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

unwearied tenderness that death himself had to withdraw, defeated by love. Once on a ship there had been mutiny, and she alone stood by him against a throng; once savages had captured her, and he, outwitting them, had rescued her, riding through leagues of prairie-land and forest, holding her before him on the saddle. In nearly all these adventures it was as though they had met for the first time, and were struck anew with the dumb wonder of first love, and the strange shy sweetness of wooing and confession. Yet they were but playing above truth. For the knowledge was always between them that they were bound immortally by a love which, having no end, seemed also to have had no beginning. They quarreled sometimes--this was playing too. She put, now herself, now him, in the wrong. And either reconciliation was sweet. But it was she who was oftenest at fault, his forgiveness was so dear to her. And still, this was but playing at it. When all these adventures and pretenses were done, they stood heart to heart, and out of their only meeting in life built up eternal truth and told each other. They told it inexhaustibly.

And so, when her father left her free to go, Helen lived on still in the mill of dreams, and kept her millstones grinding. Two years went by. And her hard gray lonely life laid its hand on her hair and her countenance. Her father had worn her out before her time.

It was only invisible grain in the mill now. The peasants came no longer with their corn. She had enough to live on, and her long seclusion unfitted her for strange men in the mill, and people she must talk to. And so long was the habit of the recluse on her, that though her soul flew leagues her body never wandered more than a few hundred yards from her home. Some who had heard of her, and had glimpses of her, spoke to her when they met; but they could make no headway with this sweet, shy, silent woman. Yet children and boys and girls felt drawn to her. It was the dream in her eyes that stirred the love in their hearts; though they knew it no more than the soup in the pipkin knows why it bubbles and boils. For it cannot see the fire. But to them she did not seem old; her strength and eagerness were still upon her, and that silver needlework with which time broiders all men had in her its special beauty, setting her aloof in the unabandoned dream which the young so often desert as their youth deserts them. Those of her age, seeing that unyouthful gleam of her hair combined with the still-youthful dream of her eyes, felt as though they could not touch her; for no man can break another's web, he can only break his own, and these had torn their films to tatters long ago, and shouldered their way through the smudgy rents, and no more walked where she walked. But very young people knew the places she walked in, and saw her clearly, for they walked there too, though they were growing up and she was growing old.

At the end of the second year there was a storm. It lasted three days without stopping. Such fury of rain and thunder she had never heard. The gaunt rooms of the mill were steeped in gloom, except when lightning stared through the flat windows or split into fierce cracks on the dingy glass. Those three days she spent by candle-light. Outside the world seemed to lie under a dark doom.

On the third morning she woke early. She had had restless nights, but now and then slept heavily; and out of one dull slumber she awakened to the certainty that something strange had happened. The storm had lulled at last. Through her window, set high in the wall, she could see the dead light of a blank gray dawn. She had seen other eyeless mornings on her windowpane; but this was different, the air in her room was different. Something unknown had been taken from or added to it. As she lay there wondering, but not yet willing to discover, the flat light at the window was blocked out. A seagull beat against it with its wings and settled on the sill.

The flutter and the settling of the bird overcame her. It was as though reality were more than she could bear. The birds of memory and pain flew through her heart.

She got up and went to the window. The gull did not move. It was broken and exhausted by the storm. And beyond it she looked down upon the sea.

Yes, it was true. The sea itself washed at the walls of the mill.

She did not understand these gray-green waters. She knew them in vision, not in reality. She cried out sharply and threw the window up. The draggled bird fluttered in and sank on the floor. A sea-wind blew in with it. The bird's wings shivered on her feet, and the wind on her bosom. She stared over the land, swallowed up in the sea. Wreckage of all sorts tossed and floated on it. Fences and broken gates and branches of trees; and fragments of boats and nets and bits of cork; and grass and flowers and seaweed--She thought--what did she think? She thought she must be dreaming.

She felt like one drowning. Where could she find a shore?

She hurried to the bed and got her shell; its touch on her heart was her first safety. In her nightgown as she was she ran with her naked feet through the dim passages until she stood beside the grinding stones....

"Child! child! child!"

"Where are you, my boy, where are you?"

"Aren't you coming? Must I lose you after all this?--Oh, come!"

"But tell me where you are!"

"In a few hours I should have been with you--a few hours after many years."

"Oh, boy, for