Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard Part 9

"Hurrah!" cried the King. "That settles it. But what's to-day?"

"Monday, sir."

"Alas!" sighed William, wondering how he should make shift to live for five days.

"I don't know what you mean, sir," said the Lad.

"I would tell you my meaning," said the King, "but am pledged not to."

Then the Lad said, "Let it pa.s.s. I have a proposal to make. My father is dead, and for two years I have worked the forge single-handed. Now I am willing to teach you to shoe your nag with four good shoes and strong, if you will meanwhile blow the bellows for whatever other jobs come to the forge; and if the shoes are not done by dinner-time you shall have a meal thrown in."

The King looked at the Lad kindly.

"I shall blow your bellows very badly," he said, "and shoe my nag still worse."

Said the Lad, "You'll learn in time."

"Not before dinner-time, I hope," said the King, "for I am very hungry."

"You look hungry," said the Lad. "It's a bargain then."

The King held out his hand, but the Lad suddenly whipped his behind his back. "It's so dirty, sir," he said.

"Give it me all the same," said the King; and they clasped hands.

The rest of that morning the King spent in blowing the bellows, and by dinner-time not so much as the first of Pepper's hoofs was shod. For a great deal of business came into the forge, and there was no time for a lesson. So the King and the Lad took their meal together, and the King was by this time nearly as black as his master. He would have washed himself, but the Lad said it was no matter, he himself having no time to wash from week's end to week's end. In the afternoon they changed places, and the King stood at the anvil and the Lad at the bellows. He was a good teacher, but the King made a poor job of it. By nightfall he had produced shoes resembling all the letters of the alphabet excepting U, and when at last he submitted to the Lad a shoe like nothing so much as a drunken S, his master shrugged and said:

"Zeal is praiseworthy within its limits, but the best of smiths does not attempt to make two shoes at once. Let us sup."

They supped; and afterwards the Lad showed the King a small bedroom as neat as a new pin.

"I shall sully the sheets," said William, "and you will excuse me if I fetch the kettle, which is on the boil."

"As you please," said the Lad, and took himself off.

In the morning the King came clean to breakfast, but the Lad was as black as he had been.

Tuesday pa.s.sed as Monday had pa.s.sed; now William took the bellows, marveling at his youthful master's deftness, and now the Lad blew, groaning at his pupil's clumsiness. By nightfall, however, he had achieved a shoe faintly recognizable as such. For a second time the King washed himself and slept again in the little trim chamber, but the Lad in the morning resembled midnight. In this way the week went by, the King's heart beating a little faster each morning as Sat.u.r.day approached, and he wondered by what ruse he could explain his absence without creating suspicion or breaking his pledge.

On Sat.u.r.day morning the Lad said to the King: "This is a half-day. You must make your shoe this morning or not at all. It is my custom at one o'clock to close the forge and go to visit my Great-Aunt. I will be work again on Monday, till when you must shift for yourself."

The King could hardly believe his luck in having matters so well settled, and he spent the morning so diligently that by noon he had produced a shoe which, if not that of a master-craftsman, was at least adaptable to the purpose for which it had been fashioned.

The Lad examined it and said reluctantly, "It will do," and proceeded to show the King how to fasten it to Pepper's hoof.

"Why," said the King, having the nag's off forefoot in his hand, "here's a stone in it. Small wonder she limped."

"It isn't a stone," said the Lad, extracting it, "it is a ruby."

And he exhibited to the King a ruby of such a glowing red that it was as though the souls of all the grapes of Burgundy had been pressed to create it.

"You are a rich man now," said the Lad quietly, "and can live as you will."

But William closed the Lad's fingers over the stone. "Keep it," he said, "for you have filled me for a week, and I have paid you with nothing but my breath."

"As you please," said the Lad carelessly, and, tossing the stone upon a shelf, locked up the forge. "Now I am going to my Great-Aunt. There's a cake in the larder."

So saying, he strolled away, and the King was left to his own devices.

These consisted in bathing himself from head to foot till his body was as pure without as he desired his heart to be within; and in donning his fresh suit of linen. He would not break his fast, but waited, trembling and eager, till an hour before sundown, and then at last he set forth to mount the great hill with the sacred crown of trees upon its crest.

When at last he stood upon the boundary of the Ring, his heart sprang for joy in his breast, and his breath nearly failed him with amazement at the beauty of the world which lay outspread for leagues below him.

"Oh, lovely earth!" he cried aloud, "never till now have I known what beauty I lived in. How is it that we cannot see the wonder of our surroundings until we gaze upon them from afar? But if you look so fair from the hilltops, what must you appear from the very sky?" And lost in delight he turned his eyes upward, and was recalled to his senses by the sight of the sinking sun. "Lovely one, how nearly you have betrayed me!" he said, and smiling waved his hand to the dear earth, sealed up his lips, and entered the Ring.

And here between two midmost beeches he knelt down and buried his face in his hands, and prayed the spirits of that place to make him worthy.

The hours pa.s.sed, quarter by quarter, and the King stayed motionless like one in a dream. Presently, however, the dream was faintly shaken by a little lirrup of sound, as light as rain dropping from leaves above a pool. Again and again the sweet round notes fell on the meditations of the King, and he remembered with entrancement that this was the tender signal by which he was summoned to the Pond. So, rising silently, he wandered through the trees, and keeping his eyes fixed on the soft dim turf, lest some new beauty should tempt him to speech, he went across the open hill the Pond. Here he knelt down again, listening to the childlike bird, until at last the young piping ceased with a joyous chuckle. And at that instant, reflected in the Pond, he saw the silver star that watches the invisible young moon, and dipped his head.

Oh, my dear maids! When he lifted it again, all wet and bewildered, he saw upon the opposite border of the Pond, a figure, the white figure of--a woman! a girl! a child! He could not tell, for she lay three parts in the shadowy water with her back towards him, and his gaze and senses swam; but in that faint starlight one bare and lovely arm, as white as the crescent moon, was clear to him, upcurved to her shadowy hair. So she reclined, and so he knelt, both motionless, and his heart trembled (even as it had trembled at the bird's song) with a wish to go near to her, or at least to whisper to her across the water. Indeed, he was on the point of doing so, when a sudden contraction seized him, his eyes closed in a delicious agony, and he sneezed once vigorously; and in that moment of shattering blackness he recalled his vow, and rising turned his back upon the vision and groped his way again to the shelter of the trees.

Here he remained till dawn in meditation, but as to the nature of his meditations I am, dear maidens, ignorant. Nor do I know in what restless wise he pa.s.sed his Sunday.

It is enough to know that on Monday when he went into the forge he found the Lad already at work, and if he had been pitch-black at their parting he was no less so at their meeting. He appeared to be out of humor, and for some time regarded his apprentice with dissatisfaction, but only remarked at last:

"You look fatigued."

"My sleep was broken with dreams," said the King. "I am sorry if I am late. Let me to my shoeing. Since Sat.u.r.day ended in success, I suppose I shall now finish the business without more ado."

He was, however, too hopeful as it appeared, for though he managed to fashion a shoe which was in his eyes the equal of the other, the Lad was captious and would not commend it.

"I should be an ill craftmaster," said he, "if I let you rest content on what you have already done. I made such a shoe as this on my thirteenth birthday, and my father's only praise was, You must do better yet.'"

So particular was the young smith that William spent the whole of another week in endeavoring to please him. This might have chafed the King, but that it agreed entirely with his desires to remain in that place, sleeping and eating at no cost to himself, and working so strenuously that his hands grew almost as hard as the metal he worked in; for the Lad now began to entrust him with small jobs of various sorts, although in the matter of the second shoe he refused to be satisfied.

When Sat.u.r.day came, however, the King contrived a shoe so much superior to any he had yet made that the Lad, examining it, was compelled to say, "It is better than the other." Then Pepper, who always stood in a noose beside the door awaiting her moment, lifted up her near forefoot of her own accord, and the King took it in his hand.

"How odd!" he exclaimed a moment later. "The nag has a stone in this foot also. It is not strange that she went so ill."

"It is not a stone," said the Lad. "It is a pearl."

And he held out to the King a pearl of such a shining purity that it was as though it had been rounded within the spirit of a saint.

"This makes you a rich man," said the Lad moodily, "and you can journey whither you please."

But the King shook his head. "Keep it," he said, "for you have lodged me for a week, and I have given you only the clumsy service of my hands."

"Very well," said the Lad simply, and put the pearl in his pocket. "My Great-Aunt is expecting me. There's a cake in the larder."