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

old jersey and your hair as red as ever."

"I shall always see your free young figure standing on the high bank against the sky."

"Oh, I was desperate."

"I wondered what you'd do. I knew you'd do something."

"I thought I'd never get across the water."

"Do you know what I thought as I saw you coming so bravely and so badly? I thought, I'll teach her to swim one day. Shall I, child?"

"I can't swim without you, my boy," she whispered.

"But you pretended not to know me!"

"I couldn't help it, it was such fun."

"How COULD you make fun of me then?"

"I always shall, you know."

"Oh, yes," she said, "do, always."

"What DID you think when you saw me in the tree? What did you see when you got there? Not what you expected."

"No. I saw twenty years come flying upon me, twenty years I'd forgotten all about. Because for me it has always been twenty years ago."

"And you expected to see a boy, and you saw a grizzled man."

"No," said Helen, her eyes shining with tears, "I expected to see a boy, and I saw a gray-haired woman. I've seen her ever since."

"I've only seen her once," said Peter. "I saw her rise up from the water and sit in my tree. And when she spoke and looked at me, it was a child." He put his hand over her wet eyes. "You must stop seeing her, child," he said.

"When I told you my name, were you disappointed?"

"No. It's the loveliest name in the world."

"You said it at once."

"I had to. I'd wanted to say it for twenty years. But I sha'n't say it often, Helen."

"Won't you?"

"No, child."

"Now and then, for a treat?" she looked up at him half-shy, half-merry.

"Oh, you CAN smile, can you?"

"You were to teach me that too."

"Yes, I've a lot to teach you, haven't I?--I've yet to teach you to say my name."

"Have you?"

"You've never said it once."

"I've said it a thousand times."

"You've never let me hear you."

"Haven't I?"

"Let me hear you!"

"Peter."

"Say it again!"

"Peter! Peter! Peter!"

"Again!"

"My boy!"...

"When we got back to the mill-door the last of the twenty years, that had been melting faster and faster, melted away for ever. And you and I were standing there as we'd stood then; and I wanted to kiss your mouth as I'd wanted to then."

"Oh, why didn't you?--both times!"

"Shall I now, for both times?"

"Oh!--oh, that's for a hundred times."

"Think of all the times I've wanted to, and been without you."

"You've never been without me."

"I know that. How often I came to the mill."

"Did you come to the mill?"

"As often as I ate your grain. Didn't you know?"

"I know how often your sea brought me to you."

"Did it?"

"And, oh, my boy! at last the sea brought you to me."

"And the mill," he said. "Where has that brought us?"

"I thought perhaps you'd die."

"I couldn't have died so close on finding you. I was fighting the demons all the time--fighting my way through to you. And at last I opened my eyes and saw you again, your black hair edged with light against the window."

"My black hair? you mean my brown hair, don't you?"

"Oh, weren't you cross! I loved you for being cross."

"I wasn't cross. Why will you keep on saying I'm things I'm not?"

"You were so cross that you pretended our twenty years were sixty."

"I never said anything about twenty years, OR sixty."

"You did, though. Sixty! why, in sixty years we'd have been very nearly old. So to punish you I pretended to go to sleep, and I saw you take your hair down. It was so beautiful. You've seen the threads spiders spin on blackened furze that gypsies have set fire to? Your hair was like that. You were angry with those lovely lines of silver, and you wanted to get rid of them. I nearly called to you to stop hurting what I loved so much, but you stopped of yourself, as though you had heard me before I called."

"I was ashamed of myself," whispered Helen. "I was ashamed of trying to be again what I was the only other time you saw me."

"You've never stopped being that, child," said Peter.

"You knew, didn't you, why it was I had stayed on at the mill? You knew what it was that held me, and why I could never leave it?"

"Yes, I knew. It held you because it held me too. I wondered if you'd tell me that."

"I longed to, but I couldn't. I've never been able to tell you things. And I never shall."

"Oh, child, don't look so troubled. You've always told me things and always will. Do you think it's with our tongues we tell each other things? What can words ever tell? They only circle round the truth like birds flying in the sun. The light bathes their flight, yet they are millions of miles away from the light they fly in. We listen to each other's words, but we watch each other's eyes."

"Some people half-shut their eyes, Peter."

"Some people, Helen, can't shut their eyes at all. Your eyes will never stop telling me things. And the strangest thing about them is that looking into them is like being able to see in the dark. They are darkness, not light. And in darkness dreams are born. When I look into your eyes I go into your dream."

"I shall never shut my eyes again," she whispered. "I will keep you in my dream for ever."

"Women aren't all the same, Peter."

"Aren't they?"

"And yet--they are."

"Well, I give it up."

"Didn't you know?"

"No. I told you the truth that time. I've not had very much to do with women."

"Then I've something to teach you, Peter."

"I don't know what you can prove," said Peter. "One woman by herself can't prove a difference."

"Can't she?" said Helen; and laughed and cried at once.

"But why did you call me a nuisance?"

"You were one--you are one. You leave a man no peace--you're like the sea. You're full of storms, aren't you?"

"Not only storms."

"I know. But the sea wouldn't be the sea