Chapter 2

In the early evening came a little orphan boy on his way to bring home
the cows from pasture. He was very tired, for he had been picking stones
off a field all day, so he sat down for a few minutes to rest his weary
little bones. He worked for Miser Tom, and no one who worked for Miser
Tom ever ate the bread of idleness. He was a shy, delicate lad, and the
other boys tormented him because of this. So he had no playmates and was
often very lonely. Sometimes he wished wistfully that he had just one
friend; there seemed to be so much love in the world and none of it for
him. He liked the old apple tree; it seemed like a friend to him, a
great, kindly, blooming, fragrant creature, reaching protecting arms
over him. His heart grew warm with his love for it, and he began to
whistle; he whistled beautifully, and the notes of his tune blew across
the brook valley like drops of elfin sound. He was very happy while he
whistled; and he had a right to be happy, for he had lived a good day,
though he did not know that and was not thinking about it. He had done
faithful work; he had saved a little bird from a cat; and he had planted
a tree,—a little wild, white birch which he had brought home from the
field and set out at the gate, Miser Tom giving a surly assent because
it cost him nothing. So the lad whistled blithely. Life was all before
him and it was May and the world was abloom. Long after he had gone up
the path to the pasture the echoes of his music seemed to linger under
the tree. Many children had sat under it; the old apple tree seemed to
love them.

At sunset an old man came to the dim, spring valley and sat for a while,
seeing visions and dreaming dreams. He was an ugly old man, but he had
very clear, beautiful, blue eyes, which told you that he had kept the
child heart. His neighbors thought that he was a failure; he had been
tied down to farm drudgery all his life; he lived poorly and was
sometimes cold and sometimes hungry. But he dwelt in an ideal world of
the imagination, of which none of his critics knew anything. He was a
poet, and he had composed a great many pieces of poetry, but he had
never written any of them down. They existed only in his mind and
memory. He had recited them all a hundred times to the old tree. It was
his only confidant. The ghosts of many springs haunted it for him; he
always came there when it was in bloom. He was an odd, ridiculous figure
enough, if anyone had seen him—bent and warped and unkempt,
gesticulating awkwardly as he recited his poems. But it was his hour,
and he felt every inch a king in his own realm. For a little time he was
strong and young and splendid and beautiful, an accredited master of
song to a listening, enraptured world. None of his prosperous neighbors
ever lived through such an hour; he would not have exchanged places with
one of them.

* * * * *

The next visitor to the tree was a pale woman with a pain-lined face.
She walked slowly, and sat down with a sigh of relief. She had seen the
old tree blossom-white for many springs, and she knew she would never
see it again. She had a deadly disease, and her doctor had told her that
day that she had only a few more weeks to live. And she did not want to
die—she was afraid of death.

A young moon set behind the dark hills, and the old tree was very
wonderful in the starlight. It seemed to have a life and a speech of its
own, and she felt as if it were talking to her—consoling
her—encouraging her. The universe was full of love, it said, and spring
came everywhere, and in death you opened and shut a door. There were
beautiful things on the other side of the door—one need not be afraid.
Then suddenly she was not afraid any longer. Love seemed all about her
and around her, as if breathed out from some great, invisible, hovering
Tenderness. One could not be afraid where love was—and love was
everywhere. She laid her face against the trunk of the old tree and
rested.

She had not been gone long when old Miser Tom came himself, walking home
from market, and sat down with a grunt. He was tired and he did not like
it because it meant that he was getting old. He had a thin, pinched,
merciless mouth, and he looked around him with eyes that held nothing in
reverence. All the land he could see around him belonged to him—or he
thought it did. Really it did not belong to him at all, but to the old
dumb poet and the little orphan who loved it. Miser Tom thought he was
very rich, but he was horribly poor, for not one living creature loved
him—not even a dog or a cat. His heart was poisoned and his thoughts
were venomous because a neighbor had got higher prices at market that
day than he had. He scowled up at the tree and wished he dared cut it
down for firewood. It was no good—and it spoiled several yards of the
meadow. Yet, even as he scowled, a thought came to him. What if he
hadn’t made money his god, and scrimped and starved mind and soul and
body for it? What if, long ago, he had married the girl with whom he had
sat here one evening in his youth? What if he had had a home and
children like other men? It was only for a moment he thought thus—the
next minute he was Miser Tom again, sneering at such questions. A lavish
wife and a spendthrift brood—not for him. He had been too wise. That
girl was no longer fair—she was a faded, drab, married woman, ground
down with hard work, gnawing her heart out over the boy whose unknown
grave was somewhere in France. Poor fool! Oh, yes, he had been wise. But
he would not cut the old tree down—not just yet. It—it was a pretty
thing, so white in the night’s dim beauty. He would leave it be. After
all, some shade enhanced the value of the pasture.

* * * * *

After Miser Tom had shuffled away, an old man and his wife came along
the path and turned aside to rest. It was the anniversary of their
wedding, and they had been spending it with their daughter in the
village but now they were on their way home. They, too, loved the old
apple tree.

“I sat here for a long time the night before our wedding day, Jean,” the
old husband said. “It was a small tree then, barely large enough to cast
a shade, but it was as white as it is now. It was the first spring it
had bloomed. There was no seat here then, so I sat on the grass under it
and thought about you.”