"When you played with the seagull..."
"Yes?"
"How you loved it!"
"Yes."
"I looked to see how you felt when you loved a thing. I wanted so much to be the seagull in your hands."
"When I touched it I was touching you."
She put his hand to her breast and whispered, "I love birds."
He smiled. "I knew you loved them; and best free. All birds must fly in their own air."
"Yes," she said. "But their freedom only means their power to choose what air they'll fly in. And every choice is a cage too."
"I shall leave the door open, child."
"I shall never fly out," said Helen.
* * *
"You talked of going away."
"Yes. But not from you."
"Am I to go with you always, following chance and making no plans?"
"Will you? You are the only plan I ever made. Will you leave everything else but me to chance? Perhaps it will lead us all over the earth; and perhaps after all we shall not go very far. But I never could see ahead, except one thing."
"What was it?"
"The mill-door and you in your old blue gown. And for seven days I've stopped seeing that. I haven't it to steer by. Will you chance it?"
"Must you be playing with meanings even in dreams? Don't you know--don't you know that for a woman who loves, and is not sure that she is loved, her days and nights are all chances, every minute she lives is a chance? It might be...it might not be...oh, those ghosts of joy and pain! they are almost too much to bear. For the joy isn't pure joy, or the pain pure pain, and she cannot come to rest in either of them. Sometimes the joy is nearly as great as though she knew; yet at the instant she tries to take it, it looks at her with the eyes of doubt, and she trembles, and dare not take it yet. And sometimes the pain is all but the death she foresees; yet even as she submits to it, it lays upon her heart the finger of hope. And then she trembles again, because she need not take it yet. Those are her chances, Peter. But when she knows that her beloved is her lover, life may do what it will with her; but she is beyond its chances for ever."
"Your corn! you kept my corn!"
"Till it should bear. And your shell there--you've kept my shell."
"Till it should speak. And now--oh, see these things that have held our dreams for twenty years! The life is threshed from them for ever--they are only husks. They can hold our dreams no more. Oh, I can't go on dreaming by myself, I can't, it's no use. I thought my heart had learned to bear its dream alone, but the time comes when love in its beauty is too near to pain. There is more love than the single heart can bear. Good-by, my boy--good-by!"
"Helen! don't suffer so! oh, child, what are you doing?--"
"Letting my dear dreams go...it's no use, Peter..."
The millstones took them and crushed them.
She uttered a sharp cry....
His arm tightened round her. "What is it, child?" she heard him say.
She looked at him bewildered, and saw that he too was dazed. She looked into the gray-green eyes of a boy of twenty. She said in a voice of wonder, "Oh, my boy!" as he felt her soft hair.
"Such a fuss about an empty shell and a bit of dead wheat."
She hid her face on his jersey.
"You are a silly, aren't you?" said Peter. "I wish you'd look up."
Helen looked up, and they kissed each other for the first time.
I defy you now, Mistress Jennifer, to prove that your grassblade is greener than mine.
* * *
THIRD INTERLUDE
The girls now turned their attention to their neglected apples, varying this more serious business with comments on the story that had just been related.
Jessica: I should be glad to know, Jane, what you make of this matter.
Jane: Indeed, Jessica, it is difficult to make anything at all of matter so bewildering. For who could have divined reality to be the illusion and dreams the truth? so that by the light of their dreams the lovers in this tale mistook each other for that which they were not.
Martin: Who indeed, Mistress Jane, save students of human nature like yourselves?--who have doubtless long ago observed how men and women begin by filling a dim dream with a golden thing, such as youth, and end by putting a shining dream into a gray thing, such as age. And in the end it is all one, and lovers will see to the last in each other that which they loved at the first, since things are only what we dream them to be, as you have of course also observed.
Joscelyn: We have observed nothing of the sort, and if we dreamed at all we would dream of things exactly as they are, and never dream of mistaking age for youth. But we do not dream. Women are not given to dreams.
Martin: They are the fortunate sex. Men are such incurable dreamers that they even dream women to be worse preys of the delusive habit than themselves. But I trust you found my story sufficiently wide-awake to keep you so.
Joscelyn: It did not make me yawn. Is this mill still to be found on the Sidlesham marshes?
Martin: It is where it was. But what sort of gold it grinds now, whether corn or dreams, or nothing, I cannot say. Yet such is the power of what has been that I think, were the stones set in motion, any right listener might hear what Helen and Peter once heard, and even more; for they would hear the tale of those lovers' journeys over the changing waters, and their return time and again to the unchanging plot of earth that kept their secrets. Until in the end they were together delivered up to the millstones which thresh the immortal grain from its mortal husk. But this was after long years of gladness and a life kept young by the child which each was always re-discovering in the other's heart.
Jennifer: Oh, I am glad they were glad. Do you know, I had begun to think they would not be.
Jessica: It was exactly so with me. For suppose Peter had never returned, or when he did she had found him dead in the tree?
Jane: And even after he returned and recovered, how nearly they were removed from ever understanding each other!
Joan: Oh, no, Jane! once they came together there could be no doubt of the understanding. As soon as Peter came back, I felt sure it would be all right.
Joyce: And I too, all along, was convinced the tale must end happily.
Martin: Strange! so was I. For Love, in his daily labors, is as swift in averting the nature of perils as he is deft in diverting the causes of misunderstanding. I know in fact of but one thing that would have foiled him.
Four of the Milkmaids: What then?
Martin: Had Helen not been given to dreams.
Not a word was said in the Apple-Orchard.
Joscelyn: It would have done her no harm had she not been, singer. Nor would your story have suffered, being, like all stories, a thing as important as thistledown. In either event, though Peter had perished, or misunderstood her for ever, it would not have concerned me a whit. Or even in both events.
Jessica: Nor me.
Jane: Nor me.
Martin: Then farewell my story. A thing as important as thistledown is as unimportantly dismissed. And yonder in heaven the moon sulks at us through a cloud with a quarter of her eye, reproaching us for our peace-destroying chatter. It destroys our own no less than hers. To dream is forbidden, but at least let us sleep.
One by one the milkmaids settled in the grass and covered their faces with their hands, and went to sleep. But Jennifer remained where she was. She sat with downcast eyes, softly drawing the grassblade through and through her fingers, and the swing swayed a little like a branch moving in an imperceptible wind, and her breast heaved a little as though stirred with inaudible sighs. She sat so long like that that Martin knew she had forgotten he was beside her, and he quietly put out his hand to draw the grassblade from hers. But before he had even touched it he felt something fall upon his palm that was not rain or dew.
"Dear Mistress Jennifer," said Martin gently, "why do you weep?"
She shook her head, since there are times when the voice plays a girl false, and
will not serve her.
"Is it," said Martin, "because the grass is not green enough?"
She nodded.
"Pray let me judge," entreated Martin, and took the grassblade from her fingers. Whereupon she put her face into her two hands, whispering:
"Master Pippin, Master Pippin, oh, Master Pippin."
"Let me judge," said Martin again, but in a whisper too.
Then Jennifer took her hands from her wet face, and looked at him with her wet eyes, and said with great braveness and much faltering:
"I will be nineteen in November."
At this Martin looked very grave, and he got down from the tree and walked to the end of the orchard full of thought. But when he turned there he found that she had stolen after him, and was standing near him hanging her head, yet watching him with deep anxiety.
Jennifer: It is t-t-too old, isn't it?
Martin: Too old for what?
Jennifer: I--I--I don't know.
Martin: It is, of course, extremely old. There are things you will never be able to do again, because you are so old.
Jennifer sobbed.
Martin: You are too old to be rocked in a cradle. You are too old to write pothooks and hangers, and too old, alas, to steal pickles and jam when the house is abed. Yet there are still a few things you might do if--
Jennifer: Oh, if?
Martin: If you could find a friend as old as yourself, or even a little older, to help you.
Jennifer: But think how old h--h--h-- the friend would have to be.
Martin: What would that matter? For all grass is green enough if it not near grass that looks greener.
Jennifer: Oh, is this true?
Martin: It is indeed. And I believe too that were your friend's hair red enough, and your friend's freckled nose snub enough, since youth resides long in these qualities, you might even, with such a companion, begin once more to steal pickles and jam by night, to learn your pothooks and hangers, and even in time to be rocked asleep by a cradle.
Jennifer: D-d-dear Master Pippin.
Martin: They look quite green, don't they?
And he laid the two blades side by side on her palm, and Jennifer, whose voice once more would not serve her, nodded and put the two blades in her pocket. Then Martin took out his handkerchief and very carefully dried her eyes and cheeks, saying as he did so, "Now that I have explained this to your satisfaction, won't you, please, explain something to mine?"
Jennifer: I will if I can.
Martin: Then explain what it is you have against men.
Jennifer: I don't know how to tell you, it is so terrible.
Martin: I will try to bear it.
Jennifer: They say women cannot--cannot--
Martin: Cannot?
Jennifer: Keep secrets!
Martin: Men say so?
Jennifer: Yes!
Martin: MEN say so?
Jennifer: They do, they do!
Martin: Men! Oh, Jupiter! if this were true--but it is not--these men would be blabbing the greatest of secrets in saying so. If I had a secret--but I have not--do you think I would trust it to a man? Not I! What does a man do with a secret? Forgets it, throws it behind him into some empty chamber of his brain and lets the cobwebs smother it! buries it in some deserted corner of his heart, and lets the weeds grow over it! Is this keeping a secret? Would you keep a garden or a baby so? I will a thousand times sooner give my secret to a woman. She will tend it and cherish it, laugh and cry with it, dress it in a new dress every day and dandle it in the world's eye for joy and pride in it--nay, she will bid the whole world come into her nursery to admire the pretty secret she keeps so well. And under her charge a little secret will grow into a big one, with a hundred charms and additions it had not when I confided it to her, so that I shall hardly know it again when I ask for it: so beautiful, so important, so mysterious will it have become in the woman's care. Oh, believe me, Mistress Jennifer, it is women who keep secrets and men who neglect them.
Jennifer: If I had only thought of these things to say! But I am not clever at argument like men.
Martin: I suspect these clever arguers. They can always find the right thing to say, even if they are in the wrong. Women are not to be blamed for washing their hands of them for ever.
Jennifer: I know. Yet I cannot help wondering who bakes them gingerbread for Sunday.
Martin: Let them go without. They do not deserve gingerbread.
Jennifer: I know, I know. But they like it so much. And it is nice making it, too.
Martin: Then I suppose it will have to be made till the last of Sundays. What a bother it all is.
Jennifer: I know. Good night, dear Master Pippin.
Martin: Dear milkmaid, good night. There lie your fellows, careless of the color of the grass they lie on, and of the years that lie on them. They have forsworn the baking of cakes, the eating of which begets dreams, to which women are not given. Go lie with them, and be if you can as careless and dreamless as they are.
And then, seeing the tears refilling her eyes, he hastily pulled out his handkerchief again and wiped them as they fell, saying, "But if you cannot--if you cannot (don't cry so fast!)--if you cannot, then give me your key (dear Jennifer, please dry up!) to Gillian's Well-House, because you were glad that my tale ended gladly, and also because all lovers, no matter of what age, are green enough, and chiefly because my handkerchief's sopping."
Then Jennifer caught his hands in hers and whispered, "Oh, Martin! are they? ALL lovers?--are they green enough?"
"God help them, yes!" said Martin Pippin.
She dropped his hands, leaving her key in them, and looked up at him with wet lashes, but happiness behind them. So he stooped and kissed the last tears from her eyes. Since his handkerchief had become quite useless for the purpose.
And she stole back to her place, and he lay down in his, and Jennifer dreamed that she was baking gingerbread, and Martin that he was eating it.
"Maids! maids! maids!"
It was Old Gillman on the heels of dawn.
"A pest on him and all farmers," groaned Martin, "who would harvest men's slumbers as soon as they're sown."
"Get into hiding!" commanded Joscelyn.
"I will not budge," said Martin. "I am going to sleep again. For at that moment I had a lion in one hand and a unicorn in the other--"
"WILL you conceal yourself!" whispered Joscelyn, with as much fury as a whisper can compass.
"And the lion had comfits in his crown, and the unicorn a gilded horn. And both were so sticky and spicy and sweet--"
Joscelyn flung herself upon her knees before him, spreading her yellow skirts which barely concealed him, as Old Gillman thrust his head through the hawthorn gap.
"Good morrow, maids," he grunted.
"--that I knew not, dear Mistress Joscelyn," murmured Martin, "which to bite first."
"Good morrow, master!" cried the milkmaids loudly; and they fluttered their petticoats like sunshine between the man at the hedge and the man in the grass.
"Is my daughter any merrier this morning?"
"No, master," said Jennifer, "yet I think I see smiles on their way."
"If they lag much longer," muttered the farmer, "they'll be on the wrong side of her mouth when they do come. For what sort of a home will she return to?--a pothouse! and what sort of a father?--a drunkard! And the fault's hers that deprives him of the drink he loved in his sober days. Gillian!" he exclaimed, "when will ye give up this child's whim to learn by experience, and take an old man's word for it?"
But Gillian was as deaf to him as to the cock crowing in the barnyard.
"Come fetch your portion," said Old Gillman to the milkmaids, "since there's no help for it. And good day to ye, and a better morrow."
"Wait a bit, master!" entreated Jennifer, "and tell me if Daisy, my Lincoln Red, lacks for anything."
"For nothing that Tom can help her to, maid. But she lacks you, and lacking you, her milk. So that being a cow she may be said to lack every
thing. And so do I, and the men, and the farm--ruin's our portion, nothing but rack and ruin."
Saying which he departed.
"To breakfast," said Martin cheerfully.
"Suppose you'd been seen," scolded Joscelyn.
"Then our tales would have been at an end," said Martin. "Would this have distressed you?"
"The sooner they're ended the better," said Joscelyn, "if you can do nothing but babble of sticky unicorns."
"It was fresh from the oven," explained Martin meekly. "I wish we could have gingerbread for breakfast instead of bread."
"Do not be sure," said Joscelyn severely, "that you will get even bread."
"I am in your hands," said Martin, "but please be kinder to the ducks."
Joscelyn, all of a fluster, then put new bread in the place of Gillian's old; but her annoyance was turned to pleasure when she discovered that the little round top of yesterday's loaf had entirely disappeared.
"Upon my word!" cried she, "the cure is taking effect."
"I believe you are right," said Martin. "How sorry the ducks will be."
They quickly fed the ducks, and then themselves; and Martin received his usual share, Joscelyn having so far relented that she even advised him as to the best tree for apples in the whole orchard.
After breakfast Martin found six pair of eyes fixed so earnestly upon him that he began to laugh.
"Why do you laugh?" asked little Joan.
"Because of my thoughts," said he. So she took a new penny from her pocket and gave it to him.
"I was thinking," said Martin, "how strange it is that girls are all so exactly alike."
"Oh!" cried six different voices in a single key of indignation.
"What a fib!" said Joyce. "I am like nobody but me."
"Nor am !" cried all the others in a breath.
"Yet a moment ago," said Martin, "you, Mistress Joyce, were wondering with all your might what diversion I had hit upon for this morning. And so were Jane and Jessica and Jennifer and Joan and Joscelyn."
"I was NOT!" cried six voices at once.
"What, none of you?" said Martin. "Did I not say so?"
And they were very provoked, not knowing what to answer for fear it might be on the tip of her neighbor's tongue. So they said nothing at all, and with one accord tossed their heads and turned their backs on him. And Martin laughed, leaving them to guess why. On which, greatly put out, every girl without even consulting one another they decided to have nothing further to do with him, and each girl went and sat under a different apple-tree and began to do her hair.
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard Page 16
