The Trees of Pride | Page 5

that the sight appeared to which so many eyes and minds
seemed to be almost automatically turning.
Out of the middle of this low, and more or less level wood, rose three
separate stems that shot up and soared into the sky like a lighthouse out
of the waves or a church spire out of the village roofs. They formed a
clump of three columns close together, which might well be the mere
bifurcation, or rather trifurcation, of one tree, the lower part being lost
or sunken in the thick wood around. Everything about them suggested
something stranger and more southern than anything even in that last
peninsula of Britain which pushes out farthest toward Spain and Africa
and the southern stars. Their leathery leafage had sprouted in advance
of the faint mist of yellow-green around them, and it was of another
and less natural green, tinged with blue, like the colors of a kingfisher.
But one might fancy it the scales of some three-headed dragon towering
over a herd of huddled and fleeing cattle.
"I am exceedingly sorry your girl is so unwell," said Vane shortly. "But
really--" and he strode down the steep road with plunging strides.
The boat was already secured to the little stone jetty, and the boatman,
a younger shadow of the woodcutter-- and, indeed, a nephew of that
useful malcontent--saluted his territorial lord with the sullen formality
of the family. The Squire acknowledged it casually and had soon
forgotten all such things in shaking hands with the visitor who had just
come ashore. The visitor was a long, loose man, very lean to be so
young, whose long, fine features seemed wholly fitted together of bone
and nerve, and seemed somehow to contrast with his hair, that showed
in vivid yellow patches upon his hollow temples under the brim of his
white holiday hat. He was carefully dressed in exquisite taste, though
he had come straight from a considerable sea voyage; and he carried
something in his hand which in his long European travels, and even
longer European visits, he had almost forgotten to call a gripsack.
Mr. Cyprian Paynter was an American who lived in Italy. There was a
good deal more to be said about him, for he was a very acute and

cultivated gentleman; but those two facts would, perhaps, cover most of
the others. Storing his mind like a museum with the wonder of the Old
World, but all lit up as by a window with the wonder of the New, he
had fallen heir to some thing of the unique critical position of Ruskin or
Pater, and was further famous as a discoverer of minor poets. He was a
judicious discoverer, and he did not turn all his minor poets into major
prophets. If his geese were swans, they were not all Swans of Avon. He
had even incurred the deadly suspicion of classicism by differing from
his young friends, the Punctuist Poets, when they produced
versification consisting exclusively of commas and colons. He had a
more humane sympathy with the modern flame kindled from the
embers of Celtic mythology, and it was in reality the recent appearance
of a Cornish poet, a sort of parallel to the new Irish poets, which had
brought him on this occasion to Cornwall. He was, indeed, far too
well-mannered to allow a host to guess that any pleasure was being
sought outside his own hospitality. He had a long standing invitation
from Vane, whom he had met in Cyprus in the latter's days of
undiplomatic diplomacy; and Vane was not aware that relations had
only been thus renewed after the critic had read Merlin and Other
Verses, by a new writer named John Treherne. Nor did the Squire even
begin to realize the much more diplomatic diplomacy by which he had
been induced to invite the local bard to lunch on the very day of the
American critic's arrival.
Mr. Paynter was still standing with his gripsack, gazing in a trance of
true admiration at the hollowed crags, topped by the gray, grotesque
wood, and crested finally by the three fantastic trees.
"It is like being shipwrecked on the coast of fairyland," he said,
"I hope you haven't been shipwrecked much," replied his host, smiling.
"I fancy Jake here can look after you very well."
Mr. Paynter looked across at the boatman and smiled also. "I am
afraid," he said, "our friend is not quite so enthusiastic for this
landscape as I am."
"Oh, the trees, I suppose!" said the Squire wearily.
The boatman was by normal trade a fisherman; but as his house, built
of black tarred timber, stood right on the foreshore a few yards from the
pier, he was employed in such cases as a sort of ferryman. He was