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

Pulling and paddling they got to the bank. He took her helping-hand up it, and she saw by his movements that he was very feeble. He leaned on her as they went back to the mill; they walked without speaking.

When they reached the door Peter said, "It's twenty years since I was here, but I expect you don't remember."

"Oh, yes," said Helen, "I remember."

"Do you now?" said Peter. "It's funny you should remember."

And with that he did faint again. And this time when he recovered he was in a fever. His staying-power was gone.

She put him to bed and nursed him. She sat day and night in his room, doing by instinct what was right and needful. At first he lay either unconscious or delirious. She listened to his incoherent speech in a sort of agony, as though it might contain some clue to a riddle; and sat with her passionate eyes brooding on his countenance, as though in that too might lie the answer. But if there was one, neither his words nor his face revealed it. "When he wakes," she whispered to herself, "he'll tell me. How can there be barriers between us any more?"

After three days he came to himself. She was sitting by the window preparing sheep's-wool for her spindle. She bent over her task, using the last of the light, which fell upon her head. She did not know that he was conscious, or had been watching her, until he spoke.

"Your hair used to be quite brown, didn't it?" he said. "Nut-brown."

She started and turned to him, and a faint flush stained her cheeks.

"Ah, you're not pleased," said Peter with a slight grin. "None of us like getting old, do we?"

Helen put by the question. "You're yourself again."

"Doing my best," said he. "How long is it?"

"Three days."

"As much as that? I could have sworn it was only yesterday. Well, time passes."

He said no more, and fell into a doze. Helen was as grateful for this as she could have been for anything just then. She couldn't have gone on talking. She was stunned with misgivings. How could he ever have thought her hair was brown? Couldn't he see even now that it had once been as black as jet? She put her hand up to her head, and unpinned a coil of her heavy hair, and spread it over her breast and looked at it. Yes, the silver was there, too much and too soon. But there was less silver than black. It was still time's stitchery, not his fabric. The man who was not her boy need never have seen her before to know that once her hair had been black. This was worse than forgetfulness in him; it was misremembrance. She pulled at the silver hairs passionately as though she would pluck them out and make him see her as she had been. But soon she stopped her futile effort to uncount the years. "I am foolish," she whispered to herself, and coiled her lock again and bound it in its place. "There are other ways of making him remember. Presently when he wakes again I will talk to him. I will remind him of everything, yes, and I'll tell him everything. I WON'T be afraid." She waited with longing his next consciousness.

But to her woe she found herself defeated. While he slept she was able, as when he had been delirious or absent, to create the occasion and the talk between them. She dropped all fears, and in frank tenderness brought him her twenty years of dreams. And in her thought he accepted and answered them. But when he woke and spoke to her from the bed, she knew at once that the man who lay there was not the man with whom she had been speaking. His personality fenced with hers; it had barriers she could not pass. She dared not try, for dread of his indifference or his smiles.

"What made you stick on in this place?" he asked her.

"I don't know," said Helen. "Places hold one, don't they?"

"None ever held me. I couldn't have been content to stay the best half of my life in one spot. But I suppose women are different."

"You speak as though all women were the same."

"Aren't they? I thought they might be. I don't know much about them," said Peter, rubbing his chin. "Rough as a porcupine, aren't I? You must have thought me a savage when you found me stuck upside-down in that tree like a sloth. What DID you think?"

She looked at him, longing to tell him what she had thought. She longed to tell him of the boy she had expected to find in the tree. She longed to tell him how the finding had shocked her by bringing home to her her loss--not of the boy, but of something in that moment still more precious to her. Because (she longed to tell him) she had so swiftly rediscovered the lost boy, not in his face but in his glance, not in his words but in the tones of his voice.

But when she looked at him and saw him leaning on his elbow waiting for her answer with his half-shut lids and the half-smile on his lips, she answered only, "I was thinking how to get you back to the bank."

"Was that it? Well, you managed it. I've never thanked you, have I?"

"Don't!" said Helen with a quick breath, and looked out of the window.

He waited for a few moments and then said, "I'm a bad hand at thanking. I can't help being a savage, you know. I'm not fit for women's company. I don't look so rough when I'm trimmed."

"I don't want to be thanked," said Helen controlling her voice; and added with a faint smile, "No one looks his best when he's ill."

"Wait till I'm well," grinned Peter, "and see if I'm not fit to walk you out o' Sundays." He lay back on his pillow and whistled a