The Man Whom the Trees Loved | Page 8

had not lessened her alarm. Her husband made no comment; his cigar, she noticed, had gone out.
"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 'God 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 muffled in the yellow shawl; even a child could have supplied the remainder of the unspoken thought.
"Ah," said Sanderson gently, "but there is 'God' in the trees. God in a very subtle aspect and sometimes--I have known the trees express it too--that which is not God--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 assert, 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