Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (28 page)

Jessica: (I won't take care!). I knew the answer all the time.

Martin: Then you know what your apple-tree has to do with my story.

Jessica: Yes, I suppose so.

Martin: Please tell me.

Jessica: No.

Martin: But I give it up.

Jessica: No.

Martin: That's not fair. People who give it up must always be told, in triumph if not in pity.

Jessica: I sha'n't tell.

Martin: You don't know.

Jessica: I'll box your ears.

Martin: If you do--!

Jessica: Quarreling's silly.

Martin: Who began it?

Jessica: You did. Men always do.

Martin: Always. What was the beginning of your quarrel with men?

Jessica: They say girls can't throw straight.

Martin: Silly asses! I'd like to see them throw as straight as girls. Did you ever watch them at it? Men can throw straight in one direction only--but watch a girl! she'll throw straight all round the compass. Why, a man will throw straight at the moon and miss it by the eighth of an inch; but a girl will throw at the sun and hit the moon as straight as a die. I never saw a girl throw yet without straightway finding some mark or other.

Jessica: Yes, but you can't convince a man till he's hit.

Martin: Hit him then.

Jessica: It didn't convince him. He said I'd missed. And he said he had hi--he wasn't convinced.

Martin: Did he really say that? These men can no more talk straight than throw straight. Can you talk straight, Jessica?

Jessica: Yes, Martin.

Martin: Then tell me what your apple-tree has to do with my story.

Jessica: Bother. All right. Because wisdom and beauty and courage and laughter can all be measured in pint-pots. And any or all of these things can be dipped out of a fountain. You thought I didn't know, but I do know.

Martin: (Take care!) Where did you get all this knowledge?

Jessica: And that was why Margaret could take what she took from Lionel and Hugh and Heriot and Ambrose, because it was something measurable. Yes, because even a gay spirit can be sad at times, and a strong nerve weak, and a beautiful face ugly, and a clever brain dull. But when it came to taking what Hobb had, she could take and take without exhausting it, and give and give and always have something left to give, because that wasn't measurable. And the tree is the tree, and love is never anything else but love.

Martin: Oh, Jessica! who has been your schoolmaster?

Jessica: And so when she threw away her four pints what did it matter, any more than when the tree loses its leaves, or its flowers, or snaps a twig, or drops its apples? For though nobody else thought them lovely or clever or witty or splendid, she and Hobb were so to each other for ever and ever; because--

Martin: Because?

Jessica: It doesn't matter. I've told you enough, and you thought I couldn't tell you anything, and I simply hated saying it, but you thought I couldn't throw straight and I can, and your riddle was as simple as pie.

Martin: (Look out, I tell you!) You have thrown as straight as a die. And now I will ask you a straight question. Will you give me your key to Gillian's prison?

Jessica: Yes.

Martin: Because you dreaded lest Hobb's rose was blighted for ever?

Jessica: No. Because it's a shame she should be there at all.

And she gave him the key.

Martin: You honest dear.

Jessica: You thought I was going to beg the question--didn't you, Martin?

Martin: Put in your tongue, or--

Jessica: Or what?

Martin: You know what.

Jessica: I don't know what.

Martin: Then you must take the consequences.

And she took the consequences on both cheeks.

Jessica: Oh! Oh, if I had guessed you meant that, do you suppose for a moment that I would have--?

Martin: You dishonest dear.

Jessica: I don't know what you mean.

Martin: How crooked girls throw!

She boxed his ears heartily and ran to her comrades. When she was perfectly safe she turned round and put out her tongue at him.

Then they both lay down and went to sleep.

Martin was wakened by water squeezed on his eyelids. He looked up and saw Joscelyn wringing out her little handkerchief in the pannikin.

"Let us have no nonsense this morning," said she.

"I like that!" mumbled Martin. "What's this but nonsense?" He sat up, drying his face on his sleeve. "What a silly trick," he said.

"Rubbish," said Joscelyn. "Our master is due, and yesterday you overslept yourself and were troublesome. Go to your tree this instant."

"I shall go when I choose," said Martin.

"Maids! maids! maids!"

"This instant!" said Joscelyn, and dipped her handkerchief in the pannikin.

Martin crawled into the tree.

"Is a dog got into the orchard, maids?" said Old Gillman, looking through the hedge.

"What an idea, master," said Joscelyn.

"I thought I seed one wagging his tail in the grass."

The girls burst out laughing; they laughed till the apples shook, and Old Gillman laughed too, because laughter is catching. And then he stopped laughing and said, "Is an echo got into the orchard?"

And the startled girls laughed louder than ever, and they grew red in the face, and tears stood in their eyes, and Joscelyn had to go and lean against the russet tree, where she stood frowning like a stepmother.

" Tis well to be laughing," said Old Gillman, "but have ye heard my daughter laughing yet?"

"No, master," said Jessica, "but I shouldn't wonder if it happened any day."

"Any day may be no day," groaned Gillman, "and though it were some day, as like as not I'd not be here to see the day. For I'm drinking myself into my grave, as Parson warned me yesternight, coming for my receipt for mulled beer. Gillian!" he implored, "when will ye think better of it, and save an old man's life?"

But for all the notice she took of him, he might have been the dog barking in his kennel.

"Bitter bread for me, maids, and sweet bread for you," said the farmer, passing the loaves through the gap. " Tis plain fare for all these days. May the morrow bring cake."

"Oh, master, please!" called Jessica. "I would like to know how Clover, the Aberdeen, gets on without me."

"Gets on as best she can with Oliver," said Gillman, "though that fretty at times tis as well for him she's polled. Yet all he says is Patience.' But I say, will patience keep us all from rack and ruin?"

And he went away shaking his head.

"Why did you laugh?" stormed Joscelyn, as soon as he was out of earshot.

"How could I help it?" pleaded Martin. "When the old man laughed because you laughed, and you laughed for another reason--hadn't I a third reason to laugh? But how you glared at me! I am sorry I laughed. Let us have breakfast."

"You think of nothing but mealtimes," said Joscelyn crossly; and she carried Gillian's bread to the Well-House, where she discovered only the little round top of yesterday's loaf. For every crumb of the bigger half had been eaten. So Joscelyn came away all smiles, tossing the ball of bread in the air, and saying as she caught it, "I do believe Gillian is forgetting her sorrow."

"I am certain of it," agreed Martin, clapping his hands. And she flung the top of the loaf to his right, and he made a great leap to the left and caught it. And then he threw it to Jessica, who tossed it to Joan, who sent it to Joyce, who whirled it to Jennifer, who spun it to Jane, who missed it. And all the girls ran to pick it up first, but Martin with a dexterous kick landed it in the duckpond, where the drake got it. And he and the ducks squabbled over it during the next hour, while Martin and the milkmaids breakfasted on bread and apples with no squabbling and great good spirits.

And after breakfast Martin lay on his back, chewing a grassblade and counting the florets on another, whispering to himself as he plucked them one by one. And the girls watched him. He did it several times with several blades of grass, and always looked disappointed at the end.

"Won't it come right?" asked little Joan.

"Won't what come right?" said Martin.

"Oh, I know what you're doing," said little Joan; and she too plucked a blade and began to count--

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor"--

"I'm sure I wasn't," said Martin. "Tailor indeed!"

"Well, something like that," said Joan.

"Nothing at all like that. Oh, Mistress Joan! a tailor. Why, even if I were a maid like yourselves, do you think I'd give fate the chance to set me on my husband's cross-knees for the rest of my life?"

"What would you do then if you were a maid?" asked Joyce.

"If I were a town-maid," said Martin, "I should choose the most delightful husbands in the city streets." And plucking a fresh blade he counted aloud,

Ballad- singer, Churchbell- ringer, Chimneysweep, Muffin-man, Lamplighter, King! Ballad- singer, Churchbell- ringer, Chimneysweep"--

"There, Mistress Joyce," said Martin Pippin, "I should marry a Sweep and sit in the tall chimneys and see stars by daylight."

"Oh, let me try!" cried Joyce.

And--"Let me!" cried five other voices at once.

So he chose each girl a blade, and she counted her fate on it, with Martin to prompt her. And Jessica got the Chimney-sweep, and vowed she saw Orion's belt round the sun, and Jennifer got the Lamplighter and looked sorrowful, for she too wished to see stars in the morning; but Martin consoled her by saying that she would make the dark to shine, and set whispering lights in the fog, when men had none other to see by. And Joyce got the Muffin-man, and Martin told her that wherever she went men, women, and children would run to their snowy doorsteps, for she would be as welcome as swallows in spring. And Jane got the Bell-Ringer, and Martin said an angel must have blessed her birth, since she was to live and die with the peals of heaven in her ears. And Joscelyn got the Ballad-Singer.

"What about Ballad-Singers, Master Pippin?" asked Joscelyn.

"Nothing at all about Ballad-Singers," said Martin. "They're a poor lot. I'm sorry for you."

And Joscelyn threw her stripped blade away saying, "It's only a silly game."

But little Joan got the King. And she looked at Martin, and he smiled at her, and had no need to say anything, because a king is a king. And suddenly every girl must needs grow out of sorts with her fate, and find other blades to count, until each one had achieved a king to her satisfaction. All but Joscelyn, who said she didn't care.

"You are quite right," said Martin, "because none of this applies to any of you. These are town-fortunes, and you are country-maids."

And he plucked a new blade, reciting,

Mower, Reaper, Poacher, Keeper, Cowman, Thatcher, Plowman, Herd."

"How dull!" said Jessica. "These are men for every day."

"So is a husband," said Martin. "And to your town-girls, who no longer see romance in a Chimneysweep, your Poacher's a Pirate and your Shepherd a Poet. Could you not find it in your heart, Mistress Jessica, to put up with a Thatcher?"

"That's enough of husbands," said Jessica.

"Then what of houses?" said Martin. "Where shall we live when we're wed?--

'Under a thatch, In a ship's hatch, An inn, a castle, A brown paper parcel'--

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Joscelyn.

"For the sake of the rime," begged Martin. But the girls were not interested in houses. Yet the rest of the morning they went searching the orchard for the grass of fortune, and not telling. But once Martin, coming behind Jessica, distinctly heard her murmur "Thatcher!" and smile. And at another time he saw Joyce deliberately count her blade before beginning, and nip off a floret, and then begin; and the end was "Plowman." And presently little Joan came and knelt beside him where he sat counting on his own behalf, and said timidly, "Martin."

"Yes, dear?" said Martin absentmindedly.

"Oh. Martin, is it very wicked to poach?"

"The best men all do it," said Martin.

"Oh. Please, what are you counting?"

"You swear you won't tell?" said Martin, with a side-glance at her. She shook her head, and he pulled at his grass whispering--

Jennifer, Jessica, Jane, Joan, Joyce, Joscelyn, Gillian--"

"And the last one?" said little Joan, with a rosy face; for he had paused at the eighth.

"Sh!" said Martin, and stuck his blade behind his ear and called "Dinner!"

So they came to dinner.

"Have you not found," said Martin, "that after thinking all the morning it is necessary to jump all the afternoon?" And he got the ropes of the swing and began to skip with great clumsiness, always failing before ten, and catching the cord round his ankles. At which the girls plied him with derision, and said they would show him how. And Jane showed him how to skip forwards, and Jessica how to skip backwards, and Jennifer how to skip with both feet and stay in one spot, and Joyce how to skip on either foot, on a run. And Joscelyn showed him how to skip with the rope crossed and uncrossed by turns. But little Joan showed him how to skip so high and so lightly that she could whirl the rope twice under her feet before they came down to earth like birds. And then the girls took the ropes by turns, ringing the changes on all these ways of skipping; or two of them would turn a rope for the others, while they skipped the games of their grandmothers: "Cross the Bible," "All in together," "Lady, lady, drop your purse!" and "Cinderella lost her shoe;" or they turned two ropes at once for the Double Dutch; and Martin took his run with the rest. And at first he did very badly, but as the day wore on improved, until by evening he was whirling the rope three times under his feet that glanced against each other in mid-air like the knife and the steel. And the girls clapped their hands because they couldn't help it, and Joan said breathlessly:

"How quick you are! it took me ten days to do that."

And Martin answered breathlessly, "How quick you were! it took me ten years."

"Are you ever honest about anything, Master Pippin?" said Joscelyn petulantly.

"Three times a day," said Martin, "I am honestly hungry."

So they had supper.