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.