Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard
by Eleanor Farjeon · English · Gutenberg #2032 · 590,249 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard
Author: Eleanor Farjeon
Release date: January 1, 2000 [eBook #2032]
Most recently updated: December 31, 2020
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTIN PIPPIN IN THE APPLE ORCHARD ***
Produced by Batsy. HTML version by Al Haines.
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard
by
Eleanor Farjeon
FOREWORD
I have been asked to introduce Miss Farjeon to the American public, and
although I believe that introductions of this kind often do more harm
than good, I have consented in this case because the instance is rare
enough to justify an exception. If Miss Farjeon had been a promising
young novelist either of the realistic or the romantic school, I should
not have dared to express an opinion on her work, even if I had
believed that she had greater gifts than the ninety-nine other
promising young novelists who appear in the course of each decade. But
she has a far rarer gift than any of those that go to the making of a
successful novelist. She is one of the few who can conceive and tell a
fairy-tale; the only one to my knowledge--with the just possible
exceptions of James Stephens and Walter de la Mare--in my own
generation. She has, in fact, the true gift of fancy. It has already
been displayed in her verse--a form in which it is far commoner than in
prose--but Martin Pippin is her first book in this kind.
I am afraid to say too much about it for fear of prejudicing both the
reviewers and the general public. My taste may not be theirs and in
this matter there is no opportunity for argument. Let me, therefore, do
no more than tell the story of how the manuscript affected me. I was a
little overworked. I had been reading a great number of manuscripts in
the preceding weeks, and the mere sight of typescript was a burden to
me. But before I had read five pages of Martin Pippin, I had forgotten
that it was a manuscript submitted for my judgment. I had forgotten who
I was and where I lived. I was transported into a world of sunlight, of
gay inconsequence, of emotional surprise, a world of poetry, delight,
and humor. And I lived and took my joy in that rare world, until all
too soon my reading was done.
My most earnest wish is that there may be many minds and imaginations
among the American people who will be able to share that pleasure with
me. For every one who finds delight in this book I can claim as a
kindred spirit.
J. D. Beresford.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction
Prologue--Part I
Part II
Part III
Prelude to the First Tale
The First Tale: The King's Barn
First Interlude
The Second Tale: Young Gerard
Second Interlude
The Third Tale: The Mill of Dreams
Third Interlude
The Fourth Tale: Open Winkins
Fourth Interlude
The Fifth Tale: Proud Rosalind and the Hart-Royal
Fifth Interlude
The Sixth Tale: The Imprisoned Princess
Postlude--Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Epilogue
Conclusion
INTRODUCTION
In Adversane in Sussex they still sing the song of The Spring-Green
Lady; any fine evening, in the streets or in the meadows, you may come
upon a band of children playing the old game that is their heritage,
though few of them know its origin, or even that it had one. It is to
them as the daisies in the grass and the stars in the sky. Of these
things, and such as these, they ask no questions. But there you will
still find one child who takes the part of the Emperor's Daughter, and
another who is the Wandering Singer, and the remaining group (there
should be no more than six in it) becomes the Spring-Green Lady, the
Rose-White Lady, the Apple-Gold Lady, of the three parts of the game.
Often there are more than six in the group, for the true number of the
damsels who guarded their fellow in her prison is as forgotten as their
names: Joscelyn, Jane and Jennifer, Jessica, Joyce and Joan. Forgotten,
too, the name of Gillian, the lovely captive. And the Wandering Singer
is to them but the Wandering Singer, not Martin Pippin the Minstrel.
Worse and worse, he is even presumed to be the captive's sweetheart,
who wheedles the flower, the ring, and the prison-key out of the strict
virgins for his own purposes, and flies with her at last in his shallop
across the sea, to live with her happily ever after. But this is a
fallacy. Martin Pippin never wheedled anything out of anybody for his
own purposes--in fact, he had none of his own. On this adventure he was
about the business of young Robin Rue. There are further discrepancies;
for the Emperor's Daughter was not an emperor's daughter, but a
farmer's; nor was the Sea the sea, but a duckpond; nor--
But let us begin with the children's version, as they sing and dance it
on summer days and evenings in Adversane.
THE SINGING-GAME OF "THE SPRING-GREEN LADY"
(The Emperor's Daughter sits weeping in her Tower. Around her, with
their backs to her, stand six maids in a ring, with joined hands. They
are in green dresses. The Wandering Singer approaches them with his
lute.)
THE WANDERING SINGER
Lady, lady, my spring-green lady,
May I come into your orchard, lady?
For the leaf is now on the apple-bough
And the sun is high and the lawn is shady,
Lady, lady,
My fair lady!
O my spring-green lady!
THE LADIES
You may not come into our orchard, singer,
Because we must guard the Emperor's Daughter
Who hides in her hair at the windows there
With her thoughts a thousand leagues over the water,
Singer, singer,
Wandering singer,
O my honey-sweet singer!
THE WANDERING SINGER
Lady, lady, my spring-green lady,
But will you not hear an Alba, lady?
I'll play for you now neath the apple-bough
And you shall dance on the lawn so shady,
Lady, lady,
My fair lady,
O my spring-green lady!
THE LADIES
O if you play us an Alba, singer,
How can that harm the Emperor's Daughter?
No word would she say though we danced all day,
With her thoughts a thousand leagues over the water,
Singer, singer,
Wandering singer,
O my honey-sweet singer!
THE WANDERING SINGER
But if I play you an Alba, lady,
Get me a boon from the Emperor's Daughter--
The flower from her hair for my heart to wear
Though hers be a thousand leagues over the water,
Lady, lady,
My fair lady,
O my spring-green lady!
THE LADIES
(They give him the flower from the hair of the Emperor's Daughter, and
sing--)
Now you may play us an Alba, singer,
A dance of dawn for a spring-green lady,
For the leaf is now on the apple-bough,
And the sun is high and the lawn is shady,
Singer, singer,
Wandering singer,
O my honey-sweet singer!
The Wandering Singer plays on his lute, and The Ladies break their
ranks and dance. The Singer steals up behind The Emperor's Daughter,
who uncovers her face and sings--)
THE EMPEROR'S DAUGHTER
Mother, mother, my fair dead mother,
They have stolen the flower from your weeping daughter!
THE WANDERING SINGER
O dry your eyes, you shall have this other
When yours is a thousand leagues over the water,
Daughter, daughter,
My sweet daughter!
Love is not far, my daughter!
The Singer then drops a second flower into the lap of the child in the
middle, and goes away, and this ends the first part of the game. The
Emperor's Daughter is not yet released, for the key of her tower is
understood to be still in the keeping of the dancing children. Very
likely it is bed-time by this, and mothers are calling from windows and
gates, and the children must run home to their warm bread-and-milk and
their cool sheets. But if time is still to spare, the second part of
the game is played like this. The dancers once more encircle their
weeping comrade, and now they are gowned in white and pink. They will
indicate these changes perhaps by colored ribbons, or by any flower in
its season, or by imagining themselves first in green and then in rose,
which is really the best way of all. Well then--
(The Ladies, in gowns of white and rose-color, stand around The
Emperor's Daughter, weeping in her Tower. To them once more comes The
Wandering Singer with his lute.)
THE WANDERING SINGER
Lady, lady, my rose-white lady,
May I come into your orchard, lady?
For the blossom's now on the apple-bough
And the stars are near and the lawn is shady,
Lady, lady,
My fair lady,
O my rose-white lady!
THE LADIES
You may not come into our orchard, singer,
Lest you bear a word to the Emperor's Daughter
From one who was sent to banishment
Away a thousand leagues over the water,
Singer, singer,
Wandering singer,
O my honey-sweet singer!
THE WANDERING SINGER
Lady, lady, my rose-white lady,
But will you not hear a Roundel, lady?
I'll play for you now neath the apple-bough
And you shall trip on the lawn so shady,
Lady, lady,
My fair lady,
O my rose-white lady!
THE LADIES
O if you play us a Roundel, singer,
How can that harm the Emperor's Daughter?
She would not speak though we danced a week,
With her thoughts a thousand leagues over the water,
Singer, singer,
Wandering singer,
O my honey-sweet singer!
THE WANDERING SINGER
But if I play you a Roundel, lady,
Get me a gift from the Emperor's Daughter--
Her finger-ring for my finger bring
Though she's pledged a thousand leagues over the water,
Lady, lady
My fair lady,
O my rose-white lady!
THE LADIES
(They give him the ring from the finger of The Emperor's Daughter, and
sing--)
Now you may play us a Roundel, singer,
A sunset-dance for a rose-white lady,
For the blossom's now on the apple-bough,
And the stars are near and the lawn is shady,
Singer, singer,
Wandering singer,
O my honey-sweet singer!
As before, The Singer plays and The Ladies dance; and through the
broken circle The Singer comes behind The Emperor's Daughter, who
uncovers her face to sing--)
THE EMPEROR'S DAUGHTER
Mother, mother, my fair dead mother,
They've stolen the ring from your heart-sick daughter.
THE WANDERING SINGER
O mend your heart, you shall wear this other
When yours is a thousand leagues over the water,
Daughter, daughter,
My sweet daughter!
Love is at hand, my daughter!
The third part of the game is seldom played. If it is not bed-time, or
tea-time, or dinner-time, or school-time, by this time at all events
the players have grown weary of the game, which is tiresomely long; and
most likely they will decide to play something else, such as Bertha
Gentle Lady, or The Busy Lass, or Gypsy, Gypsy, Raggetty Loon!, or The
Crock of Gold, or Wayland, Shoe me my Mare!--which are all good games
in their way, though not, like The Spring-Green Lady, native to
Adversane. But I did once have the luck to hear and see The Lady played
in entirety--the children had been granted leave to play "just one more
game" before bed-time, and of course they chose the longest and played
it without missing a syllable.
(The Ladies, in yellow dresses, stand again in a ring about The
Emperor's Daughter, and are for the last time accosted by The Singer
with his lute.)
THE WANDERING SINGER
Lady, lady, my apple-gold lady,
May I come into your orchard, lady?
For the fruit is now on the apple-bough,
And the moon is up and the lawn is shady,
Lady, lady,
My fair lady,
O my apple-gold lady!
THE LADIES
You may not come into our orchard, singer,
In case you set free the Emperor's Daughter
Who pines apart to follow her heart
That's flown a thousand leagues over the water,
Singer, singer,
Wandering singer,
O my honey-sweet singer!
THE WANDERING SINGER
Lady, lady, my apple-gold lady,
But will you not hear a Serena, lady?
I'll play for you now neath the apple-bough
And you shall dream on the lawn so shady,
Lady, lady,
My fair lady,
O my apple-gold lady!
THE LADIES
O if you play a Serena, singer,
How can that harm the Emperor's Daughter?
She would not hear though we danced a year
With her heart a thousand leagues over the water,
Singer, singer,
Wandering singer,
O my honey-sweet singer!
THE WANDERING SINGER
But if I play a Serena, lady,
Let me guard the key of the Emperor's Daughter,
Lest her body should follow her heart like a swallow
And fly a thousand leagues over the water,
Lady, lady,
My fair lady,
O my apple-gold lady!
THE LADIES
(They give the key of the Tower into his hands.)
Now you may play a Serena, singer,
A dream of night for an apple-gold lady,
For the fruit is now on the apple-bough
And the moon is up and the lawn is shady,
Singer, singer,
Wandering singer,
O my honey-sweet singer!
(Once more The Singer plays and The Ladies dance; but one by one they
fall asleep to the drowsy music, and then The Singer steps into the
ring and unlocks the Tower and kisses The Emperor's Daughter. They have
the end of the game to themselves.)
Lover, lover, thy/my own true lover
Has opened a way for the Emperor's Daughter!
The dawn is the goal and the dark the cover
As we sail a thousand leagues over the water--
Lover, lover,
My dear lover,
O my own true lover!
(The Wandering Singer and The Emperor's Daughter float a thousand
leagues in his shallop and live happily ever after. I don't know what
becomes of The Ladies.)
"Bed-time, children!"
In they go.
You see the treatment is a trifle fanciful. But romance gathers round
an old story like lichen on an old branch. And the story of Martin
Pippin in the Apple-Orchard is so old now--some say a year old, some
say even two. How can the children be expected to remember?
But here's the truth of it.
MARTIN PIPPIN IN THE APPLE-ORCHARD
PROLOGUE
PART I
One morning in April Martin Pippin walked in the meadows near
Adversane, and there he saw a young fellow sowing a field with oats
broadcast. So pleasant a sight was enough to arrest Martin for an hour,
though less important things, such as making his living, could not
occupy him for a minute. So he leaned upon the gate, and presently
noticed that for every handful he scattered the young man shed as many
tears as seeds, and now and then he stopped his sowing altogether, and
putting his face between his hands sobbed bitterly. When this had
happened three or four times, Martin hailed the youth, who was then
fairly close to the gate.
"Young master!" said he. "The baker of this crop will want no salt to
his baking, and that's flat."
The young man dropped his hands and turned his brown and tear-stained
countenance upon the Minstrel. He was so young a man that he wanted his
beard.
"They who taste of my sorrow," he replied, "will have no stomach for
bread."
And with that he fell anew to his sowing and sighing, and passed up the
field.
When he came down again Martin observed, "It must be a very bitter
sorrow that will put a man off his dinner."
"It is the bitterest," said the youth, and went his way.
At his next coming Martin inquired, "What is the name of your sorrow?"
"Love," said the youth. By now he was somewhat distant from the gate
when he came abreast of it, and Martin Pippin did not catch the word.
So he called louder:
"What?"
"Love!" shouted the youth. His voice cracked on it. He appeared
slightly annoyed. Martin chewed a grass and watched him up and down the
meadow.
At the right moment he bellowed:
"I was never yet put off my feed by love."
"Then," roared the youth, "you have never loved."
At this Martin jumped over the gate and ran along the furrow behind the
boy.
"I have loved," he vowed, "as many times as I have tuned lute-strings."
"Then," said the youth, not turning his head, "you have never loved in
vain."
"Always, thank God!" said Martin fervently.
The youth, whose name was Robin Rue, suddenly dropped all his seed in
one heap, flung up his arms, and,
"Alas!" he cried. "Oh, Gillian! Gillian!" And began to sob more heavily
than ever.
"Tell me your trouble," said the Minstrel kindly.
"Sir," said the youth, "I do not know your name, and your clothes are
very tattered. But you are the first who has cared whether or no my
heart should break since my lovely Gillian was locked with six keys
into her father's Well-House, and six young milkmaids, sworn virgins
and man-haters all, to keep the keys."
"The thirsty," said Martin, "make little of padlocks when within a
rope's length of water."
"But, sir," continued the youth earnestly, "this Well-House is set in
the midst of an Apple-Orchard enclosed in a hawthorn hedge full six
feet high, and no entrance thereto but one small green wicket, bolted
on the inner side."
"Indeed?" said Martin.
"And worse to come. The length of the hedge there is a great duckpond,
nine yards broad, and three wild ducks swimming on it. Alas!" he cried,
"I shall never see my lovely girl again!"
"Love is a mighty power," said Martin Pippin, "but there are doubtless
things it cannot do."
"I ask so little," sighed Robin Rue. "Only to send her a primrose for
her hair-band, and have again whatever flower she wears there now."
"Would this really content you?" said Martin Pippin.
"I would then consent to live," swore Robin Rue, "long enough at all
events to make an end of my sowing."
"Well, that would be something," said Martin cheerfully, "for fields
must not go fallow that are appointed to bear. Direct me to your
Gillian's Apple-Orchard."
"It is useless," Robin said. "For even if you could cross the duckpond,
and evade the ducks, and compass the green gate, my sweetheart's
father's milkmaids are not to be come over by any man; and they watch
the Well-House day and night."
"Yet direct me to the orchard," repeated Martin Pippin, and thrummed
his lute a little.
"Oh, sir," said Robin anxiously, "I must warn you that it is a long and
weary way, it may be as much as two mile by the road." And he looked
disconsolately at the Minstrel, as though in fear that he would be
discouraged from the adventure.
"It can but be attempted," answered Martin, "and now tell me only
whether I go north or south as the road runs."
"Gillman the farmer, her father," said Robin Rue, "has moreover a very
big stick--"
"Heaven help us!" cried Martin, and took to his heels.
"That ends it!" sighed the sorry lover.
"At least let us make a beginning!" quoth Martin Pippin.
He leaped the gate, mocked at a cuckoo, plucked a primrose, and went
singing up the road.
Robin Rue resumed his sowing and his tears.
"Maids," said Joscelyn, "what is this coming across the duckpond?"
"It is a man," said little Joan.
The six girls came running and crowding to the wicket, standing
a-tiptoe and peeping between each other's sunbonnets. Their sunbonnets
and their gowns were as green as lettuce-leaves.
"Is he coming on a raft?" asked Jessica, who stood behind.
"No," said Jane, "he is coming on his two feet. He has taken off his
shoes, but I fear his breeches will suffer."
"He is giving bread to the ducks," said Jennifer.
"He has a lute on his back," said Joyce.
"Man!" cried Joscelyn, who was the tallest and the sternest of the
milkmaids, "go away at once!"
Martin Pippin was by now within arm's-length of the green gate. He
looked with pleasure at the six virgins fluttering in their green
gowns, and peeping bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked under their green
bonnets. Beyond them he saw the forbidden orchard, with cuckoo-flower
and primrose, daffodil and celandine, silver windflower and sweet
violets blue and white, spangling the gay grass. The twisted
apple-trees were in young leaf.
"Go away!" cried all the milkmaids in a breath. "Go away!"
"My green maidens," said Martin, "may I not come into your orchard? The
sun is up, and the shadow lies fresh on the grass. Let me in to rest a
little, dear maidens--if maidens indeed you be, and not six leaflets
blown from the apple-branches."
"You cannot come in," said Joscelyn, "because we are guarding our
master's daughter, who sits yonder weeping in the Well-House."
"That is a noble and a tender duty," said Martin. "From what do you
guard her?"
The milkmaids looked primly at one another, and little Joan said, "It
is a secret."
Martin: I will ask no more. And what do you do all day long?
Joyce: Nothing, and it is very dull.
Martin: It must be still duller for your master's daughter.
Joan: Oh, no, she has her thoughts to play with.
Martin: And what of your thoughts?
Joscelyn: We have no thoughts. I should think not indeed!
Martin: I beg your pardon. But since you find the hours so tedious,
will you not let me sing and play to you upon my lute? I will sing you
a song for a spring morning, and you shall dance in the grass like any
leaf in the wind.
Jane: I think there can be no harm in that.
Jessica: It can't matter a straw to Gillian.
Joyce: She would not look up from her thoughts though we footed it all
day.
Joscelyn: So long as he is on one side of the gate--
Jennifer: --and we on the other.
"I love to dance," said little Joan.
"Man!" cried the milkmaids in a breath, "play and sing to us!"
"Oh, maidens," answered Martin merrily, "every tune deserves its fee.
But don't look so troubled--my hire shall be of the lightest. Let me
see! You shall fetch me the flower from the hair of your little
mistress who sits weeping on the coping with her face hidden in her
shining locks."
At this the milkmaids clapped their hands, and little Joan, running to
the Well-House, with a touch like thistledown drew from the weeper's
yellow hair a yellow primrose. She brought it to the gate and laid it
in Martin's hand.
"Now you will play for us, won't you?" said she. "A dance for a
spring-morning when the leaves dance on the apple-trees."
Then Martin tuned his lute and played and sang as follows, while the
girls took hands and danced in a green chain among the twisty trees.
The green leaf dances now,
The green leaf dances now,
The green leaf with its tilted wings
Dances on the bough,
And every rustling air
Says, I've caught you, caught you,
Leaf with tilted wings,
Caught you in a snare!
Whose snare? Spring's,
That bound you to the bough
Where you dance now,
Dance, but cannot fly,
For all your tilted wings
Pointing to the sky;
Where like martins you would dart
But for Spring's delicious art
That caught you to the bough,
Caught, yet left you free
To dance if not to fly--oh see!
As you are dancing now,
Dancing on the bough,
Dancing on the bough,
Dancing with your tilted wings
On the apple-bough.
Now as Martin sang and the milkmaids danced, it seemed that Gillian in
her prison heard and saw nothing except the music and the movement of
her sorrows. But presently she raised her hand and touched her
hair-band, and then she lifted up the fairest face Martin had ever
seen, so that he needs must see it nearer; and he took the green gate
in one stride, and the green dancers never observed him. Then Gillian's
tender mouth parted like an opening quince-blossom, and--
"Oh, Mother, Mother!" she said, "if you had only lived they would not
have stolen the flower from my hair while I sat weeping."
Above her head a whispering voice made answer, "Oh, Daughter, Daughter,
dry your sweet eyes. You shall wear this other flower when yours is
gone over the duckpond to Adversane."
And lo! A second primrose dropped out of the skies into her lap. And
that day the lovely Gillian wept no more.
PART II
It happened that on an afternoon in May Martin Pippin passed again
through Adversane, and as he passed he thought, "Now certainly I have
been here before," but he could not remember when or how, for a full
month had run under the bridges of time since then, and man's memory is
not infinite.
But in walking by a certain garden he heard a sound of sobbing; and
curiosity, of which he was largely made, caused him to climb the old
brick wall that he might discover the cause. What he saw from his perch
was a garden laid out in neat plots between grassy walks edged with
double daisies, red, white and pink, or bordered with sweet herbs, or
with lavender and wallflower; and here and there were cordons of
fruit-trees, apple, plum and cherry, and in a sunny corner a clump of
flowering currant heavy with humming bees; and against the inner walls
flat pear-trees stretched their long straight lines, like music-staves
whereon a lovely melody was written in notes of snow. And in the midst
of all this stood a very young man with a face as brown as a berry. He
was spraying the cordons with quassia-water. But whenever he filled his
syringe he wept so many tears above the bucket that it was always full
to the brim.
When he had watched this happen several times, Martin hailed the young
man.
"Young master!" said Martin, "the eater of your plums will need sugar
thereto, and that's flat."
The young man turned his eyes upward.
"There is not sugar enough in all the world," he answered, "to sweeten
the fruits that are watered by my sorrows."
"Then here is a waste of good quassia," said Martin, "and I think your
name is Robin Rue."
"It is," said Robin, "and you are Martin Pippin, to whom I owe more
than to any man living. But the primrose you brought me is dead this
five-and-twenty days."
"And what of your Gillian?"
"Alas! How can I tell what of her? She is where she was and I am here
where I am. What will become of me?"
"There are riddles without answers," observed Martin.
"I can answer this one. I shall fall into a decline and die. And yet I
ask no more than to send her a ring to wear on her finger, and have her
ring to wear on mine."
"Would this satisfy you?" asked Martin.
"I could then cling to life," said Robin Rue, "long enough at least to
finish my spraying."
"We may praise God as much for small mercies," said Martin pleasantly,
"as for great ones; and trees must not be blighted that were appointed
to fruit."
So saying, he unstraddled his legs and dropped into the road, tickled
an armadillo with his toe, twirled the silver ring on his finger, and
went away singing.
"Maidens," said Joscelyn, "here is that man come again."
Maids' memories are longer than men's. At all events, the milkmaids
knew instantly to whom she referred, although nearly a month had passed
since his coming.
"Has he his lute with him?" asked little Joan.
"He has. And he is giving cake to the ducks; they take it from his
hand. Man, go away immediately!"
Martin Pippin propped his elbows on the little gate, and looked smiling
into the orchard, all pink and white blossom. The trees that had been
longest in bloom were white cascades of flower, others there were
flushed like the cheek of a sleeping child, and some were still studded
with rose-red buds. The grass was high and full of spotted orchis, and
tall wild parsley spread its nets of lace almost abreast of the lowest
boughs of blossom. So that the milkmaids stood embraced in meeting
flowers, waist-deep in the orchard growth: all gowned in pink lawn with
loose white sleeves, and their faces flushed it may have been with the
pink linings to their white bonnets, or with the evening rose in the
west, or with I know not what.
"Go away!" they cried at the intruder. "Go away!"
"My rose-white maidens," said Martin, "will you not let me into your
orchard? For the stars are rising with the dew, and the hour is at
peace. Let me in to rest, dear maidens--if maidens indeed you be, and
not six blossoms fallen from the apple-boughs."
"You cannot come in," said Joscelyn, "lest you are the bearer of a word
to our master's daughter who sits weeping in the Well-House."
"From whom should I bear her a word?" asked Martin Pippin in great
amazement.
The milkmaids cast down their eyes, and little Joan said, "It is a
secret."
Martin: I will inquire no further. But shall I not play a little on my
lute? It is as good an hour for song and dance as any other, and I will
make a tune for a sunny May evening, and you shall sway among the
grasses like any flower on the bough.
Jane: In my opinion that can hurt nobody.
Jessica: Gillian wouldn't care two pins.
Joyce: She would utter no word though we tripped it for a week.
Joscelyn: So long as he keeps to his side of the hedge--
Jennifer: --and we to ours.
"Oh, I do love to dance!" cried little Joan.
"Man!" they commanded him as one voice, "play and sing to us instantly!"
"My pretty ones," laughed Martin Pippin, "songs are as light as air,
but worth more than pearls and diamonds. What will you give me for my
song? Wait, now!--I have it. You shall fetch me the ring from the
finger of your little mistress, who sits hidden beneath the fountain of
her own bright tresses."
The milkmaids at these words nodded gayly, and little Joan tip-toed to
the Well-House, and slipped the ring from Gillian's finger as lightly
as a daisy may be slipped from its fellow on the chain. Then she ran
with it to the gate, and Martin held up his little finger, and she put
it on, saying:
"Now you will keep your promise, honey-sweet singer, and play a dance
for a May evening when the blossom blows for happiness on the
apple-trees."
So Martin Pippin tuned his lute and sang what follows, while the girls
floated in ones and twos among the orchard grass:
A-floating, a-floating, what saw I a-floating?
Fairy ships rocking with pink sails and white
Smoothly as swans on a river of light
Saw I a-floating?
No, it was apple-bloom, rosy and fair,
Softly obeying the nod of the air
I saw a-floating.
A-floating, a-floating, what saw I a-floating?
White clouds at eventide blown to and fro
Lightly as bubbles the cherubim blow,
Saw I a-floating?
No, it was pretty girls gowned like a flower
Blown in a ring round their own apple-bower
I saw a-floating.
Or was it my dream, my dream only--who knows?--
As frail as a snowflake, as flushed as a rose,
I saw a-floating?
A-floating, a-floating, what saw I a-floating?
Martin sang, and the milkmaids danced, and Gillian in her prison only
heard the dropping of her tears, and only saw the rainbow prisms on her
lashes. But presently she laid her cheek against her hand, and missed a
touch she knew; and on that revealed her lovely face so full of woe,
that Martin needs must comfort her or weep himself. And the dancers
took no heed when he made one step across the gate and went under the
trees to the Well-House.
"Oh, Mother, Mother!" sighed Gillian, "if you had only lived they would
never have stolen the ring from my finger while I sat heartsick."
Above her head a whispering voice replied, "Oh, Daughter, Daughter,
mend your dear heart! You shall wear this other ring when yours is gone
over the duckpond to Adversane."
Oh wonder! Out of the very heavens fell a silver ring into her bosom.
And if that night Gillian slept not, neither wept she.
PART III
In the beginning of the first week in September Martin Pippin came once
more to Adversane, and he said to himself when he saw it:
"Now this is the prettiest hamlet I ever had the luck to light on in my
wanderings. And if chance or fortune will, I shall some day come this
way again."
While he was thinking these thoughts, his ears were assailed by groans
and sighs, so that he wet his finger and held it up to find which way
the wind blew on this burning day of blue and gold. But no wind coming,
he sought some other agency for these gusts, and discovered it in a
wheat-field where was a young fellow stooking sheaves. A very young
fellow he was, turned copper by the sun; and as he stooked he heaved
such sighs that for every shock he stooked two tumbled at his feet.
When Martin had seen this happen more than once he called aloud to the
harvester.
"Young master!" said Martin, "the mill that grinds your grain will need
no wind to its sails, and that's flat."
The young man looked up from his labors to reply.
"There are no mill-stones in all the world," said he, "strong enough to
grind the grain of my grief."
"Then I would save these gales till they may be put to more use,"
remarked Martin, "and if I remember rightly you wear a lady's ring on
your little finger, though I cannot remember her name or yours."
"Her heavenly name is Gillian," said the youth, "and mine is Robin Rue."
"And are you wedded yet?" asked Martin.
"Wedded?" he cried. "Have you forgotten that she is locked with six
keys inside her father's Well-House?"
"But this was long ago," said Martin. "Is she there yet?"
"She is," said Robin Rue, "and here am I."
"Well, all states must end some time," said Martin Pippin.
"Even life," sighed Robin, "and therefore before the month is out I
shall wilt and be laid in the earth."
"That would be a pity," said Martin. "Can nothing save you?"
"Nothing but the keys to her prison, and they are in the keeping of
them that will not give them up."
"I remember," said Martin. "Six milkmaids."
"With hearts of flint!" cried Robin.
"Sparks may be struck from flint," said Martin, in his inconsequential
way. "But tell me, if Gillian's prison were indeed unlocked, would all
be well with you for ever?"
"Oh," said Robin Rue, "if her prison were unlocked and the prisoner in
these arms, this wheat should be flour for a wedding-cake."
"It is the best of all cakes," said Martin Pippin, "and the grain that
is destined thereto must not rot in the husk."
With these words he strolled out of the cornfield, gathered a harebell,
rang it so loudly in the ear of a passing rabbit that it is said never
to have stopped running till it found itself in France, and went up the
road humming and thrumming his lute.
On the road he met a Gypsy.
"Maids," said Joscelyn, "somebody is at the gate."
The milkmaids, who were eating apples, came clustering about her
instantly.
"Is it a man?" asked little Joan, pausing between her bites.
"No, thank all our stars," said Joscelyn, "it is a gypsy."
The milkmaids withdrew, their fears allayed. Joan bit her apple and
said, "It puckers my mouth."
Joyce: Mine's sour.
Jessica: Mine's hard.
Jane: Mine's bruised.
Jennifer: There's a maggot in mine.
They threw their apples away.
"Who'll buy trinkets?" said the Gypsy at the gate.
"What have you to sell?" asked Joscelyn.
"Knick-knacks and gew-gaws of all sorts. Rings and ribbons, mirrors and
beads, silken shoe-strings and colored lacings, sweetmeats and scents
and gilded pins; silver buckles, belts and bracelets, gay kerchiefs,
spotted ones, striped ones; ivory bobbins, sprigs of coral, and
sea-shells from far places, they'll murmur you secrets o' nights if you
put em under your pillow; here are patterns for patchwork, and here's
a sheet of ballads, and here's a pack of cards for telling fortunes.
What will ye buy? A dream-book, a crystal, a charmed powder that shall
make you see your sweetheart in the dark?"
"Oh!" six voices cried in one.
"Or this other powder shall charm him to love you, if he love you not?"
"Fie!" exclaimed Joscelyn severely. "We want no love-charms."
"I warrant you!" laughed the Gypsy. "What will ye buy?"
Jennifer: I'll have this flasket of scent.
Joyce: I'll have this looking-glass.
Jessica: And I this necklet of beads.
Jane: A pair of shoe-buckles, if you please.
Joan: This bunch of ribbons for me.
Joscelyn: Have you a corset-lace of yellow silk?
The Gypsy: Here's for you and you. No love-charms, no. Here's for you
and you and you. I warrant, no love-charms! Ay, I've a yellow lace,
twill keep you in as tight as jealousy, my pretty. Out upon all
love-charms!--And what will she have that sits crouched in the
Well-House?
"Oh, Gypsy!" cried Joscelyn, "have you among your charms one that will
make a maid fall OUT of love?"
"Nay, nay," said the Gypsy, growing suddenly grave. "That is a charm
takes more black art than I am mistress of. I know indeed of but one
remedy. Is the case so bad?"
"She has been shut into the Well-House to cure her of loving," said
Joscelyn, "and in six months she has scarcely ceased to weep, and has
never uttered a word. If you know the physic that shall heal her of her
foolishness, I pray you tell us of it. For it is extremely dull in this
orchard, with nothing to do except watch the changes of the
apple-trees, and meanwhile the farmstead lacks water and milk, there
being no entry to the well nor maids to milk the cows. Daily comes Old
Gillman to tell us how, from morning till night, he is forced to drink
cider and ale, and so the farm goes to rack and ruin, and all because
he has a lovesick daughter. What is your remedy? He would give you gold
and silver for it."
"I do not know if it can be bought," said the Gypsy, "I do not even
know if it exists. But when a maid broods too much on her own
love-tale, the like weapons only will vanquish her thoughts. Nothing
but a new love-tale will overcome her broodings, and where the case is
obstinate one only will not suffice. You say she has pined upon her
love six months. Let her be told six brand-new love-tales, tales which
no woman ever heard before, and I think she will be cured. These
counter-poisons will so work in her that little by little her own case
will be obliterated from her blood. But for my part I doubt whether
there be six untold love-tales left on earth, and if there be I know
not who keeps them buttoned under his jacket."
"Alas!" cried Joscelyn, "then we must stay here for ever until we die."
"It looks very like it," said the Gypsy, "and my wares are a penny
apiece."
So saying she collected her moneys and withdrew, and for all I know was
never seen again by man, woman, or child.
"My apple-gold maidens," said Martin Pippin, leaning on the gate in the
bright night, "may I come into your orchard?"
As he addressed them he gazed with delight at the enclosure. By the
light of the Queen Moon, now at her full in heaven, he saw that the
orchard grass was clipped, and patterned with small clover, but against
the hedges rose wild banks of meadow-sweet and yarrow and the jolly
ragwort, and briony with its heart-shaped leaf and berry as red as
heart's-blood made a bower above them all. And all the apple-trees were
decked with little golden moons hanging in clusters on the drooping
boughs, and glimmering in the recesses of the leaves. Under each tree a
ring of windfalls lay in the grass. But prettiest sight of all was the
ring of girls in yellow gowns and caps, that lay around the midmost
apple-tree like fallen fruit.
"Dear maidens," pleaded the Minstrel, "let me come in."
At the sound of his voice the six milkmaids rose up in the grass like
golden fountains. And fountains indeed they were, for their eyes were
running over with tears.
"We did not hear you coming," said little Joan.
"Go away at once!" commanded Joscelyn.
Then all the girls cried "Go away!" together.
"My apple-gold maidens," said Martin Pippin, "I entreat you to let me
in. For the moon is up, and it is time to be sleeping or waking, in
sweet company. So I beseech you to admit me, dear maidens--if maidens
in truth you be, and not six apples bobbed off their stems."
"You may not come in," said Joscelyn, "in case you should release our
master's daughter, who sits in the Well-House pining to follow her
heart."
"Why, whither would she follow it?" asked Martin much surprised.
The milkmaids turned their faces away, and little Joan murmured, "It is
a secret."
Martin: I will put chains on my thoughts. But shall I not sing you a
tune you may dance to? I will make you a song for an August night, when
the moon rocks her way up and down the cradle of the sky, and you shall
rock on earth like any apple on the twig.
Jane: For my part, I see nothing against it.
Jessica: Gillian won't care little apples.
Joyce: She would not hear though we danced the round of the year.
Joscelyn: So long as he does not come in--
Jennifer: --or we go out.
"Oh, let us dance, do let us dance!" cried little Joan.
"Man," they importuned him in a single breath, "play for us and sing
for us, as quickly as you can!"
"Sweet ones," said Martin Pippin, shaking his head, "songs must be paid
for. And yet I do not know what to ask you, some trifle in kind it
should be. Why, now, I have it! If I give you the keys to the dance,
give me the keys to your little mistress, that I may keep her secure
from following her heart like a bird of passage, whither it's no
business of mine to ask."
At this request, made so gayly and so carelessly, the girls all looked
at one another in consternation. Then Joscelyn drew herself up to full
height, and pointing with her arm straight across the duckpond she
cried:
"Minstrel, begone!"
And the six girls, turning their backs upon him, moved away into the
shadows of the moon.
"Well-a-day!" sighed Martin Pippin, "how a fool may trip and never know
it till his nose hits the earth. I will sing to you for nothing."
But the girls did not answer.
Then Martin touched his lute and sang as follows, so softly and sweetly
that they, not regarding, hardly knew the sound of his song from the
heavy-sweet scent of the ungathered apples over their heads.
Toss me your golden ball, laughing maid, lovely maid,
Lovely maid, laughing maid, toss me your ball!
I'll catch it and throw it, and hide it and show it,
And spin it to heaven and not let it fall.
Boy, run away with you! I will not play with you--
This is no ball!
We are too old to be playing at ball.
Toss me the golden sun, laughing maid, lovely maid,
Lovely maid, laughing maid, toss me the sun!
I'll wheel it, I'll whirl it, I'll twist it and twirl it
Till cocks crow at midnight and day breaks at one.
Boy, I'll not sport with you! Boy, to be short with you,
This is no sun!
We are too young to play tricks with the sun.
Toss me your golden toy, laughing maid, lovely maid,
Lovely maid, laughing maid, toss me your toy!
It's all one to me, girl, whatever it be, girl
So long as it's round that's enough for a boy.
Boy, come and catch it then!--there now! Don't snatch it then!
Here comes your toy!
Apples were made for a girl and a boy.
There was no sound or movement from the girls in the shadows.
"Farewell, then," said Martin. "I must carry my tunes and tales
elsewhere."
Like pebbles from a catapult the milkmaids shot to the gate.
"Tales?" cried Jessica.
"Do you know tales?" exclaimed Jennifer.
"What kind of tales?" demanded Jane.
"Love-tales?" panted Joyce.
"Six of them?" urged little Joan.
"A thousand!" said Martin Pippin.
Joscelyn's hand lay on the bolt.
"Man," she said, "come in."
She opened the wicket, and Martin Pippin walked into the Apple Orchard.
PRELUDE TO THE FIRST TALE
"And now," said Martin Pippin, "what exactly do you require of me?"
"If you please," said little Joan, "you are to tell us a love-story
that has never been told before."
"But we have reason to fear," added Jane, "that there is no such story
left in all the world."
"There you are wrong," said Martin, "for on the contrary no love-story
has ever been told twice. I never heard any tale of lovers that did not
seem to me as new as the world on its first morning. I am glad you have
a taste for love-stories."
"We have not," said Joscelyn, very quickly.
"No, indeed!" cried her five fellows.
"Then shall it be some other kind of tale?"
"No other kind will do," said Joscelyn, still more quickly.
"We must all bear our burdens," said Martin; "so let us make ourselves
as happy as we can in an apple-tree, and when the tale becomes too
little to your taste you shall munch apples and forget it."
"Will you sit in the swing?" asked Jennifer, pointing to the midmost
apple-tree, which was the largest in the orchard, and had a little
swing hanging from a long upper limb.
Close to the apple-tree, a branch of which indeed brushed its mossed
pent-roof, stood the Well-House. It had a round wall of old red bricks
growing green with time, and a pillar of oak rose up at each point of
the compass to support the pent. Between the south and west pillars was
a green door, held by a rusty chain and a padlock with six keyholes.
The little circular court within was flagged, and three rings of worn
steps led to the well-head and the green wooden bucket inverted on the
coping. Between the cracks of the flags sprang grass, and pink-starred
centaury, and even a trail of mallow sprawled over the steps where
Gillian lay in tears, as though to wreathe her head with its striped
blooms.
"What luck you have," said Martin, "not only to live in an orchard, but
to have a swing to swing in."
"It is our one diversion," said Joyce, "except when you come to play to
us."
"It is delightful to swing," said little Joan invitingly.
"So it is," agreed Martin, "and I beg you to sit in the swing while I
sit on this bough, and when I see your eyelids growing heavy with my
tale I will start the rope and rouse you--thus!"
So saying, he lifted the littlest milkmaid lightly into her perch and
gave her so vigorous a push that she cried out with delight, as at one
moment the point of her shoe cleared the door of the Well-House, and at
the next her heels were up among the apples. Then Martin ensconced
himself upon a lower limb of the tree, which had a mossy cushion
against the trunk as though nature or time had designed it for a teller
of tales. The milkmaids sprang quickly into other branches around him,
shaking a hail of sweet apples about his head. What he could he caught,
and dropped into the swinger's lap, whence from time to time he helped
himself; and she did likewise.
"Begin," said Joscelyn.
"A thought has occurred to me," said Martin Pippin, "and it is that my
tale may disturb your master's daughter."
"We desire it to," said Joscelyn looking down on the Well-House and the
yellow head of Gillian. "The fear is rather that you may not arouse her
attention, so I hope that when you speak you will speak clearly. For to
tell you the truth we have heard that nothing but six love-tales will
wash from her mind the image of--"
"Of whom?" inquired Martin as she paused.
"It does not matter whom," said Joscelyn, "but I think the time is ripe
to confess to you that the silly damsel is in love."
"The world is so full of wonders," said Martin Pippin, "that one ceases
to be surprised at almost anything."
"Is love then," said little Joan, "so rare a thing in the world?"
"The rarest of all things," answered Martin, looking gravely into her
eyes. "It is as rare as flowers in Spring."
"I am glad of that," said Joan; while Joscelyn objected, "But nothing
is commoner."
"Do you think so?" said Martin. "Perhaps you are right. Yet Spring
after Spring the flowers quicken my heart as though I were perceiving
them for the first time in my life--yes, even the very commonest of
them."
"What do you call the commonest?" asked Jessica.
"Could any be commoner," said Martin, "than Robin-run-by-the-Wall? Yet
I think he has touched many a heart in his day."
And fixing his eyes on the weeper in the Well-House, Martin Pippin
tried his lute and sang this song.
Run by the wall, Robin,
Run by the wall!
You might hear a secret
A lady once let fall.
If you hear her secret
Tell it in my ear,
And I'll whisper you another
For her to overhear.
The weeper stirred very slightly.
"The song makes little sense," said Joscelyn, "and would make none at
all if you called this flower by its right name of Jack-in-the-Hedge."
"Let us do so," said Martin readily, "and then the nonsense will run
this way as easily as that."
Hide in the hedge, Jack,
Hide in the hedge!
You might catch a letter
Dropped over the edge.
If you catch her letter
Slip it in my hand,
And I'll write another
That she'll understand.
As he concluded, Gillian lifted up her head, and putting her hair from
her face gazed over the duckpond beyond the green wicket.
"The lady," said Joscelyn with some impatience, "who understand the
letter must outdo me in wits, for I find no understanding whatever in
your silly song. However, it seems to have brought our master's
daughter out of her lethargy, and the moment is favorable to your tale.
Therefore without further ado I beg you to begin."
"I will," said Martin, "and on my part entreat your forbearance while I
relate to you the story of The King's Barn."
THE KING'S BARN
There was once, dear maidens, a King in Sussex of whose kingdom and
possessions nothing remained but a single Barn and a change of linen.
It was no fault of his. He was a very young king when he came into his
heritage, and it was already dwindled to these proportions. Once his
fathers had owned a beautiful city on the banks of the Adur, and all
the lands to the north and the west were theirs, for a matter of
several miles indeed, including many strange things that were on them:
such as the Wapping Thorp, the Huddle Stone, the Bush Hovel where a
Wise Woman lived, and the Guess Gate; likewise those two communities
known as the Doves and the Hawking Sopers, whose ways of life were as
opposite as the Poles. The Doves were simple men, and religious; but
the Hawking Sopers were indeed a wild and rowdy crew, and it is said
that the King's father had hunted and drunk with them until his estates
were gambled away and his affairs decayed of neglect, and nothing was
left at last but the solitary Barn which marked the northern boundary
of his possessions. And here, when his father was dead, our young King
sat on a tussock of hay with his golden crown on his head and his
golden scepter in his hand, and ate bread and cheese thrice a day,
throwing the rind to the rats and the crumbs to the swallows. His name
was William, and beyond the rats and the swallows he had no other
company than a nag called Pepper, whom he fed daily from the tussock he
sat on.
But at the end of a week he said:
"It is a dull life. What should a King do in a Barn?"
So saying, he pulled the last handful of hay from under him, rising up
quickly before he had time to fall down, and gave it to his nag; and
next he tied up his scepter and crown with his change of linen in a
blue handkerchief; and last he fetched a rope and a sack and put them
on Pepper for bridle and saddle, and rode out of the Barn leaving the
door to swing.
"Let us go south, Pepper," said he, "for it is warmer to ride into the
sun than away from it, and so we shall visit my Father's lands that
might have been mine."
South they went, with the great Downs ahead of them, and who knew what
beyond? And first they came to the Hawking Sopers, who when they saw
William approaching tumbled out of their dwelling with a great racket,
crying to him to come and drink and play with them.
"Not I," said he. "For so I should lose my Barn to you, and such as it
is it is a shelter, and my only one. But tell me, if you can, what
should a King do in a Barn?"
"He should dance in it," said they, and went laughing and singing back
to their cups.
"What sort of advice is this, Pepper?" said the King. "Shall we try
elsewhere?"
The nag whinnied with unusual vehemence, and the King, taking this for
yea, and not observing that she limped as she went, rode on to the
Doves: the gentle gray-gowned Brothers who spent their days in pious
works and their nights in meditation. Between the twelve hours of
twilight and dawn they were pledged not to utter speech, but the King
arriving there at noon they welcomed him with kind words, and offered
him a bowl of rice and milk.
He thanked them, and when he had eaten and drink put to them his riddle.
"What should a King do in a Barn?"
They answered, "He should pray in it."
"This may be good advice," said the King. "Pepper, should we go
further?"
The little nag whinnied till her sides shook, which the King took, as
before, to be an affirmative. However, because it was Sunday he
remained with the Doves a day and a night, and during such time as
their lips were not sealed they urged him to become one of them, and
found a new settlement of Brothers in his Barn. He spent his night in
reflection, but by morning had come to no decision.
"To what better use could you dedicate it?" asked the Chief Brother,
who was known as the Ringdove because he was the leader.
"None that I can think of," said the King, "but I fear I am not good
enough."
"When you have passed our initiation," said the Ringdove, "you will be."
"Is it difficult?" asked William.
"No, it is very easy, and can be accomplished within a month. You have
only to ride south till you come to the hills, on the highest of which
you will see a Ring of beech-trees. Under the hills lies the little
village of Washington, and there you may dwell in comfort through the
week. But on each of the four Saturdays of the lunar month you must
mount the hill at sunset and keep a vigil among the beeches till
sunrise. And you must see that these Saturdays occur on the fourth
quarters of the moon--once when she is in her crescent, once at the
half, again at the full, and lastly when she is waning."
"And is this all?" said William. "It sounds very simple."
"Not quite all, but the rest is nearly as simple. You have but to
observe four rules. First, to tell no living soul of your resolve
during the month of initiation. Second, to keep your vigil always
between the two great beeches in the middle of the Ring. Third, to
issue forth at midnight and immerse your head in the Dewpond which lies
on the hilltop to the west, and having done so to return to your watch
between the trees. And fourth, to make no utterance on any account
whatever from sunset to sunrise."
"Suppose I should sneeze?" inquired the King anxiously.
"There's no supposing about it," said the Ringdove. "Sneezing, seeing
that your head will be extremely wet, is practically inevitable. But
the rule applies only to such utterance as lies within human control.
When the fourth vigil has been successfully accomplished, return to us
for a blessing and the gray robe of our Order."
"But how," asked the King, "during my vigils shall I know when midnight
is due?"
"In the third quarter after eleven a bird sings. At the beginning of
its song go forth from the Ring, and at the ending plunge your head
into the Pond. For on these nights the bird sings ceaselessly for
fifteen minutes, but stops at the very moment of midnight."
"And is this really all?"
"This is all."
"How easy it is to become good," said William cheerfully. "I will begin
at once."
So impatient was he to become a Brother Dove--
(But here Martin Pippin broke off abruptly, and catching the rope of
the swing in his left hand he gave it a great lurch.
Joan: Oh! Oh! Oh!
Martin: I perceive, Mistress Joan, that you lose interest in my story.
Your mouth droops.
Joan: Oh, no! Oh, no! It is only--it is a very nice story--but--
Martin: What cannot be said aloud can frequently be whispered.
He leaned his ear close to her mouth, and very shyly she whispered into
it.
Joan (whispering very shyly): Why must the young King join a
Brotherhood? I thought...this was to be a...love story.
Martin smiled and chose an apple from her lap.
"Keep this for me," said he, "until I ask for it; and if you are not
then satisfied, neither will I be")
So impatient (resumed Martin) was the King to enter the Brotherhood,
that he abandoned his idea of visiting the Huddle Stone and the Wapping
Thorp (which would have taken him out of his course), and, without even
waiting to break his fast, leaped on to Pepper's back and turned her
head southwest towards the hills. And in his eagerness he failed to
remark how Pepper stumbled at every second step. Before he had gone a
mile he came to the Guess Gate.
Of the Guess Gate, as you may know, all men ask a question in passing
through, and in the back-swing of the Gate it creaks an answer. So
nothing more natural than that the King, having flung the Gate open,
should cry aloud once more:
"Gate, Gate! What should a King do in a Barn?"
"Now at last," thought he, "I shall be told whether to dance or to pray
in it." And he stood listening eagerly as the Gate hung an instant on
its outward journey and then began to creak home.
"He--should--rule--in--it--he--should--rule--in--it--he--should--"
squeaked the Guess Gate, and then latch clicked and it was silent.
This disconcerted William.
"Now I am worse off than ever," he sighed. "Pray, Pepper, can this
advice be bettered?"
As usual when he questioned her, the nag pricked up her ears and
whinnied so violently that he nearly fell off her back. Nevertheless,
he kept Pepper's head in a beeline for Chanctonbury, never noticing how
very ill she was going, and presently crossed the great High Road
beyond which lay the Bush Hovel. The Wise Woman was at home; from afar
the King saw her sitting outside the Hovel mending her broom with a
withe from the Bush.
"Here if anywhere," rejoiced William, "I shall learn the truth."
He dismounted and approached the old woman, cap in hand.
"Wise Woman," he said respectfully, "you know most things, but do you
know this--whether a King should dance or pray or rule in his Barn?"
"He should do all three, young man," said the Wise Woman.
"But--!" exclaimed William.
"I'm busy," snapped the Wise Woman. "You men will always be chattering,
as though pots need never be stewed nor cobwebs swept." So saying, she
went into the Hovel and slammed the door.
"Pepper," said the poor King, "I am at my wits' ends. Go where yours
lead you."
At this Pepper whinnied in a perfect frenzy of delight, and the King
had to clasp both arms round her neck to avoid tumbling off.
Now the little nag preferred roads to beelines over copses and ditches,
and she turned back and ambled along the highway so very lamely that it
became impossible even for her preoccupied rider not to perceive that
she had cast all her four shoes.
"Poor beast!" he cried dismayed, "how has this happened, and where? Oh,
Pepper, how could you be so careless? I have not a penny in my purse to
buy you new shoes, my poor Pepper. Do you not remember where you lost
them?"
The little nag licked her master's hand (for he had dismounted to
examine her trouble), and looked at him with great eyes full of
affection, and then she flung up her head and whinnied louder than
ever. The sound of it was like nothing so much as laughter. Then she
went on, hobbling as best she could, and the King walked by her side
with his hand on her neck. In this way they came to a small village,
and here the nag turned up a by-road and halted outside the
blacksmith's forge. The smith's Lad stood within, clinking at the
anvil, the smuttiest Lad smith ever had.
"Lad!" cried the King.
The Lad looked up from his work and came at once to the door, wiping
his hands upon his leather apron.
"Where am I?" asked the King.
"In the village of Washington," said the Lad.
"What! Under the Ring?" cried the King.
"Yes, sir," said the Lad.
"A blessing on you!" said the King joyfully, and clapped his hand on
the Lad's shoulder. "Pepper, you have solved the problem and led me to
my destiny."
"Is Pepper your nag's name?" asked the blacksmith's Lad.
"It is," said the King; "her only one."
"Then she has one more name than she has shoes," said the Lad. "How
came she to lose them?"
"I didn't notice," confessed the King.
"You must have been thinking very deeply," remarked the Lad. "Are you
in love?"
"I am not quite twenty-one," said the King.
"I see. Do you want your nag shod?"
"I do. But I have spent my last penny."
"Earn another then," said the Lad.
"I did not even earn the last one," said the King shamefacedly. "I have
never worked in my life."
"Why, where have you lived?" exclaimed the Lad.
"In a Barn."
"But one works in a Barn--"
"Stop!" cried the king, putting his fingers in his ears. "One prays in
a Barn."
"Very likely," said the Lad, looking at him curiously. "Are you going
to pray in one?"
"Yes," said the King. "When is the New Moon?"
"Next Saturday."
"Hurrah!" cried the King. "That settles it. But what's to-day?"
"Monday, sir."
"Alas!" sighed William, wondering how he should make shift to live for
five days.
"I don't know what you mean, sir," said the Lad.
"I would tell you my meaning," said the King, "but am pledged not to."
Then the Lad said, "Let it pass. I have a proposal to make. My father
is dead, and for two years I have worked the forge single-handed. Now I
am willing to teach you to shoe your nag with four good shoes and
strong, if you will meanwhile blow the bellows for whatever other jobs
come to the forge; and if the shoes are not done by dinner-time you
shall have a meal thrown in."
The King looked at the Lad kindly.
"I shall blow your bellows very badly," he said, "and shoe my nag still
worse."
Said the Lad, "You'll learn in time."
"Not before dinner-time, I hope," said the King, "for I am very hungry."
"You look hungry," said the Lad. "It's a bargain then."
The King held out his hand, but the Lad suddenly whipped his behind his
back. "It's so dirty, sir," he said.
"Give it me all the same," said the King; and they clasped hands.
The rest of that morning the King spent in blowing the bellows, and by
dinner-time not so much as the first of Pepper's hoofs was shod. For a
great deal of business came into the forge, and there was no time for a
lesson. So the King and the Lad took their meal together, and the King
was by this time nearly as black as his master. He would have washed
himself, but the Lad said it was no matter, he himself having no time
to wash from week's end to week's end. In the afternoon they changed
places, and the King stood at the anvil and the Lad at the bellows. He
was a good teacher, but the King made a poor job of it. By nightfall he
had produced shoes resembling all the letters of the alphabet excepting
U, and when at last he submitted to the Lad a shoe like nothing so much
as a drunken S, his master shrugged and said:
"Zeal is praiseworthy within its limits, but the best of smiths does
not attempt to make two shoes at once. Let us sup."
They supped; and afterwards the Lad showed the King a small bedroom as
neat as a new pin.
"I shall sully the sheets," said William, "and you will excuse me if I
fetch the kettle, which is on the boil."
"As you please," said the Lad, and took himself off.
In the morning the King came clean to breakfast, but the Lad was as
black as he had been.
Tuesday passed as Monday had passed; now William took the bellows,
marveling at his youthful master's deftness, and now the Lad blew,
groaning at his pupil's clumsiness. By nightfall, however, he had
achieved a shoe faintly recognizable as such. For a second time the
King washed himself and slept again in the little trim chamber, but the
Lad in the morning resembled midnight. In this way the week went by,
the King's heart beating a little faster each morning as Saturday
approached, and he wondered by what ruse he could explain his absence
without creating suspicion or breaking his pledge.
On Saturday morning the Lad said to the King: "This is a half-day. You
must make your shoe this morning or not at all. It is my custom at one
o'clock to close the forge and go to visit my Great-Aunt. I will be
work again on Monday, till when you must shift for yourself."
The King could hardly believe his luck in having matters so well
settled, and he spent the morning so diligently that by noon he had
produced a shoe which, if not that of a master-craftsman, was at least
adaptable to the purpose for which it had been fashioned.
The Lad examined it and said reluctantly, "It will do," and proceeded
to show the King how to fasten it to Pepper's hoof.
"Why," said the King, having the nag's off forefoot in his hand,
"here's a stone in it. Small wonder she limped."
"It isn't a stone," said the Lad, extracting it, "it is a ruby."
And he exhibited to the King a ruby of such a glowing red that it was
as though the souls of all the grapes of Burgundy had been pressed to
create it.
"You are a rich man now," said the Lad quietly, "and can live as you
will."
But William closed the Lad's fingers over the stone. "Keep it," he
said, "for you have filled me for a week, and I have paid you with
nothing but my breath."
"As you please," said the Lad carelessly, and, tossing the stone upon a
shelf, locked up the forge. "Now I am going to my Great-Aunt. There's a
cake in the larder."
So saying, he strolled away, and the King was left to his own devices.
These consisted in bathing himself from head to foot till his body was
as pure without as he desired his heart to be within; and in donning
his fresh suit of linen. He would not break his fast, but waited,
trembling and eager, till an hour before sundown, and then at last he
set forth to mount the great hill with the sacred crown of trees upon
its crest.
When at last he stood upon the boundary of the Ring, his heart sprang
for joy in his breast, and his breath nearly failed him with amazement
at the beauty of the world which lay outspread for leagues below him.
"Oh, lovely earth!" he cried aloud, "never till now have I known what
beauty I lived in. How is it that we cannot see the wonder of our
surroundings until we gaze upon them from afar? But if you look so fair
from the hilltops, what must you appear from the very sky?" And lost in
delight he turned his eyes upward, and was recalled to his senses by
the sight of the sinking sun. "Lovely one, how nearly you have betrayed
me!" he said, and smiling waved his hand to the dear earth, sealed up
his lips, and entered the Ring.
And here between two midmost beeches he knelt down and buried his face
in his hands, and prayed the spirits of that place to make him worthy.
The hours passed, quarter by quarter, and the King stayed motionless
like one in a dream. Presently, however, the dream was faintly shaken
by a little lirrup of sound, as light as rain dropping from leaves
above a pool. Again and again the sweet round notes fell on the
meditations of the King, and he remembered with entrancement that this
was the tender signal by which he was summoned to the Pond. So, rising
silently, he wandered through the trees, and keeping his eyes fixed on
the soft dim turf, lest some new beauty should tempt him to speech, he
went across the open hill the Pond. Here he knelt down again, listening
to the childlike bird, until at last the young piping ceased with a
joyous chuckle. And at that instant, reflected in the Pond, he saw the
silver star that watches the invisible young moon, and dipped his head.
Oh, my dear maids! When he lifted it again, all wet and bewildered, he
saw upon the opposite border of the Pond, a figure, the white figure
of--a woman! a girl! a child! He could not tell, for she lay three
parts in the shadowy water with her back towards him, and his gaze and
senses swam; but in that faint starlight one bare and lovely arm, as
white as the crescent moon, was clear to him, upcurved to her shadowy
hair. So she reclined, and so he knelt, both motionless, and his heart
trembled (even as it had trembled at the bird's song) with a wish to go
near to her, or at least to whisper to her across the water. Indeed, he
was on the point of doing so, when a sudden contraction seized him, his
eyes closed in a delicious agony, and he sneezed once vigorously; and
in that moment of shattering blackness he recalled his vow, and rising
turned his back upon the vision and groped his way again to the shelter
of the trees.
Here he remained till dawn in meditation, but as to the nature of his
meditations I am, dear maidens, ignorant. Nor do I know in what
restless wise he passed his Sunday.
It is enough to know that on Monday when he went into the forge he
found the Lad already at work, and if he had been pitch-black at their
parting he was no less so at their meeting. He appeared to be out of
humor, and for some time regarded his apprentice with dissatisfaction,
but only remarked at last:
"You look fatigued."
"My sleep was broken with dreams," said the King. "I am sorry if I am
late. Let me to my shoeing. Since Saturday ended in success, I suppose
I shall now finish the business without more ado."
He was, however, too hopeful as it appeared, for though he managed to
fashion a shoe which was in his eyes the equal of the other, the Lad
was captious and would not commend it.
"I should be an ill craftmaster," said he, "if I let you rest content
on what you have already done. I made such a shoe as this on my
thirteenth birthday, and my father's only praise was, You must do
better yet.'"
So particular was the young smith that William spent the whole of
another week in endeavoring to please him. This might have chafed the
King, but that it agreed entirely with his desires to remain in that
place, sleeping and eating at no cost to himself, and working so
strenuously that his hands grew almost as hard as the metal he worked
in; for the Lad now began to entrust him with small jobs of various
sorts, although in the matter of the second shoe he refused to be
satisfied.
When Saturday came, however, the King contrived a shoe so much superior
to any he had yet made that the Lad, examining it, was compelled to
say, "It is better than the other." Then Pepper, who always stood in a
noose beside the door awaiting her moment, lifted up her near forefoot
of her own accord, and the King took it in his hand.
"How odd!" he exclaimed a moment later. "The nag has a stone in this
foot also. It is not strange that she went so ill."
"It is not a stone," said the Lad. "It is a pearl."
And he held out to the King a pearl of such a shining purity that it
was as though it had been rounded within the spirit of a saint.
"This makes you a rich man," said the Lad moodily, "and you can journey
whither you please."
But the King shook his head. "Keep it," he said, "for you have lodged
me for a week, and I have given you only the clumsy service of my
hands."
"Very well," said the Lad simply, and put the pearl in his pocket. "My
Great-Aunt is expecting me. There's a cake in the larder."
So saying he walked off, and the King was left alone. As before, he
bathed himself and changed his linen, and left the contents of the
larder untouched; and an hour before sunset he climbed the hill for the
second time, and presently stood panting on the edge of the Ring. And
again a pang of wonder that was akin to pain shot through his heart at
the loveliness of the world below him.
"Beautiful earth!" he cried once more, "how fair and dear you are
become to me in your remoteness. But oh, if you appear so beautiful
from this summit, what must you appear from the summit of the clouds?"
And he glanced from the earth to the sky, and saw the sun running down
his airy hill. "Dear Temptress!" he said, "how cunningly you would
snare me from my purpose." And he kissed his hand to her thrice, sealed
up his lips, and entered the Ring.
Between the two tall beeches he knelt down, and drowned the following
hours in thought and prayer; till that deep lake of meditation was
divided by the sound of singing, as though a shoal of silver fishes
swam and leaped upon its surface, putting all quietness to flight, and
troubling its waters with a million lovelinesses. For now it was as
though the bird's enchanting song came partly from within and partly
from without, and if the fall of its music shattered his dream like
falling fish, certain it seemed to him that the fish had first leaped
from his own heart, out of whose unsuspected caves darted a shoal of
nameless longings. He too leaped up and darted through the trees, and
with head bent down, for fear of he knew not what, made his way to the
Pond. Here he knelt again, drinking in the tremulous song of the bird,
as tremulous as youth and maidenhood, until at last it ceased with a
sweet uncompleted cry of longing. And at that instant, in the mirror of
the Pond, he saw the uncompleted disc of the half-moon, and dipped his
head.
Ah wonder! when he lifted it again, dazzled and dripping, he saw across
the Pond a figure rising from the water, the figure, as he could now
perceive in the fuller light, of a girl, clear to the waist. Her face
was half turned from him, and her hair flowed half to him and half
away, but within that cloudy setting gleamed the lines of her lovely
neck and one white shoulder and one moonlit breast, whose undercurve
appeared to float upon the Pond like the petal of a waterlily. So he
knelt on his side and she on hers, both motionless, and he heart leaped
(even as it had leaped at the bird's song) with a longing to kneel
beside and even touch that loveliness; or, if he could not, at least to
call to her across the Pond so that he would turn and reveal to him
what still was hidden. He was in fact about to do so, when suddenly his
senses were overwhelmed with a sweet anguish, darkness fell on him, and
from its very core he sneezed twice, violently. This interruption of
the previous spell was sufficient to bring him to a realization of his
peril, and rising hastily he ran back to the Ring, where he remained
till morning. But to what pious thoughts he then committed himself I
cannot tell you; neither in what feverish fashion he got through Sunday.
On Monday morning when he arrived at the forge he found the Lad at work
before him, and ebony was not blacker than his face. He glanced at the
King with some show of temper, but only said:
"You look worn out."
"I have had bad dreams," said the King. "Excuse me for being behind my
time. I will try to make up for it by wasting no more, and fashioning
instantly two shoes as good as that I made on Saturday."
But though he handled his tools with more dexterity than he had yet
exhibited, the Lad petulantly pushed aside the first shoe he made,
which to the King appeared to be, if anything, superior to the one he
had made on Saturday. The Lad, however, quickly explained himself,
saying:
"A master-smith who intends to make his apprentice his equal will not
let him rest at the halfway house. I made a shoe like this when I was
fourteen, and all my father said was, I have hopes of you.'"
So for yet another week the King's nose was kept to the grindstone, and
it would have irritated most men to find their good work repeatedly
condemned; but William was, as you may have observed, singularly
sweet-tempered, besides which he desired nothing so much as to remain
where he was. And for another five days he slept and ate and worked,
until the muscles of his arms began to swell, and he swung the hammer
with as much ease as his master, who now left a great part of the work
entirely in his hands. Although in this matter of the third shoe he
refused to be satisfied.
Nevertheless on Saturday morning the King, making a last effort before
the forge was shut, submitted a shoe so far beyond anything he had yet
achieved, that the Lad could not but say, "This is a good shoe." And
Pepper, seeing them coming, lifted her off hind-foot to be shod.
"Now as I live!" cried the King. "Another stone! And how she contrived
to hobble so far is a miracle."
"It isn't a stone," said the Lad, "it is a diamond."
And he presented to the King a diamond of such triumphant brilliance
that it might have been conceived of the ambitions of the mightiest
monarch of the earth.
"You now own surpassing wealth," said the Lad dejectedly, "and you have
no more need to work."
But William would not even touch the stone. "Keep it," he said, "for
you have befriended me for a week, and I have given you only the
strength of my arms."
"Let it be so," said the Lad gently, and put the diamond in his belt.
"I must not keep my Great-Aunt waiting. There's a cake in the larder."
So saying he went his way, and the King went his; which, as you may
surmise, was to the bath and his clean clothes. He did not go into the
larder, and an hour before sunset made the ascent of the hill, and for
the third time stood like a conqueror upon the crest. And as he gazed
over the lands below his heart throbbed with a passion for the earth
that was half agony and half love, unless indeed it was the whole agony
of love.
"Most beautiful earth!" he cried aloud, "only as you recede from me do
I realize how necessary it is for me to possess you. How is it that
when I possess you I know you not as I know you now? But oh! if you are
so wonderful from these great hills, what must you be from the greater
hills of air?" And he looked up, and saw the sun descending in the
west. "Sweet earth," he sighed, "you would hold me when I should be
gone, and never remind me that the moment to depart is due." And he
stretched out his arms to her, sealed up his lips, and went into the
Ring.
Once more he knelt between the giant beeches, and sank all thoughts in
pious contemplation; till suddenly those still waters were convulsed as
though with stormy currents, and a wild song beat through his breast,
so that he could not believe it was the bird singing from a short
distance: it was as though the storm of music broke from his singing
heart--yes, from his own heart singing for some unexpressed
fulfillment. He was barely conscious of going through the trees, with
eyes shut tight against the outer world, but soon he was kneeling at
the brink of the Pond, while the surge of joy and pain in the song
broke on his spirit like waves upon a shore, or love upon a man and a
woman--washed back, towered up, and broke on him again. At last on one
full glorious phrase it ceased. And at that instant, deep in the Pond,
he saw the full orb of the moon, and dipped his head.
Oh, when he lifted it, startled and illuminated, he saw on the further
side of the Pond a woman standing. The moonlight bathed her form from
head to foot, her hair was thrown behind her, and she stood facing him,
so that in the cold clear light he could see her fully revealed: her
strong tender face, her strong soft body, her strong slim legs, her
strong and lovely arms. As white as mayblossom she was, and beauty went
forth from her like fragrance from the shaken bough. So he knelt on his
side and she stood on hers, both motionless, but gazing into each
other's eyes, and his heart broke (even as it had broken at the bird's
song) with a passion to take her in his arms, for it seemed to him that
this alone would mend its breaking. Or if he might not do this, at
least to send his need of her in a great cry across the Pond. And as
his passion grew she slowly lifted her arms and opened them to him as
though to bid him enter; and her lips parted, and she cried out, as
though she were uttering the cry of his own soul:
"Beloved!"
All the joy and the pain, fulfilled, of the bird's song were gathered
in that word.
Glorified he leaped up, his whole being answering the cry of hers, but
before his lips could translate it he was gripped by a mighty agony,
and sneeze after sneeze shook all his senses, so that he was utterly
helpless. When he was able to look up again he saw the woman moving
towards him round the Pond, and suddenly he clapped his hands over his
eyes and fled towards the Ring, as though pursued by demons. Here he
passed the remainder of the night, but in what sort of prayers I leave
you to imagine; as also amid what ravings he passed his Sunday.
On Monday the Lad was again before him at the forge, and a crow's wing
had looked milky beside his face. He did not raise his eyes as the King
came in, but said:
"You look very ill." He said it furiously.
"I have had nightmares," said the King. "Pardon me if you can. I will
get to work and make my final shoe."
But though he now had little more to learn in his craft, the Lad, when
the shoe was made, picked it up in his pincers and flung it to the
other end of the forge; yet the King now knew enough to know that few
smiths could have made its equal. So he looked surprised; at which the
Lad, controlling himself, said:
"When I pass your fourth shoe you will need no more masters--I forged a
shoe like that one yonder when I was fifteen, and my father said of it,
You will make a smith one day.'"
And on neither Tuesday nor Wednesday nor Thursday nor Friday could the
King succeed in pleasing the Lad; the better his shoes the angrier grew
his young master that they were not good enough. Yet between these
gusts of temper he was gentle and remorseful, and once the King saw
tears in his eyes, and another time the Lad came humbly to ask for
pardon. Then William laughed and put out his hand, but, as once before,
the Lad slipped his behind his back and said:
"It is so dirty, friend."
And this time he would not let William take it. So the King was forced
instead to lay his arm about the Lad's shoulder, and press it tenderly;
but the Lad made no response, and only stood hanging his head until the
King removed his arm. All the same, when next the King made a shoe he
was full of rage, and stamped on it, and ran out of the forge. Which
surprised the King all the more because it was so excellent a shoe. Yet
he was secretly glad of its rejection, for he felt it would break his
heart to go away from that place; and he could think of no good cause
for remaining, once Pepper was shod. So there he stayed, eating,
sleeping, and working, while the thews of his back became as strong
under the smooth skin as the thews of a beech-tree under the smooth
bark; and his craft was such that the Lad at last left the whole of the
work of the forge in his charge. For there was nothing he could not do
surpassingly well. And this the Lad admitted, save only in the case of
the fourth shoe.
But on Saturday, just before closing-time, the King set to and made a
shoe so fine that when the Lad saw it he said quietly, "I could not
make a better." Had he not said so he must have lied, or proved that he
did know a masterpiece when he saw it. And he too good a craftsman for
that, besides being honest.
Pepper instantly lifted up her near hind-foot.
"Upon my word!" exclaimed the King, "the world is full of stones, and
Pepper has found them all. The wonder is that she did not fall down on
the road."
"This is not a stone," said the Lad, "it is an opal."
And he displayed an opal of such marvelous changeability, such milk and
fire shot with such shifting rainbows, that it was as though it had had
birth of all the moods of all the women of all time.
"This enriches you for life," said the Lad gloomily, "and now you are
free of masters for ever."
But William thrust his hands into his pockets. "Keep it," he said, "for
this week you have given me love, and I have given you nothing but the
sinews of my body."
The Lad looked at him and said, "I have given you hard words, and fits
of temper, and much injustice."
"Have you?" said William. "I remember only your tenderness and your
tears. So keep the opal in love's name."
The Lad tried to answer, but could not; and he slipped the opal under
his shirt. Then he faltered, "My Great-Aunt--" and still he could not
speak. But he made a third effort, and said, "There is a cake in the
larder," and turned on his heel and went away quickly. And the King
looked after him till he was out of sight, and then very slowly went to
his bath and his fresh linen. But he left the cake where it was.
And he sat by the door of the forge with his face in his hands until
the length of his shadow warned him that he must go. And he rose and
went for the last time up the hill, but with a sinking heart; and when
he stood on the top and gazed upon the beauty of the earth he had left
below, in his breast was the ache of loss and longing for one he had
loved, and with his eyes he tried to draw that beauty into himself, but
the void in him remained unfulfilled. Yet never had her beauty been so
great.
"Beloved and lovely earth!" he whispered, "why do you appear most fair
and most desirable now that I am about to lose you? Why when I had you
did you not hold me by force, and tell me what you were? Only now I
discover you from mid-heaven--but oh! in what way should I discover you
from heaven itself?" And he looked upward, and lo! a blurred sun shone
upon him, swimming to its rest. "Farewell, dear earth!" said the King.
"Since you cannot mount to me, and I may not descend to you." And he
knelt upon the turf and laid his cheek and forehead to it, and then he
rose, sealed up his lips, and passed into the Ring.
Between the two tall beeches he sank down, and all sense and thought
and consciousness sank with him, as though his being had become a dead
forgotten lake, hidden in a lifeless wood; where birds sang not, nor
rain fell, nor fishes played, nor currents moved below the stagnant
waters. But presently a wind seemed to wail among the trees, and the
sound of it traveled over the King's senses, stirred them, and passed.
But only to return again, moan over him, and trail away; and so it kept
coming and going till first he heard, then listened to, and at last
realized the haunting signal of the bird. And he went forth into the
open night, his eyes wide apart but seeing nothing until he stumbled at
the Pond and crouched beside it. The bird grew fainter and fainter, and
presently the sound, like a ghost at dawn, ceased to exist; and at that
instant, under the Pond, he beheld the lessening circle of the moon,
and dipped his head.
Alas! when he lifted it, shivering and stunned, he saw the form he
longed to see on the other side of the Pond; but not, as he had longed
to see it, gazing at him with the love and glory of seven nights ago.
Now she stood on the turf, half turned from him, and the wave of her
hair blew to and fro like a cloud, now revealing her white side, now
concealing it. And he looked, but she would not look. So he knelt on
his side and she remained on hers, both motionless. And suddenly the
impulse to sneeze arose within him, and at that instant she began to
move--not towards him, as before, but away from him, downhill.
At that he could bear no more, and quelling the impulse with a mighty
effort, he got upon his feet crying, "Beloved, stay! Beloved, stay,
beloved!"
And he staggered round the Pound as quickly as his shaking knees would
let him; but quicker still she slid away, and when he came where she
had been the place was as empty as the sky in its moonless season. He
called and ran about and called again; but he got no answer, nor found
what he sought. All that night he spent in calling and running to and
fro. What he did on Sunday you may know, and I may know, but he did
not. On Sunday night he stayed beside the Pond, but whatever his hopes
were they received no fulfillment. On Monday night he was there again,
and on Tuesday, and on Wednesday; and between the mornings and the
nights he went from hill to hill, seeking her hiding-place who came to
bathe in the lake. There was not a hill within a day's march that did
not know him, from Duncton to Mount Harry. But on none of them he found
the Woman. How he lived is a puzzle. Perhaps upon wild raspberries.
After the sun had set on Chanctonbury on Saturday night, he came
exhausted to the Ring again, and stood on that high hill gazing
earthward. But there was no light above or below, and he said:
"I have lost all. For the earth is swallowed in blackness, and the
Woman has disappeared into space, and I myself have cast away my
spiritual initiation. I will sit by the Pond till midnight, and if the
bird sings then I will still hope, but if it does not I will dip my
head in the water and not lift it again."
So he went and lay down by the Pond in the darkness, and the hours wore
away. But as the time of the bird's song drew near he clasped his hands
and prayed. But the bird did not sing; and when he judged that midnight
was come, he got upon his knees and prepared to put his head under the
water. And as he did so he saw, on the opposite side of the Pond, the
feeble light of a lantern. He could not see who held it, because even
as he looked the bearer blew out the light; but in that moment it
appeared to him that she was as black as the night itself.
So for awhile he knelt upon his side, and she remained on hers, both
trembling; but at last the King, dreading to startle her away, rose
softly and went round the Pond to where he had seen her.
He said into the night in a shaking voice, "I cannot see you. If you
are there, give me your hand."
And out of the night a shaking voice replied:
"It is so dirty, beloved."
Then he took her in his arms, and felt how she trembled, and he held
her closely to him to still her, whispering:
"You are my Lad."
"Yes," she said in a low voice. "But wait."
And she slipped out of his embrace, and he heard her enter the Pond,
and she stayed there as it seemed to him a lifetime; but presently she
rose up, and even in that black night the whiteness of her body was
visible to him, and she came to him as she was and laid her head on his
breast and said:
"I am your Woman."
("I want my apple," said Martin Pippin.
"But is this the end?" cried little Joan.
"Why not?" said Martin. "The lovers are united."
Joscelyn: Nonsense! Of course it is not the end! You must tell us a
thousand other things. Why was the Woman a woman on Saturday night and
a lad all the rest of the week?
Joyce: What of the four jewels?
Jennifer: Which of the answers to the King's riddle was the right one?
Jessica: What happened to the cake?
Jane: What was her name?
"Please," said little Joan, "do not let this be the end, but tell us
what they did next."
"Women will be women," observed Martin, "and to the end of time prefer
unessentials to the essential. But I will endeavor to satisfy you on
the points you name.")
In the morning William said to his beloved:
"Now tell me something of yourself. How come you to be so masterful a
smith? Why do you live as a black Lad all the week and turn only into a
white Woman on Saturdays? Have you really got a Great-Aunt, and where
does she live? How old are you? Why were you so hard to please about
the shoeing of Pepper? And why, the better my shoes the worse your
temper? Why did you run away from me a week ago? Why did you never tell
me who you were? Why have you tormented me for a whole month? What is
your name?"
"Trust a man to ask questions!" said his beloved, laughing and
blushing. "Is it not enough that I am your beloved?"
"More than enough, yet not nearly enough," said the King, "for there is
nothing of yourself which you must not tell me in time, from the moment
when you first stole barley sugar behind your father's back, down to
that in which you first loved me."
"Then I had best begin at once," she smiled, "or a lifetime will not be
long enough. I am eighteen years old and my name is Viola. I was born
in Falmer, and my father was the best smith in all Sussex, and because
he had no other child he made me his bellows-boy, and in time, as you
know, taught me his trade. But he was, as you also know, a stern
master, and it was not until, on my sixteenth birthday, I forged a shoe
the equal of your last, that he said I could not make a better.' And
so saying he died. Now I had no other relative in all the world except
my Great-Aunt, the Wise Woman of the Bush Hovel, and her I had never
seen; but I thought I could not do better in my extremity than go to
her for counsel. So, shouldering my father's tools, I journeyed west
until I came to her place, and found her trying to break in a new
birch-broom that was still too green and full of sap to be easily
mastered; and she was in a very bad temper. Good day, Great-Aunt,' I
said, I am your Great-Niece Viola.' I have no more use for great
nieces,' she snapped, than for little ones.' And she continued to
tussle with the broomstick and took no further notice of me. Then I
went into the Hovel, where a fire burned on the hearth, and I took out
my tools and fashioned a bit on the hob; and when it was ready I took
it to her and said, This will teach it its manners'; and she put the
bit on the broom, which became as docile as a lamb. Great-Niece,' said
she, it appears that I told you a lie this morning. What can I do for
you?' Tell me, if you please, how I am to live now that my father is
dead.' There is no need to tell you,' said she; you have your living
at your fingers' ends.' But women cannot be smiths,' said I. Then
become a lad,' said she, and ply your trade where none knows you; and
lest men should suspect you by your face, which fools though they be
they might easily do, let it be so sooted from week's end to week's end
that none can discover what you look like; and if any one remarks on
it, put it down to your trade.'
But Great-Aunt,' I said, I could not bear to go dirty from week's
end to week's end.' If you will be so particular,' she said, take a
bath every Saturday night and spend your Sundays with me, as fair as
when you were a babe. And before you go to work again on Monday you
shall once more conceal your fairness past all men's penetration.'
But, dear Great-Aunt,' I pleaded, it may be that the day will come
when I might not wish--'"
And here, dear maidens, Viola faltered. And William put his arm about
her a little tighter--because it was there already--and said, "What
might you not wish, beloved?" And she murmured, "To be concealed past
one man's penetration. And my Great-Aunt said I need not worry. Because
though men, she said, were fools, there was one time in every man's
life when he was quick enough to penetrate all obscurities, whether it
were a layer of soot or a night without a moon." And she hid her face
on the King's shoulder, and he tried to kiss her but could not make her
look up until he said, "Or even a woman's waywardness?" Then she looked
up of her own accord and kissed him.
"In this way," she resumed, "it became my custom on each Saturday,
after closing the forge, to come here with my woman's raiment, and wait
in a hollow until night had fallen, and make myself clean of the week's
blackness. For I dared not do this by daylight, or be seen going forth
from my forge in my proper person."
"But why did you choose to bathe at midnight?" asked the King.
She was silent for a few moments, and then said hurriedly, "I did not
choose to bathe at midnight until a month ago.--For the rest," she
resumed, "I was hard to please in the matter of the shoes because I
knew that when they were finished you would ride away. And therefore
the more you improved the crosser I became. And if I have tormented you
for a month it was because you tormented me by refusing to speak when
you saw me here, in spite of your hateful vow; and you would not even
look at my cake in the larder."
"Women are strange," said the King. "How do you know I did not look at
the cake?"
"I do know," she said as hurriedly as before. "And if I would not tell
you who I was, it was because I could not bear, on the other hand, to
extort from you a love you seemed so reluctant to endure; until indeed
it became of its own accord too strong even for the purpose which
brought you every week to the Ring. For I knew that purpose, since all
dwellers in Washington know why men go up the hill with the new moon."
"But when my love did become too strong for my vow, and opened my lips
at last," said the King, "why did you run away?"
Viola said, "Had you not run away the week before? And now I have
answered all your questions."
"No," said the King, "not all. You haven't told me yet when you first
loved me."
Viola smiled and said, "I first stole barley sugar when my father said
This is for the other little girl over the way'; and I first loved you
when, seeing you had been too absent-minded to know that Pepper had
cast her shoes, I feared you were in love."
"But that was three minutes after we met!" cried the King.
"Was it as much as that!" said she.
Now after awhile Viola said, "Let us get down to the world again. We
cannot stay here for ever."
"Why not?" said the King. However, they walked to the brow of the hill,
and stood together gazing awhile over the sunlit earth that had never
been so beautiful to either of them; for their sight was newly-washed
with love, and all things were changed.
"Now I know how she looks from heaven," said the King, "and that is
like heaven itself. Let us go; for I think she will still look so at
our coming, seeing that we carry heaven with us."
So they went downhill to the forge, and there Viola said to her lover,
"I can stay no longer in this place where all men have known me as a
lad; and besides, a woman's home is where her husband lives."
"But I live only in a Barn," said William the King.
"Then I will live there with you," said Viola, "and from this very
night. But first I will shoe Pepper anew, for she is so unequally shod
that she might spill us on the road. And that she may be shod worthily
of herself and of us, give me what you have tied up in your blue
handkerchief." The King fetched his handkerchief and unknotted it, and
gave her his crown and scepter; and she set him at the bellows and made
three golden shoes and shod the nag on her two fore-feet and her off
hind-foot. But when she looked at the near hind-foot, which the King
had shod last of all, she said: "I could not make a better. And
therefore, like his father, the Lad must shut his smithy, for he is
dead." Then she put the three shoes she had removed into a bag with
some other trifles; and while she did so the King took what remained of
the gold and made it into two rings. This done, they got on to Pepper's
back, and with her three shoes of gold and one of iron she bore them
the way the King had come. When they passed the Bush Hovel they saw the
Wise Woman currying her broomstick, and Viola cried:
"Great-Aunt, give us a blessing."
"Great-Niece," said the Wise Woman, "how can I give you what you
already have? But I will give you this." And she held out a horseshoe.
"Good gracious," said the King, "this was once Pepper's."
"It was," said the Wise Woman. "In her merriment at hearing you ask a
silly question, she cast it outside my door."
A little further on they came to the Guess Gate, but when the King,
dismounting, swung it open, it grated on something in the road. He
stooped and lifted--a horseshoe.
"Wonder of wonders!" exclaimed the King. "This also was Pepper's. What
shall we do with it?"
"Hang--it--up--hang--it--up--hang--" creaked the Gate; and clicked home.
In due course they reached the Doves, and at the sound of Pepper's
hoofs the Brothers flocked out to meet them.
"Is all well?" cried the Ringdove, seeing the King only. "And have you
returned to us for the final blessing?"
"I have," replied the King, "for I bring my bride behind me, and now
you must make us one."
The gentle Brothers, rejoicing at the sight of their happiness and
their beauty, led them in; and there they were wedded. The Doves
offered them to eat, but the King was impatient to reach his Barn by
nightfall; so they got again on Pepper's back, and as they were about
to leave the Ringdove said:
"I have something of yours which is in itself a thing of no moment;
yet, because it is of good augury, take it with you."
And he gave the King Pepper's third shoe.
"Thank you," said the King, "I will hang it over my Barn door."
Now he urged Pepper to her full speed, and they went at a gallop past
the Hawking Sopers, who, hearing the clatter, came running into the
road.
"Stay, gallopers, stay!" they cried, "and make merry with us."
"We cannot," called the King, "for we are newly married."
"Good luck to you then!" shouted the Sopers, and with huzzas and
laughter flung something after them. Viola stretched out her hand and
caught it in mid-air, and it was a horseshoe.
"The tale is complete," she laughed, "and now you know where Pepper
picked up her stones."
Soon after the King said, "Here is my Barn." And he sprang down and
lifted his bride from the nag's back and brought her in.
"It is a poor place," he said gently, "but it is all I have. What can I
do for you in such a home?"
"I will tell you," said Viola, and putting her hand into her left
pocket, she drew out the ruby winking with the wine of mirth. "You can
dance in it." And suddenly they caught each other by the hands and went
capering and laughing round the Barn like children.
"Hurrah!" cried William, "now I know what a King should do in a Barn!"
"But he should do more than dance in it," said Viola; and putting her
hand into her right pocket she gave him the pearl, as pure as a prayer;
"beloved, he should pray in it too."
And William looked at her and knelt, and she knelt by him, and in
silence they prayed the same prayer, side by side.
Then William rose and said simply, "Now I know."
But she knelt still, and took from her girdle the diamond, as bright as
power, and she put it in his hand, saying very low, "Oh, my dear King!
but he should also rule in it." And she kissed his hand. But the King
lifted her very quickly so that she stood equal with his heart, and
embracing her he said, with tears in his eyes:
"And you, beloved! what will a Queen do in a Barn?"
"The same as a King," she whispered, and drew from her bosom the opal,
as lovely and as variable as the human spirit. "With the other three
stones you may, if you will, buy back your father's kingdom. But this,
which contains all qualities in one, let us keep for ever, for our
children and theirs, that they may know there is nothing a King and a
Queen may not do in a Barn, or a man and a woman anywhere. But the best
thing they can do is to work in it."
Then, going out, she came back with the bag which she had slung on
Pepper's back, and took from it her father's tools.
"In three weeks you learned all I learned in three years," said she.
"When I shod Pepper this morning I did my last job as a smith; for now
I shall have other work to do. But you, whether you choose to get your
father's lands again or no, I pray to work in the trade I have given
you, for I have made you the very king of smiths, and all men should do
the thing they can do best. So take the hammer and nail up the
horseshoes over the door while I get supper; for you look as hungry as
I feel."
"But there's nothing to eat," said the King ruefully.
However, he went outside, and over the door he hung as many shoes as
there are nails in one--the four Pepper had cast on the road, and the
three he had first made for her. As he drove the last nail home Viola
called:
"Supper is ready."
And the King went into the Barn and saw a Wedding Cake.
And now, if you please, Mistress Joan, I have earned my apple.
FIRST INTERLUDE
Now there was a great munching of apples in the tree, for to tell the
truth during the latter part of the story this business had been
suspended, and between bites the milkmaids discussed the merits of what
they had just heard.
Jessica: What is your opinion of this tale, Jane?
Jane: It surprised me more than anything. For who could have suspected
that the Lad was a Woman?
Martin: Lads are to be suspected of any mischief, Mistress Jane.
Joscelyn: It is not to be supposed, Master Pippin, that we are
acquainted with the habits of lads.
Martin: I suppose nothing. But did the story please you?
Joscelyn: As a story it was well enough to pass an hour. I would be
willing to learn whether the King regained his kingdom or no.
Martin: I think he did, since you may go to this day to the little city
on the banks of the Adur which is re-named after his Barn. But I doubt
whether he lived there, or anywhere but in the Barn where he and his
beloved began their life of work and prayer and mirth and loving-rule.
And died as happily as they had lived.
Joan: I am glad they lived happily. I was afraid the tale would end
unhappily.
Joyce: And so was I. For when the King roamed the hills for a whole
week without success, I began to fear he would never find the Woman
again.
Jennifer: I for my part feared lest he should not open his lips during
the fourth vigil, and so must become a Dove for the remainder of his
days.
Jane: It was but by the grace of a moment he did not drown himself in
the Pond.
Jessica: Or what if, by some unlucky chance, he had never come to the
forge at all?
Martin: In any of these events, I grant you, the tale must have ended
in disaster. And this is the special wonder of love-tales: that though
they may end unhappily in a thousand ways, and happily in only one, yet
that one will vanquish the thousand as often as the desires of lovers
run in tandem. But there is one accident you have left out of count,
and it is the worst stumbling-block I know of in the path of happy
endings.
All the Milkmaids: What is it?
Martin: Suppose the lovely Viola had been a sworn virgin and a hater of
men.
There was silence in the Apple-Orchard.
Joscelyn: She would have been none the worse for that, singer. And the
tale would have been none the less a tale, which is all we look for
from you. This talk of happy endings is silly talk. The King might have
sought the Woman in vain, or kept his vow, or drowned himself, or
ridden to the confines of Kent, for aught I care.
Joyce: Or I.
Jennifer: Or I.
Jessica: Or I.
Jane: Or I.
Martin: I am silenced. Tales are but tales, and not worth speculation.
And see, the moon is gone to sleep behind a cloud, which shows us
nothing save the rainbow of her dreams. It is time we did as she does.
Like shooting-stars in August the milkmaids slid from their leafy
heaven and dropped to the grass. And here they pillowed their heads on
their soft arms and soon were breathing the breath of sleep. But little
Joan sat on in the swing.
Now all this while she had kept between her hands the promised apple,
turning and turning it like one in doubt; and presently Martin looked
aside at her with a smile, and held his open palm to receive his
reward. And first she glanced at him, and then at the sleepers, and
last she tossed the apple lightly in the air. But by some mishap she
tossed it too high, and it made an arc clean over the tree and fell in
a distant corner by the hedge. So she ran quickly to recover it for
him, and he ran likewise, and they stooped and rose together, she with
the apple in her hands, he with his hands on hers. At which she blushed
a little, but held fast to the fruit.
"What!" said Martin Pippin, "am I never to have my apple?"
She answered softly, "Only when I am satisfied, as you promised."
"And are you not? What have I left undone?"
Joan: Please, Master Pippin. What did the young King look like?
Martin: Fool that I am to leave these vital things untold! I shall
avoid this error in future. He was more than middle tall, and broad in
the shoulders; and he had gray-blue eyes, and a fresh color, and a kind
and merry look, and dark brown hair that was not always as sleek as he
wished it to be.
Joan: Oh!
Martin: With this further oddity, that above the nape of his neck was a
whitish tuft which, though he took great pains to conceal it,
continually obtruded through the darker hair like the cottontail on the
back of a rabbit.
Joan: Oh! Oh!
And she became as red as a cherry.
Martin: May I have my apple?
Joan: But had not he a--mustache?
Martin: He fondly believed so.
Joan (with unexpected fire): It was a big and beautiful mustache!
Martin (fervently): There was never a King of twenty years with one so
big and beautiful.
She gave him the apple.
Martin: Thank you. Will you, because I have answered many questions,
now answer one?
Joan: Yes.
Martin: Then tell me this--what is your quarrel with men?
Joan: Oh, Master Pippin! they say that one and one make two.
Martin: Is this possible? Good heavens, are men such numskulls! When
they have but to go to the littlest woman on earth to learn--what you
and I well know--that one and one make one, and sometimes three, or
four, or even half-a-dozen; but never two. Fie upon these men!
Joan: I am glad you think I am in the right. But how obstinate they are!
Martin: As obstinate as children, and should be birched as roundly.
Joan: Oh! but-- You would not birch children.
Martin: You are right again. They should be coaxed.
Joan: Yes. No. I mean-- Good night, dear singer.
Martin: Good night, dear milkmaid. Sleep sweetly among your comrades
who are wiser than we, being so indifferent to happy endings that they
would never unpadlock sorrow, though they had the key in their keeping.
Then he took her hands in one of his, and put his other hand very
gently under her chin, and lifted it till he could look into her face,
and he said: "Give me the key to Gillian's prison, little Joan, because
you love happy endings."
Joan: Dear Martin, I cannot give you the key.
Martin: Why not?
Joan: Because I stuck it inside your apple.
So he kissed her and they parted, and lay down and slept; she among her
comrades under the apple-tree, and he under the briony in the hedge;
and the moon came out of her dream and watched theirs.
With morning came a hoarse voice calling along the hedge:
"Maids! maids! maids!"
Up sprang the milkmaids, rubbing their eyes and stretching their arms;
and up sprang Martin likewise. And seeing him, Joscelyn was stricken
with dismay.
"It is Old Gillman, our master," she whispered, "come with bread and
questions. Quick, singer, quick! into the hollow russet before he
reaches the hole in the hedge."
Swiftly the milkmaids hustled Martin into the russet tree, and
concealed him at the very moment when the Farmer was come to the
peephole, filling it with his round red face and broad gray fringe of
whiskers, like the winter sun on a sky that is going to snow.
"Good morrow, maids," quoth old Gillman.
"Good morrow, master," said they.
"Is my daughter come to her mind yet?"
"No, master," said little Joan, "but I begin to have hopes that she
may."
"If she do not," groaned Gillman, "I know not what will happen to the
farmstead. For it is six months now since I tasted water, and how can a
man follow his business who is fuddled day and night with Barley Wine?
Life is full of hardships, of which daughters are the greatest.
Gillian!" he cried, "when will ye come into your senses and out of the
Well-House?"
But Gillian took no more heed of him than of the quacking of the drake
on the duckpond.
"Well, here is your bread," said Gillman, and he thrust a basket with
seven loaves in it through the gap. "And may to-morrow bring better
tidings."
"One moment, dear master," entreated little Joan. "Tell me, please, how
Nancy my Jersey fares."
"Pines for you, pines for you, maid, though Charles does his best by
her. But it is as though she had taken a vow to let down no milk till
you come again. Rack and ruin, rack and ruin!"
And the old man retreated as he had come, muttering "Rack and ruin!"
the length of the hedge.
The maids then set about preparing breakfast, which was simplicity
itself, being bread and apples than which no breakfast could be
sweeter. There was a loaf for each maid and one over for Gillian, which
they set upon the wall of the Well-House, taking away yesterday's loaf
untouched and stale.
"Does she never eat?" asked Martin.
"She has scarcely broken bread in six months," said Joscelyn, "and what
she lives on besides her thoughts we do not know."
"Thoughts are a fast or a feast according to their nature," said
Martin, "so let us feed the ducks, who have none."
They broke the stale bread into fragments, and when the ducks had made
a meal, returned to their own; and of two loaves made seven parts, that
Martin might have his share, and to this they added apples according to
their fancies, red or russet, green or golden.
After breakfast, at Martin's suggestion, they made little boats of
twigs and leaves and sailed them on the duckpond, where they met with
many adventures and calamities from driftweed, small breezes, and the
curiosity of the ducks. And before they were aware of it the dinner
hour was upon them, when they divided two more loaves as before and ate
apples at will.
Then Martin, taking a handkerchief from his pocket, proposed a game of
Blindman's-Buff, and the girls, delighted, counter
Eener-Meener-Meiner-Mo to find the Blindman. And Joyce was He. So
Martin tied the handkerchief over her eyes.
"Can you see?" asked Martin.
"Of course I can't see!" said Joyce.
"Promise?" said Martin.
"I hope, Master Pippin," said Jane reprovingly, "that you can take a
girl's word for it."
"I'm sure I hope I can," said Martin, and turned Joyce round three
times, and ran for his life. And Joyce caught Jane on the spot and
guessed her immediately.
Then Jane was blindfolded, and she was so particular about not seeing
that it was quite ten minutes before she caught Jennifer, but she knew
who she was by the feel of her gown; and Jennifer caught Joscelyn, and
guessed her by her girdle; and Joscelyn caught Jessica and guessed her
by the darn in her sleeve; and Jessica caught Joan, and guessed her by
her ribbon; and Joan caught Martin, and guessed him by his difference.
So then Martin was Blindman, and it seemed as though he would never
have eyes again; for though he caught all the girls, one after another,
he couldn't guess which was which, and gave Jane's nose to Jessica, and
Jessica's hands to Joscelyn, and Joscelyn's chin to Joyce, and Joyce's
hair to Jennifer, and Jennifer's eyebrows to Joan; but when he caught
Joan he guessed her at once by her littleness.
In due course the change of light told them it was supper-time; and
with great surprise they ate the last two loaves to the sweet
accompaniment of the apples.
"I would never have supposed," said Joscelyn, as they gathered under
the central tree at the close of the meal, "that a day could pass so
quickly."
"Bait time with a diversion," said Martin, "and he will run like a
donkey after a dangled carrot."
"It has nearly been the happiest day of my life," said Joyce with a sly
glance at Martin.
"And why not quite?" said he.
"Because it lacked a story, singer," she said demurely.
"What can be rectified," said Martin, "must be; and the day is not yet
departed, but still lingers like a listener on the threshold of night.
So set the swing in motion, dear Mistress Joyce, and to its measure I
will endeavor to swing my thoughts, which have till now been laggards."
With these words he set Joyce in the swing and himself upon the branch
beside it as before. And the other milkmaids climbed into their
perches, rustling the fruit down from the shaken boughs; and he made of
Joyce's lap a basket for the harvest. And he and each of the maids
chose an apple as though supper had not been.
"We are listening," said Joscelyn from above.
"Not all of you," said Martin. And he looked up at Joscelyn alert on
her branch, and down at Gillian prone on the steps.
"You are here for no other purpose," said Joscelyn, "than to make them
listen that will not. I would not have you think we desire to listen."
"I think nothing but that you are the prey of circumstances," said
Martin, "constrained like flowers to bear witness to that which is
against all nature."
"What do you mean by that?" said Joscelyn. "Flowers are nature itself."
"So men have agreed," replied Martin, "yet who but men have compelled
them repeatedly to assert such unnaturalnesses as that foxes wear
gloves and cuckoos shoes? Out on the pretty fibbers!"
"Please do not be angry with the flowers," said Joan.
"How could I be?" said Martin. "The flowers must always be forgiven,
because their inconsistencies lie always at men's doors. Besides, who
does not love fairy-tales?"
Then Martin kicked his heels against the tree and sang idly:
When cuckoos fly in shoes
And foxes run in gloves,
Then butterflies won't go in twos
And boys will leave their loves.
"A silly song," said Joscelyn.
Martin: If you say so. For my part I can never tell the difference
between silliness and sense.
Jane: Then how can a good song be told from a bad? You must go by
something.
Martin: I go by the sound. But since Mistress Joscelyn pronounces my
song silly, I can only suppose she has seen cuckoos flying in shoes.
Joscelyn: You are always supposing nonsense. Who ever heard of cuckoos
flying in shoes?
Jane: Or of foxes running in gloves?
Joan: Or of butterflies going in ones?
Martin: Or of boys--
Joscelyn: I have frequently seen butterflies going in ones, foolish
Joan. And the argument was not against butterflies, but cuckoos.
Martin: And their shoes. Please, dear Mistress Joan, do not look so
downcast, nor you, dear Mistress Joscelyn, so vexed. Let us see if we
cannot turn a more sensible song upon this theme.
And he sang--
Cuckoo Shoes aren't cuckoos' shoes,
They're shoes which cuckoos never don;
And cuckoo nests aren't cuckoos' nests,
But other birds' for a moment gone;
And nothing that the cuckoo has
But he does make a mock upon.
For even when the cuckoo sings
He only says what isn't true--
When happy lovers first swore oaths
An artful cuckoo called and flew,
Yes! and when lovers weep like dew
The teasing cuckoo laughs Cuckoo!
What need for tears? Cuckoo, cuckoo!
As Martin ended, Gillian raised herself upon an elbow, and looked no
more into the green grass, but across the green duckpond.
"The second song seems to me as irrelevant as the first," said
Joscelyn, "but I observe that you cuckooed so loudly as to startle our
mistress out of her inattention. So if you mean to tell us another
story, by all means tell it now. Not that I care, except for our
extremity."
"It is my only object to ease it," said Martin, "so bear with me as
well as you may during the recital of Young Gerard."
YOUNG GERARD
There was once, dear maidens, a shepherd who kept his master's sheep on
Amberley Mount. His name was Gerard, and he was always called Young
Gerard to distinguish him from the other shepherd who was known as Old
Gerard, yet was not, as you might suppose, his father. Their master was
the Lord of Combe Ivy that lay in the southern valleys of the hills
toward the sea; he owned the grazing on the whole circle of the Downs
between the two great roads--on Amberley and Perry and Wepham and
Blackpatch and Cockhill and Highdown and Barnsfarm and Sullington and
Chantry. But the two Gerards lived together in the great shed behind
the copse between Rackham Hill and Kithurst, and the way they came to
do so was this.
One night in April when Old Gerard's gray beard was still brown, the
door of the shed was pushed open, letting in not only the winds of
Spring but a woman wrapped in a green cloak, with a lining of
cherry-color and a border of silver flowers and golden cherries. In one
hand she swung a crystal lantern set in a silver frame, but it had no
light in it; and in the other she held a small slip of a cherry-tree,
but it had no bloom on it. Her dress was white, or had been; for the
skirts of it, and her mantle, were draggled and sodden, and her green
shoes stained and torn, and her long fair hair lay limp and dank upon
her mantle whose hood had fallen away, and the shadows round her blue
eyes were as black as pools under hedgerows thawing after a frost, and
her lovely face was as white as the snowbanks they bed in. Behind her
came another woman in a duffle cloak, a crone with eyes as black as
sloes, and a skin as brown as beechnuts, and unkempt hair like the
fireless smoke of Old Man's Beard straying where it will on the
November woodsides. She too was wet and soiled, but full of life where
the young one seemed full of death.
The Shepherd looked at this strange pair and said surlily, "What want
ye?"
"Shelter," replied the crone.
She pushed the lady, who never spoke, into the shed, and took from her
shoulders the wet mantle, and from her hands the lantern and the tree;
and led her to the Shepherd's bed and laid her down. Then she spread
the mantle over the Shepherd's bench and,
"Lie there," said she, "till love warms ye."
Next she hung the lantern up on a nail in the wall, and,
"Swing there," said she, "till love lights ye."
Last she took the Shepherd's trowel and went outside the shed, and set
the cherry-slip beside the door. And she said:
"Grow there, till love blossoms ye."
After this she came inside and sat down at the bedhead.
Gerard the Shepherd, who had watched her proceedings without word or
gesture, said to himself, "They've come through the floods."
He looked across at the women and raised his voice to ask, "Did ye come
through the floods?"
The lady moaned a little, and the crone said, "Let her be and go to
sleep. What does it matter where we came from by night? By daybreak we
shall both of us be gone no matter whither."
The Shepherd said no more, for though he was both curious and
ill-tempered he had not the courage to disturb the lady, knowing by the
richness of her attire that she was of the quality; and the iron of
serfdom was driven deep into his soul. So he went to sleep on his
stool, as he had been bidden. But in the middle of the night he was
awakened by a gusty wind and the banging of his door; and he started up
rubbing his knuckles in his eyes, saying, "I've been dreaming of
strange women, but was it a dream or no?" He peered about the shed, and
the crone had vanished utterly, but the lady still lay on his bed. And
when he went over to look at her, she was dead. But beside her lay a
newborn child that opened its eyes and wailed at him.
Then the Shepherd ran to his open door and stared into the blowing
night, but there were no more signs of the crone without than there
were within. So he fastened the latch and came back to the bedside, and
examined the child.--
(But at this point Martin Pippin interrupted himself, and seizing the
rope of the swing set it rocking violently.
Joyce: I shall fall! I shall fall!
Martin: Then you will be no worse off than I, who have fallen already.
For I see you do not like my story.
Joyce: What makes you say so?
Martin: Till now you listened with all your ears, but a moment ago you
turned away your head a moment too late to hide the disappointment in
your eyes.
Joyce: It is true I am disappointed. Because the beautiful lady is
dead, and how can a love-story be, if half the lovers are dead?
Martin: Dear Mistress Joyce, what has love to do with death? Love and
death are strangers and speak in different tongues. Women may die and
men may die, but lovers are ignorant of mortality.
Joyce (pouting): That may be, singer. But lovers are also a man and a
woman, and the woman is dead, and the love-tale ended before we have
even heard it. You should not have let the woman die. What sort of
love-tale is this, now the woman is dead?
Martin: Are not more nests than one built in a spring-time?--Give me, I
pray you, two hairs of your head.
She plucked two and gave them to him, turning her pouting to laughing.
One of them Martin coiled and held before his lips, and blew on it.
"There it flies," said he, and gave her back the second hair. "Hold
fast by this and keep it from its fellow with all your might, for to
part true mates baffles the forces of the universe. And when you give
me this second hair again I swear I will send it where it will find its
fellow. But I will never ask for it until, my story ended, you say to
me, I am content.'")
Examining the child (repeated Martin) the Shepherd discovered it to be
a lusty boy-child, and this rejoiced him, so that while the baby wept
he laughed aloud.
"It is better to weep for something than for nothing," said he, "and to
laugh for something likewise. Tears are for serfs and laughter is for
freedmen." For he had conceived the plan of selling the child to his
master, the Lord of Combe Ivy, and buying his freedom with the purchase
money. So in the morning he carried the body of the lady into the heart
of the copse, and there he dug a grave and laid her in it in her white
gown. And afterwards he went up hill and down dale to his master, and
said he had a man for sale. The Lord of Combe Ivy, who was a jovial
lord and a bachelor, laughed at the tale he had to tell; but being
always of the humor for a jest he paid the Shepherd a gold piece for
the child, and promised him another each midnight on the anniversary of
its birth; but on the twenty-first anniversary, he said, the Shepherd
was to bring back the twenty-one gold pieces he had received, and
instead of adding another to them he would take them again, and make
the serf a freedman, and the child his serf.
"For," said the Lord of Combe Ivy, "an infant is a poor deal for a man
in his prime, as you are, but a youth come to manhood is a good
exchange for a graybeard, as you will be. Therefore rear this babe as
you please, and if he live to manhood so much the better for you, but
if he die first it's all one to me."
The Shepherd had hoped for a better bargain, but he must needs be
content with seeing liberty at a distance. So he returned to his shed
on the hills and made a leather purse to keep his gold-piece in, and
hung it round his neck, touching it fifty times a day under his shirt
to be sure it was still there. And presently he sought among his ewes
one who had borne her young, saying, "You shall mother two instead of
one." And the baby sucked the ewe like her very lamb, and thrived upon
the milk. And the shepherd called the child Gerard after himself,
"since," he said, "it is as good a name for a shepherd as another"; and
from that time they became the Young and Old Gerards to all who knew
them.
So the Young Gerard grew up, and as he grew the cherry-tree grew
likewise, but in the strangest fashion; for though it flourished past
all expectation, it never put forth either leaf or blossom. This
bitterly vexed Old Gerard, who had hoped in time for fruit, and the
frustration of his hopes became to him a cause of grievance against the
boy. A further grudge was that by no manner of means could he succeed
in lighting any wick or candle in the silver lantern, of which he
desired to make use.
"But if your tree and your lantern won't work," said he, "it's no
reason why you shouldn't." So he put Young Gerard to work, first as
sheepboy to his own flock, but later the boy had a flock of his own.
There was no love lost between these two, and kicks and curses were the
young one's fare; for he was often idle and often a truant, and none
was held responsible for him except the old shepherd who was selling
him piece-meal, year by year, to their master. Because of what depended
on him, Old Gerard was constrained to show him some sort of care when
he would liever have wrung his neck. The boy's fits exasperated the
man; whether he was cutting strange capers and laughing without reason,
as he frequently did, or sitting a whole evening in a morose dream,
staring at the fire or at the stars, and saying never a word. The boy's
coloring was as mingled as his moods, a blend of light and dark--black
hair, brown skin, blue eyes and golden lashes, a very odd anomaly.
(Martin: What is it, Mistress Joyce?
Joyce: I said nothing, Master Pippin.
Martin: I thought I heard you sigh.
Joyce: I did not--you did not.
Martin: My imagination exceeds all bounds.)
Because of their mutual dislike, when the boy was put in charge of his
own sheep the two shepherds spent their days apart. The Old Gerard
grazed his flock to the east as far as Chantry, but the Young Gerard
grazed his flock to the west as far as Amberley, whose lovely dome was
dearer to him than all the other hills of Sussex. And here he would sit
all day watching the cloud-shadows stalk over the face of the Downs, or
slipping along the land below him, with the sun running swiftly after,
like a carpet of light unrolling itself upon a dusky floor. And in the
evening he watched the smoke going up from the tiny cottages till it
was almost dark, and a hundred tiny lights were lit in a hundred tiny
windows. Sometimes on his rare holidays, and on other days too, he ran
away to the Wildbrooks to watch the herons, or to find in the
water-meadows the tallest kingcups in the whole world, and the myriad
treasures of the river--the giant comfrey, purple and white,
meadowsweet, St. John's Wort, purple loose-strife, willowherb, and the
ninety-nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-five others, or whatever
number else you please, that go to make a myriad. He came to know more
about the ways of the Wildbrooks than any other lad of those parts, and
one day he rediscovered the Lost Causeway that can be traveled even in
the floods, when the land lies under a lake at the foot of the hills.
He kept this, like many other things, a secret; but he had one more
precious still.
For as he lay and watched the play of sun and shadow on the plains, he
fancied a world of strange places he had known, somewhere beyond the
veils of light and mist that hung between his vision and the distance,
and he fell into a frequent dream of tunes and laughter, and sunlit
boughs in blossom, and dancing under the boughs; or of fires burning in
the open night, and a wilder singing and dancing in the starlight; and
often when his body was lying on the round hill, or by the smoky
hearth, his thoughts were running with lithe boys as strong and
careless as he was, or playing with lovely free-limbed girls with
flowing hair. Sometimes these people were fair and bright-haired and in
light and lovely clothing, and at others they were dark, with eyes of
mischief, and clad in the gayest rags; and sometimes they came to him
in a mingled company, made one by their careless hearts.
One evening in April, on the twelfth anniversary, when Young Gerard
came to gather his flock, a lamb was missing; so to escape a scolding
he waited awhile on the hills till Old Gerard should be gone about his
business. What this was Young Gerard did not know, he only knew that
each year on this night the old shepherd left him to his own devices,
and returned in the small hours of the morning. Not therefore until he
judged that the master must have left the hut, did the boy fold his
sheep; and this done he ran out on the hills again, seeking the lost
lamb. For careless though he was he cared for his sheep, as he did for
all things that ran on legs or flew on wings. So he went swinging his
lantern under the stars, singing and whistling and smelling the spring.
Now and then he paused and bleated like a ewe; and presently a small
whimper answered his signal.
"My lost lamb crying on the hills," said Young Gerard. He called again,
but at the sound of his voice the other stopped, and for a moment he
stood quite still, listening and perplexed.
"Where are you, my lamb?" said he.
"Here," said a little frightened voice behind a bush.
He laughed aloud and went forward, and soon discovered a tiny girl
cowering under a thorn. When she saw him she ran quickly and grasped
his sleeve and hid her face in it and wept. She was small for her
years, which were not more than eight.
Young Gerard, who was big for his, picked her up and looked at her
kindly and curiously.
"What is it, you little thing?" said he.
"I got lost," said the child shyly through her tears.
"Well, now you're found," said Young Gerard, "so don't cry any more."
"Yes, but I'm hungry," sobbed the child.
"Then come with me. Will you?"
"Where to?"
"To a feast in a palace."
"Oh, yes!" she said.
Young Gerard set her on his shoulder, and went back the way he had
come, till the dark shape of his wretched shed stood big between them
and the sky.
"Is this your palace?" said the child.
"That's it," said Young Gerard.
"I didn't know palaces had cracks in the walls," said she.
"This one has," explained Young Gerard, "because it's so old." And she
was satisfied.
Then she asked, "What is that funny tree by the door?"
"It's a cherry-tree."
"My father's cherry-trees have flowers on them," said she.
"This one hasn't," said Young Gerard, "because it's not old enough."
"One day will it be?" she asked.
"One day," he said. And that contented her.
He then carried her into the shed, and she looked around eagerly to see
what a palace might be like inside; and it was full of flickering
lights and shadows and the scent of burning wood, and she did not see
how poor and dirty the room was; for the firelight gleamed upon a mass
of golden fruit and silver bloom embroidered on the covering of the
settle by the hearth, and sparkled against a silver and crystal lantern
hanging in the chimney. And between the cracks on the walls Young
Gerard had stuck wands of gold and silver palm and branches of snowy
blackthorn, and on the floor was a dish full of celandine and daisies,
and a broken jar of small wild daffodils. And the child knew that all
these things were the treasures of queens and kings.
"Why don't you have that?" she asked, pointing to the crystal lantern
as Young Gerard set down his horn one.
"Because I can't light it," said he.
"Let ME light it!" she begged; so he fetched it from its nail, and
thrust a pine twig in the fire and gave her the sweet-smoking torch.
But in vain she tried to light the wick, which always spluttered and
went out again. So seeing her disappointment Young Gerard hung the
lantern up, saying, "Firelight is prettier." And he set her by the fire
and filled her lap with cones and dry leaves and dead bracken to burn
and make crackle and turn into fiery ferns. And she was pleased.
Then he looked about and found his own wooden cup, and went away and
came back with the cup full of milk, set on a platter heaped with
primroses, and when he brought it to her she looked at it with shining
eyes and asked:
"Is this the feast?"
"That's it," said Young Gerard.
And she drank it eagerly. And while she drank Young Gerard fetched a
pipe and began to whistle tunes on it as mad as any thrush, and the
child began to laugh, and jumped up, spilling her leaves and primroses,
and danced between the fitful lights and shadows as though she were,
now a shadow taken shape, and now a flame. Whenever he paused she
cried, "Oh, let me dance! Don't stop! Let me go on dancing!" until at
the same moment she dropped panting on the hearth and he flung his pipe
behind him and fell on his back with his heels in the air, crying,
"Pouf! d'you think I've the four quarters of heaven in my lungs, or
what?" But as though to prove he had yet a capful of wind under his
ribs, he suddenly began to sing a song she'd never heard before, and it
went like this:
I looked before me and behind,
I looked beyond the sun and wind,
Beyond the rainbow and the snow,
And saw a land I used to know.
The floods rolled up to keep me still
A captive on my heavenly hill,
And on their bright and dangerous glass
Was written, Boy, you shall not pass!
I laughed aloud, You shining seas,
I'll run away the day I please!
I am not winged like any plover
Yet I've a way shall take me over,
I am not finned like any bream
Yet I can cross you, lake and stream.
And I my hidden land shall find
That lies beyond the sun and wind--
Past drowned grass and drowning trees
I'll run away the day I please,
I'll run like one whom nothing harms
With my bonny in my arms.
"What does that mean?" asked the child.
"I'm sure I don't know," said Young Gerard. He kicked at the dying log
on the hearth, and sent a fountain of sparks up the chimney. The child
threw a dry leaf and saw it shrivel, and Young Gerard stirred the white
ash and blew up the embers, and held a fan of bracken to them, till the
fire ran up its veins like life in the veins of a man, and the frond
that had already lived and died became a gleaming spirit, and then it
too fell in ashes among the ash. Then Young Gerard took a handful of
twigs and branches, and began to build upon the ash a castle of many
sorts of wood, and the child helped him, laying hazel on his beech and
fir upon his oak; and often before their turret was quite reared a
spark would catch at the dry fringes of the fir, or the brown
oakleaves, and one twig or another would vanish from the castle.
"How quickly wood burns," said the child.
"That's the lovely part of it," said Young Gerard, "the fire is always
changing and doing different things with it."
And they watched the fire together, and smelled its smoke, that had as
many smells as there were sorts of wood. Sometimes it was like roast
coffee, and sometimes like roast chestnuts, and sometimes like incense.
And they saw the lichen on old stumps crinkle into golden ferns, or
fire run up a dead tail of creeper in a red S, and vanish in mid-air
like an Indian boy climbing a rope, or crawl right through the middle
of a birch-twig, making hieroglyphics that glowed and faded between the
gray scales of the bark. And then suddenly it caught the whole
scaffolding of their castle, and blazed up through the fir and oak and
spiny thorns and dead leaves, and the bits of old bark all over
blue-gray-green rot, and the young sprigs almost budding, and hissing
with sap. And for one moment they saw all the skeleton and soul of the
castle without its body, before it fell in.
The child sighed a little and yawned a little and said:
"How nice it is to live in a palace. Who lives here with you?"
"My friends," said Young Gerard, poking at the log with a bit of stick.
"What are your friends like?" she asked him, rubbing her knuckles in
her eyes.
He was silent for a little, stirring up sparks and smoke. Then he
answered, "They are gay in their hearts, and they're dressed in bright
clothes, and they come with singing and dancing."
"Who else lives in your palace with you?" she asked drowsily.
"You do," said Young Gerard.
The child's head dropped against his shoulder and she said, "My name's
Dorothea, but my father calls me Thea, and he is the Lord of Combe
Ivy." And she fell fast asleep.
For a little while Young Gerard held and watched her in the firelight,
and then he rose and wrapped her in the old embroidered mantle on the
settle, and went out. And sure-foot as a goat he carried her over the
dark hills by the tracks he knew, for roads there were none, and his
arms ached with his burden, but he would not wake her till they stood
at her father's gates. Then he shook her gently and set her down, and
she clung to him a little dazed, trying to remember.
"This is Combe Ivy," he whispered. "You must go in alone. Will you come
again?"
"One day," said Thea.
"One day there'll be flowers on my cherry-tree," said Young Gerard.
"Don't forget."
"No, I won't," she said.
He returned through the night up hill and down dale, but did not go
back to the shed until he had recovered his lamb. By then it was almost
dawn, and he found his master awake and cursing. He had feared the boy
had made off, and he had had curt treatment at Combe Ivy, which was in
a stir about the loss of the little daughter. Young Gerard showed the
lamb as his excuse, nevertheless the old shepherd leathered the young
one soundly, as he did six days in seven.
After this when Young Gerard sat dreaming on the hills, he dreamed not
only of his happy land and laughing friends, but of the next coming of
little Thea. But Combe Ivy was far away, and the months passed and the
years, and she did not come again. Meanwhile Young Gerard and his tree
grew apace, and the limbs of the boy became longer and stronger, and
the branches of the tree spread up to the roof and even began to thrust
their way through the holes in the wall; but the boy's life, save for
his dreaming, was as friendless as the tree's was flowerless. And of a
tree's dreaming who shall speak? Meanwhile Old Gerard thrashed and
rated him, and reckoned his gold pieces, and counted the years that
still lay between him and his freedom. At last came another April
bringing its hour.
For as he sat on the Mount in the early morning, when he was in his
seventeenth year, Young Gerard saw a slender girl running over the turf
and laughing in the sunlight, sometimes stopping to watch a bird
flying, or stooping to pluck one of the tiny Down-flowers at her feet.
So she came with a dancing step to the top of the Mount, and then she
saw him, and her glee left her and shyness took its place. But a little
pride in her prevented her from turning away, and she still came
forward until she stood beside him, and said:
"Good morning, Shepherd. Is it true that in April the country north of
the hills is filled with lakes?"
"Yes, sometimes, Mistress Thea," said Young Gerard.
She looked at him with surprise and said, "You must be one of my
father's shepherds, but I do not remember seeing you at Combe Ivy."
"I was only once near Combe Ivy," said Young Gerard, "when I took you
there five years ago the night you were lost on these hills."
"Oh, I remember," she said with a faint smile. "How they did scold me.
Is your cherry-tree in flower yet, Shepherd?"
"No, mistress," said Young Gerard.
"I want to see it," she said suddenly.
Young Gerard left his flock to the dog, and walked with her along the
hillbrow.
"I have run away," she told him as they went. "I had to get up very
early while they were asleep. I shall be scolded again. But travelers
come who talk of the lakes, and I wanted to see them, and to swim in
them."
"I wouldn't do that," said Young Gerard, hiding a smile. "It's
dangerous to swim in the April floods. And it would be rather cold."
"What lies beyond?" she asked.
"I'm not able to know," said Young Gerard.
"Some day I mean to know, shepherd."
"Yes, mistress," he said, "you'll be free to."
She looked at him quickly and reddened a little, it might have been
from shame or pity, Young Gerard did not know which. And her shyness
once more enveloped her; it always came over her unexpectedly, taking
her breath away like a breaking wave. So she said no more, and they
walked together, she looking at the ground, he at the soft brown hair
blowing over the curve of her young cheek. She was fine and delicate in
every line, and in her color, and in the touch of her too, Young Gerard
knew. He wanted to touch her cheek with his finger as he would have
touched the petal of a flower. Her neck, the back of it especially, was
one of the loveliest bits of her, like a primrose stalk. He fell a step
behind so that he could look at it. They did not speak as they went. He
did not want to, and she did not know what to say.
When they reached the shed she lingered a moment by the tree, tracing a
bare branch with her finger, and he waited, content, till she should
speak or act, to watch her. At last she said with her faint smile, "I
am very thirsty." Then he went into the shed and came out with his
wooden cup filled with milk. She drank and said, "Thank you, shepherd.
How pretty the violets are in your copse."
"Would you like some?" he asked.
"Not now," she said. "Perhaps another day. I must go now." She gave him
back his cup and went away, slowly at first, but when she was at some
distance he saw her begin to run like a fawn.
She did not come again that spring. And so the stark lives of the boy
and the tree went forward for another year. But one evening in the
following April, when the green was quivering on wood and hedgerow, he
came to the door of the shed and saw her bending like a flower at the
edge of the copse, filling her little basket and singing to herself.
She looked up soon and said:
"Good evening, shepherd. How does your cherry-tree?"
"As usual, Mistress Thea."
"So I see. What a lazy tree it is. Have you some milk for me?"
He brought her his cup and she drank of it for the third time, and left
him before he had had time to realize that she had come and gone, but
only how greatly her delicate beauty had increased in the last year.
However, before the summer was over she came again--to swim in the
river, she told him, as she passed him on the hills, without lingering.
And in the autumn she came to gather blackberries, and he showed her
the best place to find them. Any of these things she might have done as
easily nearer Combe Ivy, but it seemed she must always offer him some
reason for her small truancies--whether to gather berries or flowers,
or to swim in the river. He knew that her chief delight lay in escaping
from her father's manor.
Winter closed her visits; but Young Gerard was as patient as the earth,
and did not begin to look for her till April. As surely as it brought
leaves to the trees and flowers to the grass, it would, he knew, bring
his little mistress's question, half shy, half smiling, "Is your
cherry-tree in blossom, shepherd?" And later her request, smiling and
shy, for milk.
They seldom exchanged more than a few words at any time. Sometimes they
did not speak at all. For he, who was her father's servant, never spoke
first; and she, growing in years and loveliness, grew also in timidity,
so that it seemed to cost her more and more to address her greeting or
her question even to her father's servant. The sweet quick reddening of
her cheek was one of Young Gerard's chief remembrances of her.
But after a while, when they met by those sly chances which she could
control and he could not; and when she did not speak, but glanced and
hesitated and passed on; or glanced and passed without hesitation; or
passed without a glance; he came to know that she would not mind if he
arose and walked with her, if he could control the pretext, which she
could not. And he did so quietly, having always something to show her.
He showed her his most secret nests and his greatest treasures of
flowers, his because he loved them so much. He would have been jealous
of showing these things to any one but her. In a great water-meadow in
the valley, he had once shown her kingcups making sheets of gold,
enameled with every green grass ever seen in spring--thousands of
kingcups and a myriad of milkmaids in between, dancing attendance in
all their faint shades of silver-white and rosy-mauve. When a breeze
blew, this world of milkmaids swayed and curtsied above the kings'
daughters in their glory. Then Gerard and Thea looked at each other
smiling, because the same delight was in each, and soon she looked away
again at the gentle maids and the royal ladies, but he looked still at
her, who was both to him.
In silence he showed her what he loved.
But you must not suppose that she came frequently to those hills. She
was to be seen no more often than you will see a kingfisher when you
watch for it under a willow. Yet because in the season of kingfishers
you know you may see one flash at any instant, so to Young Gerard each
day of spring and summer was an expectancy; and this it was that kept
his lift alight. This and his young troop of friends in a land of fruit
in blossom and a sky in stars. For men, dear maids, live by the daily
bread of their dreams; on realizations they would starve.
At last came the winter that preceded Young Gerard's twenty-first year.
With the stripping of the boughs he stripped his heart of all thoughts
of seeing her again till the green of the coming year. The snows came,
and he tended his sheep and counted his memories; and Old Gerard tended
his sheep and counted his coins. The count was full now, and he dreamed
of April and the freeing of his body. Young Gerard also dreamed of
April, and the freeing of his heart. And under the ice that bound the
flooded meadows doubtless the earth dreamed of the freeing of her
waters and the blooming of the land. The snows and the frosts lasted
late that year as though the winter would never be done, and to the two
Gerards the days crawled like snails; but in time March blew himself
off the face of the earth, and April dawned, and the swollen river went
rushing to the sea above the banks it had drowned with its wild
overflow. And as Old Gerard began to mark the days off on a tally,
Young Gerard began to listen on the hills. When the day came whose
midnight was to make the old man a freedman, Thea had not appeared.
On the morning of this day, as the two shepherds stood outside their
shed before they separated with their flocks, their ears were accosted
with shoutings and halloos on the other side of the copse, and soon
they saw coming through the trees a man in gay attire. He had a
scalloped jerkin of orange leather, and his shoes and cap were of the
same, but his sleeves and hose and feather were of a vivid green, like
nothing in nature. He looked garish in the sun. Seeing the shepherds he
took off his cap, and solemnly thanked heaven for having after all
created something besides hills and valleys. "For," said he, "after
being lost among them I know not how many hours, with no other company
than my own shadow, I had begun to doubt whether I was not the only man
on earth, and my name Adam. A curse of all lords who do not live by
highroads!"
"Where are you bound for, master?" asked Old Gerard.
"Combe Ivy," said the stranger, "and the wedding."
Old Gerard nodded, as one little surprised; but to Young Gerard this
mention of a wedding at Combe Ivy came as news. It did not stir him
much, however, for he was not curious about the doings of the master
and the house he never saw; all that concerned him was that to-day, at
least, he must cease to listen on the hills, since his young mistress
would be at the wedding with the others.
Old Gerard said to the stranger, "Keep the straight track to the south
till you come under Wepham, then follow the valley to the east, and so
you'll be in time for the feasting, master."
"That's certain," said the stranger, "for the Lord of Combe Ivy and the
Rough Master of Coates have had no peers at junketing since Gay Street
lost its Lord; and the feast is like to go on till midnight."
With that he went on his way, and Old Gerard followed him with his
eyes, muttering,
"Would I also were there! But for you," he said, turning on the young
man with a sudden snarl, "I should be! Had ye not come a day too late,
I'd be a freedman to-night instead of to-morrow, and junketing at the
wedding with the rest."
Young Gerard did not understand him. He was not in the habit of
questioning the old man, and if he had would not have expected answers.
But certain words of the stranger had pricked his attention, and now he
said:
"Where is Gay Street?"
"Far away over the Stor and the Chill," growled Old Gerard.
"It's a jolly name."
"Maybe. But they say it's a sorry place now that it lacks its Lord."
"What became of him?"
"How should I know? What can a man know who lives all his life on a
hill with pewits for gossips?"
"You know more than I," said Young Gerard indolently. "You know there's
a wedding down yonder. Who's the Rough Master of Coates?"
"The bridegroom, young know-nothing. You've a tongue in your head
to-day."
"Why do they call him the Rough Master?"
"Because that's what he is, and so are his people, as rough as furze on
a common, they say. Have you any more questions?"
"Yes," said Young Gerard. "Who is the bride?"
"Who should the bride be? Combe Ivy's mother?"
"She's dead," said Young Gerard.
"His daughter then," scoffed Old Gerard.
Young Gerard stared at him.
"Get about your business," shouted the old shepherd with sudden wrath.
"Why do ye stare so? You're not drunk. Ah! down yonder they'll be
getting drunk without me. Enough of your idling and staring!"
He raised his staff, but Young Gerard thrust it aside so violently that
he staggered, and the boy went away to his sheep and they met no more
till evening. The whole of that day Young Gerard sat on the Mount, not
looking as usual to the busy north dreaming of the unknown land beyond
the water, but over the silent slopes and valleys of the south, whose
peoples were only birds and foxes and rabbits, and whose only cities
were built of lights and shadows. Somewhere beyond them was Combe Ivy,
and little Thea getting married to the Rough Master of Coates, in the
midst of feasting and singing and dancing. He thought of her dancing
over the Downs for joy of being free, he thought of her singing to
herself as she gathered flowers in his copse, and he thought of her
feasting on wild berries he had helped her to find--that also was a
feasting and singing and dancing. All day long his thoughts ran, "She
will not come any more in the mornings to bathe in the river over the
hill. She will not come with her little basket to gather flowers and
berries. She will not stop and ask for a cup of milk, or say, Let me
see the young lambs, or say, Is your cherry-tree in flower yet,
shepherd? She will not ask me with her eyes to come with her--oh, she
will not ask me by turning her eyes away, with her little head bent.
You! you Rough Master of Coates, what are you like, what are you like?"
In the evening when he gathered his sheep, one was missing. He had to
take the flock back without it. Old Gerard was furious with him; it
seemed as though on this last night that separated him from the long
fulfillment of his hopes he must be more furious than he had ever been
before. He was furious at being thwarted of the fun in the valley,
furious at the loss of the lamb, most furious at young Gerard's
indifference to his fury. He told the boy he must search on the hills,
and Young Gerard only sat down by the side of the shed and looked to
the south and made no answer. So he went himself, leaving the boy to
prepare the mess for supper; for he feared that if he went to Combe Ivy
that night with a bad tale to tell, his master for a whim might say
that a young sheep was a fair deal for an old shepherd, and take his
gold, and keep him a bondman still. For the Lord of Combe Ivy lived by
his whimsies. But Old Gerard could not find the lost sheep, and when he
came back the boy was where he had left him, looking over the darkening
hills.
"Is the mess ready?" said Old Gerard.
"No," said Young Gerard.
"Why not?"
"Because I forgot."
Old Gerard slashed at him with a rope he had taken in case of need.
"That will make you remember."
"No," said Young Gerard.
"Why not?"
Young Gerard said, "You beat me too often, I cannot remember all the
reasons."
"Then," said Old Gerard full of wrath, "I will beat you out of all
reason."
And he began to thrash Young Gerard will all his might, talking between
the blows. "Haven't you been the curse of my life for twenty-one
years?" snarled he. "Can I trust you? Can I leave you? Would the sheep
get their straw? Would the lambs be brought alive into the world? Bah!
for all you care the sheep would go cold and their young would die. And
down yonder they are getting drunk without me!"
"Old shepherd," said a voice behind him.
The angry man, panting with his rage and the exertion of his blows,
paused and turned. Near the corner of the shed he saw a woman in a
duffle cloak standing, or rather stooping, on her crutch. She was so
ancient that it seemed as though Death himself must have forgotten her,
but her eyes in their wrinkled sockets were as piercing as thorns. Old
Gerard, staring at them, felt as though his own eyes were pricked.
"Where have I seen you before, hag?" he said.
"Have you ever seen me before?" asked the old woman.
"I thought so, I thought so"--he fumbled with his memory.
"Then it must have been when we went courting in April, nine-and-ninety
years ago," said the old woman dryly, "but you lads remember me better
than I do you. Can I sleep by your hearth to-night?"
"Where are you going to?" asked Old Gerard, half grinning, half sour.
"Where I'll be welcome," said she.
"You're not welcome here. But there's nothing to steal, you may sleep
by the hearth."
"Thank you, shepherd," said the crone, "for your courtesy. Why were you
beating the boy?"
"Because he's one that won't work."
"Is he your slave?"
"He's my master's slave. But he's idle."
"I am not idle," said Young Gerard. "The year round I'm busy long
before dawn and long after dark."
"Then why are you idle to-day," sneered Old Gerard, "of all the days in
the year?"
"I've something else to think of," said the boy.
"You see," said the old man to the crone.
"Well," said she, "a boy cannot always be working. A boy will sometimes
be dreaming. Life isn't all labor, shepherd."
"What else is it?" said Old Gerard.
"Joy."
"Ho, ho, ho!" went Old Gerard.
"And power."
"Ho, ho, ho!"
"And triumph."
"Not for serfs," said Old Gerard.
"For serfs and lords," she said.
"Ho, ho, ho!"
"You were young once," said the crone.
Old Gerard said, "What if I was?"
"Good night," said the crone; and she went into the shed.
The shepherds looked after her, the old one stupidly, the young one
with lighted eyes.
"Will you get supper?" growled Old Gerard.
"No," said Young Gerard, "I won't. I want no supper. Put down that
rope. I am taller and stronger than you, and why I've let you go on
beating me so long I don't know, unless it is that you began to beat me
when you were taller and stronger than I. If you want any supper, get
it yourself."
Old Gerard turned red and purple. "The boy's mad!" he gasped. "Do you
know what happens to servants who defy their masters?"
"Yes," said Young Gerard, "then they're lords." And he too went into
the shed.
"Try that on Combe Ivy!" bawled Old Gerard, "and see what you'll get
for it. I thank fortune, I'll be quit of you tomorrow-- What's that
to-do in the valley?" he muttered, and stared down the hill.
Away in the hollows and shadows he saw splashes of moving light, and
heard far-off snatches of song and laughter, but the movements and
sounds were still so distant that they seemed to be only those of
ghosts and echoes. Nearer they came and nearer, and now in the night he
could discern a great rabble stumbling among the dips and rises of the
hills.
"They're heading this way," said Old Gerard. "Why, tis the
wedding-party," he said amazed, "if it's not witchcraft. But why are
they coming here?"
"Hola! hola! hola!" shouted a tipsy voice hard by.
"Here's dribblings from the wineskin," said Old Gerard; and up the
track struggled a drunken man, waving a torch above his head. It was
the guest whom he had directed in the morning.
"Hola!" he shouted again on seeing Old Gerard.
"Well, racketer?" said the shepherd, with a chuckle.
"Shall a man not racket at another man's wedding?" he cried. "Let some
one be jolly, say I!"
"The bridegroom," said Old Gerard.
"Ha, ha!" laughed the other, "the bridegroom! He was first in high
feather and last in the sulks."
"The bride, then."
"Ha, ha! ha, ha! during the toasts he tried to kiss her."
"Wouldn't she?"
"She wouldn't."
"Hark!" said Old Gerard, "here they come." The sound of rollicking
increased as the rout drew nearer.
"He's taking her home across the river," said the guest. "I wouldn't be
she. There she sat, her pretty face fixed and frozen, but a fright in
her that shook her whole body. You could see it shake. And we drank,
how we drank! to the bride and the groom and their daughters and sons,
to the sire and the priest, and the ring and the bed, to the kiss and
the quarrel, to love which is one thing and marriage which is
another--Lord, how we drank! But she drank nothing. And for all her
terror the Rough could do no more with her than with a stone. Something
in her turned him cold every time. Suddenly up he gets. We'll have no
more of this,' he says, we'll go.' Combe Ivy would have had them stay,
but She's where she's used to lord it here,' says Rough, I'll take
her where I lord it, and teach her who's master,' And he pushes down
his chair and takes her hand and pulls her away; and out we tumble
after him. Combe Ivy cries to him to wait for the horses, but no,
We'll foot it,' says he, up hill and down dale as the crow flies, and
if she hates me now without a cause I swear she'll love me with one at
the end of the dance.' We're dancing them as far as the Wildbrooks; on
t'other side they may dance for themselves. Here they come
dancing--dance, you!" cried the guest, and whirled his torch like a
madman. And as he whirled and staggered, up the hill came the
wedding-party as tipsy as he was: a motley procession, waving torches
and garlands, winecups, flagons, colored napkins, shouting and singing
and beating on trenchers and salvers--on anything that they could
snatch from the table as they quitted it. They came in all their
bravery--in doublets of flame-colored silk and blue, in scarlet leather
and green velvet, in purple slashed with silver and crimson fringed
with bronze; but their vests were unlaced, their hose sagged, and silk
and velvet and leather were stained bright or dark with wine. Some had
stuck leaves and flowers in their hair, others had tied their forelocks
with ribbons like horses on a holiday, and one had torn his yellow
mantle in two and capered in advance, waving the halves in either hand
like monstrous banners, or the flapping wings of some golden bird of
prey. In the midst of them, pressing forward and pressed on by the riot
behind, was the Rough Master of Coates, and with him, always hanging a
little away and shrinking under her veil, Thea, whose right wrist he
grasped in his left hand. Breathless she was among the breathless
rabble, who, gaining the hilltop seized each other suddenly and broke
into antics, shaking their napkins and rattling on their plates. Their
voices were hoarse with laughter and drink, and their faces flushed
with it; only among those red and swollen faces, the bridegroom's, in
the flare of the torches, looked as black as the bride's looked white.
The night about the newly-wedded pair was one great din and flutter.
Then in a trice the dancers all lost breath, and the dance parted as
they staggered aside; and at the door of the shed Young Gerard stood,
and gazed through the broken revel at little Thea, and she stood gazing
at him. And behind and above him, along the walls of the hut, and over
the doorway, and making lovely the very roof, she saw a cloud of
snowwhite blossom.
Somebody cried, "Here's a boy. He shall dance too. Boy, is there drink
within?"
The others took up the clamor. "Drink! bring us something to drink!"
"The red grape!" cried one.
"The yellow grape!" cried another.
"The sap of the apple!"
"The juice of the pear!"
"Nut-brown ale!"
"The spirit that burns!"
"Bring us drink!" they cried in a breath.
"Will you have milk?" said Young Gerard.
At this the company burst into a roar of laughter. They laughed till
they rocked. But when they were silent little Thea spoke. She said in a
faint clear voice:
"I would like a cup of milk."
Young Gerard went into the hut and came out with his wooden cup filled
with milk, and brought it to her, and she drank. None spoke or moved
while she drank, but when she gave him the cup again one of the crew
said chuckling, "Now she has drunk, now she's merrier. Try her again,
Rough, try her on milk!"
Again the night reeled with their laughter. They surrounded the wedded
pair crying, "Kiss her! kiss her! kiss her!" Then the Rough Master of
Coates pulled her round to him, dark with anger, and tried to kiss her.
But she turned sharply in his arms, bending her head away. And despite
his force, and though he was a man and she little more than a child, he
could not make her mouth meet his. And the laughter of the guests rose
higher, and infuriated him.
Then he who had spoken before said, "By Hymen, the bride should kiss
something. If the lord's not good enough, let her kiss the churl!" At
this the revelers, wild with delight, beat on their trenchers and
shouted, "Ay, let her!"
And suddenly they surged in, parting Thea from the Rough; while some
pulled him back others dragged Young Gerard forward, till he stood
where the bridegroom had stood; and in that seething throng of mockery
he felt her clinging helplessly to him, and his arm went round her.
"Kiss him! kiss him! kiss him!" cried the guests.
She looked up pitifully at him, and he bent his head. And she heard him
whisper:
"My cherry-tree's in flower."
She whispered, "Yes."
And they kissed each other.
Then the tumult of laughter passed all bounds, so that it was a wonder
if it was not heard at Combe Ivy; and the guests clashed their
trenchers one against another, and whirled their torches till the
sparks flew, yelling, "The bride's kiss! Ha, ha! the bride's kiss!"
But the Rough Master of Coates had had enough; snarling like a mad dog
he thrust his way through the crowd on one side, as Old Gerard, seeing
his purpose, thrust through on the other, and both at the same instant
fell on the boy, the one with his scabbard, the other with his staff.
"Kisses, will ye?" cried the Rough Master of Coates, "here's kisses for
ye!"
"Ha, ha!" cried the guests, "more kisses, more kisses for him that
kissed the bride!"
And then they all struck him at once, kicking and beating him without
mercy, till he lay prone on the earth. When he had fallen, the Rough
shouted, "Away to the Wildbrooks, away!"
And he seized Thea in his arms, and rushed along the brow of the hill,
and all the company followed in a confusion, and were swallowed up in
the night.
But Young Gerard raised himself a little, and groaned, "The
Wildbrooks--are they going to the Wildbrooks?"
"Ay, and over the Wildbrooks," said Old Gerard.
"But they're in flood," gasped Young Gerard. "They'll never cross it in
the spring floods."
"They'll manage it somehow. The Rough--did you see his eyes when you--?
ho, ho! he'll cross it somehow."
"He can't," the boy muttered. "The April tide's too strong. He will
drown in the flood."
"And she," said Old Gerard.
"Perhaps she will swim on the flood," said Young Gerard faintly. And he
sighed and sank back on the earth.
"Ay, you'll be sore," chuckled the old man. "You had your salve before
you had your drubbing. Lie there. I must be gone on business."
He took up his staff and went down the hill for the last time to Combe
Ivy, to purchase his freedom.
But Young Gerard lay with his face pressed to the turf. "And that was
the bridegroom," he said, and shook where he lay.
"Young shepherd," said a voice beside him. He looked up and saw the
hooded crone, come out of the hut. "Why do you water the earth?" said
she. "Have not the rains done their work?"
"What work, dame?"
"You've as fine a cherry in flower," said she, "as ever blossomed in
Gay Street in the season of singing and dancing."
"Singing and dancing!" he cried, his voice choking, and he sprang up
despite his pains. "Don't speak to me, dame, of singing and dancing.
You're old, like the withered branch of a tree, but did you not see
with your old eyes, and hear with your old ears? Did you not see her
come up the green hillside with singing and dancing? Oh, yes, my
cherry's in flower, like a crown for a bride, and the spring is all in
movement, and the birds are all in song, and she--she came up the
hillside with singing and dancing."
"I saw," said the crone, "and I heard. I'm not so old, young shepherd,
that I do not remember the curse of youth."
"What's that?" he said moodily.
"To bear the soul of a master in the body of a slave," said she; "to be
a flower in a sealed bud, the moon in a cloud, water locked in ice,
Spring in the womb of the year, love that does not know itself."
"But when it does know?" said Young Gerard slowly.
"Oh, when it knows!" said she. "Then the flower of the fruit will leap
through the bud, and the moon will leap like a lamb on the hills of the
sky, and April will leap in the veins of the year, and the river will
leap with the fury of Spring, and the headlong heart will cry in the
body of youth, I will not be a slave, but I will be the lord of life,
because--"
"Because?" said Young Gerard.
"Because I will!"
Young Gerard said nothing, and they sat together in a long silence in
the darkness, and time went by filling the sky with stars.
Now as they sat the hilltop once more began to waver with shadows and
voices, but this time the shadows came on heavy feet and weary, and the
voices were forlorn. One feebly cried, "Hola!" And round the belt of
trees straggled the rout that had left them an hour or so earlier. But
now they were sodden and dejected, draggled and woebegone, as sorry a
spectacle as so many drowned rats.
"Fire!" moaned one. "Fire! fire!"
"Who's burning?" said Young Gerard, and got quickly on his feet; but he
did not see the two he looked for.
"None's burning, fool, but many are drowning. Do we not look like
drowned men? How shall we ever get back to Combe Ivy, and warmth and
drink and comforts? Would we were burning!"
"What has happened?" the boy demanded.
"We went in search of the ferry," he said, "but the ferry was drowned
too."
"We couldn't find the ferry," said a second.
"No," mumbled a third, "the river had drunk it up. Where there were
paths there are brooks, and where there were meadows, lakes."
The miserable crew broke out into plaints and questions--"Have you no
fire? have you no food? no coverings?"
"None," said Young Gerard. "Where is the bride?"
"Have you do drink?"
"Where is the bride?"
"The groom stumbled," said one. "Let us to Combe Ivy, in comfort's
name. There'll be drink there."
He staggered down the hill, and his fellows made after him. But Young
Gerard sprang upon one, and gripped him by the shoulder and shook him,
and for the third time cried:
"Where is the bride?"
"In the water," he answered heavily, "because--there was--no wine."
Then he dragged himself out of the boy's grasp, and fell down the hill
after his companions.
Young Gerard stood for one instant listening and holding his breath.
Suddenly he said, "My lost lamb, crying on the hills." He ran into the
shed and looked about, and snatched from the settle the green and
cherry cloak, and from the wall the crystal and silver lantern. He
struck a spark from a flint and lit the wick. It burned brightly and
steadily. Then he ran out of the shed. The old woman rose up in his
path.
"That's a good light," said she, "and a warm cloak."
"Don't stop me!" said Young Gerard, and ran on. She nodded, and as he
vanished in one direction, she vanished in the other.
He had not run far when he saw one more shadow on the hills; and it
came with faltering steps, and a trembling sobbing breath, and he held
up his lantern and the light fell on Thea, shivering in her wet veil.
As the flame struck her eyes she sighed, "Oh, I can't see the way--I
can't see!"
Young Gerard hurried to her and said, "Come this way," and he took her
hand; but she snatched it quickly from him.
"Go, man!" she said. "Don't touch me. Go!"
"Don't be frightened of me," said Young Gerard gently.
Then she looked at him and whispered, "Oh--it is you--shepherd. I was
trying to find you. I'm cold."
Young Gerard wrapped the cloak about her, and said, "Come with me. I'll
make you a fire."
He took her back to the shed. But she did not go in. She crouched on
the ground under the cherry-tree. Young Gerard moved about collecting
brushwood. They scarcely looked at each other; but once when he passed
her he said, "You're shivering."
"It's because I'm so wet," said Thea.
"Did you fall in the water?"
She nodded. "The floods were so strong."
"It's a bad night for swimming," said Young Gerard.
"Yes, shepherd." She then said again, "Yes." He could tell by her voice
that she was smiling faintly. He glanced at her and saw her looking at
him; both smiled a little and glanced away again. He began to pile his
brushwood for the fire.
After a short pause she said timidly, "Are you sore, shepherd?"
"No, I feel nothing," said he.
"They beat you very hard."
"I did not feel their blows."
"How could you not feel them?" she said in a low voice. He looked at
her again, and again their eyes met, and again parted quickly.
"Now I'll strike a spark," said Young Gerard, "and you'll be warm soon."
He kindled his fire; the branches crackled and burned, and she knelt
beside the blaze and held her hands to it.
"I was never here by night before," she said.
"Yes, once," said Young Gerard. "You often came, didn't you, to gather
flowers in the morning and to swim in the river at noon. But once
before you were here in the night."
"Was I?" said she.
He dropped a handful of cones into her lap, throwing the last on the
fire. She threw another after it, and smiled as it crackled.
"I remember," she said. "Thank you, shepherd. You were always kind and
found me the things I wanted, and gave me your cup to drink of. Who'll
drink of it now?"
"No one," he said, "ever again."
He went and fetched the cup and gave it to her. "Burn that too," said
Young Gerard. Thea put it into the fire and trembled. When it was
burned she asked very low, "Will you be lonely?"
"I'll have my sheep and my thoughts."
"Yes," said Thea, "and stars when the sheep are folded. The stars are
good to be with too."
"Good to see and not be seen by," he said.
"How do you know they don't see you?" she asked shyly.
"One shepherd on a hill isn't much for the eye of a star. He may watch
them unwatched, while they come and go in their months. Sometimes there
aren't any, and sometimes not more than one pricking the sky near the
moon. But to-night, look! the sky's like a tree with full branches."
Thea looked up and said with a child's laugh, "Break me a branch!"
"I'd want Jacob's Ladder for that," smiled Young Gerard.
"Then shake the tree and bring them down!" she insisted.
"Here come your stars," said Young Gerard. Suddenly she was enveloped
in a falling shower, white and heavenly.
"The stars--!" she cried. "Oh, what is it?"
"My cherry-tree--it's in flower--" said Young Gerard, and his voice
trembled. She looked up quickly and saw that he was standing beside
her, shaking the tree above her head. And now their eyes met and did
not separate. He put out his hand and broke a branch from the tree and
offered it to her. She took it from him slowly, as though she were in a
dream, and laid it in her lap, and put her face in her hands and began
to cry.
Young Gerard whispered, "Why are you crying?"
Thea said, "Oh, my wedding, my wedding! Only last year I thought of the
night of my wedding and how it would be. It was not with torchlight and
shouting and wine, but moonlight and silence and the scent of wild
blossoms. And now I know that it was not the night of my wedding I
dreamed of."
"What did you dream of?" asked Young Gerard.
"The night of my first love."
"Thea," said Young Gerard, and he knelt beside her.
"And my love's first kiss."
"Oh, Thea," said Young Gerard, and he took her hands.
"Why did you not feel their blows?" she said. "I felt them."
Their arms went round each other, and for the second time that night
they kissed.
Young Gerard said, "I've always wondered if this would happen."
And Thea answered, "I didn't know it would be you."
"Didn't you? didn't you?" he whispered, stroking her head, wondering at
himself doing what he had so often dreamed of doing.
"Oh," she faltered, "sometimes I thought--it might--be you, darling."
"Thea, Thea!"
"When I came over the Mount to swim in the river, and saw you in the
distance among your sheep, there was a swifter river running through
all my body. When I came every April to ask for your cherry-tree, what
did it matter to me that it was not in bloom? for all my heart was wild
with bloom, oh, Gerard, my--lover!"
"Oh, Thea, my love! What can I give you, Thea, I, a shepherd?"
"You were the lord of the earth, and you gave me its flowers and its
birds and its secret waters. What more could you give me, you, a
shepherd and my lord?"
"The wild white bloom of its fruit-trees that comes to the branches in
April like love to the heart. I'll give it you now. Sit here, sit here!
I'll make you a bower of the cherry, and a crown, and a carpet too.
There's nothing in all April lovely and wild enough for you to-night,
your bridal night, my lady and my darling!"
And in a great fit of joy he broke branch after branch from the tree as
she sat at its foot, and set them about her, and filled her arms to
overflowing, and crowned her with blossoms, and shook the bloom under
her feet, till her shy happy face, paling and reddening by turns,
looked out from a world of flowers and she cried between laughing and
weeping, "Oh, Gerard, oh, you're drowning me!"
"It's the April floods," shouted Young Gerard, "and I must drown with
you, Thea, Thea, Thea!" And he cast himself down beside her, and
clasped her amid all the blossoming, and with his head on her shoulder
kissed and kissed her till he was breathless and she as pale as the
flowers that smothered their kisses.
And then suddenly he folded her in the green mantle, blossoms and all,
and sprang up and lifted her to his breast till she lay like a child in
the arms of its mother; and he picked up the lantern and said, "Now we
will go away for ever."
"Where are we going?" she whispered with shining eyes.
"To the Wildbrooks," he said.
"To drown in the floods together?" She closed her eyes.
"There's a way through all floods," said Young Gerard.
And he ran with her over the hills with all his speed.
And Old Gerard returned to a hut as empty as it had been one-and-twenty
years ago. And they say that Combe Ivy, having never set eyes on the
boy in his life, swore that the shepherd's tale had been a fiction from
first to last, and kept him a serf to the end of his days.
("What a night of stars it is!" said Martin Pippin, stretching his arms.
"Good heavens, Master Pippin," cried Joyce, "what a moment to mention
it!"
"It is worth mentioning," said Martin, "at all moments when it is so. I
would not think of mentioning it in the middle of a snowstorm."
"You should as little think of mentioning it," said Joyce, "in the
middle of a story."
"But I am at the end of my story, Mistress Joyce."
Joscelyn: Preposterous! Oh! Oh, how can you say so? I am ashamed of you!
Martin: Dear Mistress Joscelyn, I thank you in charity's name for being
that for me which I have never yet succeeded in being for myself.
Joscelyn: What! are you not ashamed to offer us a broken gift? Your
story is like a cracked pitcher with half the milk leaked out. What was
the secret of the Lantern, the Cloak, and the Cherry-tree?
Joyce: Who was the lovely lady, his mother? and who the old crone?
Jennifer: What was the end of the Rough Master of Coates?
Jessica: Did not the lovers drown in the floods?
Jane: And if they did not, what became of them?
"Please," said little Joan, "tell us why Young Gerard dreamed those
dreams. Oh, please tell us what happened."
"Women's taste is for trifles," said Martin. "I have offered you my
cake, and you wish only to pick off the nuts and the cherries."
"No," said Joan, "we wish you to put them on. Do you not love nuts and
cherries on a cake?"
"More than anything," said Martin.)
A long while ago, dear maidens, there were Lords in Gay Street, and up
and down the Street the cherry-trees bloomed in Spring as they bloomed
nowhere else in Sussex, and under the trees sang and danced the
loveliest lads and lasses in all England, with hearts like children.
And on all their holiday clothes they worked the leaf and branch and
flower and fruit of the cherry. And they never wore anything else but
their holiday clothes, because in Gay Street it was always holidays.
And a long while ago there were Gypsies on Nyetimber Common, the
merriest Gypsies in the southlands, with the gayest tatters and the
brightest eyes, and the maddest hearts for mirth-making. They were also
makers of lanterns when they were anything else but what all Gypsies
are.
And once the son of a Gypsy King loved the daughter of a Lord of Gay
Street, and she loved him. And because of this there was wrath in Gay
Street and scorn on Nyetimber, and all things were done to keep the
lovers apart. But they who attempt this might more profitably chase
wild geese. So one night in April they were taken under one of her
father's own wild cherries by the light of one of his father's own
lanterns. And it was her father and his father who found them, as they
had missed them, in the same moment, and were come hunting for
sweethearts by night with their people behind them.
Then the Lord of Gay Street pronounced a curse of banishment on his own
daughter, that she must go far away beyond the country of the floods,
and another on his own tree, that it might never blossom more. And
there and then it withered. And the Gypsy King pronounced as dark a
curse of banishment on his own son, and a second on his own lantern,
that it might never more give light. And there and then it went out.
Then from the crowd of gypsies came the oldest of them all, who was the
King's great-grandmother, and she looked from the angry parents to the
unhappy lovers and said, "You can blight the tree and make the lantern
dark; nevertheless you cannot extinguish the flower and the light of
love. And till these things lift the curse and are seen again united
among you, there will be no Lords in Gay Street nor Kings on Nyetimber."
And she broke a shoot from the cherry and picked up the lantern and
gave them to the lady and her lover; and then she took them one by each
hand and went away. And the Lord of Gay Street and the Gypsy King died
soon after without heirs, and the joy went out of the hearts of both
peoples, and they dressed in sad colors for one-and-twenty years.
But the three traveled south through the country of the floods, and on
the way the King's son was drowned, as others had been before him, and
after him the Rough Master of Coates. But the crone brought the lady
safely through, and how she was at once delivered of her son and her
sorrow, dear maidens, you know.
And for one-and-twenty years the crone was seen no more, and then of a
sudden she re-appeared at daybreak and bade her people put on their
bright apparel because their King was coming with a young Queen; and
after this she led them to Gay Street where she bade the folk to don
their holiday attire, because their Lord was on his way with a fair
Lady. And all those girls and boys, the dark and the light, felt the
child of joy in their hearts again, and they went in the morning with
singing and dancing to welcome the comers under the cherry-trees.
I entreat you now, Mistress Joyce, for the second hair from your head.
SECOND INTERLUDE
The milkmaids put their forgotten apples to their mouths, and the
chatter began to run out of them like juice from bitten fruit.
Jessica: What did you think of this story, Jane?
Jane: I did not know what to think, Jessica, until the very conclusion,
and then I was too amazed to think anything. For who would have
imagined the young Shepherd to be in reality a lord?
Martin: Few of us are what we seem, Mistress Jane. Even chimney-sweeps
are Jacks-in-Green on May-Days; for the other
three-hundred-and-sixty-four days in the year they pretend to be
chimney-sweeps. And I have actually known men who appeared to be haters
of women, when they secretly loved them most tenderly.
Joscelyn: It does not surprise me to hear this. I have always
understood men to be composed of caprices.
Martin: They are composed of nothing else. I see you know them through
and through.
Joscelyn: I do not know anything at all about them. We do not study
what does not interest us.
Martin: I hope, Mistress Joscelyn, you found my story worthy of study?
Joscelyn: It served its turn. Might one, by going to Rackham Hill, see
this same cherry-tree and this same shed?
Martin: Alas, no. The shed rotted with time and weather, and bit by bit
its sides were rebuilt with stone. And the cherry-tree Old Gerard
chopped down in a fury, and made firewood of it. But it too had served
its turn. For as every man's life (and perhaps, but you must answer for
this, every woman's life), awaits the hour of blossoming that makes it
immortal, so this tree passed in a single night from sterility to
immortality; and it mattered as little if its body were burned the next
day, as it would have mattered had Gerard and Thea gone down through
the waters that night instead of many years later, after a life-time of
great joy and delight.
Joyce: I am glad of that. There were moments when I feared it would not
be so.
Jennifer: I too. For how could it be otherwise, seeing that he was a
shepherd and she a lord's daughter?
Jessica: And when it was related how she was to wed the Rough Master of
Coates, my hopes were dashed entirely.
Jane: And when they beat Young Gerard I was perfectly certain he was
dead.
Joan: I rather fancied the tale would end happily, all the same.
Martin: I fancied so too. For though any of these accidents would have
marred the ending, love is a divinity above all accidents, and guards
his own with extraordinary obstinacy. Nothing could have thwarted him
of his way but one thing.
Five of the Milkmaids: Oh, what?
Martin: Had Thea been one of those who are not interested in the study
of men.
Nobody said anything in the Apple-Orchard.
Joscelyn: She need not have been condemned to unhappiness on that
account, singer. And what does the happiness or unhappiness of an idle
story weigh? Whether she wedded another, or whether they were parted by
whatever cause, such as her superior station, or even his death, it's
all one to me.
Jennifer: And me.
Jessica: And me.
Jane: And me.
Martin: The tale is judged. Let it go hang. For a cloud has dropped
over nine-tenths of the moon, like the eyelid of a girl who still peeps
through her lashes, but will soon fall asleep for weariness. I have
made her lids as heavy as yours with my poor story. Let us all sleep
and forget it.
So the girls lay down in the grass and slept. But Joyce went on
swinging. And every time she swayed past him she looked at Martin, and
her lips opened and shut again, nothing having escaped them but a very
little laughter. The tenth time this happened Martin said:
"What keeps your lashes open, Mistress Joyce, when your comrades' lie
tangled on their cheeks? Is it the same thing that opens your lips and
peeps through the doorway and runs away again?"
"MUST my lashes shut because others' do?" said Joyce. "May not lashes
have whims of their own?"
"Nothing is more whimsical," said Martin Pippin. "I have known, for
instance, lashes that WILL be golden though the hair of the head be
dark. It is a silly trick."
"I don't dislike such lashes," said Joyce. "That is, I think I should
not if ever I saw them."
Martin: Perhaps you are right. I should love them in a woman.
Joyce: I never saw them in a woman.
Martin: In a man they would be regrettable.
Joyce: Then why did you give them to Young Gerard?
Martin: Did I? It was pure carelessness. Let us change the color of his
lashes.
Joyce: No, no! I will not have them changed. I would not for the world.
Martin: Dear Mistress Joyce, if I had the world to offer you, I would
sit by the road and break it with a pickax rather than change a single
eyelash in Young Gerard's lids. Since you love them.
Joyce: Oh, did I say so?
Martin: Didn't you?--Mistress Joyce, when you laugh I am ready to
forgive you all your debts.
Joyce: Why, what do I owe you?
Martin: An eyelash.
Joyce: I am sure I do not.
Martin: No? Then a hair of some sort. How will you be able to sleep
to-night with a hair on your conscience? For your own sake, lift that
crowbar.
Joyce: To tell you the truth, I fear to redeem my promise lest you are
unable to redeem yours.
Martin: Which was?
Joyce: To blow it to its fellow, who is now wandering in the night like
thistledown.
Martin: I will do it, nevertheless.
Joyce: It is easier promised than proved. But here is the hair.
Martin: Are you certain it is the same hair?
Joyce: I kept it wound round my finger.
Martin: I know no better way of keeping a hair. So here it goes!
And he held the hair to his lips and blew on it.
Martin: A blessing on it. It will soon be wedded.
Joyce: I have your word on it.
Martin: You shall have your eyes on it if you will tell me one thing.
Joyce: Is it a little thing?
Martin: It's as trifling as a hair. I wish only to know why you have
fallen out with men.
Joyce: For the best of reasons. Why, Master Pippin! they say the world
is round!
Martin: Heaven preserve us! was ever so giddy a statement? Round? Why,
the world's as full of edges as the dealings of men and women, in which
you can scarcely go a day's march without reaching the end of all
things and tumbling into heaven. I tell you I have traveled the world
more than any man living, and it takes me all my time to keep from
falling off the brink. Round? The world is one great precipice!
Joyce: I said so! I said so! I know I was right! I should like to
tell--them so.
Martin: Were you only able to go out of the Orchard, you would be free
to tell--them so. They are such fools, these men.
Joyce: Not in all matters, Master Pippin, but certainly in this. They
are good at some things.
Martin: For my part I can't think what.
Joyce: They whitewash cowsheds beautifully.
Martin: Who wouldn't? Whitewash is such beautiful stuff. No, let us be
done with these round-minded men and go to bed. Good night, dear
milkmaid.
Joyce: Ah, but singer! you have not yet proved your fable of the two
hairs, which you swore were as hard to keep apart as the two lovers in
your tale.
"Whom love guarded against accidents," said Martin; and he held out to
her the third finger of his left hand, and wound at its base were the
two hairs, in a ring as fine as a cobweb. She took his finger between
two of hers and laughed, and examined it, and laughed again.
"You have been playing the god of love to my hairs," said Joyce.
"Somebody must protect those that cannot, or will not, be kind to
themselves," said Martin. And then his other fingers closed quickly on
her hand, and he said: "Dear Mistress Joyce, help me to play the god of
love to Gillian, and give me your key to the Well-House, because there
were moments when you feared my tale would end unhappily."
She pulled her hand away and began to swing rapidly, without answering.
But presently she exclaimed, "Oh, oh! it has dropped!"
"What? what?" said Martin anxiously.
But she only cried again, "Oh, my heart! it has dropped under the
swing."
"In love's name," said Martin, "let me recover your heart."
He groped in the grass and found what she had dropped, and then was
obliged to fall flat on his back to escape her feet as she swung.
"Well, any time's a time for laughing," said Martin, crawling forth and
getting on his knees. "Here's the key to your heart, laughing Joyce."
"Oh, Martin! how can I take it with my hands on the ropes?"
"Then I'll lay it on your lap."
"Oh, Martin! how do you expect it to stay there while I swing?"
"Then you must stop swinging."
"Oh, Martin! I will never stop swinging as long as I live!"
"Then what must I do with this key?"
"Oh, Martin! why do you bother me so about an old key? Can't you see
I'm busy?"
"Oh, Joyce! when you laugh I must--I must--"
"Yes?"
"I must!"
And he caught her two little feet in his hands as she next flew by, and
kissed each one upon the instep.
Then he ran to his bed under the hedge, and she sat where she was till
her laughing turned to smiling, and her smiling to sleeping.
"Maids! maids! maids!"
It was morning.
"To your hiding-place, Master Pippin!" urged Joscelyn. "It's our master
come again."
Martin concealed himself with speed, and an instant later the farmer's
burly face peered through the gap in the hedge.
"Good morrow, maids."
"Good morrow, master."
"Has my daughter stopped weeping yet?"
"No, master," said Joyce, "but I begin to think that she will before
long."
"A little longer will be too long," moaned Gillman, "for my purse is
running dry with these droughty times, and I shall have to mortgage the
farm to buy me ale, since I am foiled of both water and milk. Who would
have daughters when he might have sons? Gillian!" he cried, "when will
ye learn that old heads are wiser than young ones?"
But Gillian paid no more attention to him than to the cawing rooks in
the elms in the oatfield.
"Take your bread, maids," said Gillman, "and heaven send us grace
to-morrow."
"Just an instant, master," said Joyce. "I would like to know if Blossom
my Shorthorn is well?"
"As well as a child without its mother, maid, though Michael has turned
nurse to her. But she seems sworn to hold back her milk till you come
again. Rack and ruin, nothing but rack and ruin!"
And off he went.
Then breakfast was prepared as on the previous day, and Gillian's stale
loaf was broken for the ducks. But Joscelyn pointed out that one of the
kissing-crusts had been pulled off in the night.
"Your stories, Master Pippin, are doing their work," said she.
"I begin to think so," said Martin cheerfully. And then they fell to on
their own white loaves and sweet apples.
When they had breakfasted Martin observed that he could make better and
longer daisy-chains than any one else in the world, and his statement
was pooh-poohed by six voices at once. For girls' fingers, said these
voices, had been especially fashioned by nature for the making of
daisy-chains. Martin challenged them to prove this, and they plucked
lapfuls of the small white daisies with big yellow eyes, and threaded
chains of great length, and hung them about each other's necks. And so
deft and dainty was their touch that the chains never broke in the
making or, what is still more delicate a matter, in the hanging. But
Martin's chains always broke before he had joined the last daisy to the
first, and the girls jeered at him for having no necklace to match
their necklaces of pearls and gold, and for failing so contemptibly in
his boast. And he appeared so abashed by their jeers that little Joan
relented and made a longer chain than any that had been made yet, and
hung it round his neck. At which he was merry again, and confessed
himself beaten, and the girls became very gracious, being in their
triumph even more pleased with him than with themselves. Which was a
great deal. And by then it was dinner-time.
After dinner Martin proposed that as they had sat all the morning they
should run all the afternoon, so they played Touchwood. And Martin was
He. But an orchard is so full of wood that he had a hard job of it. And
he observed that Jennifer had very little daring, and scarcely ever
lifted her finger from the wood as she ran from one tree to another;
and that Jane had no daring at all, and never even left her tree. And
that Joscelyn was extremely daring when it was safe to be so; and that
Jessica was daring enough to tweak him and run away, while Joyce was
more daring still, for she tweaked him and did not run. As for little
Joan, she puzzled him most of all; for half the time she outdid them
all in daring, and then she was uncatchable, slipping through his very
fingers like a ray of sunlight a child tries to hold; but the other
half of the time she was timidity itself, and crept from tree to tree,
and if he were near became like a little frightened rabbit, forgetting,
or being through fear unable, to touch safety; and then she was snared
more easily than any.
By supper, however, every maid had been He but Jane. For no man can
catch what doesn't run.
"How the time has flown," said Joscelyn, when they were all seated
about the middle tree after the meal.
"It makes such a difference," said Jennifer, "when there's something to
do. We never used to have anything to do till Master Pippin came, and
now life is all games and stories."
"The games," said Joscelyn, "are well enough."
"Shall we," said Martin, "forego the stories?"
"Oh, Master Pippin!" said Jennifer anxiously, "we surely are to have a
story to-night?"
"Unless we are to remain here for ever," said Martin, "I fear we must.
But for my part I am quite happy here. Are not you, Mistress Joscelyn?"
"Your questions are idle," said she. "You know very well that we cannot
escape a story."
"You see, Mistress Jennifer," said Martin. "Let us resign ourselves
therefore. And for your better diversion, please sit in the swing, and
when the story is tedious you will have a remedy at hand."
So saying, he put Jennifer on the seat and her hands on the ropes, and
the five other girls climbed into the tree, while he took the bough
that had become his own. And all provided themselves with apples.
"Begin," said Joscelyn.
"A story-teller," said Martin, "as much as any other craftsman, needs
his instruments, of which his auditors are the chief. And of these I
lack one." And he fixed his eyes of the weeper in the Well-House.
"You have six already," said Joscelyn. "The seventh you must acquire as
you proceed. So begin."
"Without the vital tool?" cried Martin. "As well might you bid Madam
Toad to spin flax without her distaff."
"What folly is this?" said Joscelyn. "Toads don't spin."
"Don't they?" said Martin, much astonished. "I thought they did. What
then is toadflax? Do the wildflowers not know?"
And still keeping his eyes fixed on Gillian he thrummed and sang--
Toad, toad, old toad,
What are you spinning?
Seven hanks of yellow flax
Into snow-white linen.
What will you do with it
Then, toad, pray?
Make shifts for seven brides
Against their wedding-day.
Suppose e'er a one of them
Refuses to be wed?
Then she shall not see the jewel
I wear in my head.
As he concluded, Gillian raised herself on her two elbows, and with her
chin on her palms gazed steadily over the duckpond.
Joscelyn: Why seven?
Martin: Is it not as good a number as another?
Jennifer: What is the jewel like in the toad's head, Master Pippin?
Martin: How can I say, Mistress Jennifer? There's but one way of
knowing, according to the song, and like a fool I refused it.
Jennifer: I wish I knew.
Martin: The way lies open to all.
Joscelyn: These are silly legends, Jennifer. It is as little likely
that there are jewels in toads' heads as that toads spin flax. But
Master Pippin pins his faith to any nonsense.
Martin: True, Mistress Joscelyn. My faith cries for elbow-room, and he
who pins his faith to common-sense is like to get a cramp in it.
Therefore since women, as I hear tell, have ceased to spin brides'
shifts, I am obliged to believe that these things are spun by toads.
Because brides there must be though the wells should run dry.
Joscelyn: I do not see the connection. However, it is obvious that the
bad logic of your song has aroused even Gillian's attention, so for
mercy's sake make short work of your tale before it flags again.
Martin: I will follow your advice. And do you follow me with your best
attention while I turn the wheel of The Mill of Dreams.
THE MILL OF DREAMS
There was once, dear maidens, a girl who lived in a mill on the
Sidlesham marshes. But in those days the marshlands were meadowlands,
with streams running in from the coast, so that their water was
brackish and salt. And sometimes the girl dipped her finger in the
water and sucked it and tasted the sea. And the taste made storms rise
in her heart. Her name was Helen.
The mill-house was a gaunt and gloomy building of stone, as gray as
sleep, weatherstained with dreams. It had fine proportions, and looked
like a noble prison. And in fact, if a prison is the lockhouse of
secrets, it was one. The great millstones ground day and night, and
what the world sent in as corn it got back as flour. And as to the
secrets of the grinding it asked no questions, because to the world
results are everything. It understands death better than sorrow,
marriage better than love, and birth better than creation. And the
millstones of joy and pain, grinding dreams into bread, it seldom
hears. But Helen heard them, and they were all the knowledge she had of
life; for if the mill was a prison of dreams it was her prison too.
Her father the miller was a harsh man and dark; he was dark within and
without. Her mother was dead; she did not remember her. As she grew up
she did little by little the work of the big place. She was her
father's servant, and he kept her as close to her work as he kept his
millstones to theirs. He was morose, and welcomed no company. Gayety he
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