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

Joscelyn: We have never noticed any magic whatever in men. And we don't want to know the magician's name. We don't believe in anything so silly as magic.

Martin: I hope, Mistress Joscelyn, there were moments in my story not too silly to be believed in.

Joscelyn: Silliness in stories is more or less excusable, since they are not even supposed to be believed. And is there still a Wishing- Pool on Rewell and a ferry at Bury?

Martin: The ferry is there, but Harding's hammer is silent. And where his shop stood is a little cottage where children live, who dabble in summer on the ferry-step. And their mother will run from her washing or cooking to take you over the water for the same fee that Wayland asked for shoeing a poor man's donkey or making a rich man's sword. And this is the only miracle men call for from those banks to-day; and if ever you tried to take a boat across the Bury currents, you would not only believe in miracles but pray for one, while your boat turned in mid-stream like a merry-go-round. So there's no doubt that the ferry-wife is a witch. But as for the Wishing-Pool, it is as lost as it was before the white hart led two lovers to discover it at separate times, and having brought them together passed with them and its secret out of men's knowledge. For neither it nor Harding nor Rosalind was seen again in Sussex after that day. And yet I can tell you this much of their fortunes: that whatever befell them wherever they wandered, he was a king and she a queen in the sight of the whole world, which to all lovers consists of one woman and one man; and their lives were crowned lives, and they carried their crown with them even when they came in the same hour to exchange one life for another. But this was only a long and cloudless reign on earth.

Jane: Well, it is a satisfaction to know that. For at certain times your story seemed so overshadowed with clouds that I was filled with doubts.

Joan: Oh, but Jane! even when we walk in the thickest clouds on the Downs, we are certain that presently some light will melt them, or some wind blow them away.

Joyce: Yes, it never once occurred to me to doubt the end of the story.

Jennifer: Nor to me. And so the clouds only kept one in a delicious palpitation, at which one could secretly smile, without having to stop trembling.

Jessica: Was it possible, Jane, that YOU could be deceived as to the conclusion of this love-story? Why, even I saw joy coming as plain as a pikestaff.

Martin: And I, with love for its bearer. For that magician, who touches the plainest things with a radiance, makes plain girls and boys look queens and kings, and plain staves flowering branches of joy. And in this case I can think of only one catastrophe that could have obscured or distorted that vision.

Two of the Milkmaids: What catastrophe, pray?

Martin: If Rosalind had refused to believe in anything so silly as magic.

The silence of the Seven Sleepers hung over the Apple-Orchard.

Joscelyn: Then she would have proved herself a girl of sense, singer, and your tale would have gained in virtue. As it stands, I should not have grieved though the clouds had never been dispersed from so foolish a medley of magic and make-believe.

Martin: So be it, if it must be so. We will push back our lovers into their obscurities, and praise night for the round moon above us, who has pushed three parts of her circle clear of all obstacles, and awaits only some movement of heaven to blow the last remnant of cloud from her happy soul. And because more of her is now in the light than in the dark, she knows it is only a question of time. But the last hours of waiting are always the longest, and we like herself can do no better than spend them in dreams, where if we are lucky we shall catch a glimpse of the angels of truth.

Like the last five leaves blown from an autumn branch, the milkmaids fluttered from the apple-tree and couched their sleepy heads on their tired arms, and went each by herself into her particular dream; where if she found company or not she never told. But Jane sat prim and thoughtful with her elbow in her hand and her finger making a dimple in her cheek, considering deeply. And presently Martin began to cough a little, and then a little more, and finally so troublesomely that she was obliged to lay her profound thoughts aside, to attend to him with a little frown. Was even Euclid impervious to midges?

"Have you taken cold, Master Pippin?" said Jane.

"I'm afraid so," he confessed humbly; "for we all know that when we catch cold the grievance is not ours, but our nurse's."

"How did it happen?" demanded Jane, rightly affronted. "Have you been getting your feet wet in the duckpond again?"

"The trouble lies higher," murmured Martin, and held his shirt together at the throat.

Jane looked at him and colored and said, "That is the merest pretense. It was only one button and it is a very warm night. I think you must be mistaken about your cold."

"Perhaps I am," said Martin hopefully.

"And you only coughed and coughed and kept on coughing," continued Jane, "because I had forgotten all about you and was thinking of something quite different."

"It is almost impossible to deceive you," said Martin.

"Oh, Master Pippin," said Jane earnestly, "since I turned seventeen I have seen into people's motives so clearly that I often wish I did not; but I cannot help it."

Martin: You poor darling!

Jane: You must not say that word to me, Master Pippin.

Martin: It was very wrong of me. The word slipped out by mistake. I meant to say clever, not poor.

Jane: Did you? I see.