Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard Part 30

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. .h.i.t 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 labor 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 to-night it will be together. Will it be to-night, 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, re-fastening 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 s.p.a.ce 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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!"