Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (22 page)

"Is it very gold?" asked Joscelyn, and ran to the duckpond to look, but couldn't see because she was on the wrong side of the gate.

"Do I like butter?" cried Jessica.

"Do I?" cried Jennifer.

"Do I?" cried Joyce.

"Do I?" cried Jane.

"Oh, do I?" cried Joan.

"We'll soon find out," said Martin, and put buttercups under all their chins, turn by turn. And they all liked butter exceedingly.

"Do YOU like butter, Master Pippin?" asked little Joan.

"Try me," said he.

And six buttercups were simultaneously presented to his chin, and it was discovered that he liked butter the best of them all.

Then every girl had to prove it on every other girl, and again on Martin one at a time, and he on them again. And in this delicious pastime the afternoon wore by, and evening fell, and they came golden-chinned to dinner.

Supper was scarcely ended--indeed, her mouth was still full--when Jessica, looking straight at Martin, said, "I'm dying to swing."

"I never saved a lady's life easier," said Martin; and in one moment she found herself where she wished to be, and in the next saw him close beside her on the apple-bough. The five other girls went to their own branches as naturally as hens to the roost. Joscelyn inspected them like a captain marshalling his men, and when each was armed with an apple she said:

"We are ready now, Master Pippin."

"I wish I were too," said he, "but my tale has taken a fit of the shivers on the threshold, like an unexpected guest who doubts his welcome."

"Are we not all bidding it in?" said Joscelyn impatiently.

"Yes, like sweet daughters of the house," said Martin. "But what of the mistress?" And he looked across at Gillian by the well, but she looked only into the grass and her thoughts.

"Let the daughters do to begin with," said Joscelyn, "and make it your business to stay till the mistress shall appear."

"That might be to outstay my welcome," said Martin, "and then her appearance would be my discomfiture. For a hostess has, according to her guests, as many kinds of face as a wildflower, according to its counties, names."

"Some kinds have only one name," said Jessica, plucking a stalk crowned with flowers as fine as spray. "What would you call this but Cow Parsley?"

"If I were in Anglia," said Martin, "I would call it Queen's Lace."

"That's a pretty name," said Jessica.

"Pretty enough to sing about," said Martin; and looking carelessly at the Well-House he thrummed his lute and sang--

The Queen netted lace On the first April day, The Queen wore her lace In the first week of May, The Queen soiled her lace Ere May was out again, So the Queen washed her lace In the first June rain. The Queen bleached her lace On the first of July, She spread it in the orchard And left it there to dry, But on the first of August It wasn't in its place Because my sweetheart picked it up And hung it o'er her face. She laughed at me, she blushed at me, With such a pretty grace That I kissed her in September Through the Queen's own lace.

At the end of the song Gillian sat up in the grass, and looked with all her heart over the duckpond.

Joscelyn: I find your songs singularly lacking in point, singer.

Martin: You surprise me, Mistress Joscelyn. The kiss was the point.

Joscelyn: It is like you to think so. It is just like you to think a--a--a--

Martin: --kiss--

Joscelyn: Sufficient conclusion to any circumstances.

Martin: Isn't it?

Joscelyn: My goodness! You might as soon ask, is a peardrop sufficient for a body's dinner.

Martin: It would suffice me. I love peardrops. But then I am a man. Women doubtless need more substance, being in themselves more insubstantial. Now as to your quarrel with my song--

Joscelyn: It is of no consequence. You raise expectations which you do not fulfill. But it is not of the least consequence.

Martin: Dear Mistress Joscelyn, my only desire is to please you. We will not conclude on a kiss. You shall fulfill your own expectations.

Joscelyn: Mine?--I have no expectations whatever.

Martin: But I have disappointed you. What shall I do with my sweetheart? Shall she be whipped for her theft? Shall she be shut in a dungeon? Shall she be thrown before elephants? Choose your conclusion.

Joan: But, Master Pippin!--why must the poor sweetheart be punished? I am sure Joscelyn never wished her to be punished. There are other conclusions.

Martin: Dunderhead that I am, I can't think of any! What, Mistress Joscelyn, was the conclusion you expected?

Joscelyn: I tell you, I expected none!

Joan: Why, Master Pippin! I should have fancied that, seeing the dear sweetheart had hung the veil over her face, she might--

Martin: Yes?

Joan: Be expected--

Martin: Yes!

Joan: To be about to be--

Joscelyn: I am sick to death of this silly sweetheart. And since our mistress appears to be listening with both her ears, it would be more to the point to begin whatever story you propose to relate to-night, and be done with it.

Martin: You are always right. Therefore add your ears to hers, while I tell you the tale of Open Winkins.

OPEN WINKINS

There were once, dear maidens, five lords in the east of Sussex, who owned between them a single Burgh; for they were brothers. Their names were Lionel and Hugh and Heriot and Ambrose and Hobb. Lionel was ten years of age and Hobb was twenty-two, there being exactly three years all but a month between the birthdays of the brothers. And Lionel had a merry spirit, and Hugh great courage and daring, and Heriot had beauty past any man's share, and Ambrose had a wise mind; but Hobb had nothing at all for the world's praise, for he only had a loving heart, which he spent upon his brothers and his garden. And since love begets love, they all loved him dearly, and leaned heavily on his affection, though neither they nor any man looked up to him because he was a lord. Although he was the eldest, and in his quiet way administered the affairs of the Burgh and of the people of Alfriston under the Burgh, it was Ambrose who was always thinking of new schemes for improvement, and Heriot who undertook the festivities. As for the younger boys, they kept the old place alive with their youth and spirits; and it was evident that later on Hugh would win honor to the Burgh in battle and adventure, and Lionel would draw the world thither with his charm. But Hobb, to whom they all brought their shapeless dreams white-hot, since sympathy helps us to create bodies for the things which begin their existence as souls--Hobb differed from the four others not only in his name, but in his plain appearance and simple tastes. And all these things, as well as his tender heart, he got from his mother, who was the only daughter of a gardener of Alfriston. The gardener, to whom she was the very apple of his eye, had kept her privately in a place on a hill, fearing lest in her youth and inexperience she should fall to the lot of some man not worthy of her; for her knew, or believed, that a young girl of her sweetness and tenderness and devotedness of disposition would by her sweetness attract a lover too early, and by her tenderness respond to him too readily, and by her devotedness follow him too blindly, before she had time to know herself or men. And he also knew, or believed, that first love is as often a will-o'-the-wisp as the star for which all young things take it. Five days in the week he tended the gardens of Alfriston, the sixth he gave to the Lord of the Burgh that lay among the hills, and the seventh he kept for his daughter on the hill a few miles distant, which was afterwards known as Hobb's Hawth. She on her part spent her week in endeavoring to grow a perfect rose of a certain golden species, and her heart was given wholly to her father and her flower. And he watched her efforts with interest and advice, and for the first she thanked him but of the second took no heed. "For," said she, "this is MY garden, father, and MY rose, and I will grow it in my own way or not at all. Have you not had a lifetime of gardens and roses which you have brought to perfection? And would you let any man take your own upon his shoulders, even your own mistakes, and shoulder at last the praise after the blame?" Then Hobb, her father, laughed at her indulgently and said, "Nay, not any man; yet once I let a woman, and without her aid I would never have brought my rarest and dearest flower to perfection. So if I should let a woman help me, why not you a man?" "Was the woman your mother?" said she. And her father was silent. Then a day came when he trudged up and down the hills from Alfriston, and standing at the gate of her garden saw his child in the arms of a stranger; and her face, as it lay against his heart, seemed to her father also to be the face of a stranger, and not of his child. He recognized in the stranger the Lord of the Burgh. And he saw that what he had feared had come to pass, and that his daughter's heart would be no more divided between her father and her flower, for it was given whole to the lover who had first assailed it. Hobb came into the garden, and they looked up as the gate clicked, and their faces grew as red as though one had caught the reflection from the other. But both looked straight into his eyes. And his daughter, pointing to her bush, said, "Father, my rose is grown at last," and he saw that the bush was crowned with a glorious golden bloom, perfect in every detail. Then it was the turn of the Lord of the Burgh, and he said, "Sir, I ask leave to rob your garden of its rose." "Do robbers ask leave?" said Hobb. And he shook his head, adding, "Nay, when the thief and the theft are in collusion, what say is left to the owner of the treasure? Yet I do not like this. Sir, have you considered that she is a gardener's child? Daughter, have you considered that he is a lord?" And neither of them had considered these questions, and they did not propose to do so. Then Hobb shook his head again and said, "I will not waste words. I know when a plant can drink no more water. And though you pretend to ask my leave, I know that you are prepared to dispense with it. But by way of consent I will say this: whatever you may call your other sons, you shall call your first Hobb, to remind you to-morrow of what you will not consider to-day. For my daughter, when she is a lord's wife, will none the less still be a gardener's daughter, and your children will be grafted of two stocks. And if this seems to you a hard condition, then kiss and bid farewell." And they both laughed with joy at the lightness of the condition; but the gardener did not laugh. And so the Lord of the Burgh married the gardener's daughter, and they called their first son Hobb. He was born on a first of August, and thirty-five months later Ambrose was born on the first of July, and in due course Heriot in June, and Hugh in May, and Lionel in April. And the Lord, loving his sons equally, made them equal possessors of the Burgh when in time it should pass out of his hands. Which, since men are mortal, presently came to pass, and there were five lords instead of one.

It happened on a roaring night of March, when the wind was blustering over the barren ocean of the east Downs, and Lionel was still a boy of ten, but soon to be eleven, that the five brothers sat clustered about the great hearth in the hall, roasting apples and talking of this and that. But their talk was fitful, and had long pauses in which they listened to the gusty night, which had so much more to say than they. And after one of the silences Lionel shuddered slightly, and drawing his little stool close to Hobb he said:

"It sounds like witches." Hobb put his big hand round the child's head and face, and Lionel pressed his cheek against his brother's knee.

"Or lions," said Hugh, jumping up and running to the window, where he flattened his nose to stare into the night. "I wish it were lions coming over the Downs."

"What would you do with them?" said Hobb, smiling broadly.

"Fight them," said Hugh, "and chain them up. I should like to have lions instead of dogs--a red lion and a white one."

"I never heard tell of lions of those colors," said Hobb. "But perhaps Ambrose has with all his reading."

"Not I," said Ambrose, "but I haven't read half the books yet. The wind still knows more than I, and it may be that he knows where red and white lions are to be found. For he knows everything."

"And has seen everything," murmured Heriot, watching a lovely flame of blue and green that flickered among the red and gold on the hearth.

"And has been everywhere," muttered Hugh. "If I could find and catch him, I'd ask him for a red and a white lion."

"I'd rather have peacocks," said Heriot, his eyes on the fire.

"What would you choose, Ambrose?" asked Hobb.

"Nothing," said he, "but it's the hardest of all things to have, and I doubt if I'd get it. But what business have we to be choosing presents? That is Lionel's right before ours, for isn't his birthday next month? What will you ask of the wind for your birthday, Lal?"

Then Lionel, who was getting very drowsy, smiled a sleepy smile, and said, "I'd like a farm of my own in the Downs, a very little farm with pink pigs and black cocks and white donkeys and chestnut horses no bigger than grasshoppers and mice, and a very little well as big as my mug to draw up my water from, and a little green paddock the size of my pocket-handkerchief, and another of yellow corn, and another of crimson trefoil. And I would have a blue farm-wagon no larger than Hobb's shoe, and a haystack half as big as a seed-cake, and a duckpond that I could cover with my platter. And I'd live there and play with it all day long, if only I knew where the wind lives, and could ask him how to get it."

"Don't start till to-morrow," jested Ambrose, "to-night you're too sleepy to find the way."

Then he turned to his book, and Hugh was still at the window, and Heriot gazing into the fire. And as he felt the child's head droop in his hand, Hobb picked him up in his arms and carried him to bed. And he alone of all those brothers had made no choice, nor had they thought to ask him, so accustomed were they to see him jog along without the desires that lead men to their goals--such as Ambrose's thirst for knowledge, and Heriot's passion for beauty, and Hugh's lust for adventure, and Lionel's pursuit of delight. And yet, unknown to them all, he had a heartfelt wish, which, among other things, he had inherited from his mother. For on a height west of the Burgh he had made a garden where, like her, he labored to produce a perfect golden rose. But so far luck was against him, though his height, which was therefore spoken of as the Gardener's Hill, bloomed with the loveliest flowers of all sorts imaginable. But year by year his rose was attacked by a special pest, the nature of which he had not succeeded in discovering. Yet his patience was inexhaustible, and his brothers who sometimes came to his garden when they needed a listener for their achieved or unachieved ambitions, never suspected that he too had an ambition he had not realized, for they saw only a lovely garden of his creating, where wisdom, beauty, adventure, and delight were made equally welcome by the gardener.