The Apple Tree by John Galsworthy

Name: The Apple Tree
Author: John Galsworthy

John Ashurst, on his silver-wedding day, motoring with his wife Stella through the moor country, stops near a wayside grave marked only by a moorstone and blown blackthorn and bluebells, and while Stella sketches, memory carries him back twenty-six years. As a young graduate tramping to Chagford with his friend Robert Garton, a strained knee had forced them to lodge at a farm belonging to Mrs. Narracombe, guided there by her niece Megan David, a Welsh girl of seventeen. Amid the farm's apple orchard, its lame stockman Jim, the youths Joe and the "gipsy" cousins, and talk of a "gipsy bogle" said to haunt the meadow, Ashurst lingered to mend his knee and fell into an idyll with Megan. After Garton departed, days of sun, cider, and cuckoo-song deepened into passion: a first kiss under the apple blossom, a night tryst at her window, and finally a moonlit meeting beneath the great apple tree where they declared love and he promised to take her to London and marry her, sending her flying in fear at the imagined gipsy bogle. Ashurst went to Torquay to fetch money and clothes for their elopement, but there he was swept up by chance into the family of an old schoolfellow, Phil Halliday, and his three sisters, Sabina, Freda, and Stella. A day of bathing, games, and mock "blood-bond" kinship, and rescuing Halliday from drowning, bound him to their bright, wholesome, sisterly world, especially to Stella's cool, virtuous charm. Torn nightly between remorse for Megan and fascination with Stella, he let one day's delay become several, sending only a wire of excuse to the farm. Glimpsing Megan searching heartbroken through Torquay's streets for him, Ashurst could not bring himself to go to her; swimming out to sea, he inwardly resolved, out of fear and self-preservation, never to return to her. He left with the Hallidays without writing to the farm, and the following spring married Stella. Back in the present, an old laborer at the roadside grave tells Ashurst — not recognizing him — the story of "Maid's Grave": a farm girl named Megan David, who once loved a young gentleman named "Ashes" that left suddenly and never returned, pined and changed, drowned herself in the shallow orchard pool with a spray of apple blossom in her hair, and, being a suicide, was denied burial in the churchyard, laid instead at the crossroads under this turf. Overcome, Ashurst recalls the Greek chorus of the Hippolytus on the madness and cruelty of love, and returns to Stella and her unfinished sketch, kissing her forehead in silence on their silver-wedding day.

By John Galsworthy · First published 1908 · Genre: Drama, Literary Fiction, Romance · 24,999 words

First lines

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.

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The Apple Tree is listed on Textopian as a novel by John Galsworthy, dated 1908 CE.

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Work type: Novel
Author: John Galsworthy
Date: 1908 CE
Language: English
Genres: Drama, Literary Fiction, Romance, Psychological Fiction, Social Commentary
Length: 24,999 words
Structure: 1 section, 570 paragraphs
Reading fit: Very Easy (5th Grade or below)

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Genres

Drama — The narrative explores complex human emotions and relationships, central to dramatic storytelling.
Literary Fiction — The work emphasizes character development and thematic depth, characteristic of literary fiction.
Romance — Romantic elements are present, focusing on love and personal connections.
Psychological Fiction — The story delves into the psychological states of characters, examining their inner conflicts.