FullReads

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?”