The Man Whom the Trees Loved | Page 4

with its august, deep splendor
despised and pitied them. They were a thing of artificial gardens, and
belonged to beds of flowers all forced to grow one way....
"I'd like to know that artist fellow better," was the thought upon which
he returned at length to the things of practical life. "I wonder if Sophia
would mind him for a bit--?" He rose with the sound of the gong,
brushing the ashes from his speckled waistcoat. He pulled the waistcoat
down. He was slim and spare in figure, active in his movements. In the
dim light, but for that silvery moustache, he might easily have passed
for a man of forty. "I'll suggest it to her anyhow," he decided on his
way upstairs to dress. His thought really was that Sanderson could
probably explain his world of things he had always felt about--trees. A
man who could paint the soul of a cedar in that way must know it all.
"Why not?" she gave her verdict later over the bread-and-butter
pudding; "unless you think he'd find it dull without companions."
"He would paint all day in the Forest, dear. I'd like to pick his brains a
bit, too, if I could manage it."
"You can manage anything, David," was what she answered, for this
elderly childless couple used an affectionate politeness long since
deemed old-fashioned. The remark, however, displeased her, making
her feel uneasy, and she did not notice his rejoinder, smiling his
pleasure and content--"Except yourself and our bank account, my
dear." This passion of his for trees was of old a bone of contention,
though very mild contention. It frightened her. That was the truth. The
Bible, her Baedeker for earth and heaven, did not mention it. Her
husband, while humoring her, could never alter that instinctive dread

she had. He soothed, but never changed her. She liked the woods,
perhaps as spots for shade and picnics, but she could not, as he did,
love them.
And after dinner, with a lamp beside the open window, he read aloud
from _ The Times_ the evening post had brought, such fragments as he
thought might interest her. The custom was invariable, except on
Sundays, when, to please his wife, he dozed over Tennyson or Farrar as
their mood might be. She knitted while he read, asked gentle questions,
told him his voice was a "lovely reading voice," and enjoyed the little
discussions that occasions prompted because he always let her with
them with "Ah, Sophia, I had never thought of it quite in that way
before; but now you mention it I must say I think there's something in
it...."
For David Bittacy was wise. It was long after marriage, during his
months of loneliness spent with trees and forests in India, his wife
waiting at home in the Bungalow, that his other, deeper side had
developed the strange passion that she could not understand. And after
one or two serious attempts to let her share it with him, he had given up
and learned to hide it from her. He learned, that is, to speak of it only
casually, for since she knew it was there, to keep silence altogether
would only increase her pain. So from time to time he skimmed the
surface just to let her show him where he was wrong and think she won
the day. It remained a debatable land of compromise. He listened with
patience to her criticisms, her excursions and alarms, knowing that
while it gave her satisfaction, it could not change himself. The thing lay
in him too deep and true for change. But, for peace' sake, some
meeting-place was desirable, and he found it thus.
It was her one fault in his eyes, this religious mania carried over from
her upbringing, and it did no serious harm. Great emotion could shake
it sometimes out of her. She clung to it because her father taught it her
and not because she had thought it out for herself. Indeed, like many
women, she never really thought at all, but merely reflected the images
of others' thinking which she had learned to see. So, wise in his
knowledge of human nature, old David Bittacy accepted the pain of
being obliged to keep a portion of his inner life shut off from the
woman he deeply loved. He regarded her little biblical phrases as
oddities that still clung to a rather fine, big soul--like horns and little

useless things some animals have not yet lost in the course of evolution
while they have outgrown their use.
"My dear, what is it? You frightened me!" She asked it suddenly,
sitting up so abruptly that her cap dropped sideways almost to her ear.
For David Bittacy behind his crackling paper had uttered a sharp
exclamation of surprise.