"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 ou
t 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, "O
h, 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?"
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard Page 11