Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard

by Eleanor Farjeon

  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 re
member 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."