Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (21 page)

Martin: Cannot?

Jennifer: Keep secrets!

Martin: Men say so?

Jennifer: Yes!

Martin: MEN say so?

Jennifer: They do, they do!

Martin: Men! Oh, Jupiter! if this were true--but it is not--these men would be blabbing the greatest of secrets in saying so. If I had a secret--but I have not--do you think I would trust it to a man? Not I! What does a man do with a secret? Forgets it, throws it behind him into some empty chamber of his brain and lets the cobwebs smother it! buries it in some deserted corner of his heart, and lets the weeds grow over it! Is this keeping a secret? Would you keep a garden or a baby so? I will a thousand times sooner give my secret to a woman. She will tend it and cherish it, laugh and cry with it, dress it in a new dress every day and dandle it in the world's eye for joy and pride in it--nay, she will bid the whole world come into her nursery to admire the pretty secret she keeps so well. And under her charge a little secret will grow into a big one, with a hundred charms and additions it had not when I confided it to her, so that I shall hardly know it again when I ask for it: so beautiful, so important, so mysterious will it have become in the woman's care. Oh, believe me, Mistress Jennifer, it is women who keep secrets and men who neglect them.

Jennifer: If I had only thought of these things to say! But I am not clever at argument like men.

Martin: I suspect these clever arguers. They can always find the right thing to say, even if they are in the wrong. Women are not to be blamed for washing their hands of them for ever.

Jennifer: I know. Yet I cannot help wondering who bakes them gingerbread for Sunday.

Martin: Let them go without. They do not deserve gingerbread.

Jennifer: I know, I know. But they like it so much. And it is nice making it, too.

Martin: Then I suppose it will have to be made till the last of Sundays. What a bother it all is.

Jennifer: I know. Good night, dear Master Pippin.

Martin: Dear milkmaid, good night. There lie your fellows, careless of the color of the grass they lie on, and of the years that lie on them. They have forsworn the baking of cakes, the eating of which begets dreams, to which women are not given. Go lie with them, and be if you can as careless and dreamless as they are.

And then, seeing the tears refilling her eyes, he hastily pulled out his handkerchief again and wiped them as they fell, saying, "But if you cannot--if you cannot (don't cry so fast!)--if you cannot, then give me your key (dear Jennifer, please dry up!) to Gillian's Well-House, because you were glad that my tale ended gladly, and also because all lovers, no matter of what age, are green enough, and chiefly because my handkerchief's sopping."

Then Jennifer caught his hands in hers and whispered, "Oh, Martin! are they? ALL lovers?--are they green enough?"

"God help them, yes!" said Martin Pippin.

She dropped his hands, leaving her key in them, and looked up at him with wet lashes, but happiness behind them. So he stooped and kissed the last tears from her eyes. Since his handkerchief had become quite useless for the purpose.

And she stole back to her place, and he lay down in his, and Jennifer dreamed that she was baking gingerbread, and Martin that he was eating it.

"Maids! maids! maids!"

It was Old Gillman on the heels of dawn.

"A pest on him and all farmers," groaned Martin, "who would harvest men's slumbers as soon as they're sown."

"Get into hiding!" commanded Joscelyn.

"I will not budge," said Martin. "I am going to sleep again. For at that moment I had a lion in one hand and a unicorn in the other--"

"WILL you conceal yourself!" whispered Joscelyn, with as much fury as a whisper can compass.

"And the lion had comfits in his crown, and the unicorn a gilded horn. And both were so sticky and spicy and sweet--"

Joscelyn flung herself upon her knees before him, spreading her yellow skirts which barely concealed him, as Old Gillman thrust his head through the hawthorn gap.

"Good morrow, maids," he grunted.

"--that I knew not, dear Mistress Joscelyn," murmured Martin, "which to bite first."

"Good morrow, master!" cried the milkmaids loudly; and they fluttered their petticoats like sunshine between the man at the hedge and the man in the grass.

"Is my daughter any merrier this morning?"

"No, master," said Jennifer, "yet I think I see smiles on their way."

"If they lag much longer," muttered the farmer, "they'll be on the wrong side of her mouth when they do come. For what sort of a home will she return to?--a pothouse! and what sort of a father?--a drunkard! And the fault's hers that deprives him of the drink he loved in his sober days. Gillian!" he exclaimed, "when will ye give up this child's whim to learn by experience, and take an old man's word for it?"

But Gillian was as deaf to him as to the cock crowing in the barnyard.

"Come fetch your portion," said Old Gillman to the milkmaids, "since there's no help for it. And good day to ye, and a better morrow."

"Wait a bit, master!" entreated Jennifer, "and tell me if Daisy, my Lincoln Red, lacks for anything."

"For nothing that Tom can help her to, maid. But she lacks you, and lacking you, her milk. So that being a cow she may be said to lack everything. And so do I, and the men, and the farm--ruin's our portion, nothing but rack and ruin."

Saying which he departed.

"To breakfast," said Martin cheerfully.

"Suppose you'd been seen," scolded Joscelyn.

"Then our tales would have been at an end," said Martin. "Would this have distressed you?"

"The sooner they're ended the better," said Joscelyn, "if you can do nothing but babble of sticky unicorns."

"It was fresh from the oven," explained Martin meekly. "I wish we could have gingerbread for breakfast instead of bread."

"Do not be sure," said Joscelyn severely, "that you will get even bread."

"I am in your hands," said Martin, "but please be kinder to the ducks."

Joscelyn, all of a fluster, then put new bread in the place of Gillian's old; but her annoyance was turned to pleasure when she discovered that the little round top of yesterday's loaf had entirely disappeared.

"Upon my word!" cried she, "the cure is taking effect."

"I believe you are right," said Martin. "How sorry the ducks will be."

They quickly fed the ducks, and then themselves; and Martin received his usual share, Joscelyn having so far relented that she even advised him as to the best tree for apples in the whole orchard.

After breakfast Martin found six pair of eyes fixed so earnestly upon him that he began to laugh.

"Why do you laugh?" asked little Joan.

"Because of my thoughts," said he. So she took a new penny from her pocket and gave it to him.

"I was thinking," said Martin, "how strange it is that girls are all so exactly alike."

"Oh!" cried six different voices in a single key of indignation.

"What a fib!" said Joyce. "I am like nobody but me."

"Nor am !" cried all the others in a breath.

"Yet a moment ago," said Martin, "you, Mistress Joyce, were wondering with all your might what diversion I had hit upon for this morning. And so were Jane and Jessica and Jennifer and Joan and Joscelyn."

"I was NOT!" cried six voices at once.

"What, none of you?" said Martin. "Did I not say so?"

And they were very provoked, not knowing what to answer for fear it might be on the tip of her neighbor's tongue. So they said nothing at all, and with one accord tossed their heads and turned their backs on him. And Martin laughed, leaving them to guess why. On which, greatly put out, every girl without even consulting one another they decided to have nothing further to do with him, and each girl went and sat under a different apple-tree and began to do her hair.

"Heigho!" said Martin. "Then this morning I must divert myself." And he began to spin his golden penny in the sun, sometimes spinning it very dexterously from his elbow and never letting it fall. But the girls wouldn't look, or if they did, it was through stray bits of their hair; when they could not be suspected of looking.

"I shall certainly lose this penny," communed Martin with himself, quite audibly, "if somebody does not lend me a purse to keep it in." But nobody offered him one, so he plucked a blade of Shepherd's Purse from the grass, soliloquizing, "Now had I been a shepherd, or had the shepherd's name been Martin, here was my purse to my hand. And then, having saved my riches I might have got married. Yet I never was a shepherd, nor ever knew a shepherd of my name; and a penny is in any case a great deal too much money for a man to marry on, be he a shepherd or no. For it is always best to marry on next-to-nothing, from which a penny is three times removed."

Then he went on spinning his penny in the air again, humming to himself a song of no value, which, so far as the girls could tell for the hair over their ears, went as follows:

If I should be so lucky As a farthing for to find. I wouldn't spend the farthing According to my mind, But I'd beat it and I'd bend it And I'd break it into two, And give one half to a Shepherd And the other half to you. And as for both your fortunes, I'd wish you nothing worse Than that YOUR half and HIS half Should lie in the Shepherd's Purse.

At the end of the song he spun the penny so high that it fell into the Well-House; and endeavoring to catch it he flung the spire of wild-flower after it, and so lost both. And nobody took the least notice of his song or his loss.

Then Martin said, "Who cares?" and took a new clay pipe and a little packet from his pocket; and he wandered about the orchard till he had found an old tin pannikin, and he scooped up some water from the duckpond and made a lather in it with the soap in the packet, and sat on the gate and blew bubbles. The first bubble in the pipe was always crystal, and sometimes had a jewel hanging from it which made it fall to the earth; and the second was tinged with color, and the third gleamed like sunset, or like peacocks' wings, or rainbows, or opals. All the colors of earth and heaven chased each other on their surfaces in all the swift and changing shapes that tobacco smoke plays at on the air; but of all their colors they take the deepest glow of one or two, and now Martin would blow a world of flame and orange through the trees, or one of blue and gold, or another of green and rose. And, as he might have watched his dreams, he watched the bubbles float away; and break. But one of the loveliest at last sailed over the Well-House and between the ropes of the swing and among the fruit-laden boughs, miraculously escaping all perils; and over the hedge, where a small wind bore it up and up out of sight. And Martin, who had been looking after it with a rapt gaze, sighed, "Oh!" And six other "Ohs!" echoed his. Then he looked up and saw the six milkmaids standing quite close to him, full of hesitation and longing. So he took six more pipes from his pockets, and soon the air was glistening with bubbles, big and little. Sometimes they blew the bubbles very quickly, shaking the tiny globes as fast as they could from the bowl, till the air was filled with a treasure of opals and diamonds and moonstones and pearls, as though the king of the east had emptied his casket there. And sometimes they blew steadily and with care, endeavoring to create the best and biggest bubble of all; but generally they blew an instant too long, and the bubble burst before it left the pipe. Whenever a great sphere was launched the blower cried in ecstasy, "Oh, look at mine!" and her comrades, merely glancing, cried in equal ecstasy, "Yes, but see mine!" And each had a moment's delight in the others' bubbles, but everlasting joy in her own, and was secretly certain that of all the bubbles hers were the biggest and brightest. The biggest and brightest of all was really blown by little Joan: as Martin, in a whisper, assured her. He whispered the same thing, however, to each of her friends, and for one truth told five lies. Sometimes they played together, taking their bubbles delicately from one pipe to another, and sometimes blew their bubbles side by side till they united, and made their venture into the world like man and wife. And often they put all their pipes at once into the pannikin, and blew in the water, rearing a great palace of crystal hemispheres, that rose until it hit their chins and cheeks and the tips of their noses, and broke on them, leaving on their fair skin a trace of glistening foam. And as the six laughing faces bent over the pannikin on his knees, Martin observed that Joscelyn's hair was coiled like two great lovely roses over her ears, and that Joyce's was in clusters of ringlets, and that Jane's was folded close and smooth and shining round her small head, and that Jessica's was tucked under like a boy's, while Jennifer's lay in a soft knot on her neck. But little Joan's was hanging still in its plaits over her shoulders, and one thick plait was half undone, and the loose hair got in her own and everybody's way, and was such a nuisance that Martin was obliged at last to gather it in his hand and hold it aside for the sake of the bubble-blowers. And when they lifted their heads he was looking at them so gravely that Joyce laughed, and Jessica's eyes were a question, and Jane looked demure, and Jennifer astonished, and Joscelyn extremely composed and indifferent. And little Joan blushed. To cover her blushing she offered him another penny.

"I was thinking," said Martin, "how strange it is that girls are so absolutely different."

Then six demure shadows appeared at the very corners of their mouths, and they rose from their knees and said with one accord, "It must be dinner-time." And it was.

"Bread is a good thing," said Martin, twirling a buttercup as he swallowed his last crumb, "but I also like butter. Do not you, Mistress Joscelyn?"

"It depends on who makes it," said she. "There is butter and butter."

"I believe," said Martin, "that you do not like butter at all."

"I do not like other people's butter," said Joscelyn.

"Let us be sure," said Martin. And he twirled his buttercup under her chin. "Fie, Mistress Joscelyn!" he cried. "What a golden chin! I never saw any one so fond of butter in all my days."