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7

       The Fascination of the Forbidden Apple

       Table of Contents

      On the first Sunday in June, when Lettie knew she would keep her engagement with Leslie, and when she was having a day at home from Highclose, she got ready to go down to the mill. We were in mourning for an aunt, so she wore a dress of fine black voile, and a black hat with long feathers. Then, when I looked at her fair hands, and her arms closely covered in the long black cuffs of her sleeves, I felt keenly my old brother-love shielding, indulgent.

      It was a windy, sunny day. In shelter the heat was passionate, but in the open the wind scattered its fire. Every now and then a white cloud broad based, blue shadowed, travelled slowly along the sky-road after the forerunner small in the distance, and trailing over us a chill shade, a gloom which we watched creep on over the water, over the wood and the hill. These royal, rounded clouds had sailed all day along the same route, from the harbour of the south to the wastes in the northern sky, following the swift wild geese. The brook hurried along singing, only here and there lingering to whisper to the secret bushes, then setting off afresh with a new snatch of song.

      The fowls pecked staidly in the farmyard, with Sabbath decorum. Occasionally a lost, sportive wind-puff would wander across the yard and ruffle them, and they resented it. The pigs were asleep in the sun, giving faint grunts now and then from sheer luxury. I saw a squirrel go darting down the mossy garden wall, up into the laburnum tree, where he lay flat along the bough, and listened. Suddenly away he went, chuckling to himself. Gyp all at once set off barking, but I soothed her down; it was the unusual sight of Lettie’s dark dress that startled her, I suppose.

      We went quietly into the kitchen. Mrs Saxton was just putting a chicken, wrapped in a piece of flannel, on the warm hob to coax it into life; it looked very feeble. George was asleep, with his head in his arms on the table; the father was asleep on the sofa, very comfortable and admirable; I heard Emily fleeing upstairs, presumably to dress.

      “He stays out so late — up at the Ram Inn,” whispered the mother in a high whisper, looking at George, “and then he’s up at five — he doesn’t get his proper rest.” she turned to the chicks, and continued in her whisper —“the mother left them just before they hatched out, so we’ve been bringing them on here. This one’s a bit weak — I thought I’d hot him up a bit,” she laughed with a quaint little frown of deprecation. Eight or nine yellow, fluffy little mites were cheeping and scuffling in the fender. Lettie bent over them to touch them; they were tame, and ran among her fingers.

      Suddenly George’s mother gave a loud cry, and rushed to the fire. There was a smell of singed down. The chicken had toddled into the fire, and gasped its faint gasp among the red-hot cokes. The father jumped from the sofa; George sat up with wide eyes; Lettie gave a little cry and a shudder; Trip rushed round and began to bark. There was a smell of cooked meat.

      “There goes number one!” said the mother, with her queer little laugh. It made me laugh too.

      “What’s a matter — what’s a matter?” asked the father excitedly.

      “It’s a chicken been and walked into the fire — I put it on the hob to warm,” explained his wife.

      “Goodness — I couldn’t think what was up!” he said, and dropped his head to trace gradually the border between sleeping and waking.

      George sat and smiled at us faintly, he was too dazed to speak. His chest still leaned against the table, and his arms were spread out thereon, but he lifted his face, and looked at Lettie with his dazed, dark eyes, and smiled faintly at her. His hair was all ruffled, and his shirt collar unbuttoned. Then he got up slowly, pushing his chair back with a loud noise, and stretched himself, pressing his arms upwards with a long, heavy stretch.

      “Oh — h — h!” he said, bending his arms and then letting them drop to his sides. “I never thought you’d come today.”

      “I wanted to come and see you — I shan’t have many more chances,” said Lettie, turning from him and yet looking at him again.

      “No, I suppose not,” he said, subsiding into quiet. Then there was silence for some time. The mother began to enquire after Leslie, and kept the conversation up till Emily came down, blushing and smiling and glad.

      “Are you coming out?” said she, “there are two or three robins’ nests, and a spinkie’s —”

      “I think I’ll leave my hat,” said Lettie, unpinning it as she spoke, and shaking her hair when she was free. Mrs Saxton insisted on her taking a long white silk scarf; Emily also wrapped her hair in a gauze scarf, and looked beautiful.

      George came out with us, coatless, hatless, his waistcoat all unbuttoned, as he was. We crossed the orchard, over the old bridge, and went to where the slopes ran down to the lower pond, a bank all covered with nettles, and scattered with a hazel bush or two. Among the nettles old pans were rusting, and old coarse pottery cropped up.

      We came upon a kettle heavily coated with lime. Emily bent down and looked, and then we peeped in. There were the robin birds with their yellow beaks stretched so wide apart I feared they would never close them again. Among the naked little mites, that begged from us so blindly and confidently, were huddled three eggs.

      “They are like Irish children peeping out of a cottage,” said Emily, with the family fondness for romantic similes.

      We went on to where a tin lay with the lid pressed back, and inside it, snug and neat, was another nest, with six eggs, cheek to cheek.

      “How warm they are,” said Lettie, touching them, “you can fairly feel the mother’s breast.”

      He tried to put his hand into the tin, but the space was too small, and they looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. “You’d think the father’s breast had marked them with red,” said Emily.

      As we went up the orchard side we saw three wide displays of coloured pieces of pots arranged at the foot of three trees.

      “Look,” said Emily, “those are the children’s houses. You don’t know how our Mollie gets all Sam’s pretty bits — she is a cajoling hussy!”

      The two looked at each other again, smiling. Up on the pond-side, in the full glitter of light, we looked round where the blades of clustering corn were softly healing the red bosom of the hill. The larks were overhead among the sunbeams. We straggled away across the grass. The field was all afroth with cowslips, a yellow, glittering, shaking froth on the still green of the grass. We trailed our shadows across the fields, extinguishing the sunshine on the flowers as we went. The air was tingling with the scent of blossoms.

      “Look at the cowslips, all shaking with laughter,” said Emily, and she tossed back her head, and her dark eyes sparkled among the flow of gauze. Lettie was on in front, flitting darkly across the field, bending over the flowers, stooping to the earth like a sable Persephone come into freedom. George had left her at a little distance, hunting for something in the grass. He stopped, and remained standing in one place.

      Gradually, as if unconsciously, she drew near to him, and when she lifted her head, after stooping to pick some chimney-sweeps, little grass flowers, she laughed with a slight surprise to see him so near.

      “Ah!” she said. “I thought I was all alone in the world — such a splendid world — it was so nice.”

      “Like Eve in a meadow in Eden — and Adam’s shadow somewhere on the grass,” said I.

      “No — no Adam,” she asserted, frowning slightly, and laughing.

      “Who ever would wants streets of gold,” Emily was saying to me, “when you can have a field of cowslips! Look at that hedgebottom that gets the south sun — one stream and glitter of buttercups.”

      “Those Jews always had an eye to the filthy lucre — they even made heaven out of it,” laughed Lettie, and, turning to him, she said, “Don’t you wish we were wild — hark,

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