From the Millennial Star, October 1944 —

Fruit

By Edith Russell

Did you ever see Covent Garden in peace-time, shortly after dawn, when the streets of London still have a mystery about them? And seen the great pyramids of fruit, and smelled the tang of. oranges from Jaffa, and been delighted with the colour, the noise, the amazing activity of it all?

Did you ever see the young apple-girl whose cheeks are firm and red, and who sparkles at the tall young man in the cap and soiled buff coat? There is a nice sense of appropriateness about her selling apples. Her flesh is rather like that of a pippin, white and firm. She is raw-green fruit, but the man in the cap is too young to have his teeth set on edge. He smiles on her under his load of odorous vegetables and she shows her teeth and tosses her head in response. He is thinking of how, when he was a lad, he stole apples. He was a pretty good thief – still is!

And the woman who sells peaches and grapes, squatting on an upturned orange box. Did you ever see her? She is enormous and has a way of looking warm in a faintly unclean fashion. She suggests she was quite beautiful once. Her husband is a coarse, blear-eyed man. whose Dreath is reminiscent of the “Dog and Gun.” He sometimes holds the bag for his spouse to put the peaches in. He is obviously very much afraid . of her. They have a child which sleeps in a decrepit perambulator and which cries occasionally. Did you ever see a peach fall into the gutter, and lie there, over-ripe, disgusting, ground under the heel of humanity? This peach woman . . . there is something about her. . .

There is a little boy. too. who always seems to be there. His mother has a sweet smile, and the loud bass voice of a man- He darts about, ducking beneath the carts, between the multitudinous leg of men with baskets. Sometimes he evokes a curse, sometimes a shout and a laugh. He has old wise eyes, and the body of an elf. He isn’t fruit yet, not even young, green fruit. He is scarcely the flower. Sometimes just a tiny grain of pollen on the wing of a bee. He hides behind sacks of turnips and bruises his knees on wooden crates. His mother scolds him in her deep, absurd voice, and looks at him as Mary must have looked at the infant Christ.

It was he who made me ask if you ever saw Covent Garden. There is Life there, and Death, and the promise of Eternity. It is a perpetual Harvest Home. There is Life in those delicious mountains of apples and oranges, melons and peaches, nuts and vegetables. There is the warm, unsullied breath of the soil in them, the vitality of God’s sunshine, the pulsing sap drunk from the spilling of His rain-clouds. There is the toil of men’s hands, the patience of their hearts, the aching of their backs, piled tier on tier upon the unlovely carts. There is the first ripple of scented Spring upon the orchards, the heat of Summer, the brown after-glow of Autumn, the white nudity of Winter – in one small apple.

Did you ever feel just a hint of sadness, while your voice praised God for Harvest Home? Did you ever wish that it could always be Eternal Spring, that the fruit might never drop off the tree? Did you ever enquire, with a certain hopelessness, why the elf-boy and the apple-girl and the peach-woman were necessary to that wonderful economy which is God’s and wholly comprehensible to Him alone?

If there was not Autumn, there would be no Spring. If there was no ripe fruit there would be no seed. And if the seed were not planted and lost to the eye of man through the regenerating days of Autumn and Winter, there would be no awakening, no Resurrection.

There must always be the seed, the flower, the fruit – and the miracle of the bee’s wing. And the only guarantee of the eternal Spring lies in the russet heart of Autumn.

-ooOoo-

We lose an Associate of the Star Office

Sister Edith Russell, who has been in the Star Office for the past twelve months, has been released from her mission to return home. Sister Russell came to the mission with unusual ability and training in the field of journalism, and while acting as Associate Editor of the Millennial Star has supplied a much needed touch, the Lady’s touch, to the publication and to the office. The Star has been in continuous publication now for one hundred and five years, and in all of that time has had only one woman on the editorial staff. This is a very proud distinction, and the issues of the Star, which have been published under her direction, will stand as a testimonial to her ability and devotion to duty. She leaves with the love and confidence of the mission office staff, and will be missed by all of the readers of the Star in Britain and in the United States. We are sure she has a great future in her chosen profession, and we shall watch with interest the course of her career. We hope to receive articles from her for publication in the Star which she has grown to love with almost maternal affection.