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

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 smother a groan of remorseful longing. He went to dinner gloomy and silent, and his mood threw a dinge even over the children. [103]It was a melancholy 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.

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 glinted 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 come back in an hour, 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 nettles till he came to the edge, and the old apple tree itself. Unchanged! A little more of the grey-green 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 escape, 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 bogle was supposed to sit. And an ache for lost youth, a hankering, a sense of wasted love and sweetness, gripped Ashurst by the throat. [104]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 being seen, he went back to the lane, and musingly returned to the crossroads.

Beside the car an old, grey-bearded man 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!’

“It is a grave,” he said.

“But why out here?”

The old man smiled. “That’s a tale, as you may say. And not the first time as I’ve told it – plenty of people ask about that bit of turf. ‘Maid’s Grave’ we calls it, here.”

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 you don’t mind, sir, I’ll sit down, my leg’s hurting a bit today.” And he sat down on the mound of turf.

“There’s always a flower on this grave. And it isn’t so very lonesome, neither; lots of people go by now, in their new motor cars and things – not as it was in the old days. She’s got company up here. It was a poor soul, killed herself.”

“I see!” said Ashurst. “Cross-roads burial. I didn’t know that custom was kept up.”

“Ah! but it was a long time ago. We had a parson, he was very God-fearing then. Let me see… I were just on fifty when it happened. There’s no one knows more about it than what I do. She belonged close here; same farm as where I used to work. It belonged to Mrs. Narracombe, and it is Nick Narracombe’s now; I do a bit for him still, sometimes.”

Ashurst, who was leaning against the gate, lighting his pipe, left his 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 a hundred, poor maid! I put a flower here every time I pass. Pretty maid and good maid she was, though they wouldn’t bury her up to the 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 speaking,” the old man went on, “I think as it was a love-story – though there’s no one never knew for certain. You can’t tell what’s in a maid’s head but that’s what I think about it.” He drew his hand along the turf. “I was fond of that maid – don’ know if there was anyone as wasn’t fond of her. But she was to loving-hearted – that’s where it was, I think.” He looked up. And Ashurst, whose lips were trembling in the cover of his beard, murmured again: “Yes?”

“It was in the spring, about now as it might be, or a little later – blossom time – and we had a young college gentlemen staying at the farm – nice fellow too, with his head in the air. I liked him very well, and I never saw nothing between them, but to my thinking he turned the maid’s fancy.” The old man took the pipe out of his mouth, spat, and went on: