'-'earted."

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

pouch.

"Have a fill, Jim?"

"Thank 'ee, sir. She'm one in an 'underd, I think."

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

"Lovin'-hearted!" Yes! And what was he doing? What were his

intentions--as they say towards this loving-hearted girl? The thought

dogged him, wandering through fields bright with buttercups, where the

little red calves were feeding, and 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, in the

garden of the Hesperides!... 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 glamour of the golden

pasture, under his short legs. Ashurst crossed out unchallenged to the

hillside above the stream. From that slope a for mounted to its crown of

rocks. The ground there was covered with a mist of bluebells, and nearly

a score of crab-apple trees were in full bloom. He threw himself down on

the grass. The change from the buttercup glory and oak-goldened glamour

of the fields to this ethereal beauty under the grey for 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 crab-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 to-night under the apple tree. In such a spot as

this, fauns and dryads surely lived; nymphs, white as the crab-apple

blossom, retired within those trees; fauns, brown as the dead bracken,

with pointed ears, lay in wait for them. 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 insistent 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.

But the rabbits scurried away.

6

It was nearly eleven that night when Ashurst put down the pocket

"Odyssey" which for half an hour he had held in his hands without

reading, and slipped through the yard down to the orchard. The moon had

just risen, very golden, over the hill, and like a bright, powerful,

watching spirit peered through the bars of an ash tree's half-naked

boughs. In among the apple trees it was still dark, and he stood making

sure of his direction, feeling the rough grass with his feet. A black

mass close behind him stirred with a heavy grunting sound, and three

large pigs settled down again close to each other, under the wall. He

listened. There was no wind, but the stream's burbling whispering

chuckle had gained twice its daytime strength. One bird, he could not

tell what, cried "Pippip," "Pip-pip," with perfect monotony; he could

hear a night-Jar spinning very far off; an owl hooting. Ashurst moved a

step or two, and again halted, aware of a dim living whiteness all round

his head. On the dark unstirring trees innumerable flowers and buds all

soft and blurred were being bewitched to life by the creeping moonlight.

He had the oddest feeling of actual companionship, as if a million white

moths or spirits had floated in and settled between dark sky and darker

ground, and were opening and shutting their wings on a level with his

eyes. In the bewildering, still, scentless beauty of that moment he

almost lost memory of why he had come to the orchard. The flying glamour

which had clothed the earth all day had not gone now that night had

fallen, but only changed into this new form. He moved on through the

thicket of stems and boughs covered with that live powdering whiteness,

till he reached the big apple tree. No mistaking that, even in the dark,

nearly twice the height and size of any other, and leaning out towards

the open meadows and the stream. Under the thick branches he stood still

again, to listen. The same sounds exactly, and a faint grunting from the

sleepy pigs. He put his hands on the dry, almost warm tree trunk, whose

rough mossy surface gave forth a peaty scent at his touch. Would she

come--would she? And among these quivering, haunted, moon-witched trees

he was seized with doubts of everything! All was unearthly here, fit for

no earthly lovers; fit only for god and goddess, faun and nymph not for

him and this little country girl. Would it not be almost a relief if she

did not come? But all the time he was listening. And still that unknown

bird went "Pip-pip," "Pip-pip," and there rose the busy chatter of the

little trout stream, whereon the moon was flinging glances through the

bars of her tree-prison. The blossom on a level with his eyes seemed to

grow more living every moment, seemed with its mysterious white beauty

more and more a part of his suspense. He plucked a fragment and held it

close--three blossoms. Sacrilege to pluck fruit-tree blossom--soft,

sacred, young blossom--and throw it away! Then suddenly he heard the

gate close, the pigs stirring again and grunting; and leaning against the

trunk, he pressed his hands to its mossy sides behind him, and held his

breath. She might have been a spirit threading the trees, for all the

noise she made! Then he saw her quite close--her dark form part of a

little tree, her white face part of its blossom; so still, and peering

towards him. He whispered: "Megan!" and held out his hands. She ran

forward, straight to his breast. When he felt her heart beating against

him, Ashurst knew to the full the sensations of chivalry and passion.

Because she was not of his world, because she was so simple and young and

headlong, adoring and defenceless, how could he be other than her

protector, in the dark! Because she was all simple Nature and beauty, as

much a part of this spring night as was the living blossom, how should he

not take all that she would give him how not fulfil the spring in her

heart and his! And torn between these two emotions he clasped her close,

and kissed her hair. How long they stood there without speaking he knew

not. The stream went on chattering, the owls hooting, the moon kept

stealing up and growing whiter; the blossom all round them and above

brightened in suspense of living beauty. Their lips had sought each

other's, and they did not speak. The moment speech began all would be

unreal! Spring has no speech, nothing but rustling and whispering.

Spring has so much more than speech in its unfolding flowers and leaves,

and the coursing of its streams, and in its sweet restless seeking! And

sometimes spring will come alive, and, like a mysterious Presence stand,

encircling lovers with its arms, laying on them the fingers of

enchantment, so that, standing lips to lips, they forget everything but

just a kiss. While her heart beat against him, and her lips quivered on

his, Ashurst felt nothing but simple rapture--Destiny meant her for his

arms, Love could not be flouted! But when their lips parted for breath,

division began again at once. Only, passion now was so much the

stronger, and he sighed:

"Oh! Megan! Why did you come?" She looked up, hurt, amazed.

"Sir, you asked me to."

"Don't call me 'sir,' my pretty sweet." "What should I be callin" you?"

"Frank."

"I could not. Oh, no!"

"But you love me--don't you?"

"I could not help lovin' you. I want to be with you--that's all."

"All!"

So faint that he hardly heard, she whispered: "I shall die if I can't be

with you."

Ashurst took a mighty breath.

"Come and be with me, then!"

"Oh!"

Intoxicated by the awe and rapture in that "Oh!" he went on, whispering:

"We'll go to London. I'll show you the world.

"And I will take care of you, I promise, Megan. I'll never be a brute to

you!"

"If I can be with you--that is all."

He stroked her hair, and whispered on:

"To-morrow I'll go to Torquay and get some money, and get you some

clothes that won't be noticed, and then we'll steal away. And when we

get to London, soon perhaps, if you love me well enough, we'll be

married."

He could feel her hair shiver with the shake of her head.

"Oh, no! I could not. I only want to be with you!"

Drunk on his own chivalry, Ashurst went on murmuring, "It's I who am not

good enough for you. Oh! Megan, when did you begin to love me?"

"When I saw you in the road, and you looked at me. The first night I

loved you; but I never thought you would want me."

She slipped down suddenly to her knees, trying to kiss his feet.

A shiver of horror went through Ashurst; he lifted her up bodily and held

her fast--too upset to speak.

She whispered: "Why won't you let me?"

"It's I who will kiss your feet!"

Her smile brought tears into his eyes. The whiteness of her moonlit face

so close to his, the faint pink of her opened lips, had the living

unearthly beauty of the apple blossom.

And then, suddenly, her eyes widened and stared past him painfully; she

writhed out of his arms, and whispered: "Look!"

Ashurst saw nothing but the brightened stream, the furze faintly gilded,

the beech trees glistening, and behind them all the wide loom of the

moonlit hill. Behind him came her frozen whisper: "The gipsy bogie!"

"Where?"

"There--by the stone--under the trees!"

Exasperated, he leaped the stream, and strode towards the beech clump.

Prank of the moonlight! Nothing! In and out of the boulders and thorn

trees, muttering and cursing, yet with a kind of terror, he rushed and

stumbled. Absurd! Silly! Then he went back to the apple tree. But she

was gone; he could hear a rustle, the grunting of the pigs, the sound of

a gate closing. Instead of her, only this old apple tree! He flung his

arms round the trunk. What a substitute for her soft body; the rough

moss against his face--what a substitute for her soft cheek; only the

scent, as of the woods, a little the same! And above him, and around,

the blossoms, more living, more moonlit than ever, seemed to glow and

breathe.

7

Descending from the train at Torquay station, Ashurst wandered

uncertainly along the front, for he did not know this particular queen of

English watering places. Having little sense of what he had on, he was

quite unconscious of being remarkable among its inhabitants, and strode

along in his rough Norfolk jacket, dusty boots, and battered hat, without

observing that people gazed at him rather blankly. He was seeking a

branch of his London bank, and having found one, found also the first

obstacle to his mood. Did he know anyone in Torquay? No. In that case,

if he would wire to his bank in London, they would be happy to oblige him

on receipt of the reply. That suspicious breath from the matter-of-fact

world somewhat tarnished the brightness of his visions. But he sent the

telegram.

Nearly opposite to the post office he saw a shop full of ladies'

garments, and examined the window with strange sensations. To have to

undertake the clothing of his rustic love was more than a little

disturbing. He went in. A young woman came forward; she had blue eyes

and a faintly puzzled forehead. Ashurst stared at her in silence.

"Yes, sir?"

"I want a dress for a young lady."

The young woman smiled. Ashurst frowned the peculiarity of his request

struck him with sudden force.

The young woman added hastily:

"What style would you like--something modish?"

"No. Simple."

"What figure would the young lady be?"

"I don't know; about two inches shorter than you, I should say."

"Could you give me her waist measurement?"

Megan's waist!

"Oh! anything usual!"

"Quite!"

While she was gone he stood disconsolately eyeing the models in the

window, and suddenly it seemed to him incredible that Megan--his Megan

could ever be dressed save in the rough tweed skirt, coarse blouse, and

tam-o'-shanter cap he was wont to see her in. The young woman had come

back with several dresses in her arms, and Ashurst eyed her laying them

against her own modish figure. There was one whose colour he liked, a

dove-grey, but to imagine Megan clothed in it was beyond him. The young

woman went away, and brought some more. But on Ashurst there had now come

a feeling of paralysis. How choose? She would want a hat too, and

shoes, and gloves; and, suppose, when he had got them all, they

commonised her, as Sunday clothes always commonised village folk! Why

should she not travel as she was? Ah! But conspicuousness would matter;

this was a serious elopement. And, staring at the young woman, he

thought: 'I wonder if she guesses, and thinks me a blackguard?'

"Do you mind putting aside that grey one for me?" he said desperately at

last. "I can't decide now; I'll come in again this afternoon."

The young woman sighed.

"Oh! certainly. It's a very tasteful costume. I don't think you'll get

anything that will suit your purpose better."

"I expect not," Ashurst murmured, and went out.

Freed again from the suspicious matter-of-factness of the world, he took

a long breath, and went back to visions. In fancy he saw the trustful,

pretty creature who was going to join her life to his; saw himself and

her stealing forth at night, walking over the moor under the moon, he

with his arm round her, and carrying her new garments, till, in some

far-off wood, when dawn was coming, she would slip off her old things and

put on these, and an early train at a distant station would bear them

away on their honeymoon journey, till London swallowed them up, and the

dreams of love came true.

"Frank Ashurst! Haven't seen you since Rugby, old chap!"

Ashurst's frown dissolved; the face, close to his own, was blue-eyed,

suffused with sun--one of those faces where sun from within and without

join in a sort of lustre. And he answered:

"Phil Halliday, by Jove!"

"What are you doing here?"

"Oh! nothing. Just looking round, and getting some money. I'm staying

on the moor."

"Are you lunching anywhere? Come and lunch with us; I'm here with my

young sisters. They've had measles."

Hooked in by that friendly arm Ashurst went along, up a hill, down a

hill, away out of the town, while the voice of Halliday, redolent of

optimism as his face was of sun, explained how "in this mouldy place the

only decent things were the bathing and boating," and so on, till

presently they came to a crescent of houses a little above and back from

the sea, and into the centre one an hotel--made their way.

"Come up to my room and have a wash. Lunch'll be ready in a jiffy."

Ashurst contemplated his visage in a looking-glass. After his farmhouse

bedroom, the comb and one spare shirt regime of the last fortnight, this

room littered with clothes and brushes was a sort of Capua; and he

thought: 'Queer--one doesn't realise But what--he did not quite know.

When he followed Halliday into the sitting room for lunch, three faces,

very fair and blue-eyed, were turned suddenly at the words: "This is

Frank Ashurst my young sisters."

Two were indeed young, about eleven and ten. The third was perhaps

seventeen, tall and fair-haired too, with pink-and-white cheeks just

touched by the sun, and eyebrows, rather darker than the hair, running a

little upwards from her nose to their outer points. The voices of all

three were like Halliday's, high and cheerful; they stood up straight,

shook hands with a quick movement, looked at Ashurst critically, away

again at once, and began to talk of what they were going to do in the

afternoon. A regular Diana and attendant nymphs! After the farm this

crisp, slangy, eager talk, this cool, clean, off-hand refinement, was

queer at first, and then so natural that what he had come from became

suddenly remote. The names of the two little ones seemed to be Sabina

and Freda; of the eldest, Stella.

Presently the one called Sabina turned to him and said:

"I say, will you come shrimping with us?--it's awful fun!"

Surprised by this unexpected friendliness, Ashurst murmured:

"I'm afraid I've got to get back this afternoon."

"Oh!"

"Can't you put it off?"

Ashurst turned to the new speaker, Stella, shook his head, and smiled.

She was very pretty! Sabina said regretfully: "You might!" Then the talk

switched off to caves and swimming.

"Can you swim far?"

"About two miles."

"Oh!"

"I say!"

"How jolly!"

The three pairs of blue eyes, fixed on him, made him conscious of his new

importance--The sensation was agreeable. Halliday said:

"I say, you simply must stop and have a bathe. You'd better stay the

night."

"Yes, do!"'

But again Ashurst smiled and shook his head. Then suddenly he found

himself being catechised about his physical achievements. He had

rowed--it seemed--in his college boat, played in his college football

team, won his college mile; and he rose from table a sort of hero. The

two little girls insisted that he must see "their" cave, and they set

forth chattering like magpies, Ashurst between them, Stella and her

brother a little behind. In the cave, damp and darkish like any other

cave, the great feature was a pool with possibility of creatures which

might be caught and put into bottles. Sabina and Freda, who wore no

stockings on their shapely brown legs, exhorted Ashurst to join them in

the middle of it, and help sieve the water. He too was soon bootless and

sockless. Time goes fast for one who has a sense of beauty, when there

are pretty children in a pool and a young Diana on the edge, to receive

with wonder anything you can catch! Ashurst never had much sense of

time. It was a shock when, pulling out his watch, he saw it was well

past three. No cashing his cheque to-day-the bank would be closed before

he could get there. Watching his expression, the little girls cried out

at once:

"Hurrah! Now you'll have to stay!"

Ashurst did not answer. He was seeing again Megan's face, when at

breakfast time he had whispered: "I'm going to Torquay, darling, to get

everything; I shall be back this evening. If it's fine we can go

to-night. Be ready." He was seeing again how she quivered and hung on

his words. What would she think? Then he pulled himself together,

conscious suddenly of the calm scrutiny of this other young girl, so tall

and fair and Diana-like, at the edge of the pool, of her wondering blue

eyes under those brows which slanted up a little. If they knew what was

in his mind--if they knew that this very night he had meant! Well, there

would be a little sound of disgust, and he would be alone in the cave.

And with a curious mixture of anger, chagrin, and shame, he put his watch

back into his pocket and said abruptly:

"Yes; I'm dished for to-day."

"Hurrah! Now you can bathe with us."

It was impossible not to succumb a little to the contentment of these

pretty children, to the smile on Stella's lips, to Halliday's "Ripping,

old chap! I can lend you things for the night!" But again a spasm of

longing and remorse throbbed through Ashurst, and he said moodily:

"I must send a wire!"

The attractions of the pool palling, they went back to the hotel. Ashurst

sent his wire, addressing it to Mrs. Narracombe: "Sorry, detained for the

night, back to-morrow." Surely Megan would understand that he had too

much to do; and his heart grew lighter. It was a lovely afternoon, warm,

the sea calm and blue, and swimming his great passion; the favour of

these pretty children flattered him, the pleasure of looking at them, at

Stella, at Halliday's sunny face; the slight unreality, yet extreme

naturalness of it all--as of a last peep at normality before he took this

plunge with Megan! He got his borrowed bathing dress, and they all set

forth. Halliday and he undressed behind one rock, the three girls behind

another. He was first into the sea, and at once swam out with the

bravado of justifying his self-given reputation. When he turned he could

see Halliday swimming along shore, and the girls flopping and dipping,

and riding the little waves, in the way he was accustomed to despise, but

now thought pretty and sensible, since it gave him the distinction of the

only deep-water fish. But drawing near, he wondered if they would like

him, a stranger, to come into their splashing group; he felt shy,

approaching that slim nymph. Then Sabina summoned him to teach her to

float, and between them the little girls kept him so busy that he had no

time even to notice whether Stella was accustomed to his presence, till

suddenly he heard a startled sound from her: She was standing submerged

to the waist, leaning a little forward, her slim white arms stretched out

and pointing, her wet face puckered by the sun and an expression of fear.

"Look at Phil! Is he all right? Oh, look!"

Ashurst saw at once that Phil was not all right. He was splashing and

struggling out of his depth, perhaps a hundred yards away; suddenly he

gave a cry, threw up his arms, and went down. Ashurst saw the girl

launch herself towards him, and crying out: "Go back, Stella! Go back!"

he dashed out. He had never swum so fast, and reached Halliday just as

he was coming up a second time. It was a case of cramp, but to get him

in was not difficult, for he did not struggle. The girl, who had stopped

where Ashurst told her to, helped as soon as he was in his depth, and

once on the beach they sat down one on each side of him to rub his limbs,

while the little ones stood by with scared faces. Halliday was soon

smiling. It was--he said--rotten of him, absolutely rotten! If Frank

would give him an arm, he could get to his clothes all right now.

Ashurst gave him the arm, and as he did so caught sight of Stella's face,

wet and flushed and tearful, all broken up out of its calm; and he

thought: 'I called her Stella! Wonder if she minded?'

While they were dressing, Halliday said quietly, "You saved my life, old

chap!"

"Rot!"

Clothed, but not quite in their right minds, they went up all together to

the hotel and sat down to tea, except Halliday, who was lying down in his

room. After some slices of bread and jam, Sabina said:

"I say, you know, you are a brick!" And Freda chimed in:

"Rather!"

Ashurst saw Stella looking down; he got up in confusion, and went to the

window. From there he heard Sabina mutter: "I say, let's swear blood

bond. Where's your knife, Freda?" and out of the corner of his eye

could see each of them solemnly prick herself, squeeze out a drop of

blood and dabble on a bit of paper. He turned and made for the door.

"Don't be a stoat! Come back!" His arms were seized; imprisoned between

the little girls he was brought back to the table. On it lay a piece of

paper with an effigy drawn in blood, and the three names Stella Halliday,

Sabina Halliday, Freda Halliday--also in blood, running towards it like

the rays of a star. Sabina said:

"That's you. We shall have to kiss you, you know."

And Freda echoed:

"Oh! Blow--Yes!"

Before Ashurst could escape, some wettish hair dangled against his face,

something like a bite descended on his nose, he felt his left arm

pinched, and other teeth softly searching his cheek. Then he was

released, and Freda said:

"Now, Stella."

Ashurst, red and rigid, looked across the table at a red and rigid

Stella. Sabina giggled; Freda cried:

"Buck up--it spoils everything!"

A queer, ashamed eagerness shot through Ashurst: then he said quietly:

"Shut up, you little demons!"

Again Sabina giggled.

"Well, then, she can kiss her hand, and you can put it against your nose.

It is on one side!"

To his amazement the girl did kiss her hand and stretch it out. Solemnly

he took that cool, slim hand and laid it to his cheek. The two little

girls broke into clapping, and Freda said:

"Now, then, we shall have to save your life at any time; that's settled.

Can I have another cup, Stella, not so beastly weak?" Tea was resumed,

and Ashurst, folding up the paper, put it in his pocket. The talk turned

on the advantages of measles, tangerine oranges, honey in a spoon, no

lessons, and so forth. Ashurst listened, silent, exchanging friendly

looks with Stella, whose face was again of its normal sun-touched pink

and white. It was soothing to be so taken to the heart of this jolly

family, fascinating to watch their faces. And after tea, while the two

little girls pressed seaweed, he talked to Stella in the window seat and

looked at her water-colour sketches. The whole thing was like a

pleasurable dream; time and incident hung up, importance and reality

suspended. Tomorrow he would go back to Megan, with nothing of all this

left save the paper with the blood of these children, in his pocket.

Children! Stella was not quite that--as old as Megan! Her talk--quick,

rather hard and shy, yet friendly--seemed to flourish on his silences,

and about her there was something cool and virginal--a maiden in a bower.

At dinner, to which Halliday, who had swallowed too much sea-water, did

not come, Sabina said:

"I'm going to call you Frank."

Freda echoed:

"Frank, Frank, Franky."

Ashurst grinned and bowed.

"Every time Stella calls you Mr. Ashurst, she's got to pay a forfeit.

It's ridiculous."

Ashurst looked at Stella, who grew slowly red. Sabina giggled; Freda

cried:

"She's 'smoking'--'smoking!'--Yah!"

Ashurst reached out to right and left, and grasped some fair hair in each

hand.

"Look here," he said, "you two! Leave Stella alone, or I'll tie you

together!"

Freda gurgled:

"Ouch! You are a beast!"

Sabina murmured cautiously:

"You call her Stella, you see!"

"Why shouldn't I? It's a jolly name!"

"All right; we give you leave to!"

Ashurst released the hair. Stella! What would she call him--after this?

But she called him nothing; till at bedtime he said, deliberately:

"Good-night, Stella!"

"Good-night, Mr.----Good-night, Frank! It was jolly of you, you know!"

"Oh-that! Bosh!"

Her quick, straight handshake tightened suddenly, and as suddenly became

slack.

Ashurst stood motionless in the empty sitting-room. Only last night,

under the apple tree and the living blossom, he had held Megan to him,

kissing her eyes and lips. And he gasped, swept by that rush of

remembrance. To-night it should have begun-his life with her who only

wanted to be with him! And now, twenty-four hours and more must pass,

because-of not looking at his watch! Why had he made friends with this

family of innocents just when he was saying good-bye to innocence, and

all the rest of it? 'But I mean to marry her,' he thought; 'I told her

so!'

He took a candle, lighted it, and went to his bedroom, which was next to

Halliday's. His friend's voice called, as he was passing:

"Is that you, old chap? I say, come in."

He was sitting up in bed, smoking a pipe and reading.

"Sit down a bit."

Ashurst sat down by the open window.

"I've been thinking about this afternoon, you know," said Halliday rather

suddenly. "They say you go through all your past. I didn't. I suppose I

wasn't far enough gone."

"What did you think of?"

Halliday was silent for a little, then said quietly

"Well, I did think of one thing--rather odd--of a girl at Cambridge that

I might have--you know; I was glad I hadn't got her on my mind. Anyhow,

old chap, I owe it to you that I'm here; I should have been in the big

dark by now. No more bed, or baccy; no more anything. I say, what d'you

suppose happens to us?"

Ashurst murmured:

"Go out like flames, I expect."

"Phew!"

"We may flicker, and cling about a bit, perhaps."

"H'm! I think that's rather gloomy. I say, I hope my young sisters have

been decent to you?"

"Awfully decent."

Halliday put his pipe down, crossed his hands behind his neck, and turned

his face towards the window.

"They're not bad kids!" he said.

Watching his friend, lying there, with that smile, and the candle-light

on his face, Ashurst shuddered. Quite true! He might have been lying

there with no smile, with all that sunny look gone out for ever! He

might not have been lying there at all, but "sanded" at the bottom of the

sea, waiting for resurrection on the ninth day, was it? And that smile of

Halliday's seemed to him suddenly something wonderful, as if in it were

all the difference between life and death--the little flame--the all! He

got up, and said softly:

"Well, you ought to sleep, I expect. Shall I blow out?"

Halliday caught his hand.

"I can't say it, you know; but it must be rotten to be dead. Good-night,

old boy!"

Stirred and moved, Ashurst squeezed the hand, and went downstairs. The

hall door was still open, and he passed out on to the lawn before the

Crescent. The stars were bright in a very dark blue sky, and by their

light some lilacs had that mysterious colour of flowers by night which no

one can describe. Ashurst pressed his face against a spray; and before

his closed eyes Megan started up, with the tiny brown spaniel pup against

her breast. "I thought of a girl that I might have you know. I was glad

I hadn't got her on my mind!" He jerked his head away from the lilac,

and began pacing up and down over the grass, a grey phantom coming to

substance for a moment in the light from the lamp at either end. He was

with her again under the living, breathing white ness of the blossom, the

stream chattering by, the moon glinting steel-blue on the bathing-pool;

back in the rapture of his kisses on her upturned face of innocence and

humble passion, back in the suspense and beauty of that pagan night. He

stood still once more in the shadow of the lilacs. Here the sea, not the

stream, was Night's voice; the sea with its sigh and rustle; no little

bird, no owl, no night-Jar called or spun; but a piano tinkled, and the

white houses cut the sky with solid curve, and the scent from the lilacs

filled the air. A window of the hotel, high up, was lighted; he saw a

shadow move across the blind. And most queer sensations stirred within

him, a sort of churning, and twining, and turning of a single emotion on

itself, as though spring and love, bewildered and confused, seeking the

way, were baffled. This girl, who had called him Frank, whose hand had

given his that sudden little clutch, this girl so cool and pure--what

would she think of such wild, unlawful loving? He sank down on the

grass, sitting there cross-legged, with his back to the house, motionless

as some carved Buddha. Was he really going to break through innocence,

and steal? Sniff the scent out of a wild flower, and--perhaps--throw it

away? "Of a girl at Cambridge that I might have--you know!" He put his

hands to the grass, one on each side, palms downwards, and pressed; it

was just warm still--the grass, barely moist, soft and firm and friendly.

'What am I going to do?' he thought. Perhaps Megan was at her window,

looking out at the blossom, thinking of him! Poor little Megan! 'Why

not?' he thought. 'I love her! But do I really love her? or do I only

want her because she is so pretty, and loves me? What am I going to do?'

The piano tinkled on, the stars winked; and Ashurst gazed out before him

at the dark sea, as if spell-bound. He got up at last, cramped and

rather chilly. There was no longer light in any window. And he went in

to bed.

Out of a deep and dreamless sleep he was awakened by the sound of

thumping on the door. A shrill voice called:

"Hi! Breakfast's ready."

He jumped up. Where was he--? Ah!

He found them already eating marmalade, and sat down in the empty place

between Stella and Sabina, who, after watching him a little, said:

"I say, do buck up; we're going to start at half-past nine."

"We're going to Berry Head, old chap; you must come!"

Ashurst thought: 'Come! Impossible. I shall be getting things and going

back.' He looked at Stella. She said quickly:

"Do come!"

Sabina chimed in:

"It'll be no fun without you."

Freda got up and stood behind his chair.

"You've got to come, or else I'll pull your hair!"

Ashurst thought: 'Well--one day more--to think it over! One day more!'

And he said:

"All right! You needn't tweak my mane!"

"Hurrah!"

At the station he wrote a second telegram to the farm, and then tore it

up; he could not have explained why. From Brixham they drove in a very

little wagonette. There, squeezed between Sabina and Freda, with his

knees touching Stella's, they played "Up, Jenkins "; and the gloom he was

feeling gave way to frolic. In this one day more to think it over, he

did not want to think! They ran races, wrestled, paddled--for to-day

nobody wanted to bathe--they sang catches, played games, and ate all they

had brought. The little girls fell asleep against him on the way back,

and his knees still touched Stella's in the narrow wagonette. It seemed

incredible that thirty hours ago he had never set eyes on any of those

three flaxen heads. In the train he talked to Stella of poetry,

discovering her favourites, and telling her his own with a pleasing sense

of superiority; till suddenly she said, rather low:

"Phil says you don't believe in a future life, Frank. I think that's

dreadful."

Disconcerted, Ashurst muttered:

"I don't either believe or not believe--I simply don't know."

She said quickly:

"I couldn't bear that. What would be the use of living?"

Watching the frown of those pretty oblique brows, Ashurst answered:

"I don't believe in believing things because a one wants to."

"But why should one wish to live again, if one isn't going to?"

And she looked full at him.

He did not want to hurt her, but an itch to dominate pushed him on to

say:

"While one's alive one naturally wants to go on living for ever; that's

part of being alive. But it probably isn't anything more."

"Don't you believe in the Bible at all, then?"

Ashurst thought: 'Now I shall really hurt her!'

"I believe in the Sermon on the Mount, because it's beautiful and good

for all time."

"But don't you believe Christ was divine?"

He shook his head.

She turned her face quickly to the window, and there sprang into his mind

Megan's prayer, repeated by little Nick: "God bless us all, and Mr.

Ashes!" Who else would ever say a prayer for him, like her who at this

moment must be waiting--waiting to see him come down the lane? And he

thought suddenly: 'What a scoundrel I am!'

All that evening this thought kept coming back; but, as is not unusual,

each time with less poignancy, till it seemed almost a matter of course

to be a scoundrel. And--strange!--he did not know whether he was a

scoundrel if he meant to go back to Megan, or if he did not mean to go

back to her.

They played cards till the children were sent off to bed; then Stella

went to the piano. From over on the window seat, where it was nearly

dark, Ashurst watched her between the candles--that fair head on the

long, white neck bending to the movement of her hands. She played

fluently, without much expression; but what a Picture she made, the faint

golden radiance, a sort of angelic atmosphere hovering about her! Who

could have passionate thoughts or wild desires in the presence of that

swaying, white-clothed girl with the seraphic head? She played a thing of

Schumann's called "Warum?" Then Halliday brought out a flute, and the

spell was broken. After this they made Ashurst sing, Stella playing him

accompaniments from a book of Schumann songs, till, in the middle of "Ich

grolle nicht," two small figures clad in blue dressing-gowns crept in and

tried to conceal themselves beneath the piano. The evening broke up in

confusion, and what Sabina called "a splendid rag."

That night Ashurst hardly slept at all. He was thinking, tossing and

turning. The intense domestic intimacy of these last two days, the

strength of this Halliday atmosphere, seemed to ring him round, and make

the farm and Megan--even Megan--seem unreal. Had he really made love to

her--really promised to take her away to live with him? He must have

been bewitched by the spring, the night, the apple blossom! This May

madness could but destroy them both! The notion that he was going to

make her his mistress--that simple child not yet eighteen--now filled him

with a sort of horror, even while it still stung and whipped his blood.

He muttered to himself: "It's awful, what I've done--awful!" And the

sound of Schumann's music throbbed and mingled with his fevered thoughts,

and he saw again Stella's cool, white, fair-haired figure and bending

neck, the queer, angelic radiance about her. 'I must have been--I must

be-mad!' he thought. 'What came into me? Poor little Megan!' "God

bless us all, and Mr. Ashes!" "I want to be with you--only to be with

you!" And burying his face in his pillow, he smothered down a fit of

sobbing. Not to go back was awful! To go back--more awful still!

Emotion, when you are young, and give real vent to it, loses its power of

torture. And he fell asleep, thinking: 'What was it--a few kisses--all

forgotten in a month!'

Next morning he got his cheque cashed, but avoided the shop of the

dove-grey dress like the plague; and, instead, bought himself some

necessaries. He spent the whole day in a queer mood, cherishing a kind

of sullenness against himself. Instead of the hankering of the last two

days, he felt nothing but a blank--all passionate longing gone, as if

quenched in that outburst of tears. After tea Stella put a book down

beside him, and said shyly:

"Have you read that, Frank?"

It was Farrar's "Life of Christ." Ashurst smiled. Her anxiety about his

beliefs seemed to him comic, but touching. Infectious too, perhaps, for

he began to have an itch to justify himself, if not to convert her. And

in the evening, when the children and Halliday were mending their

shrimping nets, he said:

"At the back of orthodox religion, so far as I can see, there's always

the idea of reward--what you can get for being good; a kind of begging

for favours. I think it all starts in fear."

She was sitting on the sofa making reefer knots with a bit of string. She

looked up quickly:

"I think it's much deeper than that."

Ashurst felt again that wish to dominate.

"You think so," he said; "but wanting the 'quid pro quo' is about the

deepest thing in all of us! It's jolly hard to get to the bottom of it!"

She wrinkled her brows in a puzzled frown.

"I don't think I understand."

He went on obstinately:

"Well, think, and see if the most religious people aren't those who feel

that this life doesn't give them all they want. I believe in being good

because to be good is good in itself."

"Then you do believe in being good?"

How pretty she looked now--it was easy to be good with her! And he

nodded and said:

"I say, show me how to make that knot!"

With her fingers touching his, in manoeuvring the bit of string, he felt

soothed and happy. And when he went to bed he wilfully kept his thoughts

on her, wrapping himself in her fair, cool sisterly radiance, as in some

garment of protection.

Next day he found they had arranged to go by train to Totnes, and picnic

at Berry Pomeroy Castle. Still in that resolute oblivion of the past, he

took his place with them in the landau beside Halliday, back to the

horses. And, then, along the sea front, nearly at the turning to the

railway station, his heart almost leaped into his mouth. Megan--Megan

herself!--was walking on the far pathway, in her old skirt and jacket and

her tam-o'-shanter, looking up into the faces of the passers-by.

Instinctively he threw his hand up for cover, then made a feint of

clearing dust out of his eyes; but between his fingers he could see her

still, moving, not with her free country step, but wavering,

lost-looking, pitiful-like some little dog which has missed its master

and does not know whether to run on, to run back--where to run. How had

she come like this?--what excuse had she found to get away?--what did she

hope for? But with every turn of the wheels bearing him away from her,

his heart revolted and cried to him to stop them, to get out, and go to

her! When the landau turned the corner to the station he could stand it

no more, and opening the carriage door, muttered: "I've forgotten

something! Go on--don't wait for me! I'll join you at the castle by the

next train!" He jumped, stumbled, spun round, recovered his balance, and

walked forward, while the carriage with the astonished Hallidays rolled

on.

From the corner he could only just see Megan, a long way ahead now. He

ran a few steps, checked himself, and dropped into a walk. With each

step nearer to her, further from the Hallidays, he walked more and more

slowly. How did it alter anything--this sight of her? How make the

going to her, and that which must come of it, less ugly? For there was no

hiding it--since he had met the Hallidays he had become gradually sure

that he would not marry Megan. It would only be a wild love-time, a

troubled, remorseful, difficult time--and then--well, then he would get

tired, just because she gave him everything, was so simple, and so

trustful, so dewy. And dew--wears off! The little spot of faded colour,

her tam-o'-shanter cap, wavered on far in front of him; she was looking

up into every face, and at the house windows. Had any man ever such a

cruel moment to go through? Whatever he did, he felt he would be a

beast. And he uttered a groan which made a nursemaid turn and stare. He

saw Megan stop and lean against the sea-wall, looking at the sea; and he

too stopped. Quite likely she had never seen the sea before, and even in

her distress could not resist that sight. 'Yes-she's seen nothing,' he

thought; 'everything's before her. And just for a few weeks' passion, I

shall be cutting her life to ribbons. I'd better go and hang myself

rather than do it!' And suddenly he seemed to see Stella's calm eyes

looking into his, the wave of fluffy hair on her forehead stirred by the

wind. Ah! it would be madness, would mean giving up all that he

respected, and his own self-respect. He turned and walked quickly back

towards the station. But memory of that poor, bewildered little figure,

those anxious eyes searching the passers-by, smote him too hard again,

and once more he turned towards the sea.

The cap was no longer visible; that little spot of colour had vanished in

the stream of the noon promenaders. And impelled by the passion of

longing, the dearth which comes on one when life seems to be whirling

something out of reach, he hurried forward. She was nowhere to be seen;

for half an hour he looked for her; then on the beach flung himself face

downward in the sand. To find her again he knew he had only to go to the

station and wait till she returned from her fruitless quest, to take her

train home; or to take train himself and go back to the farm, so that she

found him there when she returned. But he lay inert in the sand, among

the indifferent groups of children with their spades and buckets. Pity

at her little figure wandering, seeking, was well-nigh merged in the

spring-running of his blood; for it was all wild feeling now--the

chivalrous part, what there had been of it, was gone. He wanted her

again, wanted her kisses, her soft, little body, her abandonment, all her

quick, warm, pagan emotion; wanted the wonderful feeling of that night

under the moonlit apple boughs; wanted it all with a horrible intensity,

as the faun wants the nymph. The quick chatter of the little bright

trout-stream, the dazzle of the buttercups, the rocks of the old "wild

men"; the calling of the cuckoos and yaffles, the hooting of the owls;

and the red moon peeping out of the velvet dark at the living whiteness

of the blossom; and her face just out of reach at the window, lost in its

love-look; and her heart against his, her lips answering his, under the

apple tree--all this besieged him. Yet he lay inert. What was it which

struggled against pity and this feverish longing, and kept him there

paralysed in the warm sand? Three flaxen heads--a fair face with friendly

blue--grey eyes, a slim hand pressing his, a quick voice speaking his

name--"So you do believe in being good?" Yes, and a sort of atmosphere

as of some old walled-in English garden, with pinks, and cornflowers, and

roses, and scents of lavender and lilaccool and fair, untouched, almost

holy--all that he had been brought up to feel was clean and good. And

suddenly he thought: 'She might come along the front again and see me!'

and he got up and made his way to the rock at the far end of the beach.

There, with the spray biting into his face, he could think more coolly.

To go back to the farm and love Megan out in the woods, among the rocks,

with everything around wild and fitting--that, he knew, was impossible,

utterly. To transplant her to a great town, to keep, in some little flat

or rooms, one who belonged so wholly to Nature--the poet in him shrank

from it. His passion would be a mere sensuous revel, soon gone; in

London, her very simplicity, her lack of all intellectual quality, would

make her his secret plaything--nothing else. The longer he sat on the

rock, with his feet dangling over a greenish pool from which the sea was

ebbing, the more clearly he saw this; but it was as if her arms and all

of her were slipping slowly, slowly down from him, into the pool, to be

carried away out to sea; and her face looking up, her lost face with

beseeching eyes, and dark, wet hair-possessed, haunted, tortured him! He

got up at last, scaled the low rock-cliff, and made his way down into a

sheltered cove. Perhaps in the sea he could get back his control--lose

this fever! And stripping off his clothes, he swam out. He wanted to

tire himself so that nothing mattered and swam recklessly, fast and far;

then suddenly, for no reason, felt afraid. Suppose he could not reach

shore again--suppose the current set him out--or he got cramp, like

Halliday! He turned to swim in. The red cliffs looked a long way off.

If he were drowned they would find his clothes. The Hallidays would

know; but Megan perhaps never--they took no newspaper at the farm. And

Phil Halliday's words came back to him again: "A girl at Cambridge I

might have Glad I haven't got her on my mind!" And in that moment of

unreasoning fear he vowed he would not have her on his mind. Then his

fear left him; he swam in easily enough, dried himself in the sun, and

put on his clothes. His heart felt sore, but no longer ached; his body

cool and refreshed.

When one is as young as Ashurst, pity is not a violent emotion. And,

back in the Hallidays' sitting-room, eating a ravenous tea, he felt much

like a man recovered from fever. Everything seemed new and clear; the

tea, the buttered toast and jam tasted absurdly good; tobacco had never

smelt so nice. And walking up and down the empty room, he stopped here

and there to touch or look. He took up Stella's work-basket, fingered

the cotton reels and a gaily-coloured plait of sewing silks, smelt at the

little bag filled with woodroffe she kept among them. He sat down at the

piano, playing tunes with one finger, thinking: 'To-night she'll play; I

shall watch her while she's playing; it does me good to watch her.' He

took up the book, which still lay where she had placed it beside him, and

tried to read. But Megan's little, sad figure began to come back at

once, and he got up and leaned in the window, listening to the thrushes

in the Crescent gardens, gazing at the sea, dreamy and blue below the

trees. A servant came in and cleared the tea away, and he still stood,

inhaling the evening air, trying not to think. Then he saw the Hallidays

coming through the gate of the Crescent, Stella a little in front of Phil

and the children, with their baskets, and instinctively he drew back.

His heart, too sore and discomfited, shrank from this encounter, yet

wanted its friendly solace--bore a grudge against this influence, yet

craved its cool innocence, and the pleasure of watching Stella's face.

From against the wall behind the piano he saw her come in and stand

looking a little blank as though disappointed; then she saw him and

smiled, a swift, brilliant smile which warmed yet irritated Ashurst.

"You never came after us, Frank."

"No; I found I couldn't."

"Look! We picked such lovely late violets!" She held out a bunch.

Ashurst put his nose to them, and there stirred within him vague

longings, chilled instantly by a vision of Megan's anxious face lifted to

the faces of the passers-by.

He said shortly: "How jolly!" and turned away. He went up to his room,

and, avoiding the children, who were coming up the stairs, threw himself

on his bed, and lay there with his arms crossed over his face. Now that

he felt the die really cast, and Megan given up, he hated himself, and

almost hated the Hallidays and their atmosphere of healthy, happy English

homes.

Why should they have chanced here, to drive away first love--to show him

that he was going to be no better than a common seducer? What right had

Stella, with her fair, shy beauty, to make him know for certain that he

would never marry Megan; and, tarnishing it all, bring him such

bitterness of regretful longing and such pity? Megan would be back by

now, worn out by her miserable seeking--poor little thing!--expecting,

perhaps, to find him there when she reached home. Ashurst bit at his

sleeve, to stifle a groan of remorseful longing. He went to dinner glum

and silent, and his mood threw a dinge even over the children. It was a

melancholy, rather ill tempered evening, for they were all tired; several

times he caught Stella looking at him with a hurt, puzzled expression,

and this pleased his evil mood. He slept miserably; got up quite early,

and wandered out. He went down to the beach. Alone there with the

serene, the blue, the sunlit sea, his heart relaxed a little. Conceited

fool--to think that Megan would take it so hard! In a week or two she

would almost have forgotten! And he well, he would have the reward of

virtue! A good young man! If Stella knew, she would give him her

blessing for resisting that devil she believed in; and he uttered a hard

laugh. But slowly the peace and beauty of sea and sky, the flight of the

lonely seagulls, made him feel ashamed. He bathed, and turned homewards.

In the Crescent gardens Stella herself was sitting on a camp stool,

sketching. He stole up close behind. How fair and pretty she was, bent

diligently, holding up her brush, measuring, wrinkling her brows.

He said gently:

"Sorry I was such a beast last night, Stella."

She turned round, startled, flushed very pink, and said in her quick way:

"It's all right. I knew there was something. Between friends it doesn't

matter, does it?"

Ashurst answered:

"Between friends--and we are, aren't we?"

She looked up at him, nodded vehemently, and her upper teeth gleamed

again in that swift, brilliant smile.

Three days later he went back to London, travelling with the Hallidays.

He had not written to the farm. What was there he could say?

On the last day of April in the following year he and Stella were

married....

Such were Ashurst's memories, sitting against the wall among the gorse,

on his silver-wedding day. At this very spot, where he had laid out the

lunch, Megan must have stood outlined against the sky when he had first

caught sight of her. Of all queer coincidences! And there moved in him a

longing to go down and see again the farm and the orchard, and the meadow

of the gipsy bogle. It would not take long; Stella would be an hour yet,

perhaps.

How well he remembered it all--the little crowning group of pine trees,

the steep-up grass hill behind! He paused at the farm gate. The low

stone house, the yew-tree porch, the flowering currants--not changed a

bit; even the old green chair was out there on the grass under the

window, where he had reached up to her that night to take the key. Then

he turned down the lane, and stood leaning on the orchard gate-grey

skeleton of a gate, as then. A black pig even was wandering in there

among the trees. Was it true that twenty-six years had passed, or had he

dreamed and awakened to find Megan waiting for him by the big apple tree?

Unconsciously he put up his hand to his grizzled beard and brought

himself back to reality. Opening the gate, he made his way down through

the docks and nettles till he came to the edge, and the old apple tree

itself. Unchanged! A little more of the greygreen lichen, a dead branch

or two, and for the rest it might have been only last night that he had

embraced that mossy trunk after Megan's flight and inhaled its woody

savour, while above his head the moonlit blossom had seemed to breathe

and live. In that early spring a few buds were showing already; the

blackbirds shouting their songs, a cuckoo calling, the sunlight bright

and warm. Incredibly the same-the chattering trout-stream, the narrow

pool he had lain in every morning, splashing the water over his flanks

and chest; and out there in the wild meadow the beech clump and the stone

where the gipsy bogie was supposed to sit. And an ache for lost youth, a

hankering, a sense of wasted love and sweetness, gripped Ashurst by the

throat. Surely, on this earth of such wild beauty, one was meant to hold

rapture to one's heart, as this earth and sky held it! And yet, one

could not!

He went to the edge of the stream, and looking down at the little pool,

thought: 'Youth and spring! What has become of them all, I wonder?'

And then, in sudden fear of having this memory jarred by human encounter,

he went back to the lane, and pensively retraced his steps to the

crossroads.

Beside the car an old, grey-bearded labourer was leaning on a stick,

talking to the chauffeur. He broke off at once, as though guilty of

disrespect, and touching his hat, prepared to limp on down the lane.

Ashurst pointed to the narrow green mound. "Can you tell me what this

is?"

The old fellow stopped; on his face had come a look as though he were

thinking: 'You've come to the right shop, mister!'

"'Tes a grave," he said.

"But why out here?"

The old man smiled. "That's a tale, as yu may say. An' not the first

time as I've a-told et--there's plenty folks asks 'bout that bit o' turf.

'Maid's Grave' us calls et, 'ereabouts."

Ashurst held out his pouch. "Have a fill?"

The old man touched his hat again, and slowly filled an old clay pipe.

His eyes, looking upward out of a mass of wrinkles and hair, were still

quite bright.

"If yu don' mind, zurr, I'll zet down my leg's 'urtin' a bit today." And

he sat down on the mound of turf.

"There's always a flower on this grave. An' 'tain't so very lonesome,

neither; brave lot o' folks goes by now, in they new motor cars an'

things--not as 'twas in th' old days. She've a got company up 'ere.

'Twas a poor soul killed 'erself."

"I see!" said Ashurst. "Cross-roads burial. I didn't know that custom

was kept up."

"Ah! but 'twas a main long time ago. Us 'ad a parson as was very

God-fearin' then. Let me see, I've a 'ad my pension six year come

Michaelmas, an' I were just on fifty when t'appened. There's none livin'

knows more about et than what I du. She belonged close 'ere; same farm

as where I used to work along o' Mrs. Narracombe 'tes Nick Narracombe's

now; I dus a bit for 'im still, odd times."

Ashurst, who was leaning against the gate, lighting his pipe, left his

curved hands before his face for long after the flame of the match had

gone out.

"Yes?" he said, and to himself his voice sounded hoarse and queer.

"She was one in an 'underd, poor maid! I putts a flower 'ere every time

I passes. Pretty maid an' gude maid she was, though they wouldn't burry

'er up to th' church, nor where she wanted to be burried neither." The

old labourer paused, and put his hairy, twisted hand flat down on the

turf beside the bluebells.

"Yes?" said Ashurst.

"In a manner of speakin'," the old man went on, "I think as 'twas a

love-story--though there's no one never knu for zartin. Yu can't tell

what's in a maid's 'ead but that's wot I think about it." He drew his

hand along the turf. "I was fond o' that maid--don' know as there was

anyone as wasn' fond of 'er. But she was to lovin'-'earted--that's where

'twas, I think." He looked up. And Ashurst, whose lips were trembling

in the cover of his beard, murmured again: "Yes?"

"'Twas in the spring, 'bout now as 't might be, or a little

later--blossom time--an' we 'ad one o' they young college gentlemen

stayin' at the farm-nice feller tu, with 'is 'ead in the air. I liked 'e

very well, an' I never see nothin' between 'em, but to my thinkin' 'e

turned the maid's fancy." The old man took the pipe out of his mouth,

spat, and went on:

"Yu see, 'e went away sudden one day, an' never come back. They got 'is

knapsack and bits o' things down there still. That's what stuck in my

mind--'is never sendin' for 'em. 'Is name was Ashes, or somethen' like

that."

"Yes?" said Ashurst once more.

The old man licked his lips.

"'Er never said nothin', but from that day 'er went kind of dazed lukin';

didn'seem rightly therr at all. I never knu a'uman creature so changed

in me life--never. There was another young feller at the farm--Joe

Biddaford 'is name wer', that was praaperly sweet on 'er, tu; I guess 'e

used to plague 'er wi 'is attentions. She got to luke quite wild. I'd

zee her sometimes of an avenin' when I was bringin' up the calves; ther'

she'd stand in th' orchard, under the big apple tree, lukin' straight

before 'er. 'Well,' I used t'think, 'I dunno what 'tes that's the matter

wi' yu, but yu'm lukin' pittiful, that yu be!'"

The old man refit his pipe, and sucked at it reflectively.

"Yes?" said Ashurst.

"I remembers one day I said to 'er: 'What's the matter, Megan?'--'er name

was Megan David, she come from Wales same as 'er aunt, ol' Missis

Narracombe. 'Yu'm frettin' about somethin'. I says. 'No, Jim,' she

says, 'I'm not frettin'.' 'Yes, yu be!' I says. 'No,' she says, and to

tears cam' rollin' out. 'Yu'm cryin'--what's that, then?' I says. She

putts 'er 'and over 'er 'eart: 'It 'urts me,' she says; 'but 'twill sune

be better,' she says. 'But if anything shude 'appen to me, Jim, I wants

to be burried under this 'ere apple tree.' I laughed. 'What's goin' to

'appen to yu?' I says; 'don't 'ee be fulish.' 'No,' she says, 'I won't be

fulish.' Well, I know what maids are, an' I never thought no more about

et, till two days arter that, 'bout six in the avenin' I was comin' up

wi' the calves, when I see somethin' dark lyin' in the strame, close to

that big apple tree. I says to meself: 'Is that a pig-funny place for a

pig to get to!' an' I goes up to et, an' I see what 'twas."

The old man stopped; his eyes, turned upward, had a bright, suffering

look.

"'Twas the maid, in a little narrer pool ther' that's made by the

stoppin' of a rock--where I see the young gentleman bathin' once or

twice. 'Er was lyin' on 'er face in the watter. There was a plant o'

goldie-cups growin' out o' the stone just above 'er'ead. An' when I come

to luke at 'er face, 'twas luvly, butiful, so calm's a baby's--wonderful

butiful et was. When the doctor saw 'er, 'e said: 'Er culdn' never

a-done it in that little bit o' watter ef' er 'adn't a-been in an

extarsy.' Ah! an' judgin' from 'er face, that was just 'ow she was. Et

made me cry praaper-butiful et was! 'Twas June then, but she'd afound a

little bit of apple-blossom left over somewheres, and stuck et in 'er

'air. That's why I thinks 'er must abeen in an extarsy, to go to et gay,

like that. Why! there wasn't more than a fute and 'arf o' watter. But I

tell 'ee one thing--that meadder's 'arnted; I knu et, an' she knu et; an'

no one'll persuade me as 'tesn't. I told 'em what she said to me 'bout

bein' burried under th' apple tree. But I think that turned 'em--made et

luke to much 's ef she'd 'ad it in 'er mind deliberate; an' so they

burried 'er up 'ere. Parson we 'ad then was very particular, 'e was."

Again the old man drew his hand over the turf.

"'Tes wonderful, et seems," he added slowly, "what maids 'll du for love.

She 'ad a lovin-'eart; I guess 'twas broken. But us never knu nothin'!"

He looked up as if for approval of his story, but Ashurst had walked past

him as if he were not there.

Up on the top of the hill, beyond where he had spread the lunch, over,

out of sight, he lay down on his face. So had his virtue been rewarded,

and "the Cyprian," goddess of love, taken her revenge! And before his

eyes, dim with tears, came Megan's face with the sprig of apple blossom

in her dark, wet hair. 'What did I do that was wrong?' he thought.

'What did I do?' But he could not answer. Spring, with its rush of

passion, its flowers and song-the spring in his heart and Megan's! Was

it just Love seeking a victim! The Greek was right, then--the words of

the "Hippolytus" as true to-day!

"For mad is the heart of Love,

And gold the gleam of his wing;

And all to the spell thereof

Bend when he makes his spring.

All life that is wild and young

In mountain and wave and stream

All that of earth is sprung,

Or breathes in the red sunbeam;

Yea, and Mankind. O'er all a royal throne,

Cyprian, Cyprian, is thine alone!"

The Greek was right! Megan! Poor little Megan--coming over the hill!

Megan under the old apple tree waiting and looking! Megan dead, with

beauty printed on her!

A voice said:

"Oh, there you are! Look!"

Ashurst rose, took his wife's sketch, and stared at it in silence.

"Is the foreground right, Frank?"

"Yes."

"But there's something wanting, isn't there?"

Ashurst nodded. Wanting? The apple tree, the singing, and the gold!

And solemnly he put his lips to her forehead. It was his silver-wedding

day.

1916

THE JURYMAN

"Don't you see, brother, I was reading yesterday the Gospel

about Christ, the little Father; how He suffered, how He walked

on the earth. I suppose you have heard about it?"

"Indeed, I have," replied Stepanuitch; "but we are people in

darkness; we can't read."--TOLSTOI.

Mr. Henry Bosengate, of the London Stock Exchange, seated himself in his

car that morning during the great war with a sense of injury. Major in a

Volunteer Corps; member of all the local committees; lending this very

car to the neighbouring hospital, at times even driving it himself for

their benefit; subscribing to funds, so far as his diminished income

permitted--he was conscious of being an asset to the country, and one

whose time could not be wasted with impunity. To be summoned to sit on a

jury at the local assizes, and not even the grand jury at that! It was

in the nature of an outrage.

Strong and upright, with hazel eyes and dark eyebrows, pinkish-brown

cheeks, a forehead white, well-shaped, and getting high, with greyish

hair glossy and well-brushed, and a trim moustache, he might have been

taken for that colonel of Volunteers which indeed he was in a fair way of

becoming.

His wife had followed him out under the porch, and stood bracing her

supple body clothed in lilac linen. Red rambler roses formed a sort of

crown to her dark head; her ivory-coloured face had in it just a

suggestion of the Japanese.

Mr. Bosengate spoke through the whirr of the engine:

"I don't expect to be late, dear. This business is ridiculous. There

oughtn't to be any crime in these days."

His wife--her name was Kathleen--smiled. She looked very pretty and

cool, Mr. Bosengate thought. To him bound on this dull and stuffy

business everything he owned seemed pleasant--the geranium beds beside

the gravel drive, his long, red-brick house mellowing decorously in its

creepers and ivy, the little clock-tower over stables now converted to a

garage, the dovecote, masking at the other end the conservatory which

adjoined the billiard-room. Close to the red-brick lodge his two

children, Kate and Harry, ran out from under the acacia trees, and waved

to him, scrambling bare-legged on to the low, red, ivy-covered wall which

guarded his domain of eleven acres. Mr. Bosengate waved back, thinking:

'Jolly couple--by Jove, they are!' Above their heads, through the trees,

he could see right away to some Downs, faint in the July heat haze. And

he thought: 'Pretty a spot as one could have got, so close to Town!'

Despite the war he had enjoyed these last two years more than any of the

ten since he built "Charmleigh" and settled down to semi-rural

domesticity with his young wife. There had been a certain piquancy, a

savour added to existence, by the country's peril, and all the public

service and sacrifice it demanded. His chauffeur was gone, and one

gardener did the work of three. He enjoyed-positively enjoyed, his

committee work; even the serious decline of business and increase of

taxation had not much worried one continually conscious of the national

crisis and his own part therein. The country had wanted waking up,

wanted a lesson in effort and economy; and the feeling that he had not

spared himself in these strenuous times, had given a zest to those quiet

pleasures of bed and board which, at his age, even the most patriotic

could retain with a good conscience. He had denied himself many

things--new clothes, presents for Kathleen and the children, travel, and

that pine-apple house which he had been on the point of building when the

war broke out; new wine, too, and cigars, and membership of the two Clubs

which he had never used in the old days. The hours had seemed fuller and

longer, sleep better earned--wonderful, the things one could do without

when put to it! He turned the car into the high road, driving dreamily

for he was in plenty of time. The war was going pretty well now; he was

no fool optimist, but now that conscription was in force, one might

reasonably hope for its end within a year. Then there would be a boom,

and one might let oneself go a little. Visions of theatres and supper

with his wife at the Savoy afterwards, and cosy night drives back into

the sweet-smelling country behind your own chauffeur once more teased a

fancy which even now did not soar beyond the confines of domestic

pleasures. He pictured his wife in new dresses by Jay--she was fifteen

years younger than himself, and "paid for dressing" as they said. He had

always delighted--as men older than their wives will--in the admiration

she excited from others not privileged to enjoy her charms. Her rather

queer and ironical beauty, her cool irreproachable wifeliness, was a

constant balm to him. They would give dinner parties again, have their

friends down from town, and he would once more enjoy sitting at the foot

of the dinner table while Kathleen sat at the head, with the light soft

on her ivory shoulders, behind flowers she had arranged in that original

way of hers, and fruit which he had grown in his hot-houses; once more he

would take legitimate interest in the wine he offered to his guests--once

more stock that Chinese cabinet wherein he kept cigars. Yes--there was a

certain satisfaction in these days of privation, if only from the

anticipation they created.

The sprinkling of villas had become continuous on either side of the high

road; and women going out to shop, tradesmen's boys delivering victuals,

young men in khaki, began to abound. Now and then a limping or bandaged

form would pass--some bit of human wreckage; and Mr. Bosengate would

think mechanically: 'Another of those poor devils! Wonder if we've had

his case before us!'

Running his car into the best hotel garage of the little town, he made

his way leisurely over to the court. It stood back from the

market-place, and was already lapped by a sea of persons having, as in

the outer ring at race meetings, an air of business at which one must not

be caught out, together with a soaked or flushed appearance. Mr.

Bosengate could not resist putting his handkerchief to his nose. He had

carefully drenched it with lavender water, and to this fact owed,

perhaps, his immunity from the post of foreman on the jury--for, say what

you will about the English, they have a deep instinct for affairs.

He found himself second in the front row of the jury box, and through the

odour of "Sanitas" gazed at the judge's face expressionless up there, for

all the world like a bewigged bust. His fellows in the box had that

appearance of falling between two classes characteristic of jurymen. Mr.

Bosengate was not impressed. On one side of him the foreman sat, a

prominent upholsterer, known in the town as "Gentleman Fox." His dark

and beautifully brushed and oiled hair and moustache, his radiant linen,

gold watch and chain, the white piping to his waistcoat, and a habit of

never saying "Sir" had long marked him out from commoner men; he

undertook to bury people too, to save them trouble; and was altogether

superior. On the other side Mr. Bosengate had one of those men, who,

except when they sit on juries, are never seen without a little brown

bag, and the appearance of having been interrupted in a drink. Pale and

shiny, with large loose eyes shifting from side to side, he had an

underdone voice and uneasy flabby hands. Mr. Bosengate disliked sitting

next to him. Beyond this commercial traveller sat a dark pale young man

with spectacles; beyond him again, a short old man with grey moustache,

mutton chops, and innumerable wrinkles; and the front row was completed

by a chemist. The three immediately behind, Mr. Bosengate did not

thoroughly master; but the three at the end of the second row he learned

in their order of an oldish man in a grey suit, given to winking; an

inanimate person with the mouth of a moustachioed codfish, over whose

long bald crown three wisps of damp hair were carefully arranged; and a

dried, dapperish, clean-shorn man, whose mouth seemed terrified lest it

should be surprised without a smile. Their first and second verdicts were

recorded without the necessity for withdrawal, and Mr. Bosengate was

already sleepy when the third case was called. The sight of khaki

revived his drooping attention. But what a weedy-looking specimen! This

prisoner had a truly nerveless pitiable dejected air. If he had ever had

a military bearing it had shrunk into him during his confinement. His

ill-shaped brown tunic, whose little brass buttons seemed trying to keep

smiling, struck Mr. Bosengate as ridiculously short, used though he was

to such things. 'Absurd,' he thought--'Lumbago! Just where they ought

to be covered!' Then the officer and gentleman stirred in him, and he

added to himself: 'Still, there must be some distinction made!' The

little soldier's visage had once perhaps been tanned, but was now the

colour of dark dough; his large brown eyes with white showing below the

iris, as so often in the eyes of very nervous people--wandered from face

to face, of judge, counsel, jury, and public. There were hollows in his

cheeks, his dark hair looked damp; around his neck he wore a bandage.

The commercial traveller on Mr. Bosengate's left turned, and whispered:

"Felo de se! My hat! what a guy!" Mr. Bosengate pretended not to

hear--he could not bear that fellow!--and slowly wrote on a bit of paper:

"Owen Lewis." Welsh! Well, he looked it--not at all an English face.

Attempted suicide--not at all an English crime! Suicide implied

surrender, a putting-up of hands to Fate--to say nothing of the religious

aspect of the matter. And suicide in khaki seemed to Mr. Bosengate

particularly abhorrent; like turning tail in face of the enemy; almost

meriting the fate of a deserter. He looked at the prisoner, trying not

to give way to this prejudice. And the prisoner seemed to look at him,

though this, perhaps, was fancy.

The Counsel for the prosecution, a little, alert, grey, decided man,

above military age, began detailing the circumstances of the crime. Mr.

Bosengate, though not particularly sensitive to atmosphere, could

perceive a sort of current running through the Court. It was as if jury

and public were thinking rhythmically in obedience to the same

unexpressed prejudice of which he himself was conscious. Even the

Caesar-like pale face up there, presiding, seemed in its ironic serenity

responding to that current.

"Gentlemen of the jury, before I call my evidence, I direct your

attention to the bandage the accused is still wearing. He gave himself

this wound with his Army razor, adding, if I may say so, insult to the

injury he was inflicting on his country. He pleads not guilty; and

before the magistrates he said that absence from his wife was preying on

his mind"--the advocate's close lips widened--"Well, gentlemen, if such

an excuse is to weigh with us in these days, I'm sure I don't know what's

to happen to the Empire."

'No, by George!' thought Mr. Bosengate.

The evidence of the first witness, a room-mate who had caught the

prisoner's hand, and of the sergeant, who had at once been summoned, was

conclusive and he began to cherish a hope that they would get through

without withdrawing, and he would be home before five. But then a hitch

occurred. The regimental doctor failed to respond when his name was

called; and the judge having for the first time that day showed himself

capable of human emotion, intimated that he would adjourn until the

morrow.

Mr. Bosengate received the announcement with equanimity. He would be

home even earlier! And gathering up the sheets of paper he had scribbled

on, he put them in his pocket and got up. The would-be suicide was being

taken out of the court--a shambling drab figure with shoulders hunched.

What good were men like that in these days! What good! The prisoner

looked up. Mr. Bosengate encountered in full the gaze of those large

brown eyes, with the white showing underneath. What a suffering,

wretched, pitiful face! A man had no business to give you a look like

that! The prisoner passed on down the stairs, and vanished. Mr.

Bosengate went out and across the market place to the garage of the hotel

where he had left his car. The sun shone fiercely and he thought: 'I must

do some watering in the garden.' He brought the car out, and was about

to start the engine, when someone passing said: "Good evenin'.

Seedy-lookin' beggar that last prisoner, ain't he? We don't want men of

that stamp." It was his neighbour on the jury, the commercial traveller,

in a straw hat, with a little brown bag already in his hand and the froth

of an interrupted drink on his moustache. Answering curtly: "Good

evening!" and thinking: 'Nor of yours, my friend!' Mr. Bosengate started

the car with unnecessary clamour. But as if brought back to life by the

commercial traveller's remark, the prisoner's figure seemed to speed

along too, turning up at Mr. Bosengate his pitifully unhappy eyes. Want

of his wife!--queer excuse that for trying to put it out of his power

ever to see her again! Why! Half a loaf, even a slice, was better than

no bread. Not many of that neurotic type in the Army--thank Heaven! The

lugubrious figure vanished, and Mr. Bosengate pictured instead the form

of his own wife bending over her "Gloire de Dijon roses" in the rosery,

where she generally worked a little before tea now that they were short

of gardeners. He saw her, as often he had seen her, raise herself and

stand, head to one side, a gloved hand on her slender hip, gazing as it

were ironically from under drooped lids at buds which did not come out

fast enough. And the word 'Caline,' for he was something of a French

scholar, shot through his mind: 'Kathleen--Caline!' If he found her

there when he got in, he would steal up on the grass and--ah! but with

great care not to crease her dress or disturb her hair! 'If only she

weren't quite so self-contained,' he thought; 'It's like a cat you can't

get near, not really near!'

The car, returning faster than it had come down that morning, had already

passed the outskirt villas, and was breasting the hill to where, among

fields and the old trees, Charmleigh lay apart from commoner life.

Turning into his drive, Mr. Bosengate thought with a certain surprise: 'I

wonder what she does think of! I wonder!' He put his gloves and hat

down in the outer hall and went into the lavatory, to dip his face in

cool water and wash it with sweet-smelling soap--delicious revenge on the

unclean atmosphere in which he had been stewing so many hours. He came

out again into the hall dazed by soap and the mellowed light, and a voice

from half-way up the stairs said: "Daddy! Look!" His little daughter

was standing up there with one hand on the banisters. She scrambled on

to them and came sliding down, her frock up to her eyes, and her holland

knickers to her middle. Mr. Bosengate said mildly:

"Well, that's elegant!"

"Tea's in the summer-house. Mummy's waiting. Come on!"

With her hand in his, Mr. Bosengate went on, through the drawing-room,

long and cool, with sun-blinds down, through the billiard-room, high and

cool, through the conservatory, green and sweet-smelling, out on to the

terrace and the upper lawn. He had never felt such sheer exhilarated joy

in his home surroundings, so cool, glistening and green under the July

sun; and he said:

"Well, Kit, what have you all been doing?"

"I've fed my rabbits and Harry's; and we've been in the attic; Harry got

his leg through the skylight."

Mr. Bosengate drew in his breath with a hiss.

"It's all right, Daddy; we got it out again, it's only grazed the skin.

And we've been making swabs--I made seventeen, Mummy made thirty-three,

and then she went to the hospital. Did you put many men in prison?"

Mr. Bosengate cleared his throat. The question seemed to him untimely.

"Only two."

"What's it like in prison, Daddy?"

Mr. Bosengate, who had no more knowledge than his little daughter,

replied in an absent voice:

"Not very nice."

They were passing under a young oak tree, where the path wound round to

the rosery and summer-house. Something shot down and clawed Mr.

Bosengate's neck. His little daughter began to hop and suffocate with

laughter.

"Oh, Daddy! Aren't you caught! I led you on purpose!"

Looking up, Mr. Bosengate saw his small son lying along a low branch

above him--like the leopard he was declaring himself to be (for fear of

error), and thought blithely: 'What an active little chap it is!' "Let me

drop on your shoulders, Daddy--like they do on the deer."

"Oh, yes! Do be a deer, Daddy!"

Mr. Bosengate did not see being a deer; his hair had just been brushed.

But he entered the rosery buoyantly between his offspring. His wife was

standing precisely as he had imagined her, in a pale blue frock open at

the neck, with a narrow black band round the waist, and little accordion

pleats below. She looked her coolest. Her smile, when she turned her

head, hardly seemed to take Mr. Bosengate seriously enough. He placed

his lips below one of her half-drooped eyelids. She even smelled of

roses. His children began to dance round their mother, and Mr.

Bosengate,--firmly held between them, was also compelled to do this,

until she said:

"When you've quite done, let's have tea!"

It was not the greeting he had imagined coming along in the car. Earwigs

were plentiful in the summer-house--used perhaps twice a year, but

indispensable to every country residence--and Mr. Bosengate was not sorry

for the excuse to get out again. Though all was so pleasant, he felt

oddly restless, rather suffocated; and lighting his pipe, began to move

about among the roses, blowing tobacco at the greenfly; in war-time one

was never quite idle! And suddenly he said:

"We're trying a wretched Tommy at the assizes."

His wife looked up from a rose.

"What for?"

"Attempted suicide."

"Why did he?"

"Can't stand the separation from his wife."

She looked at him, gave a low laugh, and said:

"Oh dear!"

Mr. Bosengate was puzzled. Why did she laugh? He looked round, saw that

the children were gone, took his pipe from his mouth, and approached her.

"You look very pretty," he said. "Give me a kiss!"

His wife bent her body forward from the waist, and pushed her lips out

till they touched his moustache. Mr. Bosengate felt a sensation as if he

had arisen from breakfast, without having eaten marmalade. He mastered

it, and said:

"That jury are a rum lot."

His wife's eyelids flickered. "I wish women sat on juries."

"Why?"

"It would be an experience."