A Long-Ago Affair by John Galsworthy — Read

Hubert Marsland, the landscape painter, returning from a day's sketching on the river in the summer of 1921, had occasion to stay the progress of his two-seater about ten miles from London for a minor repair, and while his car was being seen to, strolled away from the garage to have a look at a house where he had often spent his holidays as a boy. Walking through a gateway and passing a large gravel-pit on his left, he was soon opposite the house, which stood back a little in its grounds. Very much changed! More pretentious, not so homely as when his uncle and aunt lived there, and he used to play cricket on this warren opposite, where the cricket ground, it seemed, had been turned into a golf course. It was late -- the dinner hour, nobody playing, and passing on to the links he stood digesting the geography. Here must have been where the old pavilion was. And there -- still turfed -- where he had made that particularly nice stroke to leg, when he went in last and carried his bat for thirteen. Thirty-nine years ago -- his sixteenth birthday. How vividly he remembered his new pads! A. P. Lucas had played against them and only made thirty-two. One founded one's style on A. P. Lucas in those days -- feet in front of the bat, and pointed a little forward, elegant; you never saw it now, and a good thing too -- one could sacrifice too much to style! Still, the tendency was all the other way; style was too much ‘off,' perhaps!

He stepped back into the sun and sat down on the grass. Peaceful -- very still! The haze of the distant downs was visible between his uncle's old house and the next; and there was the clump of elms on the far side behind which the sun would be going down just as it used to then. He pressed the palms of his hands to the turf. A glorious summer -- something like that summer of long ago. And warmth from the turf, or perhaps from the past, crept into his heart, and made it ache a little. Just here he must have sat, after his innings, at Mrs. Monteith's feet peeping out of a flounced dress. Lord! The fools boys were! How headlong and uncalculating their devotions! A softness in voice and eyes, a smile, a touch or two -- and they were slaves! Young fools, but good young fools.