Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard by Eleanor Farjeon (best new books to read txt) 📕

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.

THE MILL OF DREAMS

There was once, dear maidens, a girl who lived in a mill on the Sidlesham marshes. But in those days the marshlands were meadowlands, with streams running in from the coast, so that their water was brackish and salt. And sometimes the girl dipped her finger in the water and sucked it and tasted the sea. And the taste made storms rise in her heart. Her name was Helen.

The mill-house was a gaunt and gloomy building of stone, as gray as sleep, weatherstained with dreams. It had fine proportions, and looked like a noble prison. And in fact, if a prison is the lockhouse of secrets, it was one. The great millstones ground day and night, and what the world sent in as corn it got back as flour. And as to the secrets of the grinding it asked no questions, because to the world results are everything. It understands death better than sorrow, marriage better than love, and birth better than creation. And the millstones of joy and pain, grinding dreams into bread, it seldom hears. But Helen heard them, and they were all the knowledge she had of life; for if the mill was a prison of dreams it was her prison too.

Her father the miller was a harsh man and dark; he was dark within and without. Her mother was dead; she did not remember her. As she grew up she did little by little the work of the big place. She was her father's servant, and he kept her as close to her work as he kept his millstones to theirs. He was morose, and welcomed no company. Gayety he hated. Helen knew no songs, for she had heard none. From morning till night she worked for her father. When she had done all her other work she spun flax into linen for shirts and gowns, and wool for stockings and vests. If she went outside the mill-house, it was only for a few steps for a few moments. She wasn't two miles from the sea, but she had never seen it. But she tasted the salt water and smelt the salt wind.

Like all things that grow up away from the light, she was pale. Her oval face was like ivory, and her lips, instead of being scarlet, had the tender red of apple-blossom, after the unfolding of the bright bud. Her hair was black and smooth and heavy, and lay on either side of her face like a starling's wings. Her eyes too were as black as midnight, and sometimes like midnight they were deep and sightless. But when she was neither working nor spinning she would steal away to the millstones, and stand there watching and listening. And then there were two stars in the midnight. She came away from those stolen times powdered with flour. Her black hair and her brows and lashes, her old blue gown, her rough hands and fair neck, and her white face--all that was dark and pale in her was merged in a mist, and seen only through the clinging dust of the millstones. She would try to wipe off all the evidences of her secret occasions, but her father generally knew. Had he known by nothing else, he need only have looked at her eyes before they lost their starlight.

One day when she was seventeen years old there was a knock at the mill-house door. Nobody ever knocked. Her father was the only man who came in and went out. The mill stood solitary in those days. The face of the country has since been changed by man and God, but at that time there were no habitations in sight. At regular times the peasants brought their grain and fetched their meal; but the miller kept his daughter away from his custom. He never said why. Doubtless at the back of his mind was the thought of losing what was useful to him. Most parents have their ways of trying to keep their children; in some it is this way, in others that; not many learn to keep them by letting them go.

So when the knock came at the door, it was the strangest thing that had