Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (19 page)

She brought them to him, and he searched them till he had found among them a small metal box which he thrust under the pillow; and then he lay back, as though too tired to notice her. So her impulse died in her, unacted on.

And during the next four days it was always so. A dozen times in their talks she tried to come near him, and could not. Was it because he would not let her? or because the thing she wished to find in him was not really there? Sometimes by his manner only, and sometimes by his words, he baffled her when she attempted to approach him--and the attempt had been so painful to conceive, and its still-birth was such agony to her. He would talk frequently of the time when he would be making tracks again.

"Where to?" asked Helen.

"I leave it to chance. I always have. I've never made plans. Or very seldom. And I'm not often twice in the same place. You look tired. I'm sorry to be a bother to you. But it'll be for the last time, most likely. Go and lie down."

"I don't want to," said Helen under her breath. And in her thoughts she was crying, "The last time? Then it must be soon, soon! I'll make you listen to me now!"

"I want to sleep," said Peter.

She left the room. Tears of helplessness and misery filled her eyes. She was almost angry with him, but more angry with herself; but her self-anger was mixed with shame. She was ashamed that he made her feel so much, while he felt nothing. Did he feel nothing?

"It's my stupidity that keeps us apart," she whispered. "I will break through it!" As quickly as she had left him she returned, and stood by the bed. He was lying with his hand pressed over his eyes. When he was conscious of her being there, his hand fell, and his keen eyes shot into hers. His brows contracted.

"You nuisance," he muttered, and hid his eyes again. She turned and left him. When she got outside the door she leaned against it and shook from head to foot. She hovered on the brink of her delusions and felt as though she would soon crash into a precipice. She longed for him to go before she fell. Yes, she began to long for the time when he should go, and end this pain, and leave her to the old strange life that had been so sweet. His living presence killed it.

After that third day she had had no more fears for his safety, and he was strong and rallied quickly. The gull too was saved. He saved it. It had drooped and sickened with her. She did not know what to do with it. On the fourth day as he was so much better, she brought it to him. He reset its wing and kept it by him, making it his patient and his playfellow. It thrived at once and grew tame to his hand. He fondled and talked to it like a lover. She would watch him silently with her smoldering eyes as he fed and caressed the bird, and jabbered to it in scraps of a dozen foreign tongues. His tenderness smote her heart.

"You're not very fond of birds," he said to her once, when she had been sitting in one of her silences while he played with his pet.

The words, question or statement, filled her with anger. She would not trust herself to protest or deny. "I don't know much about them," she said.

"That's a pity," said Peter coolly. "The more you know em the more you have to love em. Yet you could love them for all sorts of things without knowing them, I'd have thought."

She said nothing.

"For their beauty, now. That's worth loving. Look at this one-- you're a beauty all right, aren't you, my pretty? Not many girls to match you." He paused, and ran his finger down the bird's throat and breast. "Perhaps you don't think she's beautiful," he said to Helen.

"Yes, she's beautiful," said Helen, with a difficulty that sounded like reluctance.

"Ah, you don't think so. You ought to see her flying. You shall some day. When her hurt's mended she'll fly--I'll let her go."

"Perhaps she won't go," said Helen.

"Oh, yes, she will. How can she stop in a place like this? This is no air for her--she must fly in her own."

"You'll be sorry to see her go," said Helen.

"To see her free? No, not a bit. I want her to fly. Why should I keep her? I'd not let her keep me. I'd hate her for it. Why should I make her hate me?"

"Perhaps she wouldn't," said Helen, in a low voice.

"Oh, I expect she would. Ungrateful little beggar. I've saved her life, and she ought to know she belongs to me. So she might stay out of gratitude. But she'd come to hate me for it, all the same. Not at first; after a bit. Because we change. Bound to, aren't we?"

"Perhaps."

"I know I do. We can none of us stay what we were. You haven't either."

"You haven't much to go by," said Helen.

"Seven minutes at the door, wasn't it? This time it's been seven days."

"Yes."

"It's a long time for me," said Peter.

"It's not much out of a lifetime."

"No. But suppose it were more than seven days?"

Helen looked at him and said slowly, "It will be, won't it? You won't be able to go to-morrow."

"No," said Peter, "not to-morrow, or next day perhaps. Perhaps I won't be able to go for the rest of my life."

This time Helen looked at him and said nothing.

Peter stroked his bird and whistled his tune and stopped abruptly and said, "Will you marry me, Helen?"

"I'd rather die," said Helen.

And she got up and went out of the room.

("Oh, the green grass!" chuckled Martin like a bird.

"Nobody asked her you to begin a song, Master Pippin," quavered Jennifer.

"It was not the beginning of a song, Mistress Jennifer. It was the epilogue of a story."

"But the epilogue comes at the end of a story," said Jennifer.

"And hasn't my story come to its end?" said Martin.

Joscelyn: Ridiculous! oh, dear! there's no bearing with you. How CAN this be the end? How can it be, with him on one side of the door and her on the other?"

Joyce: And her heart's breaking--you must make an end of that.

Jennifer: And you must tell us the end of the shell.

Jessica: And of the millstones.

Jane: What did he have in his box?

"Please," said little Joan, "tell us whether she ever found her boy again--oh, please tell us the end of her dreams."

"Do these things matter?" said Martin. "Hasn't he asked her to marry him?"

"But she said no," said Jennifer with tears in her eyes.

"Did she?" said Martin. "Who said so?"

"Master Pippin," said Joscelyn, and her voice shook with the agitation of her anger, "tell us immediately the things we want to know!"

"When, I wonder," said Martin, "will women cease to want to know little things more than big ones? However, I suppose they must be indulged in little things, lest--"

"Lest?" said little Joan.

"There is such a thing," said Martin, "as playing for safety.")

Well, then, my dear maids, when Helen ran out of his room she went to her own, and she threw herself on the bed and sobbed without weeping. Because everything in her life seemed to have been taken away from her. She lay there for a long time, and when she moved at last her head was so heavy that she took the pins from her hair to relieve herself of its weight. But still the pain weighed on her forehead, which burned on her cold fingers when she pressed them over her eyes, trying to think and find some gleam of hope among her despairing thoughts. And then she remembered that one thing at least was left her--her shell. During his illness she had never carried it to the millstones. It was as though his being there had been the only answer to her daily dreams, an answer that had failed them all the time. But now in spite of him she would try to find the old answers again. So she went once more to the millstones with her shell. And when she got there she held it so tightly to her heart that it marked her skin.

And the millstones had nothing to say. For the first time they refused to grind her corn.

Then Helen knew that she really had nothing left, and that the home-coming of the man had robbed her of her boy and of the child she had been. Nothing was left but the man and woman who had lost their youth. And the man had nothing to give the woman. Nothing but gratitude and disillusion. And now a still bitterer thought came to her--the thought that the boy had had nothing to give the girl. For twenty years it had been the girl's illusion. The storms in her heart broke out. She put her face in her hands and wept like wild rain on the sea. She wept so violently that between her passion and the speechless grinding of the stones she did not hear him coming. She only knew he was there when he put his arm round her.

"What is it, you silly thing?" said Peter.

She looked up at him through her hair that fell like a girl's in soft masses on either side of her face. There was a change in him, but she didn't know then what it was. He had got into his clothes and made himself kempt. His beard was no longer rough, though his hair was still unruly across his forehead, and under it his gray-green eyes looked, half-anxious, half-smiling, into hers. His face was rather pale, and he was a little unsteady in his weakness. But the look in his eyes was the only thing she saw. It unlocked her speech at last.

"Oh, why did you come back?" she cried. "Why did you come back? If you had never come I should have kept my dream to the end of my life. But now even when you go I shall never get it again. You have destroyed what was not there."

He was silent for a moment, still keeping his arm round her. Then he said, "Look what's here." And he opened his hand and showed her his metal box without its lid; in it were the mummies of seven ears of corn. Some were only husks, but some had grain in them still.

She stared at them through her tears, and drew from her breast her hand with the shell in it. Suddenly her mouth quivered and she cried passionately, "What's the use?" And she snatched the old corn from him and flung it to the millstones with her shell. And the millstones ground them to eternal atoms....

"My boy! my boy! it was you over there in the tree!"

"Oh, child, you came at last in your blue gown!"

"Why didn't you call to me?"

"I'd no breath. I was spent. And I knew you'd seen me and would do your best."

"I'll never forget that sight of you in the tree, with your old jersey and your hair as red as ever."

"I shall always see your free young figure standing on the high bank against the sky."

"Oh, I was desperate."

"I wondered what you'd do. I knew you'd do something."

"I thought I'd never get across the water."

"Do you know what I thought as I saw you coming so bravely and so badly? I thought, I'll teach her to swim one day. Shall I, child?"

"I can't swim without you, my boy," she whispered.

"But you pretended not to know me!"

"I couldn't help it, it was such fun."

"How COULD you make fun of me then?"

"I always shall, you know."

"Oh, yes," she said, "do, always."

"What DID you think when you saw me in the tree? What did you see when you got there? Not what you expected."

"No. I saw twenty years come flying upon me, twenty years I'd forgotten all about. Because for me it has always been twenty years ago."

"And you expected to see a boy, and you saw a grizzled man."

"No," said Helen, her eyes shining with tears, "I expected to see a boy, and I saw a gray-haired woman. I've seen her ever since."

"I've only seen her once," said Peter. "I saw her rise up from the water and sit in my tree. And when she spoke and looked at me, it was a child." He put his hand over her wet eyes. "You must stop seeing her, child," he said.

"When I told you my name, were you disappointed?"

"No. It's the loveliest name in the world."

"You said it at once."

"I had to. I'd wanted to say it for twenty years. But I sha'n't say it often, Helen."

"Won't you?"

"No, child."

"Now and then, for a treat?" she looked up at him half-shy, half-merry.

"Oh, you CAN smile, can you?"

"You were to teach me that too."

"Yes, I've a lot to teach you, haven't I?--I've yet to teach you to say my name."

"Have you?"

"You've never said it once."

"I've said it a thousand times."

"You've never let me hear you."

"Haven't I?"

"Let me hear you!"

"Peter."

"Say it again!"

"Peter! Peter! Peter!"

"Again!"

"My boy!"...

"When we got back to the mill-door the last of the twenty years, that had been melting faster and faster, melted away for ever. And you and I were standing there as we'd stood then; and I wanted to kiss your mouth as I'd wanted to then."

"Oh, why didn't you?--both times!"

"Shall I now, for both times?"

"Oh!--oh, that's for a hundred times."

"Think of all the times I've wanted to, and been without you."

"You've never been without me."

"I know that. How often I came to the mill."

"Did you come to the mill?"

"As often as I ate your grain. Didn't you know?"

"I know how often your sea brought me to you."

"Did it?"

"And, oh, my boy! at last the sea brought you to me."

"And the mill," he said. "Where has that brought us?"

"I thought perhaps you'd die."

"I couldn't have died so close on finding you. I was fighting the demons all the time--fighting my way through to you. And at last I opened my eyes and saw you again, your black hair edged with light against the window."

"My black hair? you mean my brown hair, don't you?"

"Oh, weren't you cross! I loved you for being cross."

"I wasn't cross. Why will you keep on saying I'm things I'm not?"

"You were so cross that you pretended our twenty years were sixty."

"I never said anything about twenty years, OR sixty."

"You did, though. Sixty! why, in sixty years we'd have been very nearly old. So to punish you I pretended to go to sleep, and I saw you take your hair down. It was so beautiful. You've seen the threads spiders spin on blackened furze that gypsies have set fire to? Your hair was like that. You were angry with those lovely lines of silver, and you wanted to get rid of them. I nearly called to you to stop hurting what I loved so much, but you stopped of yourself, as though you had heard me before I called."