The Trees of Pride | Page 6

a big,
black-browed youth generally silent, but something seemed now to

sting him into speech.
"Well, sir," he said, "everybody knows it's not natural. Everybody
knows the sea blights trees and beats them under, when they're only
just trees. These things thrive like some unholy great seaweed that don't
belong to the land at all. It's like the--the blessed sea serpent got on
shore, Squire, and eating everything up."
"There is some stupid legend," said Squire Vane gruffly. "But come up
into the garden; I want to introduce you to my daughter."
When, however, they reached the little table under the tree, the
apparently immovable young lady had moved away after all, and it was
some time before they came upon the track of her. She had risen,
though languidly, and wandered slowly along the upper path of the
terraced garden looking down on the lower path where it ran closer to
the main bulk of the little wood by the sea.
Her languor was not a feebleness but rather a fullness of life, like that
of a child half awake; she seemed to stretch herself and enjoy
everything without noticing anything. She passed the wood, into the
gray huddle of which a single white path vanished through a black hole.
Along this part of the terrace ran something like a low rampart or
balustrade, embowered with flowers at intervals; and she leaned over it,
looking down At another glimpse of the glowing sea behind the clump
of trees, and on another irregular path tumbling down to the pier and
the boatman's cottage on the beach.
As she gazed, sleepily enough, she saw that a strange figure was very
actively climbing the path, apparently coming from the fisherman's
cottage; so actively that a moment afterwards it came out between the
trees and stood upon the path just below her. It was not only a figure
strange to her, but one somewhat strange in itself. It was that of a man
still young, and seeming somehow younger than his own clothes, which
were not only shabby but antiquated; clothes common enough in
texture, yet carried in an uncommon fashion. He wore what was
presumably a light waterproof, perhaps through having come off the
sea; but it was held at the throat by one button, and hung, sleeves and
all, more like a cloak than a coat. He rested one bony hand on a black
stick; under the shadow of his broad hat his black hair hung down in a
tuft or two. His face, which was swarthy, but rather handsome in itself,
wore something that may have been a slightly embarrassed smile, but

had too much the appearance of a sneer.
Whether this apparition was a tramp or a trespasser, or a friend of some
of the fishers or woodcutters, Barbara Vane was quite unable to guess.
He removed his hat, still with his unaltered and rather sinister smile,
and said civilly: "Excuse me. The Squire asked me to call." Here he
caught sight of Martin, the woodman, who was shifting along the path,
thinning the thin trees; and the stranger made a familiar salute with one
finger.
The girl did not know what to say. "Have you--have you come about
cutting the wood?" she asked at last.
"I would I were so honest a man," replied the stranger. "Martin is, I
fancy, a distant cousin of mine; we Cornish folk just round here are
nearly all related, you know; but I do not cut wood. I do not cut
anything, except, perhaps, capers. I am, so to speak, a jongleur."
"A what?" asked Barbara.
"A minstrel, shall we say?" answered the newcomer, and looked up at
her more steadily. During a rather odd silence their eyes rested on each
other. What she saw has been already noted, though by her, at any rate,
not in the least understood. What he saw was a decidedly beautiful
woman with a statuesque face and hair that shone in the sun like a
helmet of copper.
"Do you know," he went on, "that in this old place, hundreds of years
ago, a jongleur may really have stood where I stand, and a lady may
really have looked over that wall and thrown him money?"
"Do you want money?" she asked, all at sea.
"Well," drawled the stranger, "in the sense of lacking it, perhaps, but I
fear there is no place now for a minstrel, except nigger minstrel. I must
apologize for not blacking my face."
She laughed a little in her bewilderment, and said: "Well, I hardly think
you need do that."
"You think the natives here are dark enough already, perhaps," he
observed calmly. "After all, we are aborigines, and are treated as such."
She threw out some desperate remark about the weather or