Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard

by Eleanor Farjeon

  "As well as a child without its mother, maid, though Michael has turned nurse to her. But she seems sworn to hold back her milk till you come again. Rack and ruin, nothing but rack and ruin!"

  And off he went.

  Then breakfast was prepared as on the previous day, and Gillian's stale loaf was broken for the ducks. But Joscelyn pointed out that one of the kissing-crusts had been pulled off in the night.

  "Your stories, Master Pippin, are doing their work," said she.

  "I begin to think so," said Martin cheerfully. And then they fell to on their own white loaves and sweet apples.

  When they had breakfasted Martin observed that he could make better and longer daisy-chains than any one else in the world, and his statement was pooh-poohed by six voices at once. For girls' fingers, said these voices, had been especially fashioned by nature for the making of daisy-chains. Martin challenged them to prove this, and they plucked lapfuls of the small white daisies with big yellow eyes, and threaded chains of great length, and hung them about each other's necks. And so deft and dainty was their touch that the chains never broke in the making or, what is still more delicate a matter, in the hanging. But Martin's chains always broke before he had joined the last daisy to the first, and the girls jeered at him for having no necklace to match their necklaces of pearls and gold, and for failing so contemptibly in his boast. And he appeared so abashed by their jeers that little Joan relented and made a longer chain than any that had been made yet, and hung it round his neck. At which he was merry again, and confessed himself beaten, and the girls became very gracious, being in their triumph even more pleased with him than with themselves. Which was a great deal. And by then it was dinner-time.

  After dinner Martin proposed that as they had sat all the morning they should run all the afternoon, so they played Touchwood. And Martin was He. But an orchard is so full of wood that he had a hard job of it. And he observed that Jennifer had very little daring, and scarcely ever lifted her finger from the wood as she ran from one tree to another; and that Jane had no daring at all, and never even left her tree. And that Joscelyn was extremely daring when it was safe to be so; and that Jessica was daring enough to tweak him and run away, while Joyce was more daring still, for she tweaked him and did not run. As for little Joan, she puzzled him most of all; for half the time she outdid them all in daring, and then she was uncatchable, slipping through his very fingers like a ray of sunlight a child tries to hold; but the other half of the time she was timidity itself, and crept from tree to tree, and if he were near became like a little frightened rabbit, forgetting, or being through fear unable, to touch safety; and then she was snared more easily than any.

  By supper, however, every maid had been He but Jane. For no man can catch what doesn't run.

  "How the time has flown," said Joscelyn, when they were all seated about the middle tree after the meal.

  "It makes such a difference," said Jennifer, "when there's something to do. We never used to have anything to do till Master Pippin came, and now life is all games and stories."

  "The games," said Joscelyn, "are well enough."

  "Shall we," said Martin, "forego the stories?"

  "Oh, Master Pippin!" said Jennifer anxiously, "we surely are to have a story to-night?"

  "Unless we are to remain here for ever," said Martin, "I fear we must. But for my part I am quite happy here. Are not you, Mistress Joscelyn?"

  "Your questions are idle," said she. "You know very well that we cannot escape a story."

  "You see, Mistress Jennifer," said Martin. "Let us resign ourselves therefore. And for your better diversion, please sit in the swing, and when the story is tedious you will have a remedy at hand."

  So saying, he put Jennifer on the seat and her hands on the ropes, and the five other girls climbed into the tree, while he took the bough that had become his own. And all provided themselves with apples.

  "Begin," said Joscelyn.

  "A story-teller," said Martin, "as much as any other craftsman, needs his instruments, of which his auditors are the chief. And of these I lack one." And he fixed his eyes of the weeper in the Well-House.

  "You have six already," said Joscelyn. "The seventh you must acquire as you proceed. So begin."

  "Without the vital tool?" cried Martin. "As well might you bid Madam Toad to spin flax without her distaff."

  "What folly is this?" said Joscelyn. "Toads don't spin."

  "Don't they?" said Martin, much astonished. "I thought they did. What then is toadflax? Do the wildflowers not know?"

  And still keeping his eyes fixed on Gillian he thrummed and sang--

  Toad, toad, old toad, What are you spinning? Seven hanks of yellow flax Into snow-white linen. What will you do with it Then, toad, pray? Make shifts for seven brides Against their wedding-day. Suppose e'er a one of them Refuses to be wed? Then she shall not see the jewel I wear in my head.

  As he concluded, Gillian raised herself on her two elbows, and with her chin on her palms gazed steadily over the duckpond.

  Joscelyn: Why seven?

  Martin: Is it not as good a number as another?

  Jennifer: What is the jewel like in the toad's head, Master Pippin?

  Martin: How can I say, Mistress Jennifer? There's but one way of knowing, according to the song, and like a fool I refused it.

  Jennifer: I wish I knew.

  Martin: The way lies open to all.

  Joscelyn: These are silly legends, Jennifer. It is as little likely that there are jewels in toads' heads as that toads spin flax. But Master Pippin pins his faith to any nonsense.

  Martin: True, Mistress Joscelyn. My faith cries for elbow-room, and he who pins his faith to common-sense is like to get a cramp in it. Therefore since women, as I hear tell, have ceased to spin brides' shifts, I am obliged to believe that these things are spun by toads. Because brides there must be though the wells should run dry.

  Joscelyn: I do not see the connection. However, it is obvious that the bad logic of your song has aroused even Gillian's attention, so for mercy's sake make short work of your tale before it flags again.

  Martin: I will follow your advice. And do you follow me with your best attention while I turn the wheel of The Mill of Dreams.

  * * *

  THE MILL OF DREAMS

  There was once, dear maidens, a girl who lived in a mill on the Sidlesham marshes. But in those days the marshlands were meadowlands, with streams running in from the coast, so that their water was brackish and salt. And sometimes the girl dipped her finger in the water and sucked it and tasted the sea. And the taste made storms rise in her heart. Her name was Helen.

  The mill-house was a gaunt and gloomy building of stone, as gray as sleep, weatherstained with dreams. It had fine proportions, and looked like a noble prison. And in fact, if a prison is the lockhouse of secrets, it was one. The great millstones ground day and night, and what the world sent in as corn it got back as flour. And as to the secrets of the grinding it asked no questions, because to the world results are everything. It understands death better than sorrow, marriage better than love, and birth better than creation. And the millstones of joy and pain, grinding dreams into bread, it seldom hears. But Helen heard them, and they were all the knowledge she had of life; for if the mill was a prison of dreams it was her prison too.

  Her father the miller was a harsh man and dark; he was dark within and without. Her mother was dead; she did not remember her. As she grew up she did little by little the work of the big place. She was her father's servant, and he kept her as close to her work as he kept his millstones to theirs. He was morose, and welcomed no company. Gayety he hated. Helen knew no songs, for she had heard none. From morning till night she worked for her father. When she had done all her other work she spun flax into linen for shirts and gowns, and wool for stockings and vests. If she went outside the mill-house, it was only for a few steps for a few moments. She wasn't two miles from the sea, but she had never seen it. But she tasted the salt water and smelt
the salt wind.

  Like all things that grow up away from the light, she was pale. Her oval face was like ivory, and her lips, instead of being scarlet, had the tender red of apple-blossom, after the unfolding of the bright bud. Her hair was black and smooth and heavy, and lay on either side of her face like a starling's wings. Her eyes too were as black as midnight, and sometimes like midnight they were deep and sightless. But when she was neither working nor spinning she would steal away to the millstones, and stand there watching and listening. And then there were two stars in the midnight. She came away from those stolen times powdered with flour. Her black hair and her brows and lashes, her old blue gown, her rough hands and fair neck, and her white face--all that was dark and pale in her was merged in a mist, and seen only through the clinging dust of the millstones. She would try to wipe off all the evidences of her secret occasions, but her father generally knew. Had he known by nothing else, he need only have looked at her eyes before they lost their starlight.

  One day when she was seventeen years old there was a knock at the mill-house door. Nobody ever knocked. Her father was the only man who came in and went out. The mill stood solitary in those days. The face of the country has since been changed by man and God, but at that time there were no habitations in sight. At regular times the peasants brought their grain and fetched their meal; but the miller kept his daughter away from his custom. He never said why. Doubtless at the back of his mind was the thought of losing what was useful to him. Most parents have their ways of trying to keep their children; in some it is this way, in others that; not many learn to keep them by letting them go.

  So when the knock came at the door, it was the strangest thing that had ever happened in Helen's life. She ran to the door and stood with her hand on the heavy wooden bar that fell across it into a great socket. Her heart beat fast. Before we know a thing it is a thousand things. Only one thing would be there when she lifted the bar. But as she stood with her hand upon it, a host of presences hovered on the other side. A knight in armor, a king in his gold crown, a god in the guise of a beggar, an angel with a sword; a dragon even; a woman to be her friend; her mother...a child...

  "Would it be better not to open?" thought Helen. For then she would never know. Yes, then she could run to her millstones and fling them her thoughts in the husk, and listen, listen while they ground them into dreams. What knowledge would be better than that? What would she lose by opening the door?

  But she had to open the door.

  Outside on the stones stood a common lad. He might have been three years older than she. He had a cap with a hole in it in his hand, and a shabby jersey that left his brown neck bare. He was whistling when she lifted the bar, but he stopped as the door fell back, and gave Helen a quick and careless look.

  "Can I have a bit of bread?" he asked.

  Helen stared at him without answering. She was so unused to people that her mind had to be summoned from a world of ghosts before she could hear and utter real words. The boy waited for her to speak, but, as she did not, shrugged his shoulders and turned away whistling his tune.

  Then she understood that he was going, and she ran after him quickly and touched his sleeve. He turned again, expecting her to speak; but she was still dumb.

  "Thought better of it?" he said.

  Helen said slowly, "Why did you ask me for bread?"

  "Why?" He looked her up and down. "To mend my boots with, of course."

  She looked at his boots.

  "You silly thing," grinned the boy.

  A faint color came under her skin. "I'm sorry for being stupid. I suppose you're hungry."

  "As a hunter. But there's no call to trouble you. I'll be where I can get bread, and meat too, in forty minutes. Good-by, child."

  "No," said Helen. "Please don't go. I'd like to give you some bread."

  "Oh, all right," said the boy. "What frightened you? Did you think I was a scamp?"

  "I wasn't frightened," said Helen.

  "Don't tell me," mocked the boy. "You couldn't get a word out."

  "I wasn't frightened."

  "You thought I was a bad lot. You don't know I'm not one now."

  Helen's eyes filled with tears. She turned away quickly. "I'll get you your bread," she said.

  "You are a silly, aren't you?" said the boy as she disappeared.

  Before long she came back with half a loaf in one hand, and something in the other which she kept behind her back.

  "Thanks," said the boy, taking the bit of loaf. "What else have you got there?"

  "It's something better than bread," said Helen slowly.

  "Well, let's have a look at it."

  She took her hand from behind her, and offered him seven ears of wheat. They were heavy with grain, and bowed on their ripe stems.

  "Is this what you call better than bread?" he asked.

  "It is better."

  "Oh, all right. I sha'n't eat it though--not all at once."

  "No," said Helen, "keep it till you're hungry. The grains go quite a long way when you're hungry."

  "I'll eat one a year," said the boy, "and then they'll go so far they'll outlast me my lifetime."

  "Yes," said Helen, "but the bread will be gone in forty minutes. And then you'll be where you can get meat."

  "You funny thing," said the boy, puzzled because she never smiled.

  "Where can you get meat?" she asked.

  "In a boat, fishing for rabbits."

  But she took no notice of the rabbits. She said eagerly, "A boat? are you going in a boat?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you a sailor?"

  "You've hit it."

  "You've seen the sea! you've been on the sea!--sailors do that..."

  "Oh, dear no," said the boy, "we sail three times round the duckpond and come home for tea."

  Helen hung her head. The boy put his hand up to his mouth and watched her over it.

  "Well," he said presently, "I must get along to Pagham." He stuck the little sheaf of wheat through the hole in his cap, and it bobbed like a ruddy-gold plume over his ear. Then he felt in his pocket and after some fumbling got hold of what he wanted and pulled it out. "Here you are, child," he said, "and thank you again."

  He put his present into her hand and swung off whistling. He turned once to wave to her, and the corn in his cap nodded with its weight and his light gait. She stood gazing till he was out of sight, and then she looked at what he had given her. It was a shell.

  She had heard of shells, of course, but she had never seen one. Yet she knew this was no English shell. It was as large as the top of a teacup, but more oval than round. Over its surface, like pearl, rippled waves of sea-green and sea-blue, under a luster that was like golden moonlight on the ocean. She could not define or trace the waves of color; they flowed in and out of each other with interchangeable movement. One half of the outer rim, which was transparently thin and curled like the fantastic edge of a surf wave, was flecked with a faint play of rose and cream and silver, that melted imperceptibly into the moonlit sea. When she turned the shell over she found that she could not see its heart. The blue-green side of the shell curled under like a smooth billow, and then broke into a world of caves, and caves within caves, whose final secret she could not discover. But within and within the color grew deeper and deeper, bottomless blues and unfathomable greens, shot with such gleams of light as made her heart throb, for they were like the gleams that shoot through our dreams, the light that just eludes us when we wake.

  She went into the mill, trembling from head to foot. She was not conscious of moving, but she found herself presently standing by the grinding stones, with sound rushing through her and white dust whirling round her. She gazed and gazed into the labyrinth of the shell as though she must see to its very core; but she could not. So she unfastened her blue gown and laid the shell against her young heart. It was for the first time of so many times that I know not whether when, twenty years later, she did it for the last time, they outnumbered the silver hairs am
ong her black ones. And the silver by then were uncountable. Yet on the day when Helen began her twenty years of lonely listening--

  (But having said this, Martin Pippin grasped the rope just above Jennifer's hand, and pulled it with such force that the swing, instead of swinging back and forth, as a swing should, reeled sideways so that the swinger had much ado to keep her seat.

  Jennifer: Heaven help me!

  Martin: Heaven help ME! I need its help more sorely than you do.

  Jennifer: Oh, you should be punished, not helped!

  Martin: I have been punished, and the punished require help more than censure, or scorn, or anger, or any other form of righteousness.

  Jennifer: Who has punished you? And for what?

  Martin: You, Mistress Jennifer. For my bad story.

  Jennifer: I do not remember doing so. The story is only begun. I am sure it will be a very good story.

  Martin: Now you are compassionate, because I need comfort. But the truth is that, good or bad, you care no more for my story. For I saw a tear of vexation come into your eye.

  Jennifer: It was not vexation. Not exactly vexation. And doubtless Helen will have experiences which we shall all be glad to hear. But all the same I wish--

  Martin: You wish?

  Jennifer: That she was not going to grow old in her loneliness. Because all lovers are young.

  Martin: You have spoken the most beautiful of all truths. Does the grass grow high enough by the swing for you to pluck me two blades?

  Jennifer: I think so. Yes. What do you want with them?

  Martin: I want but one of them now. You shall only give me the other if, at the end of my tale, you agree that its lovers are as green as this blade and that.)

  On the day (resumed Martin) when Helen began her lonely listening of heart and ears betwixt the seashell and the millstones of her dreams, there was not, dear Mistress Jennifer, a silver thread in her black locks to vex you with. For a girl of seventeen is but a child. Yet old enough to begin spinning the stuff of the spirit...

  "My boy!--