"And old trees in particular," continued the artist, as though to himself, "have very definite personalities. You can offend, wound, please them; the moment you stand within their shade you feel whether they come out to you, or whether they withdraw." He turned abruptly towards his host. "You know that singular essay of Prentice Mulford"s, no doubt "G.o.d in the Trees"--extravagant perhaps, but yet with a fine true beauty in it? You"ve never read it, no?" he asked.
But it was Mrs. Bittacy who answered; her husband keeping his curious deep silence.
"I never did!" It fell like a drip of cold water from the face m.u.f.fled in the yellow shawl; even a child could have supplied the remainder of the unspoken thought.
"Ah," said Sanderson gently, "but there _is_ "G.o.d" in the trees. G.o.d in a very subtle aspect and sometimes--I have known the trees express it too--that which is _not_ G.o.d--dark and terrible. Have you ever noticed, too, how clearly trees show what they want--choose their companions, at least? How beeches, for instance, allow no life too near them--birds or squirrels in their boughs, nor any growth beneath? The silence in the beech wood is quite terrifying often! And how pines like bilberry bushes at their feet and sometimes little oaks--all trees making a clear, deliberate choice, and holding firmly to it? Some trees obviously--it"s very strange and marked--seem to prefer the human."
The old lady sat up crackling, for this was more than she could permit.
Her stiff silk dress emitted little sharp reports.
"We know," she answered, "that He was said to have walked in the garden in the cool of the evening"--the gulp betrayed the effort that it cost her--"but we are nowhere told that He hid in the trees, or anything like that. Trees, after all, we must remember, are only large vegetables."
"True," was the soft answer, "but in everything that grows, has life, that is, there"s mystery past all finding out. The wonder that lies hidden in our own souls lies also hidden, I venture to a.s.sert, in the stupidity and silence of a mere potato."
The observation was not meant to be amusing. It was _not_ amusing. No one laughed. On the contrary, the words conveyed in too literal a sense the feeling that haunted all that conversation. Each one in his own way realized--with beauty, with wonder, with alarm--that the talk had somehow brought the whole vegetable kingdom nearer to that of man. Some link had been established between the two. It was not wise, with that great Forest listening at their very doors, to speak so plainly. The forest edged up closer while they did so.
And Mrs. Bittacy, anxious to interrupt the horrid spell, broke suddenly in upon it with a matter-of-fact suggestion. She did not like her husband"s prolonged silence, stillness. He seemed so negative--so changed.
"David," she said, raising her voice, "I think you"re feeling the dampness. It"s grown chilly. The fever comes so suddenly, you know, and it might be wide to take the tincture. I"ll go and get it, dear, at once. It"s better." And before he could object she had left the room to bring the homeopathic dose that she believed in, and that, to please her, he swallowed by the tumbler-full from week to week.
And the moment the door closed behind her, Sanderson began again, though now in quite a different tone. Mr. Bittacy sat up in his chair. The two men obviously resumed the conversation--the real conversation interrupted beneath the cedar--and left aside the sham one which was so much dust merely thrown in the old lady"s eyes.
"Trees love you, that"s the fact," he said earnestly. "Your service to them all these years abroad has made them know you."
"Know me?"
"Made them, yes,"--he paused a moment, then added,--"made them _aware of your presence_; aware of a force outside themselves that deliberately seeks their welfare, don"t you see?"
"By Jove, Sanderson--!" This put into plain language actual sensations he had felt, yet had never dared to phrase in words before. "They get into touch with me, as it were?" he ventured, laughing at his own sentence, yet laughing only with his lips.
"Exactly," was the quick, emphatic reply. "They seek to blend with something they feel instinctively to be good for them, helpful to their essential beings, encouraging to their best expression--their life."
"Good Lord, Sir!" Bittacy heard himself saying, "but you"re putting my own thoughts into words. D"you know, I"ve felt something like that for years. As though--" he looked round to make sure his wife was not there, then finished the sentence--"as though the trees were after me!"
""Amalgamate" seems the best word, perhaps," said Sanderson slowly.
"They would draw you to themselves. Good forces, you see, always seek to merge; evil to separate; that"s why Good in the end must always win the day--everywhere. The acc.u.mulation in the long run becomes overwhelming.
Evil tends to separation, dissolution, death. The comradeship of trees, their instinct to run together, is a vital symbol. Trees in a ma.s.s are good; alone, you may take it generally, are--well, dangerous. Look at a monkey-puzzler, or better still, a holly. Look at it, watch it, understand it. Did you ever see more plainly an evil thought made visible? They"re wicked. Beautiful too, oh yes! There"s a strange, miscalculated beauty often in evil--"
"That cedar, then--?"
"Not evil, no; but alien, rather. Cedars grow in forests all together.
The poor thing has drifted, that is all."
They were getting rather deep. Sanderson, talking against time, spoke so fast. It was too condensed. Bittacy hardly followed that last bit. His mind floundered among his own less definite, less sorted thoughts, till presently another sentence from the artist startled him into attention again.
"That cedar will protect you here, though, because you both have humanized it by your thinking so lovingly of its presence. The others can"t get past it, as it were."
"Protect me!" he exclaimed. "Protect me from their love?"
Sanderson laughed. "We"re getting rather mixed," he said; "we"re talking of one thing in the terms of another really. But what I mean is--you see--that their love for you, their "awareness" of your personality and presence involves the idea of winning you--across the border--into themselves--into their world of living. It means, in a way, taking you over."
The ideas the artist started in his mind ran furious wild races to and fro. It was like a maze sprung suddenly into movement. The whirling of the intricate lines bewildered him. They went so fast, leaving but half an explanation of their goal. He followed first one, then another, but a new one always dashed across to intercept before he could get anywhere.
"But India," he said, presently in a lower voice, "India is so far away--from this little English forest. The trees, too, are utterly different for one thing?"
The rustle of skirts warned of Mrs. Bittacy"s approach. This was a sentence he could turn round another way in case she came up and pressed for explanation.
"There is communion among trees all the world over," was the strange quick reply. "They always know."
"They always know! You think then--?"
"The winds, you see--the great, swift carriers! They have their ancient rights of way about the world. An easterly wind, for instance, carrying on stage by stage as it were--linking dropped messages and meanings from land to land like the birds--an easterly wind--"
Mrs. Bittacy swept in upon them with the tumbler--
"There, David," she said, "that will ward off any beginnings of attack.
Just a spoonful, dear. Oh, oh! not _all_ !" for he had swallowed half the contents at a single gulp as usual; "another dose before you go to bed, and the balance in the morning, first thing when you wake."
She turned to her guest, who put the tumbler down for her upon a table at his elbow. She had heard them speak of the east wind. She emphasized the warning she had misinterpreted. The private part of the conversation came to an abrupt end.
"It is the one thing that upsets him more than any other--an east wind,"
she said, "and I am glad, Mr. Sanderson, to hear you think so too."
~III~
A deep hush followed, in the middle of which an owl was heard calling its m.u.f.fled note in the forest. A big moth whirred with a soft collision against one of the windows. Mrs. Bittacy started slightly, but no one spoke. Above the trees the stars were faintly visible. From the distance came the barking of a dog.
Bittacy, relighting his cigar, broke the little spell of silence that had caught all three.
"It"s rather a comforting thought," he said, throwing the match out of the window, "that life is about us everywhere, and that there is really no dividing line between what we call organic and inorganic."
"The universe, yes," said Sanderson, "is all one, really. We"re puzzled by the gaps we cannot see across, but as a fact, I suppose, there are no gaps at all."
Mrs. Bittacy rustled ominously, holding her peace meanwhile. She feared long words she did not understand. Beelzebub lay hid among too many syllables.
"In trees and plants especially, there dreams an exquisite life that no one yet has proved unconscious."
"Or conscious either, Mr. Sanderson," she neatly interjected. "It"s only man that was made after His image, not shrubberies and things...."
Her husband interposed without delay.
"It is not necessary," he explained suavely, "to say that they"re alive in the sense that we are alive. At the same time," with an eye to his wife, "I see no harm in holding, dear, that all created things contain some measure of His life Who made them. It"s only beautiful to hold that He created nothing dead. We are not pantheists for all that!" he added soothingly.
"Oh, no! Not that, I hope!" The word alarmed her. It was worse than pope. Through her puzzled mind stole a stealthy, dangerous thing ...
like a panther.