("I want my apple," said Martin Pippin.
"But is this the end?" cried little Joan.
"Why not?" said Martin. "The lovers are united."
Joscelyn: Nonsense! Of course it is not the end! You must tell us a thousand other things. Why was the Woman a woman on Saturday night and a lad all the rest of the week?
Joyce: What of the four jewels?
Jennifer: Which of the answers to the King's riddle was the right one?
Jessica: What happened to the cake?
Jane: What was her name?
"Please," said little Joan, "do not let this be the end, but tell us what they did next."
"Women will be women," observed Martin, "and to the end of time prefer unessentials to the essential. But I will endeavor to satisfy you on the points you name.")
In the morning William said to his beloved:
"Now tell me something of yourself. How come you to be so masterful a smith? Why do you live as a black Lad all the week and turn only into a white Woman on Saturdays? Have you really got a Great-Aunt, and where does she live? How old are you? Why were you so hard to please about the shoeing of Pepper? And why, the better my shoes the worse your temper? Why did you run away from me a week ago? Why did you never tell me who you were? Why have you tormented me for a whole month? What is your name?"
"Trust a man to ask questions!" said his beloved, laughing and blushing. "Is it not enough that I am your beloved?"
"More than enough, yet not nearly enough," said the King, "for there is nothing of yourself which you must not tell me in time, from the moment when you first stole barley sugar behind your father's back, down to that in which you first loved me."
"Then I had best begin at once," she smiled, "or a lifetime will not be long enough. I am eighteen years old and my name is Viola. I was born in Falmer, and my father was the best smith in all Sussex, and because he had no other child he made me his bellows-boy, and in time, as you know, taught me his trade. But he was, as you also know, a stern master, and it was not until, on my sixteenth birthday, I forged a shoe the equal of your last, that he said I could not make a better.' And so saying he died. Now I had no other relative in all the world except my Great-Aunt, the Wise Woman of the Bush Hovel, and her I had never seen; but I thought I could not do better in my extremity than go to her for counsel. So, shouldering my father's tools, I journeyed west until I came to her place, and found her trying to break in a new birch-broom that was still too green and full of sap to be easily mastered; and she was in a very bad temper. Good day, Great-Aunt,' I said, I am your Great-Niece Viola.' I have no more use for great nieces,' she snapped, than for little ones.' And she continued to tussle with the broomstick and took no further notice of me. Then I went into the Hovel, where a fire burned on the hearth, and I took out my tools and fashioned a bit on the hob; and when it was ready I took it to her and said, This will teach it its manners'; and she put the bit on the broom, which became as docile as a lamb. Great-Niece,' said she, it appears that I told you a lie this morning. What can I do for you?' Tell me, if you please, how I am to live now that my father is dead.' There is no need to tell you,' said she; you have your living at your fingers' ends.' But women cannot be smiths,' said I. Then become a lad,' said she, and ply your trade where none knows you; and lest men should suspect you by your face, which fools though they be they might easily do, let it be so sooted from week's end to week's end that none can discover what you look like; and if any one remarks on it, put it down to your trade.'
But Great-Aunt,' I said, I could not bear to go dirty from week's end to week's end.' If you will be so particular,' she said, take a bath every Saturday night and spend your Sundays with me, as fair as when you were a babe. And before you go to work again on Monday you shall once more conceal your fairness past all men's penetration.' But, dear Great-Aunt,' I pleaded, it may be that the day will come when I might not wish—'"
And here, dear maidens, Viola faltered. And William put his arm about her a little tighter—because it was there already—and said, "What might you not wish, beloved?" And she murmured, "To be concealed past one man's penetration. And my Great-Aunt said I need not worry. Because though men, she said, were fools, there was one time in every man's life when he was quick enough to penetrate all obscurities, whether it were a layer of soot or a night without a moon." And she hid her face on the King's shoulder, and he tried to kiss her but could not make her look up until he said, "Or even a woman's waywardness?" Then she looked up of her own accord and kissed him.
"In this way," she resumed, "it became my custom on each Saturday, after closing the forge, to come here with my woman's raiment, and wait in a hollow until night had fallen, and make myself clean of the week's blackness. For I dared not do this by daylight, or be seen going forth from my forge in my proper person."
"But why did you choose to bathe at midnight?" asked the King.
She was silent for a few moments, and then said hurriedly, "I did not choose to bathe at midnight until a month ago.—For the rest," she resumed, "I was hard to please in the matter of the shoes because I knew that when they were finished you would ride away. And therefore the more you improved the crosser I became. And if I have tormented you for a month it was because you tormented me by refusing to speak when you saw me here, in spite of your hateful vow; and you would not even look at my cake in the larder."
"Women are strange," said the King. "How do you know I did not look at the cake?"
"I do know," she said as hurriedly as before. "And if I would not tell you who I was, it was because I could not bear, on the other hand, to extort from you a love you seemed so reluctant to endure; until indeed it became of its own accord too strong even for the purpose which brought you every week to the Ring. For I knew that purpose, since all dwellers in Washington know why men go up the hill with the new moon."
"But when my love did become too strong for my vow, and opened my lips at last," said the King, "why did you run away?"
Viola said, "Had you not run away the week before? And now I have answered all your questions."
"No," said the King, "not all. You haven't told me yet when you first loved me."
Viola smiled and said, "I first stole barley sugar when my father said This is for the other little girl over the way'; and I first loved you when, seeing you had been too absent-minded to know that Pepper had cast her shoes, I feared you were in love."
"But that was three minutes after we met!" cried the King.
"Was it as much as that!" said she.
Now after awhile Viola said, "Let us get down to the world again. We cannot stay here for ever."
"Why not?" said the King. However, they walked to the brow of the hill, and stood together gazing awhile over the sunlit earth that had never been so beautiful to either of them; for their sight was newly-washed with love, and all things were changed.
"Now I know how she looks from heaven," said the King, "and that is like heaven itself. Let us go; for I think she will still look so at our coming, seeing that we carry heaven with us."
So they went downhill to the forge, and there Viola said to her lover, "I can stay no longer in this place where all men have known me as a lad; and besides, a woman's home is where her husband lives."
"But I live only in a Barn," said William the King.
"Then I will live there with you," said Viola, "and from this very night. But first I will shoe Pepper anew, for she is so unequally shod that she might spill us on the road. And that she may be shod worthily of herself and of us, give me what you have tied up in your blue handkerchief." The King fetched his handkerchief and unknotted it, and gave her his crown and scepter; and she set him at the bellows and made three golden shoes and shod the nag on her two fore-feet and her off hind-foot. But when she looked at the near hind-foot, which the King had shod last of all, she said: "I could not make a better. And therefore, like his father, the Lad must shut his smithy, for he is dead." Then she put the three shoes she had removed into a bag with some other trifles; and while she did so the King took what remained of the gold and made it into two rings. This done, they got on to Pepper's back, and with her three shoes of gold and one of iron she bore them the way the King had come. When they passed the Bush Hovel they saw the Wise Woman currying her broomstick, and Viola cried:
"Great-Aunt, give us a blessing."
"Great-Niece," said the Wise Woman, "how can I give you what you already have? But I will give you this." And she held out a horseshoe.
"Good gracious," said the King, "this was once Pepper's."
"It was," said the Wise Woman. "In her merriment at hearing you ask a silly question, she cast it outside my door."
A little further on they came to the Guess Gate, but when the King, dismounting, swung it open, it grated on something in the road. He stooped and lifted—a horseshoe.
"Wonder of wonders!" exclaimed the King. "This also was Pepper's. What shall we do with it?"
"Hang—it—up—hang—it—up—hang—" creaked the Gate; and clicked home.
In due course they reached the Doves, and at the sound of Pepper's hoofs the Brothers flocked out to meet them.
"Is all well?" cried the Ringdove, seeing the King only. "And have you returned to us for the final blessing?"
"I have," replied the King, "for I bring my bride behind me, and now you must make us one."
The gentle Brothers, rejoicing at the sight of their happiness and their beauty, led them in; and there they were wedded. The Doves offered them to eat, but the King was impatient to reach his Barn by nightfall; so they got again on Pepper's back, and as they were about to leave the Ringdove said:
"I have something of yours which is in itself a thing of no moment; yet, because it is of good augury, take it with you."
And he gave the King Pepper's third shoe.
"Thank you," said the King, "I will hang it over my Barn door."
Now he urged Pepper to her full speed, and they went at a gallop past the Hawking Sopers, who, hearing the clatter, came running into the road.
"Stay, gallopers, stay!" they cried, "and make merry with us."
"We cannot," called the King, "for we are newly married."
"Good luck to you then!" shouted the Sopers, and with huzzas and laughter flung something after them. Viola stretched out her hand and caught it in mid-air, and it was a horseshoe.
"The tale is complete," she laughed, "and now you know where Pepper picked up her stones."
Soon after the King said, "Here is my Barn." And he sprang down and lifted his bride from the nag's back and brought her in.
"It is a poor place," he said gently, "but it is all I have. What can I do for you in such a home?"
"I will tell you," said Viola, and putting her hand into her left pocket, she drew out the ruby winking with the wine of mirth. "You can dance in it." And suddenly they caught each other by the hands and went capering and laughing round the Barn like children.
"Hurrah!" cried William, "now I know what a King should do in a Barn!"
"But he should do more than dance in it," said Viola; and putting her hand into her right pocket she gave him the pearl, as pure as a prayer; "beloved, he should pray in it too."
And William looked at her and knelt, and she knelt by him, and in silence they prayed the same prayer, side by side.
Then William rose and said simply, "Now I know."
But she knelt still, and took from her girdle the diamond, as bright as power, and she put it in his hand, saying very low, "Oh, my dear King! but he should also rule in it." And she kissed his hand. But the King lifted her very quickly so that she stood equal with his heart, and embracing her he said, with tears in his eyes:
"And you, beloved! what will a Queen do in a Barn?"
"The same as a King," she whispered, and drew from her bosom the opal, as lovely and as variable as the human spirit. "With the other three stones you may, if you will, buy back your father's kingdom. But this, which contains all qualities in one, let us keep for ever, for our children and theirs, that they may know there is nothing a King and a Queen may not do in a Barn, or a man and a woman anywhere. But the best thing they can do is to work in it."
Then, going out, she came back with the bag which she had slung on Pepper's back, and took from it her father's tools.
"In three weeks you learned all I learned in three years," said she. "When I shod Pepper this morning I did my last job as a smith; for now I shall have other work to do. But you, whether you choose to get your father's lands again or no, I pray to work in the trade I have given you, for I have made you the very king of smiths, and all men should do the thing they can do best. So take the hammer and nail up the horseshoes over the door while I get supper; for you look as hungry as I feel."
"But there's nothing to eat," said the King ruefully.
However, he went outside, and over the door he hung as many shoes as there are nails in one—the four Pepper had cast on the road, and the three he had first made for her. As he drove the last nail home Viola called:
"Supper is ready."
And the King went into the Barn and saw a Wedding Cake.
And now, if you please, Mistress Joan, I have earned my apple.
Now there was a great munching of apples in the tree, for to tell the truth during the latter part of the story this business had been suspended, and between bites the milkmaids discussed the merits of what they had just heard.
Jessica: What is your opinion of this tale, Jane?
Jane: It surprised me more than anything. For who could have suspected that the Lad was a Woman?
Martin: Lads are to be suspected of any mischief, Mistress Jane.
Joscelyn: It is not to be supposed, Master Pippin, that we are acquainted with the habits of lads.
Martin: I suppose nothing. But did the story please you?
Joscelyn: As a story it was well enough to pass an hour. I would be willing to learn whether the King regained his kingdom or no.
Martin: I think he did, since you may go to this day to the little city on the banks of the Adur which is re-named after his Barn. But I doubt whether he lived there, or anywhere but in the Barn where he and his beloved began their life of work and prayer and mirth and loving-rule. And died as happily as they had lived.
Joan: I am glad they lived happily. I was afraid the tale would end unhappily.
Joyce: And so was I. For when the King roamed the hills for a whole week without success, I began to fear he would never find the Woman again.
Jennifer: I for my part feared lest he should not open his lips during the fourth vigil, and so must become a Dove for the remainder of his days.
Jane: It was but by the grace of a moment he did not drown himself in the Pond.
Jessica: Or what if, by some unlucky chance, he had never come to the forge at all?
Martin: In any of these events, I grant you, the tale must have ended in disaster. And this is the special wonder of love-tales: that though they may end unhappily in a thousand ways, and happily in only one, yet that one will vanquish the thousand as often as the desires of lovers run in tandem. But there is one accident you have left out of count, and it is the worst stumbling-block I know of in the path of happy endings.
All the Milkmaids: What is it?
Martin: Suppose the lovely Viola had been a sworn virgin and a hater of men.
There was silence in the Apple-Orchard.
Joscelyn: She would have been none the worse for that, singer. And the tale would have been none the less a tale, which is all we look for from you. This talk of happy endings is silly talk. The King might have sought the Woman in vain, or kept his vow, or drowned himself, or ridden to the confines of Kent, for aught I care.
Joyce: Or I.
Jennifer: Or I.
Jessica: Or I.
Jane: Or I.
Martin: I am silenced. Tales are but tales, and not worth speculation. And see, the moon is gone to sleep behind a cloud, which shows us nothing save the rainbow of her dreams. It is time we did as she does.
Like shooting-stars in August the milkmaids slid from their leafy heaven and dropped to the grass. And here they pillowed their heads on their soft arms and soon were breathing the breath of sleep. But little Joan sat on in the swing.
Now all this while she had kept between her hands the promised apple, turning and turning it like one in doubt; and presently Martin looked aside at her with a smile, and held his open palm to receive his reward. And first she glanced at him, and then at the sleepers, and last she tossed the apple lightly in the air. But by some mishap she tossed it too high, and it made an arc clean over the tree and fell in a distant corner by the hedge. So she ran quickly to recover it for him, and he ran likewise, and they stooped and rose together, she with the apple in her hands, he with his hands on hers. At which she blushed a little, but held fast to the fruit.
"What!" said Martin Pippin, "am I never to have my apple?"
She answered softly, "Only when I am satisfied, as you promised."
"And are you not? What have I left undone?"
Joan: Please, Master Pippin. What did the young King look like?
Martin: Fool that I am to leave these vital things untold! I shall avoid this error in future. He was more than middle tall, and broad in the shoulders; and he had gray-blue eyes, and a fresh color, and a kind and merry look, and dark brown hair that was not always as sleek as he wished it to be.
Joan: Oh!
Martin: With this further oddity, that above the nape of his neck was a whitish tuft which, though he took great pains to conceal it, continually obtruded through the darker hair like the cottontail on the back of a rabbit.
Joan: Oh! Oh!
And she became as red as a cherry.
Martin: May I have my apple?
Joan: But had not he a—mustache?
Martin: He fondly believed so.
Joan (with unexpected fire): It was a big and beautiful mustache!
Martin (fervently): There was never a King of twenty years with one so big and beautiful.
She gave him the apple.
Martin: Thank you. Will you, because I have answered many questions, now answer one?
Joan: Yes.
Martin: Then tell me this—what is your quarrel with men?
Joan: Oh, Master Pippin! they say that one and one make two.
Martin: Is this possible? Good heavens, are men such numskulls! When they have but to go to the littlest woman on earth to learn—what you and I well know—that one and one make one, and sometimes three, or four, or even half-a-dozen; but never two. Fie upon these men!
Joan: I am glad you think I am in the right. But how obstinate they are!
Martin: As obstinate as children, and should be birched as roundly.
Joan: Oh! but— You would not birch children.
Martin: You are right again. They should be coaxed.
Joan: Yes. No. I mean— Good night, dear singer.
Martin: Good night, dear milkmaid. Sleep sweetly among your comrades who are wiser than we, being so indifferent to happy endings that they would never unpadlock sorrow, though they had the key in their keeping.
Then he took her hands in one of his, and put his other hand very gently under her chin, and lifted it till he could look into her face, and he said: "Give me the key to Gillian's prison, little Joan, because you love happy endings."
Joan: Dear Martin, I cannot give you the key.
Martin: Why not?
Joan: Because I stuck it inside your apple.
So he kissed her and they parted, and lay down and slept; she among her comrades under the apple-tree, and he under the briony in the hedge; and the moon came out of her dream and watched theirs.
With morning came a hoarse voice calling along the hedge:
"Maids! maids! maids!"
Up sprang the milkmaids, rubbing their eyes and stretching their arms; and up sprang Martin likewise. And seeing him, Joscelyn was stricken with dismay.
"It is Old Gillman, our master," she whispered, "come with bread and questions. Quick, singer, quick! into the hollow russet before he reaches the hole in the hedge."
Swiftly the milkmaids hustled Martin into the russet tree, and concealed him at the very moment when the Farmer was come to the peephole, filling it with his round red face and broad gray fringe of whiskers, like the winter sun on a sky that is going to snow.
"Good morrow, maids," quoth old Gillman.
"Good morrow, master," said they.
"Is my daughter come to her mind yet?"
"No, master," said little Joan, "but I begin to have hopes that she may."
"If she do not," groaned Gillman, "I know not what will happen to the farmstead. For it is six months now since I tasted water, and how can a man follow his business who is fuddled day and night with Barley Wine? Life is full of hardships, of which daughters are the greatest. Gillian!" he cried, "when will ye come into your senses and out of the Well-House?"
But Gillian took no more heed of him than of the quacking of the drake on the duckpond.
"Well, here is your bread," said Gillman, and he thrust a basket with seven loaves in it through the gap. "And may to-morrow bring better tidings."
"One moment, dear master," entreated little Joan. "Tell me, please, how Nancy my Jersey fares."
"Pines for you, pines for you, maid, though Charles does his best by her. But it is as though she had taken a vow to let down no milk till you come again. Rack and ruin, rack and ruin!"
And the old man retreated as he had come, muttering "Rack and ruin!" the length of the hedge.
The maids then set about preparing breakfast, which was simplicity itself, being bread and apples than which no breakfast could be sweeter. There was a loaf for each maid and one over for Gillian, which they set upon the wall of the Well-House, taking away yesterday's loaf untouched and stale.
"Does she never eat?" asked Martin.
"She has scarcely broken bread in six months," said Joscelyn, "and what she lives on besides her thoughts we do not know."
"Thoughts are a fast or a feast according to their nature," said Martin, "so let us feed the ducks, who have none."
They broke the stale bread into fragments, and when the ducks had made a meal, returned to their own; and of two loaves made seven parts, that Martin might have his share, and to this they added apples according to their fancies, red or russet, green or golden.
After breakfast, at Martin's suggestion, they made little boats of twigs and leaves and sailed them on the duckpond, where they met with many adventures and calamities from driftweed, small breezes, and the curiosity of the ducks. And before they were aware of it the dinner hour was upon them, when they divided two more loaves as before and ate apples at will.
Then Martin, taking a handkerchief from his pocket, proposed a game of Blindman's-Buff, and the girls, delighted, counter Eener-Meener-Meiner-Mo to find the Blindman. And Joyce was He. So Martin tied the handkerchief over her eyes.
"Can you see?" asked Martin.
"Of course I can't see!" said Joyce.
"Promise?" said Martin.
"I hope, Master Pippin," said Jane reprovingly, "that you can take a girl's word for it."
"I'm sure I hope I can," said Martin, and turned Joyce round three times, and ran for his life. And Joyce caught Jane on the spot and guessed her immediately.
Then Jane was blindfolded, and she was so particular about not seeing that it was quite ten minutes before she caught Jennifer, but she knew who she was by the feel of her gown; and Jennifer caught Joscelyn, and guessed her by her girdle; and Joscelyn caught Jessica and guessed her by the darn in her sleeve; and Jessica caught Joan, and guessed her by her ribbon; and Joan caught Martin, and guessed him by his difference.
So then Martin was Blindman, and it seemed as though he would never have eyes again; for though he caught all the girls, one after another, he couldn't guess which was which, and gave Jane's nose to Jessica, and Jessica's hands to Joscelyn, and Joscelyn's chin to Joyce, and Joyce's hair to Jennifer, and Jennifer's eyebrows to Joan; but when he caught Joan he guessed her at once by her littleness.
In due course the change of light told them it was supper-time; and with great surprise they ate the last two loaves to the sweet accompaniment of the apples.
"I would never have supposed," said Joscelyn, as they gathered under the central tree at the close of the meal, "that a day could pass so quickly."
"Bait time with a diversion," said Martin, "and he will run like a donkey after a dangled carrot."
"It has nearly been the happiest day of my life," said Joyce with a sly glance at Martin.
"And why not quite?" said he.
"Because it lacked a story, singer," she said demurely.
"What can be rectified," said Martin, "must be; and the day is not yet departed, but still lingers like a listener on the threshold of night. So set the swing in motion, dear Mistress Joyce, and to its measure I will endeavor to swing my thoughts, which have till now been laggards."
With these words he set Joyce in the swing and himself upon the branch beside it as before. And the other milkmaids climbed into their perches, rustling the fruit down from the shaken boughs; and he made of Joyce's lap a basket for the harvest. And he and each of the maids chose an apple as though supper had not been.
"We are listening," said Joscelyn from above.
"Not all of you," said Martin. And he looked up at Joscelyn alert on her branch, and down at Gillian prone on the steps.
"You are here for no other purpose," said Joscelyn, "than to make them listen that will not. I would not have you think we desire to listen."
"I think nothing but that you are the prey of circumstances," said Martin, "constrained like flowers to bear witness to that which is against all nature."
"What do you mean by that?" said Joscelyn. "Flowers are nature itself."
"So men have agreed," replied Martin, "yet who but men have compelled them repeatedly to assert such unnaturalnesses as that foxes wear gloves and cuckoos shoes? Out on the pretty fibbers!"
"Please do not be angry with the flowers," said Joan.
"How could I be?" said Martin. "The flowers must always be forgiven, because their inconsistencies lie always at men's doors. Besides, who does not love fairy-tales?"
Then Martin kicked his heels against the tree and sang idly:
When cuckoos fly in shoesAnd foxes run in gloves,Then butterflies won't go in twosAnd boys will leave their loves.
"A silly song," said Joscelyn.
Martin: If you say so. For my part I can never tell the difference between silliness and sense.
Jane: Then how can a good song be told from a bad? You must go by something.
Martin: I go by the sound. But since Mistress Joscelyn pronounces my song silly, I can only suppose she has seen cuckoos flying in shoes.
Joscelyn: You are always supposing nonsense. Who ever heard of cuckoos flying in shoes?
Jane: Or of foxes running in gloves?
Joan: Or of butterflies going in ones?
Martin: Or of boys—
Joscelyn: I have frequently seen butterflies going in ones, foolish Joan. And the argument was not against butterflies, but cuckoos.
Martin: And their shoes. Please, dear Mistress Joan, do not look so downcast, nor you, dear Mistress Joscelyn, so vexed. Let us see if we cannot turn a more sensible song upon this theme.
And he sang—
Cuckoo Shoes aren't cuckoos' shoes,They're shoes which cuckoos never don;And cuckoo nests aren't cuckoos' nests,But other birds' for a moment gone;And nothing that the cuckoo hasBut he does make a mock upon.For even when the cuckoo singsHe only says what isn't true—When happy lovers first swore oathsAn artful cuckoo called and flew,Yes! and when lovers weep like dewThe teasing cuckoo laughs Cuckoo!What need for tears? Cuckoo, cuckoo!
As Martin ended, Gillian raised herself upon an elbow, and looked no more into the green grass, but across the green duckpond.
"The second song seems to me as irrelevant as the first," said Joscelyn, "but I observe that you cuckooed so loudly as to startle our mistress out of her inattention. So if you mean to tell us another story, by all means tell it now. Not that I care, except for our extremity."
"It is my only object to ease it," said Martin, "so bear with me as well as you may during the recital of Young Gerard."
There was once, dear maidens, a shepherd who kept his master's sheep on Amberley Mount. His name was Gerard, and he was always called Young Gerard to distinguish him from the other shepherd who was known as Old Gerard, yet was not, as you might suppose, his father. Their master was the Lord of Combe Ivy that lay in the southern valleys of the hills toward the sea; he owned the grazing on the whole circle of the Downs between the two great roads—on Amberley and Perry and Wepham and Blackpatch and Cockhill and Highdown and Barnsfarm and Sullington and Chantry. But the two Gerards lived together in the great shed behind the copse between Rackham Hill and Kithurst, and the way they came to do so was this.
One night in April when Old Gerard's gray beard was still brown, the door of the shed was pushed open, letting in not only the winds of Spring but a woman wrapped in a green cloak, with a lining of cherry-color and a border of silver flowers and golden cherries. In one hand she swung a crystal lantern set in a silver frame, but it had no light in it; and in the other she held a small slip of a cherry-tree, but it had no bloom on it. Her dress was white, or had been; for the skirts of it, and her mantle, were draggled and sodden, and her green shoes stained and torn, and her long fair hair lay limp and dank upon her mantle whose hood had fallen away, and the shadows round her blue eyes were as black as pools under hedgerows thawing after a frost, and her lovely face was as white as the snowbanks they bed in. Behind her came another woman in a duffle cloak, a crone with eyes as black as sloes, and a skin as brown as beechnuts, and unkempt hair like the fireless smoke of Old Man's Beard straying where it will on the November woodsides. She too was wet and soiled, but full of life where the young one seemed full of death.
The Shepherd looked at this strange pair and said surlily, "What want ye?"
"Shelter," replied the crone.
She pushed the lady, who never spoke, into the shed, and took from her shoulders the wet mantle, and from her hands the lantern and the tree; and led her to the Shepherd's bed and laid her down. Then she spread the mantle over the Shepherd's bench and,
"Lie there," said she, "till love warms ye."
Next she hung the lantern up on a nail in the wall, and,
"Swing there," said she, "till love lights ye."
Last she took the Shepherd's trowel and went outside the shed, and set the cherry-slip beside the door. And she said:
"Grow there, till love blossoms ye."
After this she came inside and sat down at the bedhead.
Gerard the Shepherd, who had watched her proceedings without word or gesture, said to himself, "They've come through the floods."
He looked across at the women and raised his voice to ask, "Did ye come through the floods?"
The lady moaned a little, and the crone said, "Let her be and go to sleep. What does it matter where we came from by night? By daybreak we shall both of us be gone no matter whither."
The Shepherd said no more, for though he was both curious and ill-tempered he had not the courage to disturb the lady, knowing by the richness of her attire that she was of the quality; and the iron of serfdom was driven deep into his soul. So he went to sleep on his stool, as he had been bidden. But in the middle of the night he was awakened by a gusty wind and the banging of his door; and he started up rubbing his knuckles in his eyes, saying, "I've been dreaming of strange women, but was it a dream or no?" He peered about the shed, and the crone had vanished utterly, but the lady still lay on his bed. And when he went over to look at her, she was dead. But beside her lay a newborn child that opened its eyes and wailed at him.
Then the Shepherd ran to his open door and stared into the blowing night, but there were no more signs of the crone without than there were within. So he fastened the latch and came back to the bedside, and examined the child.—
(But at this point Martin Pippin interrupted himself, and seizing the rope of the swing set it rocking violently.
Joyce: I shall fall! I shall fall!
Martin: Then you will be no worse off than I, who have fallen already. For I see you do not like my story.
Joyce: What makes you say so?
Martin: Till now you listened with all your ears, but a moment ago you turned away your head a moment too late to hide the disappointment in your eyes.
Joyce: It is true I am disappointed. Because the beautiful lady is dead, and how can a love-story be, if half the lovers are dead?
Martin: Dear Mistress Joyce, what has love to do with death? Love and death are strangers and speak in different tongues. Women may die and men may die, but lovers are ignorant of mortality.
Joyce (pouting): That may be, singer. But lovers are also a man and a woman, and the woman is dead, and the love-tale ended before we have even heard it. You should not have let the woman die. What sort of love-tale is this, now the woman is dead?
Martin: Are not more nests than one built in a spring-time?—Give me, I pray you, two hairs of your head.
She plucked two and gave them to him, turning her pouting to laughing. One of them Martin coiled and held before his lips, and blew on it.
"There it flies," said he, and gave her back the second hair. "Hold fast by this and keep it from its fellow with all your might, for to part true mates baffles the forces of the universe. And when you give me this second hair again I swear I will send it where it will find its fellow. But I will never ask for it until, my story ended, you say to me, I am content.'")
Examining the child (repeated Martin) the Shepherd discovered it to be a lusty boy-child, and this rejoiced him, so that while the baby wept he laughed aloud.
"It is better to weep for something than for nothing," said he, "and to laugh for something likewise. Tears are for serfs and laughter is for freedmen." For he had conceived the plan of selling the child to his master, the Lord of Combe Ivy, and buying his freedom with the purchase money. So in the morning he carried the body of the lady into the heart of the copse, and there he dug a grave and laid her in it in her white gown. And afterwards he went up hill and down dale to his master, and said he had a man for sale. The Lord of Combe Ivy, who was a jovial lord and a bachelor, laughed at the tale he had to tell; but being always of the humor for a jest he paid the Shepherd a gold piece for the child, and promised him another each midnight on the anniversary of its birth; but on the twenty-first anniversary, he said, the Shepherd was to bring back the twenty-one gold pieces he had received, and instead of adding another to them he would take them again, and make the serf a freedman, and the child his serf.
"For," said the Lord of Combe Ivy, "an infant is a poor deal for a man in his prime, as you are, but a youth come to manhood is a good exchange for a graybeard, as you will be. Therefore rear this babe as you please, and if he live to manhood so much the better for you, but if he die first it's all one to me."
The Shepherd had hoped for a better bargain, but he must needs be content with seeing liberty at a distance. So he returned to his shed on the hills and made a leather purse to keep his gold-piece in, and hung it round his neck, touching it fifty times a day under his shirt to be sure it was still there. And presently he sought among his ewes one who had borne her young, saying, "You shall mother two instead of one." And the baby sucked the ewe like her very lamb, and thrived upon the milk. And the shepherd called the child Gerard after himself, "since," he said, "it is as good a name for a shepherd as another"; and from that time they became the Young and Old Gerards to all who knew them.
So the Young Gerard grew up, and as he grew the cherry-tree grew likewise, but in the strangest fashion; for though it flourished past all expectation, it never put forth either leaf or blossom. This bitterly vexed Old Gerard, who had hoped in time for fruit, and the frustration of his hopes became to him a cause of grievance against the boy. A further grudge was that by no manner of means could he succeed in lighting any wick or candle in the silver lantern, of which he desired to make use.
"But if your tree and your lantern won't work," said he, "it's no reason why you shouldn't." So he put Young Gerard to work, first as sheepboy to his own flock, but later the boy had a flock of his own. There was no love lost between these two, and kicks and curses were the young one's fare; for he was often idle and often a truant, and none was held responsible for him except the old shepherd who was selling him piece-meal, year by year, to their master. Because of what depended on him, Old Gerard was constrained to show him some sort of care when he would liever have wrung his neck. The boy's fits exasperated the man; whether he was cutting strange capers and laughing without reason, as he frequently did, or sitting a whole evening in a morose dream, staring at the fire or at the stars, and saying never a word. The boy's coloring was as mingled as his moods, a blend of light and dark—black hair, brown skin, blue eyes and golden lashes, a very odd anomaly.
(Martin: What is it, Mistress Joyce?
Joyce: I said nothing, Master Pippin.
Martin: I thought I heard you sigh.
Joyce: I did not—you did not.
Martin: My imagination exceeds all bounds.)
Because of their mutual dislike, when the boy was put in charge of his own sheep the two shepherds spent their days apart. The Old Gerard grazed his flock to the east as far as Chantry, but the Young Gerard grazed his flock to the west as far as Amberley, whose lovely dome was dearer to him than all the other hills of Sussex. And here he would sit all day watching the cloud-shadows stalk over the face of the Downs, or slipping along the land below him, with the sun running swiftly after, like a carpet of light unrolling itself upon a dusky floor. And in the evening he watched the smoke going up from the tiny cottages till it was almost dark, and a hundred tiny lights were lit in a hundred tiny windows. Sometimes on his rare holidays, and on other days too, he ran away to the Wildbrooks to watch the herons, or to find in the water-meadows the tallest kingcups in the whole world, and the myriad treasures of the river—the giant comfrey, purple and white, meadowsweet, St. John's Wort, purple loose-strife, willowherb, and the ninety-nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-five others, or whatever number else you please, that go to make a myriad. He came to know more about the ways of the Wildbrooks than any other lad of those parts, and one day he rediscovered the Lost Causeway that can be traveled even in the floods, when the land lies under a lake at the foot of the hills. He kept this, like many other things, a secret; but he had one more precious still.
For as he lay and watched the play of sun and shadow on the plains, he fancied a world of strange places he had known, somewhere beyond the veils of light and mist that hung between his vision and the distance, and he fell into a frequent dream of tunes and laughter, and sunlit boughs in blossom, and dancing under the boughs; or of fires burning in the open night, and a wilder singing and dancing in the starlight; and often when his body was lying on the round hill, or by the smoky hearth, his thoughts were running with lithe boys as strong and careless as he was, or playing with lovely free-limbed girls with flowing hair. Sometimes these people were fair and bright-haired and in light and lovely clothing, and at others they were dark, with eyes of mischief, and clad in the gayest rags; and sometimes they came to him in a mingled company, made one by their careless hearts.
One evening in April, on the twelfth anniversary, when Young Gerard came to gather his flock, a lamb was missing; so to escape a scolding he waited awhile on the hills till Old Gerard should be gone about his business. What this was Young Gerard did not know, he only knew that each year on this night the old shepherd left him to his own devices, and returned in the small hours of the morning. Not therefore until he judged that the master must have left the hut, did the boy fold his sheep; and this done he ran out on the hills again, seeking the lost lamb. For careless though he was he cared for his sheep, as he did for all things that ran on legs or flew on wings. So he went swinging his lantern under the stars, singing and whistling and smelling the spring. Now and then he paused and bleated like a ewe; and presently a small whimper answered his signal.
"My lost lamb crying on the hills," said Young Gerard. He called again, but at the sound of his voice the other stopped, and for a moment he stood quite still, listening and perplexed.
"Where are you, my lamb?" said he.
"Here," said a little frightened voice behind a bush.
He laughed aloud and went forward, and soon discovered a tiny girl cowering under a thorn. When she saw him she ran quickly and grasped his sleeve and hid her face in it and wept. She was small for her years, which were not more than eight.
Young Gerard, who was big for his, picked her up and looked at her kindly and curiously.
"What is it, you little thing?" said he.
"I got lost," said the child shyly through her tears.
"Well, now you're found," said Young Gerard, "so don't cry any more."
"Yes, but I'm hungry," sobbed the child.
"Then come with me. Will you?"
"Where to?"
"To a feast in a palace."
"Oh, yes!" she said.
Young Gerard set her on his shoulder, and went back the way he had come, till the dark shape of his wretched shed stood big between them and the sky.
"Is this your palace?" said the child.
"That's it," said Young Gerard.
"I didn't know palaces had cracks in the walls," said she.
"This one has," explained Young Gerard, "because it's so old." And she was satisfied.
Then she asked, "What is that funny tree by the door?"
"It's a cherry-tree."
"My father's cherry-trees have flowers on them," said she.
"This one hasn't," said Young Gerard, "because it's not old enough."
"One day will it be?" she asked.
"One day," he said. And that contented her.
He then carried her into the shed, and she looked around eagerly to see what a palace might be like inside; and it was full of flickering lights and shadows and the scent of burning wood, and she did not see how poor and dirty the room was; for the firelight gleamed upon a mass of golden fruit and silver bloom embroidered on the covering of the settle by the hearth, and sparkled against a silver and crystal lantern hanging in the chimney. And between the cracks on the walls Young Gerard had stuck wands of gold and silver palm and branches of snowy blackthorn, and on the floor was a dish full of celandine and daisies, and a broken jar of small wild daffodils. And the child knew that all these things were the treasures of queens and kings.
"Why don't you have that?" she asked, pointing to the crystal lantern as Young Gerard set down his horn one.
"Because I can't light it," said he.
"Let ME light it!" she begged; so he fetched it from its nail, and thrust a pine twig in the fire and gave her the sweet-smoking torch. But in vain she tried to light the wick, which always spluttered and went out again. So seeing her disappointment Young Gerard hung the lantern up, saying, "Firelight is prettier." And he set her by the fire and filled her lap with cones and dry leaves and dead bracken to burn and make crackle and turn into fiery ferns. And she was pleased.
Then he looked about and found his own wooden cup, and went away and came back with the cup full of milk, set on a platter heaped with primroses, and when he brought it to her she looked at it with shining eyes and asked:
"Is this the feast?"
"That's it," said Young Gerard.
And she drank it eagerly. And while she drank Young Gerard fetched a pipe and began to whistle tunes on it as mad as any thrush, and the child began to laugh, and jumped up, spilling her leaves and primroses, and danced between the fitful lights and shadows as though she were, now a shadow taken shape, and now a flame. Whenever he paused she cried, "Oh, let me dance! Don't stop! Let me go on dancing!" until at the same moment she dropped panting on the hearth and he flung his pipe behind him and fell on his back with his heels in the air, crying, "Pouf! d'you think I've the four quarters of heaven in my lungs, or what?" But as though to prove he had yet a capful of wind under his ribs, he suddenly began to sing a song she'd never heard before, and it went like this:
I looked before me and behind,I looked beyond the sun and wind,Beyond the rainbow and the snow,And saw a land I used to know.The floods rolled up to keep me stillA captive on my heavenly hill,And on their bright and dangerous glassWas written, Boy, you shall not pass!I laughed aloud, You shining seas,I'll run away the day I please!I am not winged like any ploverYet I've a way shall take me over,I am not finned like any breamYet I can cross you, lake and stream.And I my hidden land shall findThat lies beyond the sun and wind—Past drowned grass and drowning treesI'll run away the day I please,I'll run like one whom nothing harmsWith my bonny in my arms.
"What does that mean?" asked the child.
"I'm sure I don't know," said Young Gerard. He kicked at the dying log on the hearth, and sent a fountain of sparks up the chimney. The child threw a dry leaf and saw it shrivel, and Young Gerard stirred the white ash and blew up the embers, and held a fan of bracken to them, till the fire ran up its veins like life in the veins of a man, and the frond that had already lived and died became a gleaming spirit, and then it too fell in ashes among the ash. Then Young Gerard took a handful of twigs and branches, and began to build upon the ash a castle of many sorts of wood, and the child helped him, laying hazel on his beech and fir upon his oak; and often before their turret was quite reared a spark would catch at the dry fringes of the fir, or the brown oakleaves, and one twig or another would vanish from the castle.
"How quickly wood burns," said the child.
"That's the lovely part of it," said Young Gerard, "the fire is always changing and doing different things with it."
And they watched the fire together, and smelled its smoke, that had as many smells as there were sorts of wood. Sometimes it was like roast coffee, and sometimes like roast chestnuts, and sometimes like incense. And they saw the lichen on old stumps crinkle into golden ferns, or fire run up a dead tail of creeper in a red S, and vanish in mid-air like an Indian boy climbing a rope, or crawl right through the middle of a birch-twig, making hieroglyphics that glowed and faded between the gray scales of the bark. And then suddenly it caught the whole scaffolding of their castle, and blazed up through the fir and oak and spiny thorns and dead leaves, and the bits of old bark all over blue-gray-green rot, and the young sprigs almost budding, and hissing with sap. And for one moment they saw all the skeleton and soul of the castle without its body, before it fell in.
The child sighed a little and yawned a little and said:
"How nice it is to live in a palace. Who lives here with you?"
"My friends," said Young Gerard, poking at the log with a bit of stick.
"What are your friends like?" she asked him, rubbing her knuckles in her eyes.
He was silent for a little, stirring up sparks and smoke. Then he answered, "They are gay in their hearts, and they're dressed in bright clothes, and they come with singing and dancing."
"Who else lives in your palace with you?" she asked drowsily.
"You do," said Young Gerard.
The child's head dropped against his shoulder and she said, "My name's Dorothea, but my father calls me Thea, and he is the Lord of Combe Ivy." And she fell fast asleep.
For a little while Young Gerard held and watched her in the firelight, and then he rose and wrapped her in the old embroidered mantle on the settle, and went out. And sure-foot as a goat he carried her over the dark hills by the tracks he knew, for roads there were none, and his arms ached with his burden, but he would not wake her till they stood at her father's gates. Then he shook her gently and set her down, and she clung to him a little dazed, trying to remember.
"This is Combe Ivy," he whispered. "You must go in alone. Will you come again?"
"One day," said Thea.
"One day there'll be flowers on my cherry-tree," said Young Gerard. "Don't forget."
"No, I won't," she said.
He returned through the night up hill and down dale, but did not go back to the shed until he had recovered his lamb. By then it was almost dawn, and he found his master awake and cursing. He had feared the boy had made off, and he had had curt treatment at Combe Ivy, which was in a stir about the loss of the little daughter. Young Gerard showed the lamb as his excuse, nevertheless the old shepherd leathered the young one soundly, as he did six days in seven.
After this when Young Gerard sat dreaming on the hills, he dreamed not only of his happy land and laughing friends, but of the next coming of little Thea. But Combe Ivy was far away, and the months passed and the years, and she did not come again. Meanwhile Young Gerard and his tree grew apace, and the limbs of the boy became longer and stronger, and the branches of the tree spread up to the roof and even began to thrust their way through the holes in the wall; but the boy's life, save for his dreaming, was as friendless as the tree's was flowerless. And of a tree's dreaming who shall speak? Meanwhile Old Gerard thrashed and rated him, and reckoned his gold pieces, and counted the years that still lay between him and his freedom. At last came another April bringing its hour.
For as he sat on the Mount in the early morning, when he was in his seventeenth year, Young Gerard saw a slender girl running over the turf and laughing in the sunlight, sometimes stopping to watch a bird flying, or stooping to pluck one of the tiny Down-flowers at her feet. So she came with a dancing step to the top of the Mount, and then she saw him, and her glee left her and shyness took its place. But a little pride in her prevented her from turning away, and she still came forward until she stood beside him, and said:
"Good morning, Shepherd. Is it true that in April the country north of the hills is filled with lakes?"
"Yes, sometimes, Mistress Thea," said Young Gerard.
She looked at him with surprise and said, "You must be one of my father's shepherds, but I do not remember seeing you at Combe Ivy."
"I was only once near Combe Ivy," said Young Gerard, "when I took you there five years ago the night you were lost on these hills."
"Oh, I remember," she said with a faint smile. "How they did scold me. Is your cherry-tree in flower yet, Shepherd?"
"No, mistress," said Young Gerard.
"I want to see it," she said suddenly.
Young Gerard left his flock to the dog, and walked with her along the hillbrow.
"I have run away," she told him as they went. "I had to get up very early while they were asleep. I shall be scolded again. But travelers come who talk of the lakes, and I wanted to see them, and to swim in them."
"I wouldn't do that," said Young Gerard, hiding a smile. "It's dangerous to swim in the April floods. And it would be rather cold."
"What lies beyond?" she asked.
"I'm not able to know," said Young Gerard.
"Some day I mean to know, shepherd."
"Yes, mistress," he said, "you'll be free to."
She looked at him quickly and reddened a little, it might have been from shame or pity, Young Gerard did not know which. And her shyness once more enveloped her; it always came over her unexpectedly, taking her breath away like a breaking wave. So she said no more, and they walked together, she looking at the ground, he at the soft brown hair blowing over the curve of her young cheek. She was fine and delicate in every line, and in her color, and in the touch of her too, Young Gerard knew. He wanted to touch her cheek with his finger as he would have touched the petal of a flower. Her neck, the back of it especially, was one of the loveliest bits of her, like a primrose stalk. He fell a step behind so that he could look at it. They did not speak as they went. He did not want to, and she did not know what to say.
When they reached the shed she lingered a moment by the tree, tracing a bare branch with her finger, and he waited, content, till she should speak or act, to watch her. At last she said with her faint smile, "I am very thirsty." Then he went into the shed and came out with his wooden cup filled with milk. She drank and said, "Thank you, shepherd. How pretty the violets are in your copse."
"Would you like some?" he asked.
"Not now," she said. "Perhaps another day. I must go now." She gave him back his cup and went away, slowly at first, but when she was at some distance he saw her begin to run like a fawn.
She did not come again that spring. And so the stark lives of the boy and the tree went forward for another year. But one evening in the following April, when the green was quivering on wood and hedgerow, he came to the door of the shed and saw her bending like a flower at the edge of the copse, filling her little basket and singing to herself. She looked up soon and said:
"Good evening, shepherd. How does your cherry-tree?"
"As usual, Mistress Thea."
"So I see. What a lazy tree it is. Have you some milk for me?"
He brought her his cup and she drank of it for the third time, and left him before he had had time to realize that she had come and gone, but only how greatly her delicate beauty had increased in the last year.
However, before the summer was over she came again—to swim in the river, she told him, as she passed him on the hills, without lingering. And in the autumn she came to gather blackberries, and he showed her the best place to find them. Any of these things she might have done as easily nearer Combe Ivy, but it seemed she must always offer him some reason for her small truancies—whether to gather berries or flowers, or to swim in the river. He knew that her chief delight lay in escaping from her father's manor.
Winter closed her visits; but Young Gerard was as patient as the earth, and did not begin to look for her till April. As surely as it brought leaves to the trees and flowers to the grass, it would, he knew, bring his little mistress's question, half shy, half smiling, "Is your cherry-tree in blossom, shepherd?" And later her request, smiling and shy, for milk.
They seldom exchanged more than a few words at any time. Sometimes they did not speak at all. For he, who was her father's servant, never spoke first; and she, growing in years and loveliness, grew also in timidity, so that it seemed to cost her more and more to address her greeting or her question even to her father's servant. The sweet quick reddening of her cheek was one of Young Gerard's chief remembrances of her.
But after a while, when they met by those sly chances which she could control and he could not; and when she did not speak, but glanced and hesitated and passed on; or glanced and passed without hesitation; or passed without a glance; he came to know that she would not mind if he arose and walked with her, if he could control the pretext, which she could not. And he did so quietly, having always something to show her.
He showed her his most secret nests and his greatest treasures of flowers, his because he loved them so much. He would have been jealous of showing these things to any one but her. In a great water-meadow in the valley, he had once shown her kingcups making sheets of gold, enameled with every green grass ever seen in spring—thousands of kingcups and a myriad of milkmaids in between, dancing attendance in all their faint shades of silver-white and rosy-mauve. When a breeze blew, this world of milkmaids swayed and curtsied above the kings' daughters in their glory. Then Gerard and Thea looked at each other smiling, because the same delight was in each, and soon she looked away again at the gentle maids and the royal ladies, but he looked still at her, who was both to him.
In silence he showed her what he loved.
But you must not suppose that she came frequently to those hills. She was to be seen no more often than you will see a kingfisher when you watch for it under a willow. Yet because in the season of kingfishers you know you may see one flash at any instant, so to Young Gerard each day of spring and summer was an expectancy; and this it was that kept his lift alight. This and his young troop of friends in a land of fruit in blossom and a sky in stars. For men, dear maids, live by the daily bread of their dreams; on realizations they would starve.
At last came the winter that preceded Young Gerard's twenty-first year. With the stripping of the boughs he stripped his heart of all thoughts of seeing her again till the green of the coming year. The snows came, and he tended his sheep and counted his memories; and Old Gerard tended his sheep and counted his coins. The count was full now, and he dreamed of April and the freeing of his body. Young Gerard also dreamed of April, and the freeing of his heart. And under the ice that bound the flooded meadows doubtless the earth dreamed of the freeing of her waters and the blooming of the land. The snows and the frosts lasted late that year as though the winter would never be done, and to the two Gerards the days crawled like snails; but in time March blew himself off the face of the earth, and April dawned, and the swollen river went rushing to the sea above the banks it had drowned with its wild overflow. And as Old Gerard began to mark the days off on a tally, Young Gerard began to listen on the hills. When the day came whose midnight was to make the old man a freedman, Thea had not appeared.
On the morning of this day, as the two shepherds stood outside their shed before they separated with their flocks, their ears were accosted with shoutings and halloos on the other side of the copse, and soon they saw coming through the trees a man in gay attire. He had a scalloped jerkin of orange leather, and his shoes and cap were of the same, but his sleeves and hose and feather were of a vivid green, like nothing in nature. He looked garish in the sun. Seeing the shepherds he took off his cap, and solemnly thanked heaven for having after all created something besides hills and valleys. "For," said he, "after being lost among them I know not how many hours, with no other company than my own shadow, I had begun to doubt whether I was not the only man on earth, and my name Adam. A curse of all lords who do not live by highroads!"
"Where are you bound for, master?" asked Old Gerard.
"Combe Ivy," said the stranger, "and the wedding."
Old Gerard nodded, as one little surprised; but to Young Gerard this mention of a wedding at Combe Ivy came as news. It did not stir him much, however, for he was not curious about the doings of the master and the house he never saw; all that concerned him was that to-day, at least, he must cease to listen on the hills, since his young mistress would be at the wedding with the others.
Old Gerard said to the stranger, "Keep the straight track to the south till you come under Wepham, then follow the valley to the east, and so you'll be in time for the feasting, master."
"That's certain," said the stranger, "for the Lord of Combe Ivy and the Rough Master of Coates have had no peers at junketing since Gay Street lost its Lord; and the feast is like to go on till midnight."
With that he went on his way, and Old Gerard followed him with his eyes, muttering,
"Would I also were there! But for you," he said, turning on the young man with a sudden snarl, "I should be! Had ye not come a day too late, I'd be a freedman to-night instead of to-morrow, and junketing at the wedding with the rest."
Young Gerard did not understand him. He was not in the habit of questioning the old man, and if he had would not have expected answers. But certain words of the stranger had pricked his attention, and now he said:
"Where is Gay Street?"
"Far away over the Stor and the Chill," growled Old Gerard.
"It's a jolly name."
"Maybe. But they say it's a sorry place now that it lacks its Lord."
"What became of him?"
"How should I know? What can a man know who lives all his life on a hill with pewits for gossips?"
"You know more than I," said Young Gerard indolently. "You know there's a wedding down yonder. Who's the Rough Master of Coates?"
"The bridegroom, young know-nothing. You've a tongue in your head to-day."
"Why do they call him the Rough Master?"
"Because that's what he is, and so are his people, as rough as furze on a common, they say. Have you any more questions?"
"Yes," said Young Gerard. "Who is the bride?"
"Who should the bride be? Combe Ivy's mother?"
"She's dead," said Young Gerard.
"His daughter then," scoffed Old Gerard.
Young Gerard stared at him.
"Get about your business," shouted the old shepherd with sudden wrath. "Why do ye stare so? You're not drunk. Ah! down yonder they'll be getting drunk without me. Enough of your idling and staring!"
He raised his staff, but Young Gerard thrust it aside so violently that he staggered, and the boy went away to his sheep and they met no more till evening. The whole of that day Young Gerard sat on the Mount, not looking as usual to the busy north dreaming of the unknown land beyond the water, but over the silent slopes and valleys of the south, whose peoples were only birds and foxes and rabbits, and whose only cities were built of lights and shadows. Somewhere beyond them was Combe Ivy, and little Thea getting married to the Rough Master of Coates, in the midst of feasting and singing and dancing. He thought of her dancing over the Downs for joy of being free, he thought of her singing to herself as she gathered flowers in his copse, and he thought of her feasting on wild berries he had helped her to find—that also was a feasting and singing and dancing. All day long his thoughts ran, "She will not come any more in the mornings to bathe in the river over the hill. She will not come with her little basket to gather flowers and berries. She will not stop and ask for a cup of milk, or say, Let me see the young lambs, or say, Is your cherry-tree in flower yet, shepherd? She will not ask me with her eyes to come with her—oh, she will not ask me by turning her eyes away, with her little head bent. You! you Rough Master of Coates, what are you like, what are you like?"
In the evening when he gathered his sheep, one was missing. He had to take the flock back without it. Old Gerard was furious with him; it seemed as though on this last night that separated him from the long fulfillment of his hopes he must be more furious than he had ever been before. He was furious at being thwarted of the fun in the valley, furious at the loss of the lamb, most furious at young Gerard's indifference to his fury. He told the boy he must search on the hills, and Young Gerard only sat down by the side of the shed and looked to the south and made no answer. So he went himself, leaving the boy to prepare the mess for supper; for he feared that if he went to Combe Ivy that night with a bad tale to tell, his master for a whim might say that a young sheep was a fair deal for an old shepherd, and take his gold, and keep him a bondman still. For the Lord of Combe Ivy lived by his whimsies. But Old Gerard could not find the lost sheep, and when he came back the boy was where he had left him, looking over the darkening hills.