Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (20 page)

"I was ashamed of myself," whispered Helen. "I was ashamed of trying to be again what I was the only other time you saw me."

"You've never stopped being that, child," said Peter.

"You knew, didn't you, why it was I had stayed on at the mill? You knew what it was that held me, and why I could never leave it?"

"Yes, I knew. It held you because it held me too. I wondered if you'd tell me that."

"I longed to, but I couldn't. I've never been able to tell you things. And I never shall."

"Oh, child, don't look so troubled. You've always told me things and always will. Do you think it's with our tongues we tell each other things? What can words ever tell? They only circle round the truth like birds flying in the sun. The light bathes their flight, yet they are millions of miles away from the light they fly in. We listen to each other's words, but we watch each other's eyes."

"Some people half-shut their eyes, Peter."

"Some people, Helen, can't shut their eyes at all. Your eyes will never stop telling me things. And the strangest thing about them is that looking into them is like being able to see in the dark. They are darkness, not light. And in darkness dreams are born. When I look into your eyes I go into your dream."

"I shall never shut my eyes again," she whispered. "I will keep you in my dream for ever."

"Women aren't all the same, Peter."

"Aren't they?"

"And yet--they are."

"Well, I give it up."

"Didn't you know?"

"No. I told you the truth that time. I've not had very much to do with women."

"Then I've something to teach you, Peter."

"I don't know what you can prove," said Peter. "One woman by herself can't prove a difference."

"Can't she?" said Helen; and laughed and cried at once.

"But why did you call me a nuisance?"

"You were one--you are one. You leave a man no peace--you're like the sea. You're full of storms, aren't you?"

"Not only storms."

"I know. But the sea wouldn't be the sea without her storms. They're one of her ways of holding us, too. And there are more storms in her than ever break. I see them in you, big ones and little ones, brooding. Then you're a--nuisance. You always will be, won't you?"

"Not to wreck you."

"You won't do that. Or if you do--I can survive shipwreck."

"I know."

"How do you know? I nearly gave up once, but the thought of you stopped me. I wanted to come back--I'd always meant to. So I held on."

"I know."

"How do you know? I never told you, did I?"

"Oh, Peter, the things we have to tell each other. The times you thought you were alone--the times I thought I was! You've had a life you never dreamed of--and I another life that was not in my dreams."

"You've saved me from death more than once," said Peter.

"You've done more than that," said Helen, "you've given me the only life I've had. But a thing doesn't belong to you because you've saved its life or given it life. It only belongs to you because you love it. I know you belong to me. But you only know if I belong to you."

"That's not true now. You do know. And I know."

"Yes; and we know that as that belonging has nothing to do with death, it can't have anything either to do with the saving or even the giving of life. So you must never thank me, or I you. There are no thanks in love. And that was why I couldn't bear your asking me to marry you to-day. I thought you were thanking me."

"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--