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

close as to be almost a part of Open Winkins, but for that one little channel of space; and Hobb pointed to it and said, "That's a strange place, let us go there."

"No," said Margaret.

"But is it not our own wood?"

"How can you think so?" she said petulantly. "Do you not see how black it is in there? How can you want to go there? Come away."

"What is it called?" asked Hobb.

"The Red Copse," said she.

"Why?" asked Hobb.

"I don't know," said she.

"Have you never been there?" asked Hobb.

"No, never. I don't like it. It frightens me." And she clung to him like a child. "Oh, come away!"

She was trembling so that he turned instantly, and they went back to the Pilleygreen Lodges, getting wild raspberries for supper on the way. And after supper they sang songs, one against the other, each sweeter than the last, and told stories by turns, outdoing each other in fancy and invention; and at last went happily to bed.

But Hobb could not sleep. For in the night a wind came up and blew four times round his lodge, shaking it once on every wall. And it stirred in him the memory of High and Over, and with the memory misgivings that he could not name. And he rose restlessly from his couch and went out under the troubled moon, for a windy rack of clouds was blowing over the sky. But through it she often poured her amber light, and by it Hobb saw that Margaret's door was blowing on its hinges. He called her softly, but he got no answer; and then he called more loudly, but still she did not answer.

"She cannot be sleeping through this," said Hobb to himself; and with an uneasy heart he stood beside the door and looked into the lodge. And she was not there, and the couch had not been slept on. But on it lay her empty dress, its gold and black all tumbled in a heap, and on top of it was an embroidered smock. And something in the smock attracted him, so that he went quickly forward to examine it; and he saw that it was Heriot's shirt, that had been cut and changed and worked all over with peacocks' feathers. And he stood staring at it, astounded and aghast. Recovering himself, he turned to leave the lodge, but stumbled on the open coffer, hanging out of which was a second smock; and this one had two lions worked on the back and front, and one was red and the other white, and the smock had been Hugh's shirt. Then Hobb fell on the coffer and searched its contents till he had found Lionel's little shirt fashioned into a linen vest, with a tiny border of fantastic animals dancing round it, pink pigs, and black cocks, and white donkeys, and chestnut horses. And last of all he found the shirt of Ambrose, tattered and frayed, and every tatter was worked at the edge with a different hue, and here and there small mocking patches of color had been stitched above the holes.

And at each discovery the light in Hobb's eyes grew calmer, and the beat of his heart more steady. And he walked out of the Pilleygreen Lodge and as straight as his feet would carry him across Open Winkins and the green ride, and into the Red Copse. As he went he shut down the dread in his heart of what he should find there, "For," said Hobb to himself, "I shall need more courage now than I have ever had." It was black in the Red Copse, with a blackness blacker than night, and the wild races of moonlight that splashed the floors of Open Winkins were here unseen. But a line of ruddy fireflies made a track on the blackness, and Hobb, going as softly as he might, followed in their wake. Just before the middle of the Copse they stopped and flew away, and one by one, as each reached the point deserted by its leader, darted back as though unable to penetrate with its tiny fire the fearful shadows that lay just ahead. But Hobb went where the fireflies could not go. And he found a dark silent hollow in the wood, where neither moon nor sun could ever come; and at the bottom of it a long straggling pool, with a surface as black as ebony, and mud and slime below. Here toads and bats and owls and nightjars had come to drink, with rats and stoats who left their footprints in the mud. And on the ground and bushes Hobb saw slugs and snails, woodlice, beetles and spiders, and creeping things without number. The gloom of the place was awful, and turned the rank foliage of trees and shrubs black in perpetual twilight. But what Hobb saw he saw by a light that had no place in heaven. For kneeling beside the pool was his love Margaret, her naked body crouched and bowed among the creatures of the mud; and her two waves of gold were flung behind her like a smooth mantle, but the one black lock was drawn forward over her head, and she was dipping and dipping it into the dank waters. And every time she drew the dripping lock from its stagnant bath, it glimmered with an unearthly phosphorescence, that shed a ghostly light upon the hollow, and all that it contained. And at each dipping the lock of hair came out blacker than before.

At last she was done, and she slowly squeezed the water from her unnatural tress, and laid it back in its place among the gold. And then she stretched her arms and sighed so heavily that the crawling creatures by the pool were startled. But less started than she, when lifting her head she saw the eyes of Hobb looking down on her. And such terror came into her own eyes that the look rang on his heart as