The Trees of Pride | Page 3

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Etext prepared by Dianne Bean of Phoenix, Arizona.

The Trees of Pride
by Gilbert K. Chesterton

THE TREES OF PRIDE: I. THE TALE OF THE PEACOCK TREES
II. THE WAGER OF SQUIRE VANE III. THE MYSTERY OF THE
WELL IV. THE CHASE AFTER THE TRUTH

THE TREES OF PRIDE
I. THE TALE OF THE PEACOCK TREES
Squire Vane was an elderly schoolboy of English education and Irish
extraction. His English education, at one of the great public schools,
had preserved his intellect perfectly and permanently at the stage of
boyhood. But his Irish extraction subconsciously upset in him the
proper solemnity of an old boy, and sometimes gave him back the
brighter outlook of a naughty boy. He had a bodily impatience which
played tricks upon him almost against his will, and had already
rendered him rather too radiant a failure in civil and diplomatic service.
Thus it is true that compromise is the key of British policy, especially
as effecting an impartiality among the religions of India; but Vane's
attempt to meet the Moslem halfway by kicking off one boot at the
gates of the mosque, was felt not so much to indicate true impartiality
as something that could only be called an aggressive indifference.
Again, it is true that an English aristocrat can hardly enter fully into the
feelings of either party in a quarrel between a Russian Jew and an
Orthodox procession carrying relics; but Vane's idea that the procession
might carry the Jew as well, himself a venerable and historic relic, was
misunderstood on both sides. In short, he was a man who particularly
prided himself on having no nonsense about him; with the result that he
was always doing nonsensical things. He seemed to be standing on his
head merely to prove that he was hard-headed.
He had just finished a hearty breakfast, in the society of his daughter, at
a table under a tree in his garden by the Cornish coast. For, having a
glorious circulation, he insisted on as many outdoor meals as possible,
though spring had barely touched the woods and warmed the seas
round that southern extremity of England. His daughter Barbara, a

good-looking girl with heavy red hair and a face as grave as one of the
garden statues, still sat almost motionless as a statue when her father
rose. A fine tall figure in light clothes, with his white hair and mustache
flying backwards rather fiercely from a face that was good-humored
enough, for he carried his very wide Panama hat in his hand, he strode
across the terraced garden, down some stone steps flanked with old
ornamental urns to a more woodland path fringed with little trees, and
so down a zigzag road which descended the craggy Cliff to the shore,
where he was to meet a guest arriving by boat. A yacht was already in