THE MILL OF DREAMS

THERE was once, dear maidens, a girl who lived in a mill on the Sidlesham marshes. But in those days the marshlands were meadowlands, with streams running in from the coast, so that their water was brackish and salt. And sometimes the girl dipped her finger in the water and sucked it and tasted the sea. And the taste made storms rise in her heart. Her name was Helen.

The mill-house was a gaunt and gloomy building of stone, as grey as sleep, weather-stained with dreams. It had fine proportions, and looked like a noble prison. And in fact, if a prison is the lock-house of secrets, it was one. The great millstones ground day and night, and what the world sent in as corn it got back as flour. And as to the secrets of the grinding it asked no questions, because to the world results are everything. It understands death better than sorrow, marriage better than love, and birth better than creation. And the millstones of joy and pain, grinding dreams into bread, it seldom hears. But Helen heard them, and they were all the knowledge she had of life; for if the mill was a prison of dreams it was her prison too.

Her father the miller was a harsh man and dark; he was dark within and without. Her mother was dead; she did not remember her. As she grew up she did little by little the work of the big place. She was her father's servant, and he kept her as close to her work as he kept his millstones to theirs. He was morose, and welcomed no company. Gaiety he hated. Helen knew no songs, for she had heard none. From morning till night she worked for her father. When she had done all her other work she spun flax into linen for shirts and gowns, and wool for stockings and vests. If she went outside the millhouse, it was only for a few steps for a few moments. She wasn't two miles from the sea, but she had never seen it. But she tasted the salt water and smelt the salt wind.

Like all things that grow up away from the light, she was pale. Her oval face was like ivory, and her lips, instead of being scarlet, had the tender red of apple-blossom, after the unfolding of the bright bud. Her hair was black and smooth and heavy, and lay on either side of her face like a starling's wings. Her eyes too were as black as midnight, and sometimes like midnight they were deep and sightless. But when she was neither working nor spinning she would steal away to the millstones, and stand there watching and listening. And then there were two stars in the midnight. She came away from those stolen times powdered with flour. Her black hair and her brows and lashes, her old blue gown, her rough hands and fair neck, and her white face–all that was dark and pale in her was merged in a mist, and seen only through the clinging dust of the millstones. She would try to wipe off all the evidences of her secret occasions, but her father generally knew. Had he known by nothing else, he need only have looked at her eyes before they lost their starlight.

One day when she was seventeen years old there was a knock at the millhouse door. Nobody ever knocked. Her father was the only man who came in and went out. The mill stood solitary in those days. The face of the country has since been changed by man and God, but at that time there were no habitations in sight. At regular times the peasants brought their grain and fetched their meal; but the miller kept his daughter away from his custom. He never said why. Doubtless at the back of his mind was the thought of losing what was useful to him. Most parents have their ways of trying to keep their children; in some it is this way, in others that; not many learn to keep them by letting them go.

So when the knock came at the door, it was the strangest thing that had ever happened in Helen's life. She ran to the door and stood with her hand on the heavy wooden bar that fell across it into a great socket. Her heart beat fast. Before we know a thing it is a thousand things. Only one thing would be there when she lifted the bar. But as she stood with her hand upon it, a host of presences hovered on the other side. A knight in armour, a king in his gold crown, a god in the guise of a beggar, an angel with a sword; a dragon even; a woman to be her friend; her mother . . . a child . . .

'Would it be better not to open?' thought Helen. For then she would never know. Yes, then she could run to her millstones and fling them her thoughts in the husk, and listen, listen while they ground them into dreams. What knowledge would be better than that? What would she lose by opening the door?

But she had to open the door.

Outside on the stones stood a common lad. He might have been three years older than she. He had a cap with a hole in it in his hand, and a shabby jersey that left his brown neck bare. He was whistling when she lifted the bar, but he stopped as the door fell back, and gave Helen a quick and careless look.

'Can I have a bit of bread?' he asked.

Helen stared at him without answering. She was so unused to people that her mind had to be summoned from a world of ghosts before she could hear and utter real words. The boy waited for her to speak, but, as she did not, shrugged his shoulders and turned away whistling his tune.

Then she understood that he was going, and she ran after him quickly and touched his sleeve. He turned again, expecting her to speak; but she was still dumb.

'Thought better of it?' he said.

Helen said slowly, 'Why did you ask me for bread?'

'Why?' He looked her up and down. 'To mend my boots with, of course.'

She looked at his boots.

'You silly thing,' grinned the boy.

A faint colour came under her skin. 'I'm sorry for being stupid. I suppose you're hungry.'

'As a hunter. But there's no call to trouble you. I'll be where I can get bread, and meat too, in forty minutes. Good-bye, child.'

'No,' said Helen. 'Please don't go. I'd like to give you some bread.'

'Oh, all right,' said the boy. 'What frightened you? Did you think I was a scamp?'

'I wasn't frightened,' said Helen.

'Don't tell me,' mocked the boy. 'You couldn't get a word out.'

'I wasn't frightened.'

'You thought I was a bad lot. You don't know I'm not one now.'

Helen's eyes filled with tears. She turned away quickly. 'I'll get you your bread,' she said.

'You are a silly, aren't you?' said the boy as she disappeared.

Before long she came back with half a loaf in one hand, and something in the other which she kept behind her back.

'Thanks,' said the boy, taking the bit of loaf. 'What else have you got there?'

'It's something better than bread,' said Helen slowly.

'Well, let's have a look at it.'

She took her hand from behind her, and offered him seven ears of wheat. They were heavy with grain, and bowed on their ripe stems.

'Is this what you call better than bread?' he asked.

'It is better.'

'Oh, all right. I sha'n't eat it though–not all at once.'

'No,' said Helen, 'keep it till you're hungry. The grains go quite a long way when you're hungry.'

'I'll eat one a year,' said the boy, 'and then they'll go so far they'll outlast me my lifetime.'

'Yes,' said Helen, 'but the bread will be gone in forty minutes. And then you'll be where you can get meat.'

'You funny thing,' said the boy, puzzled because she never smiled.

'Where can you get meat?' she asked.

'In a boat, fishing for rabbits.'

But she took no notice of the rabbits. She said eagerly, 'A boat? are you going in a boat?'

'Yes.'

'Are you a sailor?'

'You've hit it.'

'You've seen the sea! you've been on the sea!–sailors do that . . . '

'Oh, dear no,' said the boy, 'we sail three times round the duck-pond and come home for tea.'

Helen hung her head. The boy put his hand up to his mouth and watched her over it.

'Well,' he said presently, 'I must get along to Pagham.' He stuck the little sheaf of wheat through the hole in his cap, and it bobbed like a ruddy-gold plume over his ear. Then he felt in his pocket and after some fumbling got hold of what he wanted and pulled it out. 'Here you are, child,' he said, 'and thank you again.'

He put his present into her hand and swung off whistling. He turned once to wave to her, and the corn in his cap nodded with its weight and his light gait. She stood gazing till he was out of sight, and then she looked at what he had given her. It was a shell.

She had heard of shells, of course, but she had never seen one. Yet she knew this was no English shell. It was as large as the top of a teacup, but more oval than round. Over its surface, like pearl, rippled waves of sea-green and sea-blue, under a lustre that was like golden moonlight on the ocean. She could not define or trace the waves of colour; they flowed in and out of each other with interchangeable movement. One half of the outer rim, which was transparently thin and curled like the fantastic edge of a surf wave, was flecked with a faint play of rose and cream and silver, that melted imperceptibly into the moonlit sea. When she turned the shell over she found that she could not see its heart. The blue-green side of the shell curled under like a smooth billow, and then broke into a world of caves, and caves within caves, whose final secret she could not discover. But within and within the colour grew deeper and deeper, bottomless blues and unfathomable greens, shot with such gleams of light as made her heart throb, for they were like the gleams that shoot through our dreams, the light that just eludes us when we wake.

She went into the mill, trembling from head to foot. She was not conscious of moving, but she found herself presently standing by the grinding stones, with sound rushing through her and white dust whirling round her. She gazed and gazed into the labyrinth of the shell as though she must see to its very core; but she could not. So she unfastened her blue gown and laid the shell against her young heart. It was for the first time of so many times that I know not whether when, twenty years later, she did it for the last time, they outnumbered the silver hairs among her black ones. And the silver by then were uncountable. Yet on the day when Helen began her twenty years of lonely listening–

(But having said this, Martin Pippin grasped the rope just above Jennifer's hand, and pulled it with such force that the swing, instead of swinging back and forth, as a swing should, reeled sideways so that the swinger had much ado to keep her seat.

Jennifer. Heaven help me!

Martin. Heaven help me! I need its help more sorely than you do.

Jennifer. Oh, you should be punished, not helped!

Martin. I have been punished, and the punished require help more than censure, or scorn, or anger, or any other form of righteousness.

Jennifer. Who has punished you? And for what?

Martin. You, Mistress Jennifer. For my bad story.

Jennifer. I do not remember doing so. The story is only begun. I am sure it will be a very good story.

Martin. Now you are compassionate, because I need comfort. But the truth is that, good or bad, you care no more for my story. For I saw a tear of vexation come into your eye.

Jennifer. It was not vexation. Not exactly vexation. And doubtless Helen will have experiences which we shall all be glad to hear. But all the same I wish–

Martin. You wish?

Jennifer. That she was not going to grow old in her loneliness. Because all lovers are young.

Martin. You have spoken the most beautiful of all truths. Does the grass grow high enough by the swing for you to pluck me two blades?

Jennifer. I think so. Yes. What do you want with them?

Martin. I want but one of them now. You shall only give me the other if, at the end of my tale, you agree that its lovers are as green as this blade and that.)

On the day (resumed Martin) when Helen began her lonely listening of heart and ears betwixt the sea-shell and the millstones of her dreams, there was not, dear Mistress Jennifer, a silver thread in her black locks to vex you with. For a girl of seventeen is but a child. Yet old enough to begin spinning the stuff of the spirit. . . .

'My boy!–

'Oh, how strange it was, your coming like that, so suddenly. Before I opened the door I stood there guessing. . . . And how could I have guessed this? Did you guess too on the other side?'

'No, not much. I thought it might be a cross old woman. What did you guess?'

'Oh, such stupid things. Kings and knights and even women. And it was you!'

'And it was you!'

'Suppose I'd been a cross old woman?'

'Suppose I'd been a king?'

'And you were just my boy.'

'And you–my sulky girl.'

'Oh, I wasn't sulky. Oh, didn't you understand? How could I speak to you? I couldn't hear you, I couldn't see you, even!'

'Can you see me now?'

She was lying with her cheek against his heart, and she turned her face suddenly inwards, because she saw him bend his head, and the sweetness of his first kiss was going to be more than she could bear.

'Why don't you look up, you silly child? Why don't you look at me, dear?'

'How can I yet? Can I ever? It's so hard looking in a person's eyes. But I am looking at you, I am, though you can't see me.'

'Then tell me what colour my eyes are.'

'They're grey-green, and your hair is dark red, a sort of chestnut but a little redder, and rough over your forehead, and your nose is all over freckles and very very snub–'

(Martin. Heaven help you, Mistress Jennifer!

Jennifer. W-w-w-w-why, Master Pippin?

Martin. Were you not about to fall again?

Jennifer. N-n-n-n-no. I-I-I-I-I–

Martin. I see you are as firm as a rock. How could I have been so deceived?)

He shook her a little in his arms, saying: 'How rude you are to my nose. I wish you'd look up.'

'No, not yet . . . presently. But you, did you look at me?'

'Didn't you see me look?'

'When?'

'As soon as you opened the door.'

'What did you see?'

'The loveliest thing I'd ever seen.'

'I'm not really–am I?'

'I used to dream about you at night on my watches. I made you up out of bits of the night–white moonlight, black clouds, and stars. Sometimes I would take the last cloud of sunset for your lips. And the wind, when it was gentle, for your voice. And the movements of the sea for your movements, and the rise and fall of it for your breathing, and the lap of it against the boat for your kisses. Oh, child, look up! . . . '

She looked up. . . .

'What's your name?'

'Helen.'

'I can't hear you.'

'Helen. Say it.'

'I'm trying to.'

'I can't hear you now. And I want to hear your voice say my name. Oh, my boy, do say it, so that I can remember it when you're away.'

'I can't say it, child. Why didn't you tell me your name?'

'What is yours?'

'I'm trying to tell you.'

'Please–please!'

'I'm trying with all my might. Listen with all yours.'

'I am listening. I can't hear anything. Yet I'm listening so hard that it hurts. I want to say your name over and over and over to myself when you're away. Can't you say it louder?'

'No, it's no good.'

'Oh, why didn't you tell me, boy?'

'Oh, child, why didn't you tell me?'

'Is my bread sweet to you?'

'The sweetest I ever ate. I ate it slowly, and took each bit from your hand. I kept one crust.'

'And my corn?'

'Oh, your corn! that is everlasting. You have sown your seed. I have eaten a grain, and it bore its harvest. One by one I shall eat them, and every grain will bear its full harvest. You have replenished the unknown earth with fields of golden corn, and set me walking there for ever.'

'And you have thrown golden light upon strange waters, and set me floating there for ever. Oh, you on my earth and I on your ocean, how shall we meet?'

'Your corn is my waters, my waters are your corn. They move on one wave. Oh, child, we are borne on it together, for ever.'

'But how you teased me!'

'I couldn't help it.'

'You and your boats and your duck-ponds.'

'It was such fun. You were so serious. It was so easy to tease you.'

'Why did you put your hand over your mouth?'

'To keep myself from–'

'Laughing at me?'

'Kissing you. You looked so sorry because sailors only sail round duck-ponds, when you thought they always sailed out by the west and home by the east. You believed the duck-ponds.'

'I didn't really.'

'For a moment!'

'I felt so stupid.'

'You blushed.'

'Oh, did I?'

'A very little. Like the inside of a shell. I'd always tease you to make you blush like that. Don't you ever smile or laugh, child?'

'You might teach me to. I haven't had the sort of life that makes one smile and laugh. Oh, but I could. I could smile and laugh for you if you wished. I could do anything you wanted. I could be anything you wanted.'

'Shall I make something of you? What shall it be?'

'I don't care, so long as it is yours. Oh, make something of me. I've been lonely always. I don't want to be any more. I want to be able to come to you when I please, not only because I need so much to come, but because you need me to come. Can you make me sure that you need me? When no one has ever needed you, how can you believe . . . ? Oh, no, no! don't look sorry. I do believe it. And will you always stand with me here in the loneliness that has been so dark? Then it won't be dark any more. Why do two people make light? One alone only wanders and holds out her hand and finds no one–nothing. Sometimes not even herself. Will you be with me always?'

'Always.'

'Why?'

'Because I love you.'

'No,' said Helen, 'but because I love you.'

'Tell me–were you frightened?'

'Of you? when I saw you at the door?'

'Yes. Were you?'

'Oh, my boy.'

'But didn't you think I might be a scamp?'

'I didn't think about it at all. It wouldn't have made any difference.'

'Then why were you as mum as a fish?'

'Oh, my boy.'

'Why? why? why?–if you weren't frightened. Of course you were frightened.'

'No, no, I wasn't. I told you I wasn't. Why don't you believe me?–Oh, you're laughing at me again.'

'You're blushing again.'

'It's so easy to make me ashamed when I've been silly. Of course you know now why I couldn't speak. You know what took my words away. Didn't you know then?'

'How could I know? How could I dream it would be as quick for you as for me?'

'One can dream anything . . . oh!'

'What is it, child?' For she had caught at her heart.

'Dreams . . . and not truth. Oh, are you here? Am I? Where are you–where are you? Hold me, hold me fast. Don't let it be just empty dreams.'

'Hush, hush, my dear. Dreams aren't empty. Dreams are as near the truth as we can come. What greater truth can you ever have than this? For as men and women dream, they drop one by one the veils between them and the mystery. But when they meet they are shrouded in the veils again, and though they long to strip them off, they cannot. And each sees of each but dimly the truth which in their dreams was as clear as light. Oh, child, it's not our dreams that are our illusions.'

'No,' she whispered. 'But still it is not enough. Not quite enough for the beloved that they shall dream apart and find their truths apart. In life too they must touch, and find the mystery together. Though it be only for one eternal instant. Touch me not only in my dreams, but in life. Turn life itself into the dream at last. Oh, hold me fast, my boy, my boy . . . '

'Hush, hush, child, I'm holding you . . . '

'You wept.'

'Oh, did you see? I turned my head away.'

'Why did you weep?'

'Because you thought I had misjudged you.'

'Then I misjudged you.'

'But I did not weep for that.'

'Would you, if I misjudged you?'

'It would not be so hard to bear.'

'And you went away with tears and brought me the corn of your mill.'

'And you took it with smiles, and gave me the shell of your seas.'

'Your corn rustled through my head.'

'Your shell whispers at my heart.'

'You shall always hear it whispering there. It will tell you what I can never tell you, or only tell you in other ways.'

'Of your life on the sea? Of the countries over the water? Of storms and islands and flashing birds, and strange bright flowers? Of all the lands and life I've never seen, and dream of all wrong? Will it tell me those things?–of your life that I don't know?'

'Yes, perhaps. But I could tell you of that life.'

'Of what other life will it tell me?'

'Of my life that you do know.'

'Is there one?'

'Look in your own heart.'

'I am looking.'

'And listen.'

'Yes.'

'What do you hear?'

'Oh, boy, the whispering of your shell!'

'Oh, child, the rustling of your corn!'

Oh, maids! the grinding of the millstones.

This is only a little part of what she heard. But if I told you the whole we should rise from the story grey-headed. For every day she carried her boy's shell to the grinding stones, and stood there while it spoke against her heart. And at other times of the day it lay in her pocket, while she swept and cooked and spun, and she saw shadows of her mill-dreams in the cobwebs and the rising steam, and heard echoes of them in her singing kettle and her singing wheel. And at night it lay on her pillow against her ear, and the voice of the waters went through her sleep.

So the years slipped one by one, and she grew from a girl into a young woman; and presently passed out of her youth. But her eyes and her heart were still those of a girl, for life had touched them with nothing but a girl's dream. And it is not time that leaves its traces on the spirit, whatever it may do to the body. Her father meanwhile grew harder and more tyrannical with years. There was little for him to fear now that any man would come to take her from him; but the habit of the oppressor was on him, and of the oppressed on her. And when this has been many years established, it is hard for either to realize that, to escape, the oppressed has only to open the door and go.

Yet Helen, if she had ever thought of escape into another world and life, would not have desired it. For in leaving her millstones she would have lost a world whose boundaries she had never touched, and a life whose sweetness she had never exhausted. And she would have lost her clue to knowledge of him who was to her always the boy in the old jersey who had knocked at her door so many years ago.

Once he was shipwrecked . . .

. . . The waters had sucked her under twice already, when her helpless hands hit against some floating substance on the waves. She could not have grasped it by herself, for her strength was gone; but a hand gripped her in the darkness, and dragged her, almost insensible, to safety. For a long while she lay inert across the knees of her rescuer. Consciousness was at its very boundary. She knew that in some dim distance strong hands were chafing a wet and frozen body . . . but whose hands? . . . whose body? . . . Presently it was lifted to the shelter of strong arms; and now she was conscious of her own heart-beats, but it was like a heart beating in air, not in a body. Then warmth and breath began to fall like garments about this bodiless heart, and they were indeed not her own warmth and breath, but these things given to her by another–the warmth was that of his own body where he had laid her cold hands and breast to take what heat there was in him, and the breath was of his own lungs, putting life into hers through their two mouths. . . . She opened her eyes. It was dark. The darkness she had come out of was bright beside this pitchy night, and her struggle back to life less painful than the fierce labour of the wind and waves. Their frail precarious craft was in ceaseless peril. His left arm held her like a vice, but for greater safety he had bound a rope round their two bodies and the small mast of their craft. With his right arm he clasped the mast low down, and his right hand came round to grip her shaking knees. In this close hold she lay a long while without speaking. Then she said faintly:

'Is it my boy?'

'Yes, child. Didn't you know?'

'I wanted to hear you say it. How long have you been in danger?'

'I don't know. Some hours. I thought you would never come to yourself.'

'I tried to come to you. I can't swim.'

'The sea brought you to me. You were nearly drowned. You slipped me once. If you had again–!'

'What would you have done?'

'Jumped in. I couldn't have stayed on here without you.'

'Ah, but you mustn't ever do that–promise, promise! For then you'd lose me for ever. Promise.'

'I promise. But there's no for ever of that sort. There's no losing each other, whatever happens. You know that, don't you?'

'Yes, I do know. When people love, they find each other for ever. But I don't want you to die, and I don't want to die–yet. But if it is tonight it will be together. Will it be tonight, do you think?'

'I don't know, dear. The storm's breaking up over there, but that's not the only danger.'

'But nothing matters, nothing matters at all while I'm with you.' She lay heavily against him; her eyes closed, and she shook violently.

'Child, you're shuddering, you're as cold as ice.' He put his hand upon her chilly bosom, and hugged her more fiercely to his own. With a sudden movement of despair and anger at the little he could do, he slipped his arms from his jacket, and stripping open his shirt pulled her to him, refastening his jacket around them both, tying it tightly about their bodies by the empty sleeves. She felt his lips on her hair and heard him whisper, 'You're not frightened of me, are you, child? You never will be, will you?'

She shook her head and whispered, 'I never have been.'

'Sleep, if you can, dear.'

'I'll try.'

So closely was she held by his coat and his arms, so near she lay to his beloved heart, that she knew no longer what part of that union was herself; they were one body, and one spirit. Her shivering grew less, and with her lips pressed to his neck she fell asleep.

It was noon.

The hemisphere of the sky was an unbroken blue washed with a silver glare. She could not look up. The sea was no longer wild, but it was not smooth; it was a dancing sea, and every small wave rippled with crested rainbows. A flight of gulls wheeled and screamed over their heads; their movements were so swift that the mid-air seemed to be filled with visible lines described by their flight, silver lines that gleamed and melted on transparent space like curved lightnings.

'Oh, look! oh, look!' cried Helen.

He smiled, but he was not watching the gulls. 'Yes, you've never seen that, have you, child?' His eyes searched the distance.

'But you aren't looking. What are you looking at?'

'Nothing. I can't see what I'm looking for. But the gulls might mean land, or icebergs, or a ship.'

'I don't want land or a ship, or even icebergs,' said Helen suddenly.

He looked at her with the fleeting look that had been her first impression of him.

'Why not? Why don't you?'

'I'm so happy where I am.'

'That's all very well,' said her boy, with his eyes on the distance.

For awhile she lay enjoying the warmth of the sun, watching the gulls sliding down the unseen slopes of the air. Presently high up she saw one hover and pause, settling on nothingness by the swift, almost imperceptible beat of its wings. And suddenly it dropped like a stone upon a wave, and darted up again so quickly that she could not follow what had happened.

'What is it doing?' she asked.

'Fishing,' said the boy. 'It wanted its dinner.'

'So do I,' said Helen.

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a packet wrapped in oilskin. There was biscuit in it. He gave some to her, bit by bit; though it was soft and dull, she was glad of it. But soon she drew away from the hand that fed her.

'What's the matter?' he asked.

'You must have some too.'

'That's all right. I'm not greedy like you birds.'

'I'm not a bird. And I'm not greedy. Being hungry's not being greedy. I'd be greedy if I ate while you're hungry.'

'I'm not hungry.'

'Then neither am I.'

To satisfy her he ate a biscuit. Soon after she began to feel thirst, but she dared not ask for water. She knew he had none. He looked at her lying pale in his arms, and said with a smile that was not like a real smile, 'It's a pity about the icebergs.' She smiled and nodded, and lay still in the heat, watching the gulls, and thinking of ice. Some of the birds settled on the raft. One sat on the mast; another hovered at her knee, picking at crumbs. They played in the sun, rising and falling, and turned in her vision into a whirl of snowflakes, enormous snowflakes. . . . She began to dream of snow, and her lips parted in the hope that some might fall upon her tongue. Presently she ceased to dream of snow. . . . The boy looked down at her closed lids, and at her cheeks, as white as the breasts of the gulls. He could not bear to look long, and returned to his distances.

It was night again.

The circle of the sea was as smooth as silk. Pale light played over it like dreams and ghosts. The sky was a crowded arc of stars, millions of stars, she had never seen or imagined so many. They glittered, glittered restlessly, in an ecstasy that caught her spirit. She too was filled with millions of stars, through her senses they flashed and glittered–a delirium of stars in heaven and her heart. . . .

'My boy!'

'Yes, child.'

'Do you see the stars?'

'Yes, child.'

'Do you feel them?'

'Yes.'

'Oh, can't we die now?'

She felt him move stiffly. 'There's a ship! I'm certain of it now–I'm certain! Oh, if it were day!'

The stars went on dazzling. She did not understand about the ship. Time moved forward, or stood still. For her the night was timeless. It was eternity.

But things were happening outside in time and space. By what means they had been seen or had attracted attention she did not know. But the floating dreamlight and the shivering starlight on the sea were broken by a dark movement on the waveless waters. A boat was coming. For some time there had been shouting and calling in strange voices, one of them her boy's. But once again she hovered on the dim verge of consciousness. She had flown from the body he was painfully unbinding from his own. What he had suffered in holding it there so long she never knew. From leagues away she heard him whispering, 'Child, can you help yourself a little?' And now for an instant her soul reapproached her body, and looked at him through the soft midnight of her eyes, and he saw in them such starlight as never was in sky or on sea.

'Kiss me,' said Helen.

He kissed her.

With a great effort she lifted herself and stood upright on the raft, swaying a little and holding by the mast. The boat was still a little distant.

'Good-bye, my boy.'

'Child–!'

'Don't jump. You promised not to. You promised. But I can't come with you now. You must let me go.'

He looked at her, and saw she was in a fever. He made a desperate clutch at her blue gown. But he was not quick enough. 'Keep your promise!' she cried, and disappeared in the dreamlit waters; she disappeared like a dream, without a sound. As she sank, she heard him calling her by the only name he knew. . . .

When she was thirty-five her father died. Now she was free to go where she pleased. But she did not go anywhere.

Ever since, as a child, she had first tasted salt water, she had longed to travel and see other lands. What held her now? Was it that her longing had been satisfied? that she had a host of memories of great mountains and golden shores, of jungles and strange cities of the coast, of islands lost in seas of sapphire and emerald? of caravans and towers of ivory? of haunted caverns and deserted temples? where, a child always, with her darling boy, she had had such adventures as would have filled a hundred earthly lives. They had built huts in uninhabited places, or made a twisted bower of strong green creepers, and lived their primitive paradisal life wanting nothing but each other; sometimes, through accidents and illness, they had nursed each other, with such unwearied tenderness that death himself had to withdraw, defeated by love. Once on a ship there had been mutiny, and she alone stood by him against a throng; once savages had captured her, and he, outwitting them, had rescued her, riding through leagues of prairie-land and forest, holding her before him on the saddle. In nearly all these adventures it was as though they had met for the first time, and were struck anew with the dumb wonder of first love, and the strange shy sweetness of wooing and confession. Yet they were but playing above truth. For the knowledge was always between them that they were bound immortally by love which, having no end, seemed also to have had no beginning. They quarrelled sometimes–this was playing too. She put, now herself, now him, in the wrong. And either reconciliation was sweet. But it was she who was oftenest at fault, his forgiveness was so dear to her. And still, this was but playing at it. When all these adventures and pretences were done, they stood heart to heart, and out of their only meeting in life built up eternal truth and told each other. They told it inexhaustibly.

And so, when her father left her free to go, Helen lived on still in the mill of dreams, and kept her millstones grinding. Two years went by. And her hard grey lonely life laid its hand on her hair and her countenance. Her father had worn her out before her time.

It was only invisible grain in the mill now. The peasants came no longer with their corn. She had enough to live on, and her long seclusion unfitted her for strange men in the mill, and people she must talk to. And so long was the habit of the recluse on her, that though her soul flew leagues her body never wandered more than a few hundred yards from her home. Some who had heard of her, and had glimpses of her, spoke to her when they met; but they could make no headway with this sweet, shy, silent woman. Yet children and boys and girls felt drawn to her. It was the dream in her eyes that stirred the love in their hearts; though they knew it no more than the soup in the pipkin knows why it bubbles and boils. For it cannot see the fire. But to them she did not seem old; her strength and eagerness were still upon her, and that silver needlework with which time broiders all men had in her its special beauty, setting her aloof in the unabandoned dream which the young so often desert as their youth deserts them. Those of her age, seeing that unyouthful gleam of her hair combined with the still-youthful dream of her eyes, felt as though they could not touch her; for no man can break another's web, he can only break his own, and these had torn their films to tatters long ago, and shouldered their way through the smudgy rents, and no more walked where she walked. But very young people knew the places she walked in, and saw her clearly, for they walked there too, though they were growing up and she was growing old.

At the end of the second year there was a storm. It lasted three days without stopping. Such fury of rain and thunder she had never heard. The gaunt rooms of the mill were steeped in gloom, except when lightning stared through the flat windows or split into fierce cracks on the dingy glass. Those three days she spent by candle-light. Outside the world seemed to lie under a dark doom.

On the third morning she woke early. She had had restless nights, but now and then slept heavily; and out of one dull slumber she awakened to the certainty that something strange had happened. The storm had lulled at last. Through her window, set high in the wall, she could see the dead light of a blank grey dawn. She had seen other eyeless mornings on her window-pane; but this was different, the air in her room was different. Something unknown had been taken from or added to it. As she lay there wondering, but not yet willing to discover, the flat light at the window was blocked out. A sea-gull beat against it with its wings and settled on the sill.

The flutter and the settling of the bird overcame her. It was as though reality were more than she could bear. The birds of memory and pain flew through her heart.

She got up and went to the window. The gull did not move. It was broken and exhausted by the storm. And beyond it she looked down upon the sea.

Yes, it was true. The sea itself washed at the walls of the mill.

She did not understand these grey-green waters. She knew them in vision, not in reality. She cried out sharply and threw the window up. The draggled bird fluttered in and sank on the floor. A sea-wind blew in with it. The bird's wings shivered on her feet, and the wind on her bosom. She stared over the land, swallowed up in the sea. Wreckage of all sorts tossed and floated on it. Fences and broken gates and branches of trees; and fragments of boats and nets and bits of cork; and grass and flowers and seaweed–She thought–what did she think? She thought she must be dreaming.

She felt like one drowning. Where could she find a shore?

She hurried to the bed and got her shell; its touch on her heart was her first safety. In her nightgown as she was she ran with her naked feet through the dim passages until she stood beside the grinding stones. . . .

'Child! child! child!'

'Where are you, my boy, where are you?'

'Aren't you coming? Must I lose you after all this?–Oh, come!'

'But tell me where you are!'

'In a few hours I should have been with you–a few hours after many years.'

'Oh, boy, for pity, tell me where to find you!'

'You are there waiting for me, aren't you, child? I know you are–I've always known you were. What would you have said to me when you opened the door in your blue gown?–'

'Oh, but say only where you are, my boy!'

'Do you know what I should have said? I shouldn't have said anything. I should have kissed you–'

'Oh, let me come to you and you shall kiss me. . . . '

But she listened in vain.

She went back to her room. The gull was still on the floor. Its wing was broken. Her actions from this moment were mechanical; she did what she did without will. First she bound the broken wing, and fetched bread and water for the wounded bird. Then she dressed herself and went out of the mill. She had a rope in her hands.

The water was not all around the mill. Strips and stretches of land were still unflooded, or only thinly covered. But the face of the earth had been altered by one of those great inland swoops of the sea that have for centuries changed and rechanged the point of Sussex, advancing, receding, shifting the coast-line, making new shores, restoring old fields, wedding the soil with the sand.

Helen walked where she could. She had no choice of ways. She kept by the edge of the water and went into no-man's-land. A bank of rotting grasses and dry reeds, which the waves had left uncovered, rose from the marshes. She mounted it, and beheld the unnatural sea on either hand. Here and there in the desolate water mounds of grey-green grass lifted themselves like drifting islands. Trees stricken or still in leaf reared from the unfamiliar element. Many of those which were leafless had put on a strange greenness, for their boughs dripped with seaweed. Over the floods, which were littered with such flotsam as she had seen from her window, flew seabirds and land-birds, crying and cheeping. There was no other presence in that desolation except her own.

And then at last her commanded feet stood still, and her will came back to her. For she saw what she had come to find.

He was hanging, as though it had caught him in a snare, in a tree standing solitary in the middle of a wide waste of water. He was hanging there like a dead man. She could distinguish his dark red hair and his blue jersey.

She paused to think what to do. She couldn't swim. She would not have hesitated to try; but she wanted to save him. She looked about, and saw among the bits of stuff washing against the foot of the bank a large dismembered tree-trunk. It bobbed back and forth among the hollow reeds. She thought it would serve her if she had an oar. She went in search of one, and found a broken plank cast up among the tangled growth of the bank. When she had secured it she fastened one end of her rope around the stump of an old pollard squatting on the bank like a sturdy gnome, and the other end she knotted around herself. Then, gathering all the middle of the rope into a coil, and using her plank as a prop, she let herself down the bank and slid shuddering into the water. But she had her tree-trunk now; with some difficulty she scrambled on to it, and paddled her way into the open water.

It was not really a great distance to his tree, but to her it seemed immeasurable. She was unskilful, and her awkwardness often put her into danger. But her will made her do what she otherwise might not have done; presently she was under the branches of his tree.

She pulled herself up to a limb beside him and looked at him. And it was not he.

It was not her boy. It was a man, middle-aged, rough and weatherbeaten, but pallid under his red-and-tan. His hair was grizzled. And his face was rough with a growth of grizzled hair. His whole body lurched heavily and helplessly in a fork of the tree, and one arm hung limp. His eyes were half-shut.

But they were not quite shut. He was not unconscious. And under the drooping lids he was watching her.

For a few minutes they sat gazing at each other in silence. She had her breath to get. She thought it would never come back.

The man spoke first.

'Well, you made a job of it,' he said.

She didn't answer.

'But you don't know much about the water, do you?'

'I've never seen the sea till today,' said Helen slowly.

He laughed a little. 'I expect you've seen enough of it today. But where do you live, then, that you've never seen the sea? In the middle of the earth?'

'No,' said Helen, 'I live in a mill.'

His eyelids flickered. 'Do you? Yes, of course you do. I might have guessed it.'

'How should you guess it?'

'By your blue dress,' said the man. Then he fainted.

She sat there miserably, waiting, ready to prop him if he fell. She did not know what else to do. Before very long he opened his eyes.

'Did I go off again?' he asked.

She nodded.

'Yes. Well, it's time to be making a move. I dare say I can now you're here. What's your name?'

'Helen.'

'Well, Helen, we'd better put that rope to some use. Will that tree at the other end hold?'

'Yes.'

'Then just you untie yourself and we'll get aboard and haul ourselves home.'

She unfastened the rope from her body, and helped him down to her makeshift boat.

'You take the paddle,' he said. 'My arm's damaged. But I can pull on the rope with the other.'

'Are you sure? Are you all right? What's your name?'

'Yes, I can manage. My name's Peter. This would have been a lark thirty years ago, wouldn't it? It's rather a lark now.'

She nodded vaguely, wondering what she would do if he fell off the log in mid-water.

'Suppose you faint again?'

'Don't look for trouble,' said the man. 'Push off, now.'

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 she 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 snatch of tune. Her heart almost stopped beating, because it was the tune he had whistled at the door twenty years ago. For a moment she thought she could speak to him as she wished. But desire choked her power to choose her words; so many rushed through her brain that she had to pause, seeking which of them to utter; and that long pause, in which she really seemed to have uttered them all aloud, checked the impulse. But surely he had heard her? No; for she had not spoken yet. And before she could make the effort he had stopped whistling, and when she looked at him to speak, he was fumbling restlessly about his pillow.

'What is it?' she asked.

'Something I had–where's my clothes?'

She brought them to him, and he searched them till he had found among them a small metal box which he thrust under the pillow; and then he lay back, as though too tired to notice her. So her impulse died in her, unacted on.

And during the next four days it was always so. A dozen times in their talks she tried to come near him, and could not. Was it because he would not let her? or because the thing she wished to find in him was not really there? Sometimes by his manner only, and sometimes by his words, he baffled her when she attempted to approach him–and the attempt had been so painful to conceive, and its still-birth was such agony to her. He would talk frequently of the time when he would be making tracks again.

'Where to?' asked Helen.

'I leave it to chance. I always have. I've never made plans. Or very seldom. And I'm not often twice in the same place. You look tired. I'm sorry to be a bother to you. But it'll be for the last time, most likely. Go and lie down.'

'I don't want to,' said Helen under her breath. And in her thoughts she was crying, 'The last time? Then it must be soon, soon! I'll make you listen to me now! '

'I want to sleep,' said Peter.

She left the room. Tears of helplessness and misery filled her eyes. She was almost angry with him, but more angry with herself; but her self-anger was mixed with shame. She was ashamed that he made her feel so much, while he felt nothing. Did he feel nothing?

'It's my stupidity that keeps us apart,' she whispered. 'I will break through it!' As quickly as she had left him she returned, and stood by the bed. He was lying with his hand pressed over his eyes. When he was conscious of her being there, his hand fell, and his keen eyes shot into hers. His brows contracted.

'You nuisance,' he muttered, and hid his eyes again. She turned and left him. When she got outside the door she leaned against it and shook from head to foot. She hovered on the brink of her delusions and felt as though she would soon crash into a precipice. She longed for him to go before she fell. Yes, she began to long for the time when he should go, and end this pain, and leave her to the old strange life that had been so sweet. His living presence killed it.

After that third day she had had no more fears for his safety, and he was strong and rallied quickly. The gull too was saved. He saved it. It had drooped and sickened with her. She did not know what to do with it. On the fourth day as he was so much better, she brought it to him. He reset its wing and kept it by him, making it his patient and his playfellow. It thrived at once and grew tame to his hand. He fondled and talked to it like a lover. She would watch him silently with her smouldering eyes as he fed and caressed the bird, and jabbered to it in scraps of a dozen foreign tongues. His tenderness smote her heart.

'You're not very fond of birds,' he said to her once, when she had been sitting in one of her silences while he played with his pet.

The words, question or statement, filled her with anger. She would not trust herself to protest or deny. 'I don't know much about them,' she said.

'That's a pity,' said Peter coolly. 'The more you know 'em the more you have to love 'em. Yet you could love them for all sorts of things without knowing them, I'd have thought.'

She said nothing.

'For their beauty, now. That's worth loving. Look at this one–you're a beauty all right, aren't you, my pretty? Not many girls to match you.' He paused, and ran his finger down the bird's throat and breast. 'Perhaps you don't think she's beautiful,' he said to Helen.

'Yes, she's beautiful,' said Helen, with a difficulty that sounded like reluctance.

'Ah, you don't think so. You ought to see her flying. You shall some day. When her hurt's mended she'll fly–I'll let her go.'

'Perhaps she won't go,' said Helen.

'Oh, yes, she will. How can she stop in a place like this? This is no air for her–she must fly in her own.'

'You'll be sorry to see her go,' said Helen.

'To see her free? No, not a bit. I want her to fly. Why should I keep her? I'd not let her keep me. I'd hate her for it. Why should I make her hate me?'

'Perhaps she wouldn't,' said Helen, in a low voice.

'Oh, I expect she would. Ungrateful little beggar. I've saved her life, and she ought to know she belongs to me. So she might stay out of gratitude. But she'd come to hate me for it, all the same. Not at first; after a bit. Because we change. Bound to, aren't we?'

'Perhaps.'

'I know I do. We can none of us stay what we were. You haven't either.'

'You haven't much to go by,' said Helen.

'Seven minutes at the door, wasn't it? This time it's been seven days.'

'Yes.'

'It's a long time for me,' said Peter.

'It's not much out of a lifetime.'

'No. But suppose it were more than seven days?'

Helen looked at him and said slowly, 'It will be, won't it? You won't be able to go tomorrow.'

'No,' said Peter, 'not tomorrow, or next day perhaps. Perhaps I won't be able to go for the rest of my life.'

This time Helen looked at him and said nothing.

Peter stroked his bird and whistled his tune and stopped abruptly and said, 'Will you marry me, Helen?'

'I'd rather die,' said Helen.

And she got up and went out of the room.

('Oh, the green grass!' chuckled Martin like a bird.

'Nobody asked you to begin a song, Master Pippin,' quavered Jennifer.

'It was not the beginning of a song, Mistress Jennifer. It was the epilogue of a story.'

'But the epilogue comes at the end of a story,' said Jennifer.

'And hasn't my story come to its end?' said Martin.

Joscelyn. Ridiculous! oh, dear! there's no bearing with you. How can this be the end? How can it be, with him on one side of the door and her on the other?'

Joyce. And her heart's breaking–you must make an end of that.

Jennifer. And you must tell us the end of the shell.

Jessica. And of the millstones.

Jane. What did he have in his box?

'Please,' said little Joan, 'tell us whether she ever found her boy again–oh, please tell us the end of her dreams.'

'Do these things matter?' said Martin. 'Hasn't he asked her to marry him?'

'But she said no,' said Jennifer with tears in her eyes.

'Did she?' said Martin. 'Who said so?'

'Master Pippin,' said Joscelyn, and her voice shook with the agitation of her anger, 'tell us immediately the things we want to know!'

'When, I wonder,' said Martin, 'will women cease to want to know little things more than big ones? However, I suppose they must be indulged in little things, lest–'

'Lest?' said little Joan.

'There is such a thing,' said Martin, 'as playing for safety.')

Well, then, my dear maids, when Helen ran out of his room she went to her own, and she threw herself on the bed and sobbed without weeping. Because everything in her life seemed to have been taken away from her. She lay there for a long time, and when she moved at last her head was so heavy that she took the pins from her hair to relieve herself of its weight. But still the pain weighed on her forehead, which burned on her cold fingers when she pressed them over her eyes, trying to think and find some gleam of hope among her despairing thoughts. And then she remembered that one thing at least was left her–her shell. During his illness she had never carried it to the millstones. It was as though his being there had been the only answer to her daily dreams, an answer that had failed them all the time. But now in spite of him she would try to find the old answers again. So she went once more to the millstones with her shell. And when she got there she held it so tightly to her heart that it marked her skin.

And the millstones had nothing to say. For the first time they refused to grind her corn.

Then Helen knew that she really had nothing left, and that the homecoming of the man had robbed her of her boy and of the child she had been. Nothing was left but the man and woman who had lost their youth. And the man had nothing to give the woman. Nothing but gratitude and disillusion. And now a still bitterer thought came to her–the thought that the boy had had nothing to give the girl. For twenty years it had been the girl's illusion. The storms in her heart broke out. She put her face in her hands and wept like wild rain on the sea. She wept so violently that between her passion and the speechless grinding of the stones she did not hear him coming. She only knew he was there when he put his arm round her.

'What is it, you silly thing?' said Peter.

She looked up at him through her hair that fell like a girl's in soft masses on either side of her face. There was a change in him, but she didn't know then what it was. He had got into his clothes and made himself kempt. His beard was no longer rough, though his hair was still unruly across his forehead, and under it his grey-green eyes looked, half-anxious, half-smiling, into hers. His face was rather pale, and he was a little unsteady in his weakness. But the look in his eyes was the only thing she saw. It unlocked her speech at last.

'Oh, why did you come back?' she cried. 'Why did you come back? If you had never come I should have kept my dream to the end of my life. But now even when you go I shall never get it again. You have destroyed what was not there.'

He was silent for a moment, still keeping his arm round her. Then he said, 'Look what's here.' And he opened his hand and showed her his metal box without its lid; in it were the mummies of seven ears of corn. Some were only husks, but some had grain in them still.

She stared at them through her tears, and drew from her breast her hand with the shell in it. Suddenly her mouth quivered and she cried passionately, 'What's the use?' And she snatched the old corn from him and flung it to the millstones with her shell. And the millstones ground them to eternal atoms. . . .

'My boy! my boy! it was you over there in the tree!'

'Oh, child, you came at last in your blue gown!'

'Why didn't you call to me?'

'I'd no breath. I was spent. And I knew you'd seen me and would do your best.'

'I'll never forget that sight of you in the tree, with your 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 grey-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 without her storms. They're one of her ways of holding us, too. And there are more storms in her than ever break. I see them in you, big ones and little ones, brooding. Then you're a–nuisance. You always will be, won't you?'

'Not to wreck you.'

'You won't do that. Or if you do–I can survive shipwreck.'

'I know.'

'How do you know? I nearly gave up once, but the thought of you stopped me. I wanted to come back–I'd always meant to. So I held on.'

'I know.'

'How do you know? I never told you, did I?'

'Oh, Peter, the things we have to tell each other. The times you thought you were alone–the times I thought I was! You've had a life you never dreamed of–and I another life that was not in my dreams.'

'You've saved me from death more than once,' said Peter.

'You've done more than that,' said Helen, 'you've given me the only life I've had. But a thing doesn't belong to you because you've saved its life or given it life. It only belongs to you because you love it. I know you belong to me. But you only know if I belong to you.'

'That's not true now. You do know. And I know.'

'Yes; and we know that as that belonging has nothing to do with death, it can't have anything either to do with the saving or even the giving of life. So you must never thank me, or I you. There are no thanks in love. And that was why I couldn't bear your asking me to marry you today. I thought you were thanking me.'

'When you played with the sea-gull . . . '

'Yes?'

'How you loved it!'

'Yes.'

'I looked to see how you felt when you loved a thing. I wanted so much to be the sea-gull in your hands.'

'When I touched it I was touching you.'

She put his hand to her breast and whispered, 'I love birds.'

He smiled. 'I knew you loved them; and best free. All birds must fly in their own air.'

'Yes,' she said. 'But their freedom only means their power to choose what air they'll fly in. And every choice is a cage too.'

'I shall leave the door open, child.'

'I shall never fly out,' said Helen.

'You talked of going away.'

'Yes. But not from you.'

'Am I to go with you always, following chance and making no plans?'

'Will you? You are the only plan I ever made. Will you leave everything else but me to chance? Perhaps it will lead us all over the earth; and perhaps after all we shall not go very far. But I never could see ahead, except one thing.'

'What was it?'

'The mill door and you in your old blue gown. And for seven days I've stopped seeing that. I haven't it to steer by. Will you chance it?'

'Must you be playing with meanings even in dreams? Don't you know–don't you know that for a woman who loves, and is not sure that she is loved, her days and nights are all chances, every minute she lives is a chance? It might be . . . it might not be . . . oh, those ghosts of joy and pain they are almost too much to bear. For the joy isn't pure joy, or the pain pure pain, and she cannot come to rest in either of them. Sometimes the joy is nearly as great as though she knew; yet at the instant she tries to take it, it looks at her with the eyes of doubt, and she trembles, and dare not take it yet. And sometimes the pain is all but the death she foresees; yet even as she submits to it, it lays upon her heart the finger of hope. And then she trembles again, because she need not take it yet. Those are her chances, Peter. But when she knows that her beloved is her lover, life may do what it will with her; but she is beyond its chances for ever.'

'Your corn! you kept my corn!'

'Till it should bear. And your shell there–you've kept my shell.'

'Till it should speak. And now–oh, see these things that have held our dreams for twenty years! The life is threshed from them for ever–they are only husks. They can hold our dreams no more. Oh, I can't go on dreaming by myself, I can't, it's no use. I thought my heart had learned to bear its dream alone, but the time comes when love in its beauty is too near to pain. There is more love than the single heart can bear. Good-bye, my boy–good-bye!'

'Helen! don't suffer so! oh, child, what are you doing?'

'Letting my dear dreams go . . . It's no use, Peter . . . '

The millstones took them and crushed them.

She uttered a sharp cry. . . .

She uttered a sharp cry.

His arm tightened round her. 'What is it, child?' she heard him say.

She looked at him bewildered, and saw that he too was dazed. She looked into the grey-green eyes of a boy of twenty. She said in a voice of wonder, 'Oh, my boy!' as he felt her soft hair.

'Such a fuss about an empty shell and a bit of dead wheat.'

She hid her face on his jersey.

'You are a silly, aren't you?' said Peter. 'I wish you'd look up.'

Helen looked up, and they kissed each other for the first time.

I defy you now, Mistress Jennifer, to prove that your grass-blade is greener than mine.

Third Interlude

THE girls now turned their attention to their neglected apples, varying this more serious business with comments on the story that had just been related.

Jessica. I should be glad to know, Jane, what you make of this matter.

Jane. Indeed, Jessica, it is difficult to make anything at all of matter so bewildering. For who could have divined reality to be the illusion and dreams the truth? so that by the light of their dreams the lovers in this tale mistook each other for that which they were not.

Martin. Who indeed, Mistress Jane, save students of human nature like yourselves?–who have doubtless long ago observed how men and women begin by filling a dim dream with a golden thing, such as youth, and end by putting a shining dream into a grey thing, such as age. And in the end it is all one, and lovers will see to the last in each other that which they loved at the first, since things are only what we dream them to be, as you have of course also observed.

Joscelyn. We have observed nothing of the sort, and if we dreamed at all we would dream of things exactly as they are, and would never dream of mistaking age for youth. But we do not dream. Women are not given to dreams.

Martin. They are the fortunate sex. Men are such incurable dreamers that they even dream women to be worse preys of the delusive habit than themselves. But I trust you found my story sufficiently wideawake to keep you so.

Joscelyn. It did not make me yawn. Is this mill still to be found on the Sidlesham marshes?

Martin. It is where it was. But what sort of gold it grinds now, whether corn or dreams, or nothing, I cannot say. Yet such is the power of what has been that I think, were the stones set in motion, any right listener might hear what Helen and Peter once heard, and even more; for they would hear the tale of those lovers' journeys over the changing waters, and their return time and again to the unchanging plot of earth that kept their secrets. Until in the end they were together delivered up to the millstones which thresh the immortal grain from its mortal husk. But this was after long years of gladness and a life kept young by the child which each was always rediscovering in the other's heart.

Jennifer. Oh, I am glad they were glad. Do you know, I had begun to think they would not be.

Jessica. It was exactly so with me. For suppose Peter had never returned, or when he did she had found him dead in the tree?

Jane. And even after he returned and recovered, how nearly they were removed from ever understanding each other!

Joan. Oh, no, Jane! once they came together there could be no doubt of the understanding. As soon as Peter came back, I felt sure it would be all right.

Joyce. And I too, all along, was convinced the tale must end happily.

Martin. Strange! so was I. For Love, in his daily labours, is as swift in averting the nature of perils as he is deft in diverting the causes of misunderstanding. I know in fact of but one thing that would have foiled him.

Four of the Milkmaids. What then?

Martin. Had Helen not been given to dreams.

Not a word was said in the apple orchard.

Joscelyn. It would have done her no harm had she not been, singer. Nor would your story have suffered, being, like all stories, a thing as important as thistledown. In either event, though Peter had perished, or misunderstood her for ever, it would not have concerned me a whit. Or even in both events.

Jessica. Nor me.

Jane. Nor me.

Martin. Then farewell my story. A thing as important as thistledown is as unimportantly dismissed. And yonder in heaven the moon sulks at us through a cloud with a quarter of her eye, reproaching us for our peace-destroying chatter. It destroys our own no less than hers. To dream is forbidden, but at least let us sleep.

One by one the milkmaids settled in the grass and covered their faces with their hands, and went to sleep. But Jennifer remained where she was. She sat with downcast eyes, softly drawing the grass-blade through and through her fingers, and the swing swayed a little like a branch moving in an imperceptible wind, and her breast heaved a little as though stirred with inaudible sighs. She sat so long like this that Martin knew she had forgotten he was beside her, and he quietly put out his hand to draw the grass-blade from hers. But before he had even touched it he felt something fall upon his palm that was not rain or dew.

'Dear Mistress Jennifer,' said Martin gently, 'why do you weep?'

She shook her head, since there are times when the voice plays a girl false, and will not serve her.

'Is it,' said Martin, 'because the grass is not green enough?'

She nodded.

'Pray let me judge,' entreated Martin, and took the grass-blade from her fingers. Whereupon she put her face into her two hands, whispering–

'Master Pippin, Master Pippin, oh, Master Pippin.'

'Let me judge,' said Martin again, but in a whisper too.

Then Jennifer took her hands from her wet face, and looked at him with her wet eyes, and said with great braveness and much faltering–

'I will be nineteen in November.'

At this Martin looked very grave, and he got down from the tree and walked to the end of the orchard full of thought. But when he turned there he found that she had stolen after him, and was standing near him hanging her head, yet watching him with deep anxiety.

Jennifer. It is t-t-too old, isn't it?

Martin. Too old for what?

Jennifer. I–I–I don't know.

Martin. It is, of course, extremely old. There are things you will never be able to do again, because you are so old.

Jennifer sobbed.

Martin. You are too old to be rocked in a cradle. You are too old to write pot-hooks and hangers, and too old, alas, to steal pickles and jam when the house is abed. Yet there are still a few things you might do if–

Jennifer. Oh, if?

Martin. If you could find a friend as old as yourself, or even a little older, to help you.

Jennifer. But think how old h–h–h–the friend would have to be.

Martin. What would that matter? For all grass is green enough if it is not near grass that looks greener.

Jennifer. Oh, is this true?

Martin. It is indeed. And I believe too that were your friend's hair red enough, and your friend's freckled nose snub enough, since youth resides long in these qualities, you might even, with such a companion, begin once more to steal pickles and jam by night, to learn your pot-hooks and hangers, and even in time to be rocked asleep by a cradle.

Jennifer. D-d-dear Master Pippin.

Martin. They look quite green, don't they?

And he laid the two blades side by side on her palm, and Jennifer, whose voice once more would not serve her, nodded and put the two blades in her pocket. Then Martin took out his handkerchief and very carefully dried her eyes and cheeks, saying as he did so, 'Now that I have explained this to your satisfaction, won't you, please, explain something to mine?'

Jennifer. I will if I can.

Martin. Then explain what it is you have against men.

Jennifer. I don't know how to tell you, it is so terrible.

Martin. I will try to bear it.

Jennifer. They say women cannot–cannot–

Martin. Cannot?

Jennifer. Keep secrets!

Martin. Men say so?

Jennifer. Yes!

Martin. Men say so?

Jennifer. They do, they do!

Martin. Men! Oh, Jupiter! if this were true–but it is not–these men would be blabbing the greatest of secrets in saying so. If I had a secret–but I have not–do you think I would trust it to a man? Not I! What does a man do with a secret? Forgets it, throws it behind him into some empty chamber of his brain and lets the cobwebs smother it! buries it in some deserted corner of his heart, and lets the weeds grow over it! Is this keeping a secret? Would you keep a garden or a baby so? I will a thousand times sooner give my secret to a woman. She will tend it and cherish it, laugh and cry with it, dress it in a new dress every day and dandle it in the world's eye for joy and pride in it–nay, she will bid the whole world come into her nursery to admire the pretty secret she keeps so well. And under her charge a little secret will grow into a big one, with a hundred charms and additions it had not when I confided it to her, so that I shall hardly know it again when I ask for it: so beautiful, so important, so mysterious will it have become in the woman's care. Oh, believe me, Mistress Jennifer, it is women who keep secrets and men who neglect them.

Jennifer. If I had only thought of these things to say! But I am not clever at argument like men.

Martin. I suspect these clever arguers. They can always find the right thing to say, even if they are in the wrong. Women are not to be blamed for washing their hands of them for ever.

Jennifer. I know. Yet I cannot help wondering who bakes them gingerbread for Sunday.

Martin. Let them go without. They do not deserve gingerbread.

Jennifer. I know, I know. But they like it so much. And it is nice making it, too.

Martin. Then I suppose it will have to be made till the last of Sundays. What a bother it all is.

Jennifer. I know. Good-night, dear Master Pippin.

Martin. Dear milkmaid, good-night. There lie your fellows, careless of the colour of the grass they lie on, and of the years that lie on them. They have forsworn the baking of cakes, the eating of which begets dreams, to which women are not given. Go lie with them, and be if you can as careless and dreamless as they are.

And then, seeing the tears refilling her eyes, he hastily pulled out his handkerchief again and wiped them as they fell, saying, 'But if you cannot–if you cannot (don't cry so fast!)–if you cannot, then give me your key (dear Jennifer, please dry up!) to Gillian's well-house, because you were glad that my tale ended gladly, and also because all lovers, no matter of what age, are green enough, and chiefly because my handkerchief's sopping.'

Then Jennifer caught his hands in hers and whispered, 'Oh, Martin! are they? all lovers?–are they green enough?'

'God help them, yes!' said Martin Pippin.

She dropped his hands, leaving her key in them, and looked up at him with wet lashes, but happiness behind them. So he stooped and kissed the last tears from her eyes. Since his handkerchief had become quite useless for the purpose.

And she stole back to her place, and he lay down in his, and Jennifer dreamed that she was baking gingerbread, and Martin that he was eating it.

'Maids! maids! maids!'

It was Old Gillman on the heels of dawn.

'A pest on him and all farmers,' groaned Martin, 'who would harvest men's slumbers as soon as they're sown.'

'Get into hiding!' commanded Joscelyn.

'I will not budge,' said Martin. 'I am going to sleep again. For at that moment I had a lion in one hand and a unicorn in the other–'

'Will you conceal yourself!' whispered Joscelyn, with as much fury as a whisper can compass.

'And the lion had comfits in his crown, and the unicorn a gilded horn. And both were so sticky and spicy and sweet–'

Joscelyn flung herself upon her knees before him, spreading her yellow skirts which barely concealed him, as Old Gillman thrust his head through the hawthorn gap.

'Good-morrow, maids,' he grunted.

'–that I knew not, dear Mistress Joscelyn,' murmured Martin, 'which to bite first.'

'Good-morrow, master!' cried the milkmaids loudly; and they fluttered their petticoats like sunshine between the man at the hedge and the man in the grass.

'Is my daughter any merrier this morning?'

'No, master,' said Jennifer, 'yet I think I see smiles on their way.'

'If they lag much longer,' muttered the farmer, 'they'll be on the wrong side of her mouth when they do come. For what sort of a home will she return to?–a pothouse! and what sort of a father?–a drunkard! And the fault's hers that deprives him of the drink he loved in his sober days. Gillian!' he exclaimed, 'when will ye give up this child's whim to learn by experience, and take an old man's word for it?'

But Gillian was as deaf to him as to the cock crowing in the barnyard.

'Come fetch your portion,' said Old Gillman to the milkmaids, 'since there's no help for it. And good-day to ye, and a better morrow.'

'Wait a bit, master!' entreated Jennifer, 'and tell me if Daisy, my Lincoln Red, lacks for anything.'

'For nothing that Tom can help her to, maid. But she lacks you, and lacking you, her milk. So that being a cow she may be said to lack everything. And so do I, and the men, and the farm–ruin's our portion, nothing but rack and ruin.'

Saying which he departed.

'To breakfast,' said Martin cheerfully.

'Suppose you'd been seen,' scolded Joscelyn.

'Then our tales would have been at an end,' said Martin. 'Would this have distressed you?'

'The sooner they're ended the better,' said Joscelyn, 'if you can do nothing but babble of sticky unicorns.'

'It was fresh from the oven,' explained Martin meekly. 'I wish we could have gingerbread for breakfast instead of bread.'

'Do not be sure,' said Joscelyn severely, 'that you will get even bread.'

'I am in your hands,' said Martin, 'but please be kinder to the ducks.'

Joscelyn, all of a fluster, then put new bread in the place of Gillian's old; but her annoyance was turned to pleasure when she discovered that the little round top of yesterday's loaf had entirely disappeared.

'Upon my word!' cried she, 'the cure is taking effect.'

'I believe you are right,' said Martin. 'How sorry the ducks will be.'

They quickly fed the ducks, and then themselves; and Martin received his usual share, Joscelyn having so far relented that she even advised him as to the best tree for apples in the whole orchard.

After breakfast Martin found six pairs of eyes fixed so earnestly upon him that he began to laugh.

'Why do you laugh?' asked little Joan.

'Because of my thoughts,' said he. So she took a new penny from her pocket and gave it to him.

'I was thinking,' said Martin, 'how strange it is that girls are all so exactly alike.'

'Oh!' cried six different voices in a single key of indignation.

'What a fib!' said Joyce. 'I am like nobody but me.'

'Nor am I!' cried all the others in a breath.

'Yet a moment ago,' said Martin, 'you, Mistress Joyce, were wondering with all your might what diversion I had hit upon for this morning. And so were Jane and Jessica and Jennifer and Joan and Joscelyn.'

'I was not! ' cried six voices at once.

'What, none of you?' said Martin. 'Did I not say so?'

And they were very provoked, not knowing what to answer for fear it might be on the tip of her neighbour's tongue. So they said nothing at all, and with one accord tossed their heads and turned their backs on him. And Martin laughed, leaving them to guess why. On which, greatly put out, every girl stamped her foot. And Martin laughed more than ever. So without even consulting one another they decided to have nothing further to do with him, and each girl went and sat under a different apple-tree and began to do her hair.

'Heigh-ho!' said Martin. 'Then this morning I must divert myself.' And he began to spin his golden penny in the sun, sometimes spinning it very dexterously from his elbow and never letting it fall. But the girls wouldn't look, or if they did it was through stray bits of their hair; when they could not be suspected of looking.

'I shall certainly lose this penny,' communed Martin with himself, quite audibly, 'if somebody does not lend me a purse to keep it in.' But nobody offered him one, so he plucked a blade of Shepherd's Purse from the grass, soliloquizing, 'Now had I been a shepherd, or had the shepherd's name been Martin, here was my purse to my hand. And then, having saved my riches I might have got married. Yet I never was a shepherd, nor ever knew a shepherd of my name; and a penny is in any case a great deal too much money for a man to marry on, be he a shepherd or no. For it is always best to marry on next-to-nothing, from which a penny is three times removed.'

Then he went on spinning his penny in the air again, humming to himself a song of no value, which, so far as the girls could tell for the hair over their ears, went as follows:

'If I should be so lucky
As a farthing for to find,
I wouldn't spend the farthing
According to my mind,
But I'd beat it and I'd bend it
And I'd break it into two,
And give one half to a shepherd
And the other half to you.
And as for both your fortunes,
I'd wish you nothing worse
Than that your half and his half
Should lie in the Shepherd's Purse.'

At the end of the song he spun the penny so high that it fell into the well-house; and endeavouring to catch it he flung the spire of wildflower after it, and so lost both. And nobody took the least notice of his song or his loss.

Then Martin said, 'Who cares?' and took a new clay pipe and a little packet from his pocket; and he wandered about the orchard till he had found an old tin pannikin, and he scooped up some water from the duck-pond and made a lather in it with the soap in the packet, and sat on the gate and blew bubbles. The first bubble in the pipe was always crystal, and sometimes had a jewel hanging from it which made it fall to the earth; and the second was tinged with colour, and the third gleamed like sunset, or like peacocks' wings, or rainbows, or opals. All the colours of earth and heaven chased each other on their surfaces in all the swift and changing shapes that tobacco smoke plays at on the air; but of all their colours they would take the deepest glow of one or two, and now Martin would blow a world of flame-and-orange through the trees, or one of blue-and-gold, or another of green-and-rose. And, as he might have watched his dreams, he watched the bubbles float away; and break. But one of the loveliest at last sailed over the well-house and between the ropes of the swing and among the fruit-laden boughs, miraculously escaping all perils; and over the hedge, where a small wind bore it up and up out of sight. And Martin, who had been looking after it with a rapt gaze, sighed, 'Oh!' And six other 'Ohs!' echoed his. Then he looked up and saw the six milkmaids standing quite close to him, full of hesitation and longing. So he took six more pipes from his pockets, and soon the air was glistening with bubbles, big and little. Sometimes they blew the bubbles very quickly, shaking the tiny globes as fast as they could from the bowl, till the air was filled with a treasure of opals and diamonds and moonstones and pearls, as though the king of the east had emptied his casket there. And sometimes they blew steadily and with care, endeavouring to create the best and biggest bubble of all; but generally they blew an instant too long, and the bubble burst before it left the pipe. Whenever a great sphere was launched the blower cried in ecstasy, 'Oh, look at mine!' and her comrades, merely glancing, cried in equal ecstasy, 'Yes, but see mine!' And each had a moment's delight in the others' bubbles, but everlasting joy in her own, and was secretly certain that of all the bubbles hers were the biggest and brightest. The biggest and brightest of all was really blown by little Joan: as Martin, in a whisper, assured her. He whispered the same thing, however, to each of her friends, and for one truth told five lies. Sometimes they played together, taking their bubbles delicately from one pipe to another, and sometimes blew their bubbles side by side till they united, and made their venture into the world like man and wife. And often they put all their pipes at once into the pannikin, and blew in the water, rearing a great palace of crystal hemispheres, that rose until it hit their chins and cheeks and the tips of their noses, and broke on them, leaving on their fair skin a trace of glistening foam. And as the six laughing faces bent over the pannikin on his knees, Martin observed that Joscelyn's hair was coiled like two great lovely roses over her ears, and that Joyce's was in clusters of ringlets, and that Jane's was folded close and smooth and shining round her small head, and that Jessica's was tucked under like a boy's, while Jennifer's lay in a soft knot on her neck. But little Joan's was hanging still in its plaits over her shoulders, and one thick plait was half undone, and the loose hair got in her own and everybody's way, and was such a nuisance that Martin was obliged at last to gather it in his hand and hold it aside for the sake of the bubble-blowers. And when they lifted their heads he was looking at them so gravely that Joyce laughed, and Jessica's eyes were a question, and Jane looked demure, and Jennifer astonished, and Joscelyn extremely composed and indifferent. And little Joan blushed. To cover her blushing she offered him another penny.

'I was thinking,' said Martin, 'how strange it is that girls are so absolutely different.'

Then six demure shadows appeared at the very corners of their mouths, and they rose from their knees and said with one accord, 'It must be dinner-time.' And it was.

'Bread is a good thing,' said Martin, twirling a buttercup as he swallowed his last crumb, 'but I also like butter. Do not you, Mistress Joscelyn?'

'It depends on who makes it,' said she. 'There is butter and butter.'

'I believe,' said Martin, 'that you do not like butter at all.'

'I do not like other people's butter,' said Joscelyn.

'Let us be sure,' said Martin. And he twirled his buttercup under her chin. 'Fie, Mistress Joscelyn!' he cried. 'What a golden chin! I never saw anyone so fond of butter in all my days.'

'Is it very gold?' asked Joscelyn, and ran to the duck-pond to look, but couldn't see because she was on the wrong side of the gate.

 'Do I like butter?' cried Jessica.

'Do I?'		Jennifer
'Do I?'	} cried {	Joyce
'Do I?'		Jane and
'Oh, do I?'		Joan.

'We'll soon find out,' said Martin, and put buttercups under all their chins, turn by turn. And they all liked butter exceedingly.

'Do you like butter, Master Pippin?' asked little Joan.

'Try me,' said he.

And six buttercups were simultaneously presented to his chin, and it was discovered that he liked butter the best of them all.

Then every girl had to prove it on every other girl, and again on Martin one at a time, and he on them again. And in this delicious pastime the afternoon wore by, and evening fell, and they came golden-chinned to supper.

Supper was scarcely ended–indeed, her mouth was still full–when Jessica, looking straight at Martin, said, 'I'm dying to swing.'

'I never saved a lady's life easier,' said Martin; and in one moment she found herself where she wished to be, and in the next saw him close beside her on the apple-bough. The five other girls went to their own branches as naturally as hens to the roost. Joscelyn inspected them like a captain marshalling his men, and when each was armed with an apple she said–

'We are ready now, Master Pippin.'

'I wish I were too,' said he, 'but my tale has taken a fit of the shivers on the threshold, like an unexpected guest who doubts his welcome.'

'Are we not all bidding it in?' said Joscelyn impatiently.

'Yes, like sweet daughters of the house,' said Martin. 'But what of the mistress?' And he looked across at Gillian by the well, but she looked only into the grass and her thoughts.

'Let the daughters do to begin with,' said Joscelyn, 'and make it your business to stay till the mistress shall appear.'

'That might be to outstay my welcome,' said Martin, 'and then her appearance would be my discomfiture. For a hostess has, according to her guests, as many kinds of face as a wildflower, according to its counties, names.'

'Some kinds have only one name,' said Jessica, plucking a stalk crowned with flowers as fine as spray. 'What would you call this but Cow Parsley?'

'If I were in Anglia,' said Martin, 'I would call it Queen's Lace.'

'That's a pretty name,' said Jessica.

'Pretty enough to sing about,' said Martin; and looking carelessly at the well-house he thrummed his lute and sang–

'The Queen netted lace
On the first April day,
The Queen wore her lace
In the first week of May,
The Queen soiled her lace
Ere May was out again,
So the Queen washed her lace
In the first June rain.
The Queen bleached her lace  
On the first of July,
She spread it in the orchard
And left it there to dry,
But on the first of August
It wasn't in its place
Because my sweetheart picked it up
And hung it o'er her face.
She laughed at me, she blushed at me,
With such a pretty grace,
That I kissed her in September
Through the Queen's own lace.'

At the end of the song Gillian sat up in the grass, and looked with all her heart over the duck-pond.

Joscelyn. I find your songs singularly lacking in point, singer.

Martin. You surprise me, Mistress Joscelyn. The kiss was the point.

Joscelyn. It is like you to think so. It is just like you to think a–a–a–

Martin. –kiss–

Joscelyn. Sufficient conclusion to any circumstances.

Martin. Isn't it?

Joscelyn. My goodness! You might as soon ask, is a pear-drop sufficient for a body's dinner.

Martin. It would suffice me. I love pear-drops. But then I am a man. Women doubtless need more substance, being in themselves more insubstantial. Now as to your quarrel with my song–

Joscelyn. It is of no consequence. You raise expectations which you do not fulfil. But it is not of the least consequence.

Martin. Dear Mistress Joscelyn, my only desire is to please you. We will not conclude on a kiss. You shall fulfil your own expectations.

Joscelyn. Mine?–I have no expectations whatever.

Martin. But I have disappointed you. What shall I do with my sweetheart? Shall she be whipped for her theft? Shall she be shut in a dungeon? Shall she be thrown before elephants? Choose your conclusion.

Joan. But, Master Pippin!–why must the poor sweetheart be punished? I am sure Joscelyn never wished her to be punished. There are other conclusions.

Martin. Dunderhead that I am, I can't think of any! What, Mistress Joscelyn, was the conclusion you expected?

Joscelyn. I tell you, I expected none!

Joan. Why, Master Pippin! I should have fancied that, seeing the dear sweetheart had hung the veil over her face, she might–

Martin. Yes?

Joan. Be expected–

Martin. Yes?

Joan. To be about to be–

Joscelyn. I am sick to death of this silly sweetheart. And since our mistress appears to be listening with both her ears, it would be more to the point to begin whatever story you propose to relate tonight, and be done with it.

Martin. You are always right. Therefore add your ears to hers, while I tell you the tale of

[Open Winkins]

This chapter has been put on-line as part of the BUILD-A-BOOK Initiative at the
Celebration of Women Writers.
Initial text entry and proof-reading of this chapter were the work of volunteer
Batsy Bybell.