There are still a few apples on the topmost branches of the trees in the
orchard. They are there because David, the labourer, who used to come and
lend us a hand in his odd hours--chiefly when the moon was up--is no longer
available. You may remember how David opened his heart to me about
enlisting when he stood on the ladder picking the pears last year. He did
not like to go and he did not like to stay. All the other chaps had gone,
and he didn't feel comfortable like in being left behind, but there was his
mother and his wife and his Aunt Jane, and not a man to do a hand's turn
for 'em or to dig their gardens if he went. And there was the
allotment--that 'ud run to weeds. And ...
Well, the allotment has run to weeds. I passed it to-day and looked over
the hedge and saw the chickweed and the thistles in undisputed possession.
For David has gone. "It will take a long time to turn him into a soldier,"
we said when we saw him leave his thatched roof last spring to join up, and
watched him shambling down the lane to the valley and the distant station.
"The war will be over before he gets into the trenches," I said cheerfully
to his wife, his mother, and Aunt Jane as they sat later in the day
mingling their tears in the "parlour"--that apartment sacred to Sundays,
funerals, and weddings. "Poor boy, what'll he do without his comfortable
bed?" moaned his mother.
But by May there came news that David was in France. By June he was in the
trenches, and woe sat heavy on the three women to whom the world without
David was an empty place.
Then came silence. The postman comes up the lane on his bicycle to our
straggling hamlet on the hillside twice a day, and after David had gone his
visits to the cottages of the three women had been frequent. Sometimes he
put his bicycle at the mother's gate, sometimes at David's gate, less often
at Aunt Jane's gate. For David was an industrious correspondent, even
though his letters were a laborious compromise between crosses and "hoping
you are well as it leaves me at present."
But in August the postman ceased to call. Long before his hour you could
see the three women watching for his coming. I think the postman got to
dread turning the corner and facing the expectant women with empty hands.
He could not help feeling that somehow he was to blame. At first he would
stop and point out elaborately the reasons for delay in the post. Then,
when this had become thin with time, he adopted the expedient of riding
past the cottages very hard with eyes staring far ahead, as though he was
going to a fire or was the bearer of an important dispatch.
But at the end of a fortnight or so he came round the corner one morning
more in the old style. The women observed the change and went out to meet
him. But their faces fell as they looked at the letter and saw that the
handwriting was not David's. And the contents were as bad as they could be.
The letter was from a lad in the valley who had "joined up" with David. He
wrote from a hospital asking for news of his comrade, whom he had seen
"knocked over" in the advance in which he himself had been wounded.
For the rest of the day, it was observed, the cottage doors were never
opened. Nor did any one venture to break in on the misery of the women
inside. The parson's wife came up in her gig from the valley, having heard
the news, but she did not call. She only talked to the neighbours, who had
had the details from the postman. Every one felt the news like a personal
blow, and even the widow Wigley, who lives down in the valley, was full of
sympathy. She had never quite got over her resentment at the funeral of
David's father. Her own husband had been carried to his grave on a
hand-bier, but at the funeral of David's father there was a horse-drawn
hearse and a carriage for the mourners. "They were always _such_ people for
show," said Mrs. Wigley. And the memory had rankled. But now it was buried.
Next day we saw the mother and the wife set out down the lane for the
village post-office, and thereafter daily they went to await the arrival of
letters, returning each day silent and hopeless. At last, in reply to
inquiries which had been made at the War Office, there came the official
statement that David had been reported "wounded and missing." We learned
that this usually meant that the man was dead, but the women did not know
this.
And, curiously enough, David's mother, who had been the most despairing of
women, and seemed to regard David as dead even before he started, now
discovered a genius for hopefulness. She had heard of a case from a
neighbouring village of a man who had been reported dead, and who
afterwards wrote from a prison camp in Germany, and she clung to this
precedent with a confident tenacity that we did not try to weaken. It was
foolish, of course, we said. She was pinning her faith to a case in a
thousand; but the hope gave the women something to live for, and the wound
would heal the better for the illusion.
And, after all, she was right. This morning we saw the postman call at the
cottage. He handed a post card to the wife, and it was evident that
something wonderful and radiant had happened. The women fell on each other
"laughing happy." No more going into the house to shut the door on the
world. They came out to share the great tidings with their neighbours.
"David is alive! David is a prisoner in Germany.... He's wounded.... But
he's going on all right.... He can't write yet.... But he will."
Yes, there was the post card all right. The English was not very good and
the script was German, but the fact that David was alive in hospital shone
clear and indisputable.
"It's as though he's raised from the dead," cried the wife through her
tears.
The joy of the old mother was touched with solemnity. She is a great
chapel-goer, and her utterance is naturally coloured by the Book with which
she is most familiar.
"My son was dead, and is alive again," she said simply; "he was lost and is
found."
When I went out into the orchard and saw the red-cheeked apples still
clinging to the topmost branches I thought, "Perhaps David will be able to
lend me a hand with those trees next autumn after all."