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

person alone cannot bring to perfection. And one of them is a fault. It takes two people to make a perfect fault. Eve tempted Adam; and Adam was jolly glad to get tempted if he was half as sensible as he ought to have been. And Eve knew it. And Adam let her know it. And if after that she had not tempted him he would never have forgiven her. When it came to fault-making they understood each other perfectly. And between them they made the most perfect fault in the world.

Joscelyn: (after a very long pause): You said there were two things.

Martin: Two things?

Joscelyn: That one person alone can't bring to perfection.

Martin: Did I?

Joscelyn: What is the other thing?

Martin: Love. Isn't it?

Joscelyn: How dare you ask me?

Martin: I dare ask more than that. Joscelyn, how old are you?

Joscelyn: I sha'n't tell you.

Martin: Joscelyn, you are the tallest of the milkmaids, but you can't help that. How old are you?

Joscelyn: Mind your own business.

Martin: Joscelyn, the first three times I saw you, you had your hair down your back. But ever since I told you my first story you have done it up, like beautiful dark flowers, on each side of your head. And it is my belief that you have no business to have it up at all.

Joscelyn (very angrily): How dare you! Of course I have! Am I not nearly sixteen?

Martin: Nearly?

Joscelyn: Well, next June.

Martin: Oh, Hebe! it's worse than I thought. How dare I? You whipper-snapper! How dare YOU have us all under your thumb? How dare YOU play the Gorgon to Gillian? How dare YOU cry your eyes out because my lovers had an unhappy ending? Go back to your dolls'- house! What does sixteen next June know about Adam? What does sixteen next June know about love?

Joscelyn: Everything! how dare you? everything!

Martin: Am I to believe you? Then by all you know, you baby, give me the sixth key of the Well-House!

And he took from his pocket the five keys he already had, and held out his hand for the last one. Joscelyn's eyes grew bigger and bigger, and the doubt that had troubled her all day became a certainty as she looked from the keys to her comrades, who all got very red and hung their heads.

"Why did you give them up?" demanded Joscelyn.

"Because," Martin answered for them, "they know everything about love. But then they are all more than sixteen years of age, and capable of making the right sort of ending which is so impossible to children like you and me."

Then Joscelyn looked as old as she could and said, "Not so impossible, Master Pippin, if--if--"

But all of a sudden she began to laugh. It was the first time Martin had ever heard her laugh, or her comrades for six months. Their faces cleared like magic, and they all clapped their hands and ran away. And Martin got down from his bough, because when Joscelyn laughed she didn't look more than fourteen.

"If what, Joscelyn?" he said.

"If you'd stolen the right shoe-string, Martin," said she. And she stuck out her right foot with its neatly-laced yellow slipper. Then Martin knelt down, and instead of lacing the left shoe unlaced the right one, and inside the yellow slipper found the sixth key just under the instep. "Is that the right ending?" said Joscelyn. And Martin held the little foot in his hands rubbing it gently, and said compassionately, "It must have been dreadfully uncomfortable."

"It was sometimes," said Joscelyn.

"Didn't it hurt?" asked Martin, beginning to lace up her shoes for her.

"Now and then," said Joscelyn.

"It was an awfully kiddish place to hide it in," said Martin finishing, and as he looked up Joscelyn laughed again, rubbing her tear-stained cheeks with the back of her hand, and for all the great growing girl that she was looked no more than twelve. So he slid under the swing and stood up behind her and kissed her on the back of the neck where babies are kissed.

Then all the milkmaids came back again.

PART II

To every girl Martin handed her key. "This is your business," said he. And first Joan, and next Joyce, and then Jennifer, and then Jessica, and then Jane, and last of all Joscelyn, put her key into its lock and turned. And not one of the keys would turn. They bit their lips and held their breath, and turned and turned in vain.

"This is dreadful," said Martin. "Are you sure the keys are in the right keyholes?"

"They all fit," said little Joan.

"Let me try," said Martin. And he tried, one after another, and then tried each key singly in each lock, but without result. Jane said, "I expect they've gone rusty," and Jessica said, "That must be it," and Jennifer turned pale and said, "Then Gillian can never get out of the Well-House or we out of the orchard." And Martin sat down in the swing and thought and thought. As he thought he began to swing a little, and then a little more, and suddenly he cried "Push me!" and the six girls came behind him and pushed with all their strength. Up he went with his legs pointed as straight as an arrow, and back he flew and up again. The third time the swing flew clean over the Well-House, and as true as a diving gannet Martin dropped from mid-air into the little court, and stood face to face with Gillian.

PART III

She was not weeping. She was bathed in blushes and laughter. She held out her hands to him, and Martin took them. She had golden hair of lights and shadows like a wheatfield that fell in two thick plaits over her white gown, and she had gray eyes where smiles met you like an invitation, but you had to learn later that they were really a little guard set between you and her inward tenderness, and that her gayety, like a will-o'-the-wisp, led you into the flowery by-ways of her spirit