The milkmaids put their forgotten apples to their mouths, and the chatter began to run out of them like juice from bitten fruit.
Jessica: What did you think of this story, Jane?
Jane: I did not know what to think, Jessica, until the very conclusion, and then I was too amazed to think anything. For who would have imagined the young Shepherd to be in reality a lord?
Martin: Few of us are what we seem, Mistress Jane. Even chimney-sweeps are Jacks-in-Green on May-Days; for the other three-hundred-and-sixty-four days in the year they pretend to be chimney-sweeps. And I have actually known men who appeared to be haters of women, when they secretly loved them most tenderly.
Joscelyn: It does not surprise me to hear this. I have always understood men to be composed of caprices.
Martin: They are composed of nothing else. I see you know them through and through.
Joscelyn: I do not know anything at all about them. We do not study what does not interest us.
Martin: I hope, Mistress Joscelyn, you found my story worthy of study?
Joscelyn: It served its turn. Might one, by going to Rackham Hill, see this same cherry-tree and this same shed?
Martin: Alas, no. The shed rotted with time and weather, and bit by bit its sides were rebuilt with stone. And the cherry-tree Old Gerard chopped down in a fury, and made firewood of it. But it too had served its turn. For as every man's life (and perhaps, but you must answer for this, every woman's life), awaits the hour of blossoming that makes it immortal, so this tree passed in a single night from sterility to immortality; and it mattered as little if its body were burned the next day, as it would have mattered had Gerard and Thea gone down through the waters that night instead of many years later, after a life-time of great joy and delight.
Joyce: I am glad of that. There were moments when I feared it would not be so.
Jennifer: I too. For how could it be otherwise, seeing that he was a shepherd and she a lord's daughter?
Jessica: And when it was related how she was to wed the Rough Master of Coates, my hopes were dashed entirely.
Jane: And when they beat Young Gerard I was perfectly certain he was dead.
Joan: I rather fancied the tale would end happily, all the same.
Martin: I fancied so too. For though any of these accidents would have marred the ending, love is a divinity above all accidents, and guards his own with extraordinary obstinacy. Nothing could have thwarted him of his way but one thing.
Five of the Milkmaids: Oh, what?
Martin: Had Thea been one of those who are not interested in the study of men.
Nobody said anything in the Apple-Orchard.
Joscelyn: She need not have been condemned to unhappiness on that account, singer. And what does the happiness or unhappiness of an idle story weigh? Whether she wedded another, or whether they were parted by whatever cause, such as her superior station, or even his death, it's all one to me.
Jennifer: And me.
Jessica: And me.
Jane: And me.
Martin: The tale is judged. Let it go hang. For a cloud has dropped over nine-tenths of the moon, like the eyelid of a girl who still peeps through her lashes, but will soon fall asleep for weariness. I have made her lids as heavy as yours with my poor story. Let us all sleep and forget it.
So the girls lay down in the grass and slept. But Joyce went on swinging. And every time she swayed past him she looked at Martin, and her lips opened and shut again, nothing having escaped them but a very little laughter. The tenth time this happened Martin said:
"What keeps your lashes open, Mistress Joyce, when your comrades' lie tangled on their cheeks? Is it the same thing that opens your lips and peeps through the doorway and runs away again?"
"MUST my lashes shut because others' do?" said Joyce. "May not lashes have whims of their own?"
"Nothing is more whimsical," said Martin Pippin. "I have known, for instance, lashes that WILL be golden though the hair of the head be dark. It is a silly trick."
"I don't dislike such lashes," said Joyce. "That is, I think I should not if ever I saw them."
Martin: Perhaps you are right. I should love them in a woman.
Joyce: I never saw them in a woman.
Martin: In a man they would be regrettable.
Joyce: Then why did you give them to Young Gerard?
Martin: Did I? It was pure carelessness. Let us change the color of his lashes.
Joyce: No, no! I will not have them changed. I would not for the world.
Martin: Dear Mistress Joyce, if I had the world to offer you, I would sit by the road and break it with a pickax rather than change a single eyelash in Young Gerard's lids. Since you love them.
Joyce: Oh, did I say so?
Martin: Didn't you?—Mistress Joyce, when you laugh I am ready to forgive you all your debts.
Joyce: Why, what do I owe you?
Martin: An eyelash.
Joyce: I am sure I do not.
Martin: No? Then a hair of some sort. How will you be able to sleep to-night with a hair on your conscience? For your own sake, lift that crowbar.
Joyce: To tell you the truth, I fear to redeem my promise lest you are unable to redeem yours.
Martin: Which was?
Joyce: To blow it to its fellow, who is now wandering in the night like thistledown.
Martin: I will do it, nevertheless.
Joyce: It is easier promised than proved. But here is the hair.
Martin: Are you certain it is the same hair?
Joyce: I kept it wound round my finger.
Martin: I know no better way of keeping a hair. So here it goes!
And he held the hair to his lips and blew on it.
Martin: A blessing on it. It will soon be wedded.
Joyce: I have your word on it.
Martin: You shall have your eyes on it if you will tell me one thing.
Joyce: Is it a little thing?
Martin: It's as trifling as a hair. I wish only to know why you have fallen out with men.
Joyce: For the best of reasons. Why, Master Pippin! they say the world is round!
Martin: Heaven preserve us! was ever so giddy a statement? Round? Why, the world's as full of edges as the dealings of men and women, in which you can scarcely go a day's march without reaching the end of all things and tumbling into heaven. I tell you I have traveled the world more than any man living, and it takes me all my time to keep from falling off the brink. Round? The world is one great precipice!
Joyce: I said so! I said so! I know I was right! I should like to tell—them so.
Martin: Were you only able to go out of the Orchard, you would be free to tell—them so. They are such fools, these men.
Joyce: Not in all matters, Master Pippin, but certainly in this. They are good at some things.
Martin: For my part I can't think what.
Joyce: They whitewash cowsheds beautifully.
Martin: Who wouldn't? Whitewash is such beautiful stuff. No, let us be done with these round-minded men and go to bed. Good night, dear milkmaid.
Joyce: Ah, but singer! you have not yet proved your fable of the two hairs, which you swore were as hard to keep apart as the two lovers in your tale.
"Whom love guarded against accidents," said Martin; and he held out to her the third finger of his left hand, and wound at its base were the two hairs, in a ring as fine as a cobweb. She took his finger between two of hers and laughed, and examined it, and laughed again.
"You have been playing the god of love to my hairs," said Joyce.
"Somebody must protect those that cannot, or will not, be kind to themselves," said Martin. And then his other fingers closed quickly on her hand, and he said: "Dear Mistress Joyce, help me to play the god of love to Gillian, and give me your key to the Well-House, because there were moments when you feared my tale would end unhappily."
She pulled her hand away and began to swing rapidly, without answering. But presently she exclaimed, "Oh, oh! it has dropped!"
"What? what?" said Martin anxiously.
But she only cried again, "Oh, my heart! it has dropped under the swing."
"In love's name," said Martin, "let me recover your heart."
He groped in the grass and found what she had dropped, and then was obliged to fall flat on his back to escape her feet as she swung.
"Well, any time's a time for laughing," said Martin, crawling forth and getting on his knees. "Here's the key to your heart, laughing Joyce."
"Oh, Martin! how can I take it with my hands on the ropes?"
"Then I'll lay it on your lap."
"Oh, Martin! how do you expect it to stay there while I swing?"
"Then you must stop swinging."
"Oh, Martin! I will never stop swinging as long as I live!"
"Then what must I do with this key?"
"Oh, Martin! why do you bother me so about an old key? Can't you see I'm busy?"
"Oh, Joyce! when you laugh I must—I must—"
"Yes?"
"I must!"
And he caught her two little feet in his hands as she next flew by, and kissed each one upon the instep.
Then he ran to his bed under the hedge, and she sat where she was till her laughing turned to smiling, and her smiling to sleeping.
"Maids! maids! maids!"
It was morning.
"To your hiding-place, Master Pippin!" urged Joscelyn. "It's our master come again."
Martin concealed himself with speed, and an instant later the farmer's burly face peered through the gap in the hedge.
"Good morrow, maids."
"Good morrow, master."
"Has my daughter stopped weeping yet?"
"No, master," said Joyce, "but I begin to think that she will before long."
"A little longer will be too long," moaned Gillman, "for my purse is running dry with these droughty times, and I shall have to mortgage the farm to buy me ale, since I am foiled of both water and milk. Who would have daughters when he might have sons? Gillian!" he cried, "when will ye learn that old heads are wiser than young ones?"
But Gillian paid no more attention to him than to the cawing rooks in the elms in the oatfield.
"Take your bread, maids," said Gillman, "and heaven send us grace to-morrow."
"Just an instant, master," said Joyce. "I would like to know if Blossom my Shorthorn is well?"
"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.
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