The Apple Tree in the Orchard

by Albert Kinross

 

THE APPLE TREE IN
THE ORCHARD.

By Albert Kinross

ILLUSTRATED BY C. E. BROCK.

I.

IT was shortly after Michaelmas that Tom Fuller tumbled off a ladder in the big orchard and broke his neck. He had been picking apples for Mr. Arrow down at Bank Farm, and he left a widow and five children, four girls and one boy. The four girls were grown and in service or at the paper-mill; the widow could fend for herself, she said; there remained the boy, who was thirteen and still at school. “I'll look after him,” said Mr. Arrow, coming round to the cottage after the funeral; “what's his name? Georgie? Well, we'll call him George. When you're leaving here, Mrs. Fuller, you just send him round to me.”

Mrs. Fuller found herself a place as working-housekeeper. She sold the sticks of furniture, the pots and pans and things, and went off to the station in her new black dress. “Thank God, my girls is provided for!” she said; “an' Milly is lodging respectable wi' another girl who works beside her in the mill.” Before she left she deposited little Georgie with Farmer Arrow.

“He'll live with Hook the waggoner, and I'll make a waggoner's mate o' him. There's lots o' things he can pick up here,” said the farmer; “and I'll give him sixpence a week to spend, and put by two shillings for his clothes, and there's a sovereign for him each harvesting.”

Mrs. Fuller thanked their benefactor and said good-bye to George. “Mind you write sometimes,” she called out, an' I'll send you a cake at Christmas; an' be a good boy, Georgie, an' allus do as Mister Arrow tells you.”

“Now, then, you just go in to my daughter and tell her I said you were to have some tea.” The farmer was speaking to him, and George, taking a last long look at his mother going up the lane, went into the house and stuttered and stammered before Miss Betsey Arrow. She was a woman nearing middle age, tough and hard to look at, but kindly when you knew her and didn't judge her by her tongue alone. She gave Georgie his tea, and afterwards he was sent round to Hook the waggoner's cottage, where a corner had been prepared for him alongside two little Hooks who snorted in their sleep.

All this happened in 1892, before George Fuller was fourteen years old; and ever since then he had earned his living and lodged with Hook the waggoner. Now, as Mr. Arrow had predicted, he was a full-blown waggoners mate, taking his sixteen shillings a week and paying his way. He had grown tall and strong, his whiskers had begun to sprout, he took his Saturday night beer like a man, and sang in the choir o' Sundays. In the long winter evenings he read and read, getting all kinds of books from out the village library; and sometimes these stories made him discontented... Then he would think of Hook the waggoner, who had lived the same life and drawn the same wage for thirty years, feeding the horses, taking them out, and putting them back again at nightfall, till almost he had become like a horse himself. The only things that happened to Hook were spring and summer and autumn and winter, and food and drink and sleep, and Sundays in the big chair 'gainst the fireplace. World without end, Amen. And already the rheumatics were stiffening and stooping him, and he had no money put by.... Then Georgie, grown to George Fuller, would fall a dreaming, and often he would awake sitting quite dressed in the dark, the candle burnt out, and feeling cold about the feet and hands. Was he going to end like Hook, he asked himself; was he going on and on, every day the same, every week the same, every year like the one that that had gone before; and he growing a little older and a little older, and stiffer and more stooping? And then he would stamp and shake himself, just like one of the big horses in its stall—and then he would stamp and shake himself, and look out of the window to see what kind of a night it was, and undress in the dark and go to his bed.

II.

It took ten years to make Fuller ask these questions; and in the meantime his mother had died, and all his sisters had married and gone their ways. The farm had become his world, its two hundred odd acres; its fruit, its hops, its roots, its wheat, its oats and its barley; and some years there was clover and in other years lucerne. And with these matters were joined old Farmer Arrow astride his big grey mare, and old Mrs. Arrow who clucked and chattered when she fed her chickens, and Miss Betsey, who always growled at him and was hard and short, but who gave him many a hunk of cake, of bread and cheese, of pudding and damson jam. Other people there were too; Hancock the foreman, who made his two guineas a week when the hop-drying was on; Allcorn, the second waggoner and his mate; and there were casual men that came and went, and hop-pickers from the town, and fruit-pickers from the village and round about, and vagrant men and women, who asked for a job and left it soon as a little money was paid out to them.

George had begun with spudding nettles, a vagrom boy turned loose in a field that was overgrown. On fine days, he remembered, he had whistled and sung and wondered at the sky. When the winter oats and wheat were new he had gone to other fields and scared the birds, making horrible noises—as horrible as he could. And he had a rattle to twirl as well—it made a worse noise than anything. With the spring he had done any odd job, from mowing the farmhouse lawn to following the lime-washers at work in the orchard. “You look on and make yourself useful,” said Farmer Arrow; while Miss Betsey sent him off with pounds of butter or made him dig and hoe in the kitchen-garden. Old Mrs. Arrow gave him jobs as well, and always spoke to him as though he was dirt, and made him rub his boots thrice over. She wasn't going to let him leave his marks in her clean wash-house, she said.

So, step by step, he had become a waggoner's mate, going out with the teams at first and doing as Hook told him; leading the two big shires as Hook steered plough or harrow or horse-hoenidget, they called it; then turning his first furrow, and a crooked job he made of it; riding home sideways in the twilight, and rubbing the horses down and giving them their feed. All day long they were at it under the great sky, only stopping at meal-times, or sometimes when they found a plover's nest or a rabbit's burrow. “Pee-wit—pee-wit—peewit,” the old bird would cry, circling round them; or the plough would lay bare small naked things that “wouldn't ha' paid fer the stewin',” said Hook, always hungry and on the look out for chance-met fodder. Partridge, hare, and pheasant they met, and often a crescent of wild duck, flying high, the long necks craning forward.... They talked of these things and the varying weather; for nothing else ever happened.

[Illustration: “She deposited little Georgie with Farmer Arrow.”]

Year in year out it was the same; and now George Fuller saw his life before him. Some day he might take Hook's place, but that was all the change he could foresee, and it wasn't much of a change either. Always the same getting up in winter dark or summer dawn, always the same jog-trot under the great skies, always the same hour or two of rest before bedtime, and so again next morning. World without end, Amen, It seemed to him now that he had come to the end of his tether; that, whether he was young or old, it didn't matter and was all the same. Like Hook he might marry and have children; but for all that, he would be out with his horses every morning, always a waggoner's mate, or else a waggoner... It seemed no use thinking of it, and nothing could change it all; his life was to be like that and for him there was no way out of it. He'd best get married and swallow it all, just as his father and his grandfather had done before him;

as Hook was doing, and the second waggoner was doing, and the four other hands, and even the casuals. They went on and on, taking what was sent to them, and asking no questions.. Life was like that, he ended, day in day out the same, and nothing to look forward to except the hard-earned ease that came on Sundays. And when he was old and worn out and stiff and stooping—“I'd best be goin' to sleep,” he said, “for thinkin' on it won't mend it.”

III.

One evening in the autumn George had strolled up to the village as far as the village-school. There were lights in the class-room, and he saw some half-dozen men go in at the door. Part out of curiosity and part because he had nothing better to do, he followed them. “What's on,” he asked, “a concert wi' singing, or is it a meeting about politics?” The man to whom he had addressed himself smiled. “There'll be no singin' an' there'll be no politics,” he made answer; “better'n that—there'll be some common-sense.”

[Illustration: “Sundays in the big chair 'gainst the fireplace.”]

George Fuller stuck to this man and took a seat beside him. He knew him to nod to, and knew also that he was a small market-gardener who did uncommon well out of a fat ten acres sloping out of the village and running downhill to the brook. On the wooden benches, just like scholars, sat other men of the same kind; and in the front row, which was the row of honour, waited a sprinkling of farmers, substantial men, whose land ran into the hundreds, who rode or drove good horses, and wore clean collars in the week. There they all sat like school-boys, and presently the teacher came in to teach.

He was introduced to the class by Mr. Watson of Dalton's, with whom it appeared, he had taken his supper. A village, it also appeared, that made application to the County Council, could have the services of such a teacher, who would lecture every Monday night throughout the winter season. “To-night's subject,” concluded Mr. Watson—and here he found opportunity to mention the supper, is “How Plants Take Their Food.” The teacher's name was Mr. Clarke.

George Fuller, looking on and listening, was aware of a very patient yet alert young man who explained things simply, and wherever possible made drawings with white chalk upon a blackboard. This young man obviously came from a town. He had the pale complexion, the eye-glasses, the quick movements, and the dark neat clothes, that Fuller associated with townsmen; and also he spoke like one, but always very clearly and with stress on the hard words. During the course of the evening Fuller learnt that a blade of wheat takes nourishment out of the air, said nourishment being called “nitrogen,” and also that it ate heartily underground into the bargain. He remembered as well that the young man said something about “bacilli,” and explained that ordinary stable manure was three parts water and also contained chalk, and that it made a difference whether it was covered in with a roof or exposed in the open air. Then he fell to watching how everybody was taking notes in a note-book except himself, and how white and quick Mr. Clarke's face looked compared with the weather-stained, stolid faces of the farmers and market-gardeners. In the big school-room, lit with one big lamp, the whole class made but a tiny island, and away in the distance were shadows and almost darkness. Suddenly Mr. Clarke wanted to know whether anybody cared to put questions in case things were not altogether clear. Then three or four men arose and asked him what was on their minds, and George followed that quite easily. When it was over he strolled back to Bank Farm and felt that it had been an uncommon evening. And all that week he pondered on what he had seen and heard, and the more he thought about it the more curious it became.

[Illustration: “Making horrible noises—as horrible as he could.”]

“The things aren't jus' growin' all summer,” he concluded, “they're takin' 'nitrogen' out o' the light an' air an' helpin' themselves with the 'bacilli' at their roots—that's why they likes bein' hoed an' turned over. Growin' things has their insides, same as me an' Hook.”

The next Monday, a pencil and a penny note-book in his pocket, he went up to the village again and took his seat in the school-room and listened to Mr. Clarke.

IV.

The lecturer was going back to the station, and thence to the market-town where he had his home. It was a three-mile walk in the clear moonlight, and you took the stile opposite Tower Farm. The rest of the way was foot-paths, lanes, and open country till you reached the village where the trains stopped for those parts. At the stile a figure was waiting, and Mr. Clarke knew it for one of his pupils. “Going my way?” he asked; “I'm bound for the station.”

Queerly enough, George Fuller was bound for the station too; so they walked side by side, discussing the lecture, George putting questions that he would never have dared to put indoors.

“I s'pose I'm weak in book-learnin',” he said at last and when feeling more completely at his ease; and then he went on to tell Mr. Clarke how his father had tumbled off the ladder, picking apples, when he was a small boy at school and how he had had to get his living ever since.

“You're just the kind of fellow I want to reach,” said Mr. Clarke; “if I'm to help anybody at all, it ought to be young chaps like you.”

“I'm willin' to learn,” said George slowly, “tho' mebbe I'll never amount to anythink, havin' started late like.”

“All the best fruits take a long while to establish themselves, and then they race along and make up for lost time.”

George pondered this saying, and, after a moment, found it true. “Cobnuts is like that—an' 'sparagus?” he answered.

Mr. Clarke nodded. “You at least keep your eyes open; and not everybody does that.”

The three miles seemed as one to George; for he had never talked and listened so freely, never been so interested and entertained, never known that human companionship could be so wide and so engrossing. In a few minutes, so it appeared, they had reached the station.

“Are you taking my train?” asked Mr. Clarke.

“No, I'm goin' back agin,” said George, “same way as I come. An' thank you for talkin' to me,” he added; “I'll see you agin next Monday.”

So they separated, Mr. Clarke going on to Elmsford, the market town, on whose outskirts stood the agricultural college at which he taught; George Fuller returning to Bank Farm and Hook's cottage, and the next day's loading and carting of farmyard litter for Big Harman's and the landway fields that were to take their crops of wheat and oats and barley.

Next Monday it was the same, and every Monday afterwards. George Fuller waited at the stile till the teacher came, and walked the three miles that seemed like one mile. Then three miles home again, with a new light at work within his brain, a new fullness flooding his body. There came a day when the teacher asked him what he did with himself on Sundays.

“I lies in bed an' I sings in the choir an' often I reads story-books,” responded George.

“You do read then?'

“Somethin' dreadful—leastways that's what Hook says.”

“Come over to Elmsford and spend next Sunday with me?”

“D'yer mean it?” asked George.

“Then of course you'll come.”

George went; and he had never spent such a day, neither for eating nor talking nor anything. Mr. Clarke showed him over the farm that belonged to the agricultural college, explaining the latest methods, the new varieties, the hows and the wherefores, the theories and the practice, and a hundred other things that held and fascinated. “You makes it all so simple,” commented Fuller; “if I had come here by myself, I'd ha' been quite lost.”

“And—er—instead of reading story-books, you take this home with you,” said Mr. Clarke. Now they were back at his rooms again where the shelves were packed with volumes and volumes of which he had just taken down one and handed it over to George.

The young man eyed the binding of the book and found the teacher's name upon it. “You wrote it?” he asked, and Mr. Clarke nodded.

“I put it together for just such chaps as you,” he said; “there are no big words and no fancies; and you can take it home and keep it, and When you've done with it there are plenty more.”

“There is that,” said George, eyeing the bookshelves, the rows that began at the floor and reached to the raftered ceiling. And now it was time for a substantial tea; and to-night It was Mr. Clarke who walked young Fuller to the station, and left him there all eager, the volume safely tucked under his arm.

That first Sunday was one of many Sundays, that first book the beginning of a host of books, that first visit to the college farm the opening of a round. In the week he had time in plenty to think on it all, and often Hook found him absent-minded.

“What's come o'er yer, George?” the waggoner would ask. “Yer ain't got nort to say, an' at home y'er allus mopin' o'er them ole books. You'se best get married—that'd cure yer.”

[Illustration: “Always the same 'og-trot under the great skies.”]

George smiled and took his turn at the plough handles; and then the harriers would come riding by, or a covey of partridge start and away; and now there was something to talk about after Hook's own heart.

Mrs. Arrow, Farmer Arrow and Miss Betsey saw no change, nor hardly looked for one. “Steady lad, young George is,” said the farmer; “when Hook grows too old, I'll give him the place, and two more shillings on pay day if he asks for 'em.”

“If he'd only wipe his boots when he comes into the wash-house!” cried Mrs. Arrow; and, “He's been with us ten year come last Michaelmas,” said Miss Betsey.

V.

George Fuller was twenty-eight and a grown man. It was five years now since he had strolled up to the village school-room and heard Mr. Clarke deliver that first lecture on “How Plants Take Their Food.” He still lodged in the waggoner's cottage, and there, if you went into his room, you would find bookshelves and books, and ink and paper, and a patent lamp that gave the light of a dozen candles. On Sundays George dressed almost as well as a farmer, and his tongue had lost something of the rustic way. The week-days he was just the same as ever, going out first thing of a morning with the horses and bringing them home again at night. But there was one great difference. To-day, as he looked on the land, he knew it, and knew it through and through; its shortcomings and its possibilities, its needs and where they were stinted or exceeded, its structure and its components, its worth as buried capital, the price to pay in rent. And so with all that grew on it. Foodstuffs and fertilizers, seed and sowing, plant and ongraft, the right kind and the wrong kind, and washings and sprayings, and times and spaces—he knew them all, and the why and the wherefore of it... He was ripe for a place as bailiff, and perhaps before long Mr. Clarke would find somebody who would engage him.

[Illustration: Everybody was taking notes.]

Looking now over Bank Farm, he saw that Mr. Arrow was backward and behind the present day. For years he had believed in him, looked up to him, and thought him wonderful. But now he saw quite plainly that the old man had just kept on; that his machinery was outdated, his methods, his crops, his marketing; that all were old and belonged to the years when Farmer Arrow was in his prime. “If I could have the handling of Bank Farm!” George often thought. And Mr. Arrow was growing short and sharp and sour-tempered. “You men think I'm going on losing my money,” he would say. “I'll sell the place next Michaelmas; I'll give it up; and then you can all look out for yourselves!” he would cry, and canter off to do some more fault-finding. Often he found fault without rhyme or reason.

[Illustration: “'I'd grub every one o' these and start with Warner's King or Newton's Wonder.'"]

That autumn the big orchard where Fuller's father had fallen off the ladder lost money. It was the first time in all the history of Bank Farm that the big orchard had lost money. The trees, once so fertile, were old now, cankered, and worn out, and neither root-pruning nor limewashing had helped them. George Fuller, driving the bushels of mean fruit to the barn, was loading up when Farmer Arrow strode in and handled the thin crop and abused it. “We can't keep on like this,” he said to George; “Lord knows what's going to become of us!”

“Grub all this stuff and start over again, and put in half-standards and bush fruit and save all this climbing. If it were mine—” George had looked up and caught the astonished gaze of the old man.

“What would you do?” called out Farmer Arrow.

“I've told you, sir; I'd grub every one o' these and start with Warner's King and Newton's Wonder; and seeing we're on green sand, I'd make it a plantation and fill up with currants and raspberry canes till the trees was in full bearing.”

“Would you?” snorted the farmer, and marched out at the gate.

Three days went by and the fruit-picking was over. The next morning came a letter from Mr. Clarke. “I've found you a place as under-bailiff,” he wrote; “it's better than what you've got at present, and the next step is full bailiff. Come here on Sunday and we'll talk it over and I'll take you to see my man.” So here at last was progress, and an end to the apparently endless life as waggoner's mate.

On the Saturday evening George accosted his master. He held out the letter, and the old man read it and tore it clean across.

“So you want to be a bailiff!” he cried.

“That's what I've been trying for,” answered George.

“Who told you about half-standards and bush fruit and Warner's King and Newton's Wonder—and green sand and raspberry canes—where did you learn that?”

“I've been studying the last five years, reading and what not; and Mr. Clarke at the agricultural college, he's as good as let me learn there.”

The old man asked more questions; and, “You did this after you'd done your work?” he said, not once, but every time there came a pause.

When this cross-examination was finished he tore the letter through again.

“Find out what they're going to pay you, and I'll go one better,” he said “five shillings atop of it. You're not going to leave me. And you can take the big orchard and grub it and make a new plantation. That's your work this winter, and Hook can get another waggoner's mate.”

The old man had said his say. He turned and went into the house; and it was then that Fuller realised that at last had come his chance.

VI.

From the waggoner's cottage George had moved into the farmhouse. “There's plenty of room here,” the farmer had said, “and Mrs. Arrow won't starve you.”

The books came over, the ink and papers, and the lamp that gave a light as good as a dozen candles. “So this is what you've been doing with yourself?” said Farmer Arrow, coming in and taking a look round; and, meanwhile, George, given a free hand and full responsibility, worked at the new plantation.

While the men grubbed and ploughed he got it right on paper, spaces and distances, and how to make the most of the ground till the trees came into bearing. He would have nothing idle, and yet he wouldn't be too grasping; the land should know it had a master but not a tyrant. And then he went off to buy his trees and bushes and canes and what not. Here his friendship with Mr. Clarke stood him in good stead. He might have been buying for the agricultural college itself, so well did the growers serve him. And Mr. Clarke approved of everything. “You've got your chance,” he would say; “this'll turn out better than taking a place as bailiff.”

And it did. As time went on Mr. Arrow began to believe in George, and even, when in doubt, to turn to him. This was a great step for the self-willed, self-reliant old man. On George's advice he drilled in new varieties of wheat, that grew more hardy, made more straw, and gave a heavier ear. On George's advice and estimates the two hop-gardens were strung and wired instead of poled in the old way. This doubled the yield per acre; and, as luck would have it, the prices that year ran up furiously. The farmer was a handsome sum in pocket over it. But the thing that most impressed old Arrow was Fuller's stepping into the breach over the threshing-machine. It began with a quarrel between the farmer and the engineer who went from farm to farm during the threshing season, drawing high wages, and choosing his dates like a lord. A high and mighty man was the engineer, and he and Mr. Arrow fell out at the last moment. The grain was promised, its time of delivery fixed, when the engineer went off and left them all in the lurch. The farmer saw he must break and lose his contract, and this was exactly what the engineer wished him to do and on what the vindictive fellow counted. Old Arrow must come to him and come on his knees; and even then, perhaps, he wouldn't so much as look at him. It was in the thick of this crisis that George Fuller stepped in, quietly stoked up the machine, and, in some mysterious fashion, set it going; and he kept it going till the last stack was threshed, and Hook, gaping with wonder, was ready to drive a full load off to the miller's. Bank Farm had saved its contract; its enemy, the engineer, was utterly defeated and put to rout. He had come round and prophesied explosions and a burst boiler. Henceforth old Farmer Arrow boasted of George Fuller as other men boast about an only son. And indoors Miss Betsey consulted his likes and dislikes when she cooked the dinner; while Mrs. Arrow, now grown white-haired and very frail, no longer made him rub his boots, but placed his slippers alongside “Dad's” before the parlour fire.

VII.

It took George Fuller four years to make Bank Farm a farm of note, to draw it up to the level and a little ahead of its most progressive neighbours. Now it was yielding more than it had ever earned before, and the money sunk in the new developments had been repaid to capital. George had his share now instead of a fixed wage; the work was growing easier; and there came at last a day when he announced his intention of marrying and settling down. The lady was a younger sister of his old friend Mr. Clarke.

“You're not going to leave us?” asked the farmer, when the news was broken to him.

“That's for you to say, sir,” responded George with a smile.

“Well, what I've been thinking is this,” said Mr. Arrow. “I've done my share of work and I've earned a rest. There's a nice little house at Seabrook I've been wanting, and Mrs. Arrow thinks so too, and so does Betsey. Facing the sea it is, and with a garden to potter about in. Well, what I've been thinking is that if you pays me half what the farm earns till Mrs. Arrow and me is both dead—it won't be long now—and after that a third to Betsey—she's a rare tough 'un—when we're all gone the farm 'll belong to you, absolutely and for good. Meanwhiles you'll have your half or two-thirds, as the case may be. You see, I haven't got a son of my own and you're welcome, George. It's not as though I could carry it away with me, and I think I've earned a rest. And besides you deserve it, working as you've been doing, and nobody encouraging you, this last ten year. Will you stay on at that?” And, “It's better than being a bailiff,” he added slyly.

“You're offering me a deal more than I deserve,” George answered; “most of the work's been a pleasure—the greatest pleasure, really, I've ever known.”

“And you'll keep old Hook on—just for old time's sake?”

“Hook can stay as long as he pleases.”

“That's all I've got to say about it,” ended the farmer, “and when you and Mrs. George Fuller want to come into Bank Farm just give the word.”

****

In the new plantation at Bank Farm that once was the big orchard, there stands an ancient, spreading apple-tree that George Fuller never had the heart to grub with the rest. It is the same apple-tree from which his father was picking when he fell off the ladder and broke his neck. And looking at it in May when the pink blossom comes round again, or in October when its shrunken fruits are ripe, George Fuller always falls a-thinking and old images rise up out of the past. He sees the little boy that Farmer Arrow took hold of, as he might have taken a stray kitten and given it milk; he sees the interior of Hook's cottage and a young man grown discontented, yet daring no future but the poor and pitiful sameness of to-day; and then he sees that same young man acquiring knowledge, devouring it, eager for it, all the starved years released, and clamouring to have their hunger stilled.... The old apple-tree stands there to-day. George Fuller sees it topping the young fruit he has planted, taking much out of the land and yielding nothing. “Let it stand,” he says, “let it stand—as a reminder, in case I get lazy and inclined to forget that I must work.”