THE
APPLE TREE GIRL
CHAPTER I
She was such an old-fashioned little thing!
"And ever likely to be old-fashioned," said Aunt Hepzibah, "born up here at Marlin Mills and raised, as a body might say, right in the shadow of Micah's apple tree!"
I smiled at Aunt Hepzibah then; but thinking it over now, I begin to see that the wonderful things which happened to Charlotte Marlin might never have taken place if it hadn't been for the history of Marlin Mills and the story of Micah's apple tree.
In its day Marlin Mills had been one of the prettiest and happiest of villages. Even now it has an avenue of elms by the side of the river, which is worth going many a mile to see. History tells us that Lafayette once walked beneath those elms and talked with Washington. Five years before that Nathan Hale walked under them, too, in the winter when he taught the school at Marlin Mills. Yes, and many a beau and many a belle enjoyed their shade in the days when gentlemen powdered their hair and wore lace cuffs, and the ladies dressed themselves in panniers and danced the minuet.
Perhaps at night, when the mists arise from the river and wreathe themselves among the elms, these couples walk again, re-living hours so happy that they wish to make them immortal. For myself, I know if I were a ghost I would like nothing better than to walk under the old Marlin elms with the spirit of one I had loved, and where the moon shone through the trees to give my partner a stately bow and dance the minuet. And the beauty of it is, no living soul would be likely to interrupt us, for the history of Marlin Mills is nearly finished; its houses are falling in ruins, and it won't be many years now before the last of the Old Guard will either move or (with greater dignity) be moved away.
To the east of the village is a hill, flat-topped and stony, and on the top of this hill, overlooking the village below, stands the Marlin farm and homestead—the place where my heroine was born.
Charlotte, my heroine, was six years old when she heard the story of Micah's apple tree, and I will tell it to you exactly as it was told to her.
Aunt Hepzibah was out at the time, and Ma'm Bazin was ironing in the kitchen. Ma'm Bazin was their hired girl—a French-Canadienne of about fifty, enormously fat, full of sentiment and blessed with the gift of tongues. That afternoon Charlotte had gone into the kitchen holding her hands behind her. She watched Ma'm Bazin for a time in her old-fashioned way and then, holding out her hands, she said: "Look! Why do they call these Micah's apples?"
She had in her hand two apples. They were of a pale—I had almost said a sad—color; but here and there on the skin were small, raised spots of the shape and color of red currants.
"Hush!" cautioned Ma'm Bazin. She tiptoed to the hall door, enormously fat but full of sentiment, and then she made sure that no one was in the yard. As I have said, Charlotte was six years old, and you can imagine how she was impressed by these maneuvers.
"Nearly two hundred years ago," began Ma'm Bazin, "on this very farm, lived a farmer named Sowers and his four sons. They were lazy fellows, who do nothing but sit around and complain that a honest man he cannot prosper any more. The only work they do is to plant an orchard, being fond of the cider, and in the middle of the orchard there is one tree—a bittersweet—bearing very fine apples which everyone admires. It is a pale apple and of such peculiar flavor that when the frost she has come the neighbors drop in to say the good word, and always they stroll in the orchard to fill their pockets from the bittersweet tree.
"As the years go on, Meester Sowers and his four sons drink more and more of the cider and get more and more into debt, till one day the sheriff rap-a-rap-rap on this very door and say, if the taxes are not paid by the first of the year the place will be sold and they thrown out in the cold, cold world, lamenting. Whereat they look at each other and cry in a rage that the honest man he cannot prosper any more.
"The next day is Christmas Eve, and just after dark another visitor comes rap-a-rap-rap on the door. He has a pack on his back and they see it is Micah, the peddler, who pass' that way every winter. In those days, my dear, peddlers are well known for the money they carry, because the world she is poor and honest, and the banks have not yet come.
"Micah asks if he can stay for the night, and if nobody ever sees him again, nobody knows and nobody cares. For a peddler he is here to-day and gone to-morrow. It is only known that a few days later Meester Sowers pays his tax and other debts, and no one notices that there is one spot in the orchard where he and his sons they will never cast their eye.
"The months they come and the months they go, till the frost she falls again. Then the neighbors drop in to say the good word and stroll in the orchard to fill their pockets from the bittersweet tree. But presently they return with the full gallop and a visage white. 'Look!' they cry. 'These apples, so pale before, are covered with spots like blood!'
"What Meester Sowers say then I do not know, but the neighbors run back to the tree with shovels and picks. There in his grave at last they find poor Micah, and always after that it is called Micah's tree and Micah's apples, and always after that these spots appear as a witness that the sin which is buried at the foot of a tree it shall make itself known in the fruit."
It is an old wives' tale, of course, like the stories of fairies and witchcraft which you heard when you were a child and which have been told to children since time immemorial, yet it's a tale which is believed more than doubted throughout our part of Eastern Connecticut. So if it had its effect on Charlotte's mind, especially when she looked out of her window and gazed at Micah's tree, I don't think you can greatly blame her, or wonder if it helped to make her more old-fashioned than ever.
Such was the atmosphere in which she grew up.
Below the farm was Marlin Mills, its houses falling in, and columbines and ragged robins growing among the ruins of the dam. A handful of children still attended the school where Nathan Hale once taught; but every year the number decreased, and every year a new teacher had to be found to brave the increasing loneliness. And when Charlotte returned home from school and walked past the orchard, Micah's tree was waiting to remind her why old houses creak at night and why the wind howls down the chimney at times with such a note. And when she went in the house there was her father, old Moses Marlin, a grim, gaunt man who had never quite forgiven her because she wasn't a boy.
There are times, indeed, when I, too, have wished that she had been a boy, because she would probably have made a great inventor, or an even greater poet, brought up in such an incomparable environment. Yet on second thoughts I am always glad that she was a girl, because inventors and poets we have in plenty, but never before, I believe, did a girl set out on such a scale as Charlotte did to lead herself, a little Miss Moses, into the Promised Land.
As soon as she had mastered her Third Reader she gradually developed into a bookworm, one of the most industrious little bookworms imaginable.
"She was ten years old then," said Aunt Hepzibah, "a spindly young 'un with her hair in two pigtails, but bright as a button, even if she was so quiet. 'Pears to me there were years when I never see her unless she had a book in her hand. She seemed to live and eat and sleep with the people she read about. Times there'd be tears in her eyes, and times she'd burst out laughing. 'What's the matter now?' I'd ask her. 'Oh, it's so funny!' she'd say, and curl up 'round the book again as if she'd never let go."
It was up at the old Marlin farm where Aunt Hepzibah told me these things, and, after I had gathered a few of Micah's apples, she let me look at the books which Charlotte had read. There was a set of Longfellow, and one of Dickens, and Hawthorne was there between Charles Reade and the Waverley Novels—good, old-fashioned sets of that half-morocco binding in which our grandfathers seemed to take such deep delight. It didn't require much imagination to picture Charlotte "curled up" in her chair by the window, laughing over Sam Weller, or her eyes filling with, tears as she followed the fortunes of Evangeline. And when the twilight came I think we can both imagine her laying her book aside and looking out of the window at Micah's tree … and the village below … and the sunset over the far-off hills … dreaming the dreams which you used to dream when you were a child, and all unconsciously preparing herself for the quest of the Promised Land.
In short, if you had searched the country over it is doubtful if you could have found a scene—or a girl—more conducive to the growth of Romance. And as she grew older, and her dresses grew longer, and her straight lines and angles began to turn into tender young curves, she often found herself dreaming the Golden Dream of how the prince would presently come to court her.
Charlotte finished school in her fifteenth year, the one bright star in a small, dim lot of jewels. Twelve months before her father had taken to his bed and died in the same grim way he had lived, knowing himself the last of the Marlins and never quite forgiving her because she wasn't a boy. It was nearly a year before they found his will, and then it was discovered that he had left Charlotte the farm, and ten thousand dollars in the bonds of a creamery company which he had formed in the hope of restoring to the village some measure of its past prosperity. After a family council following the reading of the will, it was decided that Charlotte should continue her education by going to the Penfield High School, Penfield being the nearest town and Aunt Grace living there with a daughter of Charlotte's age, who was also going to start at the high school that same year.
"The change will do her good, poor child!" said Aunt Harriet, a stout lady with a critical eye and a deep voice.
Charlotte was out in the hall, quietly dusting a picture which Aunt Grace was going to take away with her, but her relations didn't dream that she was so close at hand.
"She's a nice child," said Uncle Ezra.
"But," said Aunt Grace, "so old-fashioned!"
"She's a loving little thing!" warmly cried Aunt Hepzibah. "You've no idea how I shall miss her when she's gone."
Hearing that from her station in the hall Charlotte felt her heart go out to Aunt Hepzibah, and she was just on the point of going in to her complimentary relations when they started talking again.
"She's a regular little old maid!" said Uncle Ezra.
"Well, to tell you the truth, I think it's pretty lucky she's got that money," said Aunt Grace.
"Just what I've been thinking—poor child!" said Aunt Harriet; and, dropping her voice to its deepest note, she added: "Isn't she homely!"