Hobb sighed and said, "I had hoped otherwise. For, dear, I cannot rest until I have helped them." Then he told her as much as he knew of his four brothers; and her face clouded as he spoke, and her eyes looked hurt and angry by turns, and her beautiful mouth turned sulky. So then Hobb put his arm round her and said, "Do not be too troubled, for I know I shall presently find the cause and cure of these boys' ills." But Margaret pushed his arm away and rose restlessly to her feet, and paced up and down, muttering, "What do I care for these boys? It is not for them I am troubled, but for myself and you."
"For us?" said Hobb. "How can trouble touch us who love each other?"
At this Margaret threw herself on the grass beside him, and laid her head against his knee, and drew his hands to her, pressing them against her eyes and lips and throat and bosom as though she would never let them go; and through her kisses she whispered passionately, "Do you love me? do you truly love me? Oh, if you love me do not go away immediately. For I have only just found you, but your brothers have had you all their lives. And presently you shall go where you please for their sakes, but now stay a little in this wood for mine. Stay a month with me, only a month! oh, my heart, is a month much to ask when you and I found each other but an hour ago? For this time of love will never come again, and whatever other times there are to follow, if you go now you will be shutting your eyes upon the lovely dawn just as the sun is rising through the colors. And when you return, you will return perhaps to love's high-noon, but you will have missed the dawn for ever." And then she lifted her prone body a little higher until it rested once more in the curve of his arm against his heart, and she lay with her white face upturned to his, and her dark soft eyes full of passion and pleading, and she put up her fingers to caress his cheek, and whispered, "Give me my little month, oh, my heart, and at the end of it I will give you your soul's desire."
And not Hobb or any man could have resisted her.
So he promised to remain with her in Open Winkins, and not to go further on his quest till the next moon. And indeed, with all time before and behind him it did not seem much to promise, nor did he think it could hurt his brothers' case. But the kernel of it was that he longed to make the promise, and could not do otherwise than make the promise, and so, in short, he made the promise.
Then Margaret led him to two small lodges on the skirts of the forest; they were made of round logs, with moss and lichen still upon them, and they were overgrown with the loveliest growths of summer--with blackberry blossoms, a wonderful ghostly white, spread over the bushes like fairies' linen out to dry, and wild roses more than were in any other lovers' forest on earth, and the maddest sweetest confusion of honeysuckle you ever saw. Within, the rooms were strewn with green rushes, and hung with green cloths on which Margaret had embroidered all the flowers and berries in their seasons, from the first small violets blue and white to the last spindle-berries with their orange hearts splitting their rosy rinds. And there was nothing else under each roof but a round beech-stump for a stool, and a coffer of carved oak with metal locks, and a low mattress stuffed with lamb's-fleece picked from the thorns, and pillows filled with thistledown; and each couch had a green covering worked with waterlily leaves and white and golden lilies. "These are the Pilleygreen Lodges," said she, "and one is mine and one is yours; and when we want cover we will find it here, but when we do not we will eat and sleep in the open."
And so the whole of that July Hobb dwelt in the Pilleygreen Lodges in Open Winkins with his love Margaret. And by the month's end they had not done their talking. For did not a young lifetime lie behind them, and did they not foresee a longer life ahead, and between lovers must not all be told and dreamed upon? and beyond these lives in time, which were theirs in any case, had not love opened to them a timeless life of which inexhaustible dreams were to be exchanged, not always by words, though indeed by their mouths, and by the speech of their hands and arms and eyes? Hobb told her all there was to tell of the Burgh and his life with his brothers, both before and after their tragedies, but he did not often speak of them for it was a tale she hated to hear, and sometimes she wept so bitterly that he had ado to comfort her, and sometimes was so angry that he could hardly conciliate her. But such was his own gentleness that her caprices could withstand it no more than the shifting clouds the sun. And Margaret told him of herself, but her tale was short and simple--that her parents had died in the forest when she was young, and that she had lived there all her life working with her needle, twice yearly taking her work to the Cathedral Town to sell; and with the proceeds buying what she needed, and other cloths and silk and gold with which to work. She opened the coffer in Hobb's lodge and showed him what she did: veils that she had embroidered with cobwebs hung with dew, so that you feared to touch them lest you should destroy the cobweb and disperse the dew; and girdles thick-set with flowers, so that you thought Spring's self on a warm day had loosed the girdle from her middle, and lost it; and gowns worked like the feathers of a bird, some like the plumage on the wood-dove's breast, and others like a jay's wing; and there was a pair of blue skippers so embroidered that they appeared and disappeared beneath a flowing skirt with reeds and sallows rising from a hem of water, you thought you had seen kingfishers; and there were tunics overlaid with dragonflies' wings and their delicate jointed bodies of green and black-and-yellow and Chalk-Hill blue; and caps all gay with autumn berries, scarlet rose-hips and wine-red haws, and the bright briony, and spindle with its twofold gayety, and one cap was all of wild clematis, with the vine of the Traveler's Joy twined round the brim and the cloud of the Old Man's Beard upon the crown. And Hobb said, "It is magic. Who taught you to do this?" And Margaret said, "Open Winkins."
Early in their talks he told her of his garden, and of the golden rose he tried to grow there, and of his failures; and Margaret knew by his voice and his eyes more than by his words that this was the wish of his heart. And she smiled and said, "Now I know with what I must redeem my promise. Yet I think I shall be jealous of your golden rose." And Hobb, lifting a wave of her glittering hair and making a rose of it between his fingers, asked, "How can you be jealous of yourself?" "Yet I think I am," said she again, "for it was something of myself you promised to give me presently, and I would rather have something of you." "They are the same thing," said Hobb, and he twisted up the great rose of her hair till it lay beside her temple under the ebony fillet. And as his hand touched the fillet he looked puzzled, and he ran his finger round its shining blackness and exclaimed, "But this too is hair!" Margaret laughed her strange laugh and said, "Yes, my own hair, you discoverer of open secrets!" And putting up her hands she unbound the fillet, and it fell, a slender coil of black amongst the golden flood of her head, like a serpent gliding down the sunglade on a river.
"Why is it like that?" said Hobb simply.
With one of her quick changes Margaret frowned and answered, "Why is the black yew set with little lamps? Why does a black cloud have an edge of light? Why does a blackbird have white feathers in his body? Must things be ALL dark or ALL light?" And she stamped her foot and turned hastily away, and began to do up her hair with trembling hands. And Hobb came behind her and kissed the top of her head. She turned on him half angrily, half smiling, saying, "No! for you do not like my black lock." And Hobb said very gravely, "I will find all things beautiful in my beloved, from her black lock to her blacker temper." Margaret shot a swift look at him and saw that he was laughing at her with an echo of her own words; and she flung her arms about him, laughing too. "Oh, Hobb!" said she, "you pluck out my black temper by the roots!"
So with teasing and talking and quarreling and kissing, and ever-growing love, July came near its close; and as love discovers or creates all miracles in what it loves, Hobb for pure joy grew light of spirit, and laughed and played with his beloved till she knew not whether she had given her heart to a child or a man; and again when the happiness that was in his soul shone through his eyes, he was so transfigured that, gazing on his beauty, she knew not whethe
r she had received the heart of a man or a god. And the truth was that at this time Hobb was all three, since love, dear maidens, commands a region that extends beyond birth and death, and includes all that is mortal in all that is eternal. And as for Margaret, she was all things by turns, sometimes as gay as sunbeams so that Hobb could scarcely follow her dancing spirit, but could only sun himself in the delight of it; and sometimes she was full of folly and daring, and made him climb with her the highest trees, and drop great distances from bough to bough, mocking at all his fears for her though he had none for himself; and sometimes when he was downcast, as happened now and then for thinking on his brothers, she forgot her jealousy in tenderness of his sorrow, and made him lean his head upon her breast, and talked to him low as a mother to her baby, words that perhaps were only words of comfort, yet seemed to him infinite wisdom, as the child believes of its mother's tender speech. And at all times she was lovelier than his dreams of her. Not once in this month did Hobb go out of the forest, which was confined on the north and north-west by big roads running to the world, and on all other sides by sloped of Downland. But whenever in their wanderings they arrived at any of these boundaries, Margaret turned him back and said, "I do not love the open; come away."
But on the last day of the month they came upon a very narrow neck of the treeless down, a green ride carved between their wood and a dark plantation that lay beyond, so close as to be almost a part of Open Winkins, but for that one little channel of space; and Hobb pointed to it and said, "That's a strange place, let us go there."
"No," said Margaret.
"But is it not our own wood?"
"How can you think so?" she said petulantly. "Do you not see how black it is in there? How can you want to go there? Come away."
"What is it called?" asked Hobb.
"The Red Copse," said she.
"Why?" asked Hobb.
"I don't know," said she.
"Have you never been there?" asked Hobb.
"No, never. I don't like it. It frightens me." And she clung to him like a child. "Oh, come away!"
She was trembling so that he turned instantly, and they went back to the Pilleygreen Lodges, getting wild raspberries for supper on the way. And after supper they sang songs, one against the other, each sweeter than the last, and told stories by turns, outdoing each other in fancy and invention; and at last went happily to bed.
But Hobb could not sleep. For in the night a wind came up and blew four times round his lodge, shaking it once on every wall. And it stirred in him the memory of High and Over, and with the memory misgivings that he could not name. And he rose restlessly from his couch and went out under the troubled moon, for a windy rack of clouds was blowing over the sky. But through it she often poured her amber light, and by it Hobb saw that Margaret's door was blowing on its hinges. He called her softly, but he got no answer; and then he called more loudly, but still she did not answer.
"She cannot be sleeping through this," said Hobb to himself; and with an uneasy heart he stood beside the door and looked into the lodge. And she was not there, and the couch had not been slept on. But on it lay her empty dress, its gold and black all tumbled in a heap, and on top of it was an embroidered smock. And something in the smock attracted him, so that he went quickly forward to examine it; and he saw that it was Heriot's shirt, that had been cut and changed and worked all over with peacocks' feathers. And he stood staring at it, astounded and aghast. Recovering himself, he turned to leave the lodge, but stumbled on the open coffer, hanging out of which was a second smock; and this one had two lions worked on the back and front, and one was red and the other white, and the smock had been Hugh's shirt. Then Hobb fell on the coffer and searched its contents till he had found Lionel's little shirt fashioned into a linen vest, with a tiny border of fantastic animals dancing round it, pink pigs, and black cocks, and white donkeys, and chestnut horses. And last of all he found the shirt of Ambrose, tattered and frayed, and every tatter was worked at the edge with a different hue, and here and there small mocking patches of color had been stitched above the holes.
And at each discovery the light in Hobb's eyes grew calmer, and the beat of his heart more steady. And he walked out of the Pilleygreen Lodge and as straight as his feet would carry him across Open Winkins and the green ride, and into the Red Copse. As he went he shut down the dread in his heart of what he should find there, "For," said Hobb to himself, "I shall need more courage now than I have ever had." It was black in the Red Copse, with a blackness blacker than night, and the wild races of moonlight that splashed the floors of Open Winkins were here unseen. But a line of ruddy fireflies made a track on the blackness, and Hobb, going as softly as he might, followed in their wake. Just before the middle of the Copse they stopped and flew away, and one by one, as each reached the point deserted by its leader, darted back as though unable to penetrate with its tiny fire the fearful shadows that lay just ahead. But Hobb went where the fireflies could not go. And he found a dark silent hollow in the wood, where neither moon nor sun could ever come; and at the bottom of it a long straggling pool, with a surface as black as ebony, and mud and slime below. Here toads and bats and owls and nightjars had come to drink, with rats and stoats who left their footprints in the mud. And on the ground and bushes Hobb saw slugs and snails, woodlice, beetles and spiders, and creeping things without number. The gloom of the place was awful, and turned the rank foliage of trees and shrubs black in perpetual twilight. But what Hobb saw he saw by a light that had no place in heaven. For kneeling beside the pool was his love Margaret, her naked body crouched and bowed among the creatures of the mud; and her two waves of gold were flung behind her like a smooth mantle, but the one black lock was drawn forward over her head, and she was dipping and dipping it into the dank waters. And every time she drew the dripping lock from its stagnant bath, it glimmered with an unearthly phosphorescence, that shed a ghostly light upon the hollow, and all that it contained. And at each dipping the lock of hair came out blacker than before.
At last she was done, and she slowly squeezed the water from her unnatural tress, and laid it back in its place among the gold. And then she stretched her arms and sighed so heavily that the crawling creatures by the pool were startled. But less started than she, when lifting her head she saw the eyes of Hobb looking down on her. And such terror came into her own eyes that the look rang on his heart as though it had been a cry. Yet not a sound issued between her lips. And he said to himself, "Now I need more wisdom than I have ever had." And he continued to look steadily at her with eyes that she could not read. And presently he spoke.
"We have some promises to redeem to-night," he said, "and we will redeem them now. You promised me my perfect golden rose, and this night I am going out of Open Winkins and back to my own Burgh. And to-morrow, since I now know something of your power of gifts, I shall find the rose upon my hill, and in exchange for it I will keep my word and give you back yourself. But there is something more than this." And he went a little apart, and soon came back to her with his jerkin undone and his shirt in his hand. "You have my brothers' shirts and here is mine," he said. "To-night when I am gone you shall return to Open Winkins, and spend the hours in taking out the work you have put into their shirts. And in the morning when I meet them at the Burgh I shall know if you have done this. But in exchange for theirs I give you mine to do with as you will. And the only other thing I ask of you is this; that when you have taken out the work in their shirts, you will spend the day in making a white garment for the lady who will one day be my wife. And whatever other embroidery you put upon it, let it bear on the left breast a golden rose. And to-morrow night, if all is well at the Burgh, I will come here for the last time and fetch it from you."
Then Hobb laid his shirt beside her on the ground, and turned and went away. And she had not even tried to speak to him.
When Hobb got out of the Red Copse he presently found a road and followed it, hoping for the best. After awhile he saw a tramp asleep in a ditch, and woke
him and asked him the way to the Burgh of the Five Lords. But the tramp had never heard of it. So then Hobb asked the way to Firle, and the tramp said "That's another matter," for Sussex tramps know all the beacons of the Downs, and he told him to go east. Which Hobb did, walking without rest through the night and dawn and day, here and there getting a lift that helped him forward. And in his heart he carried hope like a lovely flower, but under it a quick pain like a reptile's sting that felt to him like death. And he would not give way to the pain, but went as fast and as steadily as he could; and at last, with strained eyes and aching feet, and limbs he could scarcely drag for weariness, and the dust of many miles upon his shoes and clothes, he came to his own bare country and the Burgh. He rested heavily on the gate, and the first thing he saw was Lionel on the steps, laughing and playing with a litter of young puppies. And the next was Hugh climbing the castle wall to get an arrow that had lodged in a high chink. And out of a window leaned Heriot in all his young beauty, picking sweet clusters of the seven-sisters roses that climbed to his room. And in the doorway sat Ambrose, with a book on his knee, but his eyes fixed on the gate. And when he saw Hobb standing there he came quickly down the steps, calling to the others, "Lionel! Hugh! Heriot! our brother has come home." And Lionel rushed through the puppies, and Hugh dropped bodily from the wall, and Heriot leaped through the window. And the four boys clung to Hobb and kissed him and wrung his hands, and seemed as they would fight for very possession of him. And Hobb, with his arms about the younger boys, and Heriot's hand in his, leaned his forehead on Ambrose's cheek, and Ambrose felt his face grow wet with Hobb's tears. Then Ambrose looked at him with apprehension, and said in a low voice, "Hobb, what have you lost?" And Hobb understood him. And he answered in a voice as low, "My heart. But I have found my four brothers." They took him in and prepared a bath and fresh clothes for him, and a meal was ready when he was refreshed. He came among them steady and calm again, and the three youngest had nothing but rejoicing for him. And he saw that all memory of what had happened had been washed from them. But with Ambrose it was different, for he who had had his very mind effaced, in recovering his mind remembered all. And after the meal he took Hobb aside and said, "Tell me what has happened to you."
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard Page 20
