II. THE WAGER OF SQUIRE VANE
It was more than a month before the legend of the peacock trees wasagain discussed in the Squire's circle. It fell out one evening, whenhis eccentric taste for meals in the garden that gathered the companyround the same table, now lit with a lamp and laid out for dinner in aglowing spring twilight. It was even the same company, for in the fewweeks intervening they had insensibly grown more and more into eachother's lives, forming a little group like a club. The American aesthetewas of course the most active agent, his resolution to pluck out theheart of the Cornish poet's mystery leading him again and again toinfluence his flighty host for such reunions. Even Mr. Ashe, the lawyer,seemed to have swallowed his half-humorous prejudices; and the doctor,though a rather sad and silent, was a companionable and considerate man.Paynter had even read Treherne's poetry aloud, and he read admirably;he had also read other things, not aloud, grubbing up everything in theneighborhood, from guidebooks to epitaphs, that could throw a light onlocal antiquities. And it was that evening when the lamplight and thelast daylight had kindled the colors of the wine and silver on the tableunder the tree, that he announced a new discovery.
"Say, Squire," he remarked, with one of his rare Americanisms, "aboutthose bogey trees of yours; I don't believe you know half the tales toldround here about them. It seems they have a way of eating things. Notthat I have any ethical objection to eating things," he continued,helping himself elegantly to green cheese. "But I have more or less,broadly speaking, an objection to eating people."
"Eating people!" repeated Barbara Vane.
"I know a globe-trotter mustn't be fastidious," replied Mr. Paynter."But I repeat firmly, an objection to eating people. The peacock treesseem to have progressed since the happy days of innocence when they onlyate peacocks. If you ask the people here--the fisherman who lives onthat beach, or the man that mows this very lawn in front of us--they'lltell you tales taller than any tropical one I brought you from theBarbary Coast. If you ask them what happened to the fisherman Peters,who got drunk on All Hallows Eve, they'll tell you he lost his wayin that little wood, tumbled down asleep under the wicked trees, andthen--evaporated, vanished, was licked up like dew by the sun. If youask them where Harry Hawke is, the widow's little son, they'll just tellyou he's swallowed; that he was dared to climb the trees and sit thereall night, and did it. What the trees did God knows; the habits of avegetable ogre leave one a little vague. But they even add the agreeabledetail that a new branch appears on the tree when somebody has peteredout in this style."
"What new nonsense is this?" cried Vane. "I know there's some crazy yarnabout the trees spreading fever, though every educated man knows whythese epidemics return occasionally. And I know they say you can tellthe noise of them among other trees in a gale, and I dare say you can.But even Cornwall isn't a lunatic asylum, and a tree that dines on apassing tourist--"
"Well, the two tales are reconcilable enough," put in the poet quietly."If there were a magic that killed men when they came close, it's likelyto strike them with sickness when they stand far off. In the old romancethe dragon, that devours people, often blasts others with a sort ofpoisonous breath."
Ashe looked across at the speaker steadily, not to say stonily.
"Do I understand," he inquired, "that you swallow the swallowing treestoo?"
Treherne's dark smile was still on the defensive; his fencing alwaysannoyed the other, and he seemed not without malice in the matter.
"Swallowing is a metaphor," he said, "about me, if not about the trees.And metaphors take us at once into dreamland--no bad place, either. Thisgarden, I think, gets more and more like a dream at this corner of theday and night, that might lead us anywhere."
The yellow horn of the moon had appeared silently and as if suddenlyover the black horns of the seaweed, seeming to announce as nightsomething which till then had been evening. A night breeze came inbetween the trees and raced stealthily across the turf, and as theyceased speaking they heard, not only the seething grass, but the seaitself move and sound in all the cracks and caves round them and belowthem and on every side. They all felt the note that had been struck--theAmerican as an art critic and the poet as a poet; and the Squire, whobelieved himself boiling with an impatience purely rational, did notreally understand his own impatience. In him, more perhaps than theothers--more certainly than he knew himself--the sea wind went to thehead like wine.
"Credulity is a curious thing," went on Treherne in a low voice. "Itis more negative than positive, and yet it is infinite. Hundreds of menwill avoid walking under a ladder; they don't know where the door of theladder will lead. They don't really think God would throw a thunderboltat them for such a thing. They don't know what would happen, that isjust the point; but yet they step aside as from a precipice. So the poorpeople here may or may not believe anything; they don't go into thosetrees at night."
"I walk under a ladder whenever I can," cried Vane, in quite unnecessaryexcitement.
"You belong to a Thirteen Club," said the poet. "You walk under a ladderon Friday to dine thirteen at a table, everybody spilling the salt. Buteven you don't go into those trees at night."
Squire Vane stood up, his silver hair flaming in the wind.
"I'll stop all night in your tomfool wood and up your tomfool trees,"he said. "I'll do it for twopence or two thousand pounds, if anyone willtake the bet."
Without waiting for reply, he snatched up his wide white hat and settledit on with a fierce gesture, and had gone off in great leonine stridesacross the lawn before anyone at the table could move.
The stillness was broken by Miles, the butler, who dropped and brokeone of the plates he carried. He stood looking after his master withhis long, angular chin thrust out, looking yellower where it caught theyellow light of the lamp below. His face was thus sharply in shadow, butPaynter fancied for a moment it was convulsed by some passion passingsurprise. But the face was quite as usual when it turned, and Paynterrealized that a night of fancies had begun, like the cross purposes ofthe "Midsummer Night's Dream."
The wood of the strange trees, toward which the Squire was walking, layso far forward on the headland, which ultimately almost overhung thesea, that it could be approached by only one path, which shone clearlylike a silver ribbon in the twilight. The ribbon ran along the edge ofthe cliff, where the single row of deformed trees ran beside it all theway, and eventually plunged into the closer mass of trees by one naturalgateway, a mere gap in the wood, looking dark, like a lion's mouth. Whatbecame of the path inside could not be seen, but it doubtless led roundthe hidden roots of the great central trees. The Squire was alreadywithin a yard or two of this dark entry when his daughter rose from thetable and took a step or two after him as if to call him back.
Treherne had also risen, and stood as if dazed at the effect of his idledefiance. When Barbara moved he seemed to recover himself, and steppingafter her, said something which Paynter did not hear. He said itcasually and even distantly enough, but it clearly suggested somethingto her mind; for, after a moment's thought, she nodded and walked back,not toward the table, but apparently toward the house. Paynter lookedafter her with a momentary curiosity, and when he turned again theSquire had vanished into the hole in the wood.
"He's gone," said Treherne, with a clang of finality in his tones, likethe slamming of a door.
"Well, suppose he has?" cried the lawyer, roused at the voice. "TheSquire can go into his own wood, I suppose! What the devil's all thefuss about, Mr. Paynter? Don't tell me you think there's any harm inthat plantation of sticks."
"No, I don't," said Paynter, throwing one leg over another and lightinga cigar. "But I shall stop here till he comes out."
"Very well," said Ashe shortly, "I'll stop with you, if only to see theend of this farce."
The doctor said nothing, but he also kept his seat and accepted one ofthe American's cigars. If Treherne had been attending to the matter hemight have noted, with his sardonic superstition, a curious fact--that,while all three men were ta
citly condemning themselves to stay out allnight if necessary, all, by one blank omission or oblivion, assumed thatit was impossible to follow their host into the wood just in front ofthem. But Treherne, though still in the garden, had wandered away fromthe garden table, and was pacing along the single line of trees againstthe dark sea. They had in their regular interstices, showing the seaas through a series of windows, something of the look of the ghost orskeleton of a cloister, and he, having thrown his coat once more overhis neck, like a cape, passed to and fro like the ghost of some not verysane monk.
All these men, whether skeptics or mystics, looked back for the rest oftheir lives on that
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