Chapter 1 The Plum Tree

At Wittisham several of the little houses had crept down very close to the river. Mrs. Prettyman's cottage was just like a hive made for the habitation of some gigantic bee; its pointed roof covered with deep, close-cut thatch the colour of a donkey's hide. There were small windows under the overhanging eaves, a pathway of irregular flat stones ran up to the doorway, and a bit of low wall divided the tiny garden from the river. The Plum Tree grew just beside the wall, so near indeed that it could look at itself on spring days when the water was like a mirror. In autumn the branches on that side of the tree were the first to be shaken, lest any of the fruit should fall down and be lost. Sometimes a village child treading cautiously on bare toes amongst the stones along the narrow margin, would pounce upon a plum with a squeal of joy, for although the village was surrounded with orchards, the fruit of Mrs. Prettyman's tree had a flavour all its own.

The tree had been given to her by a nephew who was a gardener in a great fruit orchard in the North, and her husband had planted and tended it for years. It began life as a slender thing with two or three rods of branches, that looked as if the first wind of winter would blow it away, but before the storms came, it had begun to trust itself to the new earth, and to root itself with force and determination. There were good soil and water near it, and plenty of sunshine, and, as is the way of Nature, it set itself to do its own business at all seasons, unlike the distracted heart of man. The traffic of the river came and went; around the headland the big ships were steering in, or going out to sea; and in the village the human life went on while the Plum Tree grew high enough to look over the wall. Its stem by that time had a firm footing; next it took a charming bend to the side, and then again threw out new branches in that direction. It turned itself from the prevailing wind, throwing a new grace into its attitude, and went on growing; returning in blossom and leaves and fruit an hundredfold for all that it received from the earth and the sun.

In spring it was enchanting; at first, before the blossoms came out, with small bright leaves, and buds like pearls, heaped upon the branches; then, later, when the whole tree was white, imaged like a bride, in the looking-glass of the river. It only wanted a nightingale to sing in it by moonlight. There were no nightingales there, but the thrushes sang in the dawning, and the little birds whose voices were sweet and thin chirruped about it in crowds, while the larks, trilling out the ardour of mating time, sometimes rose from their nests in the grass and soared over its topmost branches on their skyward flight.

Spring, therefore, was its merriest time, for then every passer-by would cry, "What a beautiful tree!" or "Did ye ever see the likes of it?"

There were a few days of inevitable sadness a little later when its million petals fell and made a delicate carpet of snow on the ground. There they lay in a kind of fairy ring, as if there had been a shower of mother-of-pearl in the April night; and no human creature would have dared set a vandal foot on that magic circle, and mar the perfection of its beauty. All the same the Plum Tree had lost its petals, and that was hard to bear at first. But though its Wittisham neighbours often said to summer trippers, "I wish you could have seen it in blossom!" the Plum Tree did not repine, because of the secrets--the thousand, thousand secrets--it held under its leaves. "The blossoms were but a promise," it thought, "and soon everybody will see the meaning of them."

Then the tiny green globes began to appear on every branch and twig; crowding, crowding, crowding till it seemed as if there could never be room for so many to grow; but the weaker ones fell from the boughs or were blown away when the wind was fierce, so the Plum Tree felt no anxiety, knowing that it was built for a large family! The little green globes grew and grew, and drank in sweet mother-juices, and swelled, and when the summer sun touched their cheeks all day they flushed and reddened, till when August came the tree was laden with purpling fruit; fruit so tempting that its rosy beauty had sometimes to be hidden under a veil of grey fishing net, lest the myriad bird-friends it had made during the summer should love it too much for its own good.

So the Plum Tree grew and flourished, taking its part in the pageant of the seasons, unaware that its existence was to be interwoven with that of men; or that creatures of another order of being were to owe some changes in their fortunes to its silent obedience to the motive of life.