И. Маевская - Лучшие истории о любви / Best love stories

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

She said simply: “They are all bad.”

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

“Oh, no! Oh, no!”

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

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

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

She did not answer; and he added:

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

“Soon?”

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

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

Fixing his eyes on her face, he asked:

“Would you like me to stay?”

“Yes.”

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

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

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

It was on Sunday in the evening, when he was lying in the orchard listening to a blackbird and composing a love poem, that he saw the girl come running among the trees, with the red-cheeked, stolid Joe in swift pursuit. About twenty yards away it ended, and the two stood fronting each other, not noticing the stranger in the grass – the boy pressing on, the girl fending him off. Ashurst could see her face, angry, disturbed. Painfully affected by that sight, Ashurst jumped up. They saw him then. Megan dropped her hands, and shrank behind a tree trunk; the boy gave an angry grunt [74]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. [75]

“I beg your pardon,” he said.

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

“Megan!”

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

“Stop and speak to me.”

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

“Well, then, to Joe.”

“How dare he come after me?”

“In love with you, I suppose.”

She stamped her foot.

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

She cried with sudden passion:

“You laugh at me – you laugh at us!”

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

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

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

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

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

He stayed up there for hours, till it grew cold, then groped his way [76]back into the lane, and came again past the wild meadow to the orchard. There he lit a match and looked at his watch. Nearly twelve! It was black and unstirring in there now, very different from the lingering, bird-befriended brightness of six hours ago! And suddenly he saw this idyll of his with the eyes of the outer world – had mental vision of Mrs. Narracombe’s snake-like neck turned, her quick dark glance taking it all in; saw the gipsy-like cousins mocking and distrustful; Joe stolid and furious; only the lame man, Jim, with the suffering eyes, seemed tolerable to his mind. And the village pub! – the gossiping matrons he passed on his walks; and then – his own friends – Robert Carton’s smile when he went off that morning ten days ago; so ironical and knowing! Disgusting! For a minute he literally hated this earthy, cynical world to which one belonged, willy-nilly.