Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard

by Eleanor Farjeon

  "Oh, how strange it was, your coming like that, so suddenly. Before I opened the door I stood there guessing...And how could I have guessed this? Did you guess too on the other side?"

  "No, not much. I thought it might be a cross old woman. What did YOU guess?"

  "Oh, such stupid things. Kings and knights and even women. And it was you!"

  "And it was you!"

  "Suppose I'd been a cross old woman?"

  "Suppose I'd been a king?"

  "And you were just my boy."

  "And you--my sulky girl."

  "Oh, I wasn't sulky. Oh, didn't you understand? How could I speak to you? I couldn't hear you, I couldn't see you, even!"

  "Can you see me now?"

  She was lying with her cheek against his heart, and she turned her face suddenly inwards, because she saw him bend his head, and the sweetness of his first kiss was going to be more than she could bear.

  "Why don't you look up, you silly child? Why don't you look at me, dear?"

  "How can I yet? Can I ever? It's so hard looking in a person's eyes. But I am looking at you, I AM, though you can't see me."

  "Then tell me what color my eyes are."

  "They're gray-green, and your hair is dark red, a sort of chestnut but a little redder and rough over your forehead, and your nose is all over freckles with very very snub--"

  (Martin: Heaven help you, Mistress Jennifer!

  Jennifer: W-w-w-w-why, Master Pippin?

  Martin: Were you not about to fall again?

  Jennifer: N-n-n-n-no. I-I-I-I-I--

  Martin: I see you are as firm as a rock. How could I have been so deceived?)

  He shook her a little in his arms, saying: "How rude you are to my nose. I wish you'd look up."

  "No, not yet...presently. But you, did you look at me?"

  "Didn't you see me look?"

  "When?"

  "As soon as you opened the door."

  "What did you see?"

  "The loveliest thing I'd ever seen."

  "I'm not really--am I?"

  "I used to dream about you at night on my watches. I made you up out of bits of the night--white moonlight, black clouds, and stars. Sometimes I would take the last cloud of sunset for your lips. And the wind, when it was gentle, for your voice. And the movements of the sea for your movements, and the rise and fall of it for your breathing, and the lap of it against the boat for your kisses. Oh, child, look up!..."

  She looked up....

  "What's your name?"

  "Helen."

  "I can't hear you."

  "Helen. Say it."

  "I'm trying to."

  "I can't hear YOU now. And I want to hear your voice say my name. Oh, my boy, do say it, so that I can remember it when you're away."

  "I can't say it, child. Why didn't you tell me your name?"

  "What is yours?"

  "I'm trying to tell you."

  "Please--please!"

  "I'm trying with all my might. Listen with all yours."

  "I am listening. I can't hear anything. Yet I'm listening so hard that it hurts. I want to say your name over and over and over to myself when you're away. CAN'T you say it louder?"

  "No, it's no good."

  "Oh, why didn't you tell me, boy?"

  "Oh, child, why didn't you tell me?"

  "Is my bread sweet to you?"

  "The sweetest I ever ate. I ate it slowly, and took each bit from your hand. I kept one crust."

  "And my corn."

  "Oh, your corn! that is everlasting. You have sown your seed. I have eaten a grain, and it bore its harvest. One by one I shall eat them, and every grain will bear its full harvest. You have replenished the unknown earth with fields of golden corn, and set me walking there for ever."

  "And you have thrown golden light upon strange waters, and set me floating there for ever. Oh, you on my earth and I on your ocean, how shall we meet?"

  "Your corn is my waters, my waters are your corn. They move on one wave. Oh, child, we are borne on it together, for ever."

  "But how you teased me!"

  "I couldn't help it."

  "You and your boats and your duckponds."

  "It was such fun. You were so serious. It was so easy to tease you."

  "Why did you put your hand over your mouth?"

  "To keep myself from--"

  "Laughing at me?"

  "Kissing you. You looked so sorry because sailors only sail round duckponds, when you thought they always sailed out by the West and home by the East. You believed the duckponds."

  "I didn't really."

  "For a moment!"

  "I felt so stupid."

  "You blushed."

  "Oh, did I?"

  "A very little. Like the inside of a shell. I'd always tease you to make you blush like that. Don't you ever smile or laugh, child?"

  "You might teach me to. I haven't had the sort of life that makes one smile and laugh. Oh, but I could. I could smile and laugh for you if you wished. I could do anything you wanted. I could be anything you wanted."

  "Shall I make something of you? What shall it be?"

  "I don't care, so long as it is yours. Oh, make something of me. I've been lonely always. I don't want to be any more. I want to be able to come to you when I please, not only because I need so much to come, but because you need me to come. Can you make me sure that you need me? When no one has ever needed you, how can you believe...? Oh, no, no! don't look sorry. I do believe it. And will you always stand with me here in the loneliness that has been so dark? Then it won't be dark any more. Why do two people make light? One alone only wanders and holds out her hand and finds no one-- nothing. Sometimes not even herself. Will you be with me always?"

  "Always."

  "Why?"

  "Because I love you."

  "No," said Helen, "but because I love you."

  "Tell me--WERE you frightened?"

  "Of you? when I saw you at the door?"

  "Yes. Were you?"

  "Oh, my boy."

  "But didn't you think I might be a scamp?"

  "I didn't think about it at all. It wouldn't have made any difference."

  "Then why were you as mum as a fish?"

  "Oh, my boy."

  "Why? why? why?--if you weren't frightened? Of course you were frightened."

  "No, no, I wasn't. I told you I wasn't. Why don't you believe me?-- Oh, you're laughing at me again."

  "You're blushing again."

  "It's so easy to make me ashamed when I've been silly. Of course you know now why I couldn't speak. You know what took my words away. Didn't you know then?"

  "How could I know? How could I dream it would be as quick for you as for me?"

  "One can dream anything...oh!"

  "What is it, child?" For she had caught at her heart.

  "Dreams...and not truth. Oh, are you here? Am I? Where are you-- where are you? Hold me, hold me fast. Don't let it be just empty dreams."

  "Hush, hush, my dear. Dreams aren't empty. Dreams are as near the truth as we can come. What greater truth can you ever have than this? For as men and women dream, they drop one by one the veils between them and the mystery. But when they meet they are shrouded in the veils again, and though they long to strip them off, they cannot. And each sees of each but dimly the truth which in their dreams was as clear as light. Oh, child, it's not our dreams that are our illusions."

  "No," she whispered. "But still it is not enough. Not quite enough for the beloved that they shall dream apart and find their truths apart. In life too they must touch, and find the mystery together. Though it be only for one eternal instant. Touch me not only in my dreams, but in life. Turn life itself into the dream at last. Oh, hold me fast, my boy, my boy..."

  "Hush, hush, child, I'm holding you..."

  "You wept."

  "Oh, did you see? I turned my head away."

  "Why did you weep?"

  "Because you thought I had misjudged you."

  "Then I misjudged you.
"

  "But I did not weep for that."

  "Would you, if I misjudged you?"

  "It would not be so hard to bear."

  "And you went away with tears and brought me the corn of your mill."

  "And you took it with smiles, and gave me the shell of your seas."

  "Your corn rustled through my head."

  "Your shell whispers at my heart."

  "You shall always hear it whispering there. It will tell you what I can never tell you, or only tell you in other ways."

  "Of your life on the sea? Of the countries over the water? Of storms and islands and flashing birds, and strange bright flowers? Of all the lands and life I've never seen, and dream of all wrong? Will it tell me those things?--of your life that I don't know."

  "Yes, perhaps. But I could tell you of that life."

  "Of what other life will it tell me?"

  "Of my life that you do know."

  "Is there one?"

  "Look in your own heart."

  "I am looking."

  "And listen."

  "Yes."

  "What do you hear?"

  "Oh, boy, the whispering of your shell!"

  "Oh, child, the rustling of your corn!"

  Oh, maids! the grinding of the millstones.

  This is only a little part of what she heard. But if I told you the whole we should rise from the story gray-headed. For every day she carried her boy's shell to the grinding stones, and stood there while it spoke against her heart. And at other times of the day it lay in her pocket, while she swept and cooked and spun, and she saw shadows of her mill-dreams in the cobwebs and the rising steam, and heard echos of them in her singing kettle and her singing wheel. And at night it lay on her pillow against her ear, and the voice of the waters went through her sleep.

  So the years slipped one by one, and she grew from a girl into a young woman; and presently passed out of her youth. But her eyes and her heart were still those of a girl, for life had touched them with nothing but a girl's dream. And it is not time that leaves its traces on the spirit, whatever it may do to the body. Her father meanwhile grew harder and more tyrannical with years. There was little for him to fear now that any man would come to take her from him; but the habit of the oppressor was on him, and of the oppressed on her. And when this has been many years established, it is hard for either to realize that, to escape, the oppressed has only to open the door and go.

  Yet Helen, if she had ever thought of escape into another world and life, would not have desired it. For in leaving her millstones she would have lost a world whose boundaries she had never touched, and a life whose sweetness she had never exhausted. And she would have lost her clue to knowledge of him who was to her always the boy in the old jersey who had knocked at her door so many years ago.

  Once he was shipwrecked...

  ...The waters had sucked her under twice already, when her helpless hands hit against some floating substance on the waves. She could not have grasped it by herself, for her strength was gone; but a hand gripped her in the darkness, and dragged her, almost insensible, to safety. For a long while she lay inert across the knees of her rescuer. Consciousness was at its very boundary. She knew that in some dim distance strong hands were chafing a wet and frozen body...but whose hands?...whose body?...Presently it was lifted to the shelter of strong arms; and now she was conscious of her own heart-beats, but it was like a heart beating in air, not in a body. Then warmth and breath began to fall like garments about this bodiless heart, and they were indeed not her own warmth and breath, but these things given to her by another--the warmth was that of his own body where he had laid her cold hands and breast to take what heat there was in him, and the breath was of his own lungs, putting life into hers through their two mouths....She opened her eyes. It was dark. The darkness she had come out of was bright beside this pitchy night, and her struggle back to life less painful than the fierce labor of the wind and waves. Their frail precarious craft was in ceaseless peril. His left arm held her like a vice, but for greater safety he had bound a rope round their two bodies and the small mast of their craft. With his right arm he clasped the mast low down, and his right hand came round to grip her shaking knees. In this close hold she lay a long while without speaking. Then she said faintly:

  "Is it my boy?"

  "Yes, child. Didn't you know?"

  "I wanted to hear you say it. How long have you been in danger?"

  "I don't know. Some hours. I thought you would never come to yourself."

  "I tried to come to you. I can't swim."

  "The sea brought you to me. You were nearly drowned. You slipped me once. If you had again--!"

  "What would you have done?"

  "Jumped in. I couldn't have stayed on here without you."

  "Ah, but you mustn't ever do that--promise, promise! For then you'd lose me for ever. Promise."

  "I promise. But there's no for ever of that sort. There's no losing each other, whatever happens. You know that, don't you?"

  "Yes, I do know. When people love, they find each other for ever. But I don't want you to die, and I don't want to die--yet. But if it is to-night it will be together. Will it be to-night, do you think?"

  "I don't know, dear. The storm's breaking up over there, but that's not the only danger."

  "But nothing matters, nothing matters at all while I'm with you." She lay heavily against him; her eyes closed, and she shook violently.

  "Child, you're shuddering, you're as cold as ice." He put his hand upon her chilly bosom, and hugged her more fiercely to his own. With a sudden movement of despair and anger at the little he could do, he slipped his arms from his jacket, and stripping open his shirt pulled her to him, re-fastening his jacket around them both, tying it tightly about their bodies by the empty sleeves. She felt his lips on her hair and heard him whisper, "You're not frightened of me, are you, child? You never will be, will you?"

  She shook her head and whispered, "I never have been."

  "Sleep, if you can, dear."

  "I'll try."

  So closely was she held by his coat and his arms, so near she lay to his beloved heart, that she knew no longer what part of that union was herself; they were one body, and one spirit. Her shivering grew less, and with her lips pressed to his neck she fell asleep.

  It was noon.

  The hemisphere of the sky was an unbroken blue washed with a silver glare. She could not look up. The sea was no longer wild, but it was not smooth; it was a dancing sea, and every small wave rippled with crested rainbows. A flight of gulls wheeled and screamed over their heads; their movements were so swift that the mid-air seemed to be filled with visible lines described by their flight, silver lines that gleamed and melted on transparent space like curved lightnings.

  "Oh, look! oh, look!" cried Helen.

  He smiled, but he was not watching the gulls. "Yes, you've never seen that, have you, child?" His eyes searched the distance.

  "But you aren't looking. What are you looking at?"

  "Nothing. I can't see what I'm looking for. But the gulls might mean land, or icebergs, or a ship."

  "I don't want land or a ship, or even icebergs," said Helen suddenly.

  He looked at her with the fleeting look that had been her first impression of him.

  "Why not? Why don't you?"

  "I'm so happy where I am."

  "That's all very well," said her boy, with his eyes on the distance.

  For awhile she lay enjoying the warmth of the sun, watching the gulls sliding down the unseen slopes of the air. Presently high up she saw one hover and pause, settling on nothingness by the swift, almost imperceptible beat of its wings. And suddenly it dropped like a stone upon a wave, and darted up again so quickly that she could not follow what had happened.

  "What is it doing?" she asked.

  "Fishing," said the boy. "It wanted its dinner."

  "So do I," said Helen.

  He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a packet wrapped in oi
lskin. There was biscuit in it. He gave some to her, bit by bit; though it was soft and dull, she was glad of it. But soon she drew away from the hand that fed her.

  "What's the matter?" he asked.

  "You must have some too."

  "That's all right. I'm not greedy like you birds."

  "I'm not a bird. And I'm not greedy. Being hungry's not being greedy. I'd be greedy if I ate while you're hungry."

  "I'm not hungry."

  "Then neither am I."

  To satisfy her he ate a biscuit. Soon after she began to feel thirst, but she dared not ask for water. She knew he had none. He looked at her lying pale in his arms, and said with a smile that was not like a real smile, "It's a pity about the icebergs." She smiled and nodded, and lay still in the heat, watching the gulls, and thinking of ice. Some of the birds settled on the raft. One sat on the mast; another hovered at her knee, picking at crumbs. They played in the sun, rising and falling, and turned in her vision into a whirl of snowflakes, enormous snowflakes....She began to dream of snow, and her lips parted in the hope that some might fall upon her tongue. Presently she ceased to dream of snow....The boy looked down at her closed lids, and at her cheeks, as white as the breasts of the gulls. He could not bear to look long, and returned to his distances.

  It was night again.

  The circle of the sea was as smooth as silk. Pale light played over it like dreams and ghosts. The sky was a crowded arc of stars, millions of stars, she had never seen or imagined so many. They glittered, glittered restlessly, in an ecstasy that caught her spirit. She too was filled with millions of stars, through her senses they flashed and glittered--a delirium of stars in heaven and her heart....

  "My boy!"

  "Yes, child."

  "Do you see the stars?"

  "Yes, child."

  "Do you feel them?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, can't we die now?"

  She felt him move stiffly. "There's a ship! I'm certain of it now-- I'm certain! Oh, if it were day!"

  The stars went on dazzling. She did not understand about the ship. Time moved forward, or stood still. For her the night was timeless. It was eternity.

  But things were happening outside in time and space. By what means they had been seen or had attracted attention she did not know. But the floating dreamlight and the shivering starlight on the sea were broken by a dark movement on the waveless waters. A boat was coming. For some time there had been shouting and calling in strange voices, one of them her boy's. But once again she hovered on the dim verge of consciousness. She had flown from the body he was painfully unbinding from his own. What he had suffered in holding it there so long she never knew. From leagues away she heard him whispering, "Child, can you help yourself a little?" And now for an instant her soul re-approached her body, and looked at him through the soft midnight of her eyes, and he saw in them such starlight as never was in sky or on sea.