Martin Pippin in the Apple OrchardFarjeon, Eleanor
General
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard
Farjeon, Eleanor
Fairy tales; Minstrels -- Fiction
But all this Martin only felt without seeing, for he was drowned.
Gillian, I suppose, wasn't thinking. So they held each other's hands
and looked at each other.
Presently Martin said, "It's time now, Gillian, and you can go."
"Yes, Martin," said Gillian. "How shall I go?"
"As I came," said he.
"Before I go," said she, "I am going to ask you a question. You have
asked my friends a lot of questions these six nights, which they have
answered frankly, and you have twisted their answers round your little
finger. Now you must answer my question as frankly."
"And what will you do?" asked Martin.
"I won't twist your answer," said Gillian gently. "I'll take it for
what it is worth. You have been laughing up your sleeve a little at my
friends because, having a quarrel with men, they were sworn to live
single. But you live single too. Tell me, if you please, what is your
quarrel with girls?"
Martin dropped her hands until he held each by the little finger only,
and then he answered, "That they are so much too good for us, Gillian."
"Thank you, Martin," said Gillian, taking her hands away. "And now
please ask them to send over the swing, for it is time for me to go to
Adversane." And as she spoke the light played over her eyes again and
floated him up to the surface of things where he could swim without
drowning. He saw now the flowers of her loveliness, but no longer the
deeps of those gray pools where the light shimmered between herself and
him. So he turned and climbed to the pent roof of the Well-House, and
looked towards the group of shadows clustered under the apple-tree
around the swing; and they understood and launched it through the air,
and he caught it as it came. And Gillian in a moment was up beside him.
"Are you ready?" said Martin.
"Yes," she answered getting on the swing, "thank you. And thank you for
everything. Thank you for coming three times this year. Thank you for
the stories. Thank you for giving their happiness again to my darling
friends. Thank you for all the songs. Thank you for drying my tears."
"Are they all dried up?" said Martin.
"All," said Gillian.
"If they were not," said he, "you shall find Herb-Robert growing along
the roadside, and the Herbman himself in Adversane."
And holding the swing fast as he sat on the roof, Martin sang her his
last song, not very loud, but so clearly that the shadows under the
apple-tree heard every note and syllable.
Good morrow, good morrow, dear Herbman Robert!
Good morrow, sweet sir, good morrow!
Oh, sell me a herb, good Robert, good Robert,
To cure a young maid of her sorrow.
And hath her sorrow a name, sweet sir?
No lovelier name or purer,
With its root in her heart and its flower in her eyes,
Yet sell me a herb shall cure her.
Oh, touch with this rosy herb of spring
Both heart and eyes when she's sleeping,
And joy will come out of her sorrowing,
And laughter out of her weeping.
"Good-by, Martin."
"Good-by, Gillian."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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