THE MAN

WHOM THE TREES LOVED

ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

1912

~I~

He painted trees as by some special divining instinct of their essentialqualities. He understood them. He knew why in an oak forest, forinstance, each individual was utterly distinct from its fellows, and whyno two beeches in the whole world were alike. People asked him down topaint a favorite lime or silver birch, for he caught the individualityof a tree as some catch the individuality of a horse. How he managed itwas something of a puzzle, for he never had painting lessons, hisdrawing was often wildly inaccurate, and, while his perception of a TreePersonality was true and vivid, his rendering of it might almostapproach the ludicrous. Yet the character and personality of thatparticular tree stood there alive beneath his brush--shining, frowning, dreaming, as the case might be, friendly or hostile, good or evil. Itemerged. 

There was nothing else in the wide world that he could paint; flowersand landscapes he only muddled away into a smudge; with people he washelpless and hopeless; also with animals. Skies he could sometimesmanage, or effects of wind in foliage, but as a rule he left these allseverely alone. He kept to trees, wisely following an instinct that wasguided by love. It was quite arresting, this way he had of making a treelook almost like a being--alive. It approached the uncanny. 

"Yes, Sanderson knows what he's doing when he paints a tree!" thoughtold David Bittacy, C. B. , late of the Woods and Forests. "Why, you canalmost hear it rustle. You can smell the thing. You can hear the raindrip through its leaves. You can almost see the branches move. Itgrows. " For in this way somewhat he expressed his satisfaction, half topersuade himself that the twenty guineas were well spent (since his wifethought otherwise), and half to explain this uncanny reality of lifethat lay in the fine old cedar framed above his study table. 

Yet in the general view the mind of Mr. Bittacy was held to be austere, not to say morose. Few divined in him the secretly tenacious love ofnature that had been fostered by years spent in the forests and junglesof the eastern world. It was odd for an Englishman, due possibly to thatEurasian ancestor. Surreptitiously, as though half ashamed of it, he hadkept alive a sense of beauty that hardly belonged to his type, and wasunusual for its vitality. Trees, in particular, nourished it. He, also, understood trees, felt a subtle sense of communion with them, bornperhaps of those years he had lived in caring for them, guarding, protecting, nursing, years of solitude among their great shadowypresences. He kept it largely to himself, of course, because he knew theworld he lived in. HE also kept it from his wife--to some extent. Heknew it came between them, knew that she feared it, was opposed. Butwhat he did not know, or realize at any rate, was the extent to whichshe grasped the power which they wielded over his life. Her fear, hejudged, was simply due to those years in India, when for weeks at a timehis calling took him away from her into the jungle forests, while sheremained at home dreading all manner of evils that might befall him. This, of course, explained her instinctive opposition to the passion forwoods that still influenced and clung to him. It was a natural survivalof those anxious days of waiting in solitude for his safe return. 

For Mrs. Bittacy, daughter of an evangelical clergy-man, was aself-sacrificing woman, who in most things found a happy duty in sharingher husband's joys and sorrows to the point of self-obliteration. Onlyin this matter of the trees she was less successful than in others. Itremained a problem difficult of compromise. 

He knew, for instance, that what she objected to in this portrait of thecedar on their lawn was really not the price he had given for it, butthe unpleasant way in which the transaction emphasized this breachbetween their common interests--the only one they had, but deep. 

Sanderson, the artist, earned little enough money by his strange talent;such checks were few and far between. The owners of fine or interestingtrees who cared to have them painted singly were rare indeed, and the"studies" that he made for his own delight he also kept for his owndelight. Even were there buyers, he would not sell them. Only a few, andthese peculiarly intimate friends, might even see them, for he dislikedto hear the undiscerning criticisms of those who did not understand. Notthat he minded laughter at his craftsmanship--he admitted it withscorn--but that remarks about the personality of the tree itself couldeasily wound or anger him. He resented slighting observations concerningthem, as though insults offered to personal friends who could not answerfor themselves. He was instantly up in arms. 

"It really is extraordinary, " said a Woman who Understood, "that you canmake that cypress seem an individual, when in reality all cypresses areso _exactly_ alike. "

And though the bit of calculated flattery had come so near to saying theright, true, thing, Sanderson flushed as though she had slighted afriend beneath his very nose. Abruptly he passed in front of her andturned the picture to the wall. 

"Almost as queer, " he answered rudely, copying her silly emphasis, "asthat _you_ should have imagined individuality in your husband, Madame, when in reality all men are so _exactly_ alike!"

Since the only thing that differentiated her husband from the mob wasthe money for which she had married him, Sanderson's relations with thatparticular family terminated on the spot, chance of prospective orderswith it. His sensitiveness, perhaps, was morbid. At any rate the way toreach his heart lay through his trees. He might be said to love trees. He certainly drew a splendid inspiration from them, and the source of aman's inspiration, be it music, religion, or a woman, is never a safething to criticize. 

"I do think, perhaps, it was just a little extravagant, dear, " said Mrs. Bittacy, referring to the cedar check, "when we want a lawnmower sobadly too. But, as it gives you such pleasure--"

"It reminds me of a certain day, Sophia, " replied the old gentleman, looking first proudly at herself, then fondly at the picture, "now longgone by. It reminds me of another tree--that Kentish lawn in the spring, birds singing in the lilacs, and some one in a muslin frock waitingpatiently beneath a certain cedar--not the one in the picture, I know, but--"

"I was not waiting, " she said indignantly, "I was picking fir-cones forthe schoolroom fire--"

"Fir-cones, my dear, do not grow on cedars, and schoolroom fires werenot made in June in my young days. "

"And anyhow it isn't the same cedar. "

"It has made me fond of all cedars for its sake, " he answered, "and itreminds me that you are the same young girl still--"

She crossed the room to his side, and together they looked out of thewindow where, upon the lawn of their Hampshire cottage, a ragged Lebanonstood in a solitary state. 

"You're as full of dreams as ever, " she said gently, "and I don't regretthe check a bit--really. Only it would have been more real if it hadbeen the original tree, wouldn't it?"

"That was blown down years ago. I passed the place last year, andthere's not a sign of it left, " he replied tenderly. And presently, whenhe released her from his side, she went up to the wall and carefullydusted the picture Sanderson had made of the cedar on their presentlawn. She went all round the frame with her tiny handkerchief, standingon tiptoe to reach the top rim. 

"What I like about it, " said the old fellow to himself when his wife hadleft the room, "is the way he has made it live. All trees have it, ofcourse, but a cedar taught it to me first--the 'something' trees possessthat make them know I'm there when I stand close and watch. I suppose Ifelt it then because I was in love, and love reveals life everywhere. "He glanced a moment at the Lebanon looming gaunt and somber through thegathering dusk. A curious wistful expression danced a moment through hiseyes. "Yes, Sanderson has seen it as it is, " he murmured, "solemnlydreaming there its dim hidden life against the Forest edge, and asdifferent from that other tree in Kent as I am from--from the vicar, say. It's quite a stranger, too. I don't know anything about it really. That other cedar I loved; this old fellow I respect. Friendlythough--yes, on the whole quite friendly. He's painted the friendlinessright enough. He saw that. I'd like to know that man better, " he added. "I'd like to ask him how he saw so clearly that it stands there betweenthis cottage and the Forest--yet somehow more in sympathy with us thanwith the mass of woods behind--a sort of go-between. _That_ I nevernoticed before. I see it now--through his eyes. It stands there like asentinel--protective rather. "

He turned away abruptly to look through the window. He saw the greatencircling mass of gloom that was the Forest, fringing their littlelawn. It pressed up closer in the darkness. The prim garden with itsformal beds of flowers seemed an impertinence almost--some littlecolored insect that sought to settle on a sleeping monster--some gaudyfly that danced impudently down the edge of a great river that couldengulf it with a toss of its smallest wave. That Forest with itsthousand years of growth and its deep spreading being was some suchslumbering monster, yes. Their cottage and garden stood too near itsrunning lip. When the winds were strong and lifted its shadowy skirts ofblack and purple. .. . He loved this feeling of the Forest Personality; hehad always loved it. 

"Queer, " he reflected, "awfully queer, that trees should bring me such asense of dim, vast living! I used to feel it particularly, I remember, in India; in Canadian woods as well; but never in little English woodstill here. And Sanderson's the only man I ever knew who felt it too. He's never said so, but there's the proof, " and he turned again to thepicture that he loved. A thrill of unaccustomed life ran through him ashe looked. "I wonder; by Jove, I wonder, " his thoughts ran on, "whethera tree--er--in any lawful meaning of the term can be--alive. I remembersome writing fellow telling me long ago that trees had once been movingthings, animal organisms of some sort, that had stood so long feeding, sleeping, dreaming, or something, in the same place, that they had lostthe power to get away. .. !"

Fancies flew pell-mell about his mind, and, lighting a cheroot, hedropped into an armchair beside the open window and let them play. Outside the blackbirds whistled in the shrubberies across the lawn. Hesmelt the earth and trees and flowers, the perfume of mown grass, andthe bits of open heath-land far away in the heart of the woods. Thesummer wind stirred very faintly through the leaves. But the great NewForest hardly raised her sweeping skirts of black and purple shadow. 

Mr. Bittacy, however, knew intimately every detail of that wilderness oftrees within. He knew all the purple coombs splashed with yellow wavesof gorse; sweet with juniper and myrtle, and gleaming with clear anddark-eyed pools that watched the sky. There hawks hovered, circling hourby hour, and the flicker of the peewit's flight with its melancholy, petulant cry, deepened the sense of stillness. He knew the solitarypines, dwarfed, tufted, vigorous, that sang to every lost wind, travelers like the gypsies who pitched their bush-like tents beneaththem; he knew the shaggy ponies, with foals like baby centaurs; thechattering jays, the milky call of the cuckoos in the spring, and theboom of the bittern from the lonely marshes. The undergrowth of watchinghollies, he knew too, strange and mysterious, with their dark, suggestive beauty, and the yellow shimmer of their pale dropped leaves. 

Here all the Forest lived and breathed in safety, secure frommutilation. No terror of the axe could haunt the peace of its vastsubconscious life, no terror of devastating Man afflict it with thedread of premature death. It knew itself supreme; it spread and preeneditself without concealment. It set no spires to carry warnings, for nowind brought messages of alarm as it bulged outwards to the sun andstars. 

But, once its leafy portals left behind, the trees of the countrysidewere otherwise. The houses threatened them; they knew themselves indanger. The roads were no longer glades of silent turf, but noisy, cruelways by which men came to attack them. They were civilized, caredfor--but cared for in order that some day they might be put to death. Even in the villages, where the solemn and immemorial repose of giantchestnuts aped security, the tossing of a silver birch against theirmass, impatient in the littlest wind, brought warning. Dust cloggedtheir leaves. The inner humming of their quiet life became inaudiblebeneath the scream and shriek of clattering traffic. They longed andprayed to enter the great Peace of the Forest yonder, but they could notmove. They knew, moreover, that the Forest with its august, deepsplendor despised and pitied them. They were a thing of artificialgardens, 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 whichhe returned at length to the things of practical life. "I wonder ifSophia would mind him for a bit--?" He rose with the sound of the gong, brushing the ashes from his speckled waistcoat. He pulled the waistcoatdown. He was slim and spare in figure, active in his movements. In thedim light, but for that silvery moustache, he might easily have passedfor a man of forty. "I'll suggest it to her anyhow, " he decided on hisway upstairs to dress. His thought really was that Sanderson couldprobably explain his world of things he had always felt about--trees. Aman 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 brainsa bit, too, if I could manage it. "

"You can manage anything, David, " was what she answered, for thiselderly childless couple used an affectionate politeness long sincedeemed old-fashioned. The remark, however, displeased her, making herfeel uneasy, and she did not notice his rejoinder, smiling his pleasureand content--"Except yourself and our bank account, my dear. " Thispassion of his for trees was of old a bone of contention, though verymild contention. It frightened her. That was the truth. The Bible, herBaedeker for earth and heaven, did not mention it. Her husband, whilehumoring her, could never alter that instinctive dread she had. Hesoothed, but never changed her. She liked the woods, perhaps as spotsfor 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 thoughtmight interest her. The custom was invariable, except on Sundays, when, to please his wife, he dozed over Tennyson or Farrar as their mood mightbe. She knitted while he read, asked gentle questions, told him hisvoice was a "lovely reading voice, " and enjoyed the little discussionsthat occasions prompted because he always let her with them with "Ah, Sophia, I had never thought of it quite in _that_ way before; but nowyou mention it I must say I think there's something in it. .. . "

For David Bittacy was wise. It was long after marriage, during hismonths of loneliness spent with trees and forests in India, his wifewaiting at home in the Bungalow, that his other, deeper side haddeveloped the strange passion that she could not understand. And afterone or two serious attempts to let her share it with him, he had givenup and learned to hide it from her. He learned, that is, to speak of itonly casually, for since she knew it was there, to keep silencealtogether would only increase her pain. So from time to time he skimmedthe surface just to let her show him where he was wrong and think shewon the day. It remained a debatable land of compromise. He listenedwith patience to her criticisms, her excursions and alarms, knowing thatwhile it gave her satisfaction, it could not change himself. The thinglay in him too deep and true for change. But, for peace' sake, somemeeting-place was desirable, and he found it thus. 

It was her one fault in his eyes, this religious mania carried over fromher upbringing, and it did no serious harm. Great emotion could shake itsometimes out of her. She clung to it because her father taught it herand not because she had thought it out for herself. Indeed, like manywomen, she never really _thought_ at all, but merely reflected theimages of others' thinking which she had learned to see. So, wise in hisknowledge of human nature, old David Bittacy accepted the pain of beingobliged to keep a portion of his inner life shut off from the woman hedeeply loved. He regarded her little biblical phrases as oddities thatstill clung to a rather fine, big soul--like horns and little uselessthings some animals have not yet lost in the course of evolution whilethey have outgrown their use. 

"My dear, what is it? You frightened me!" She asked it suddenly, sittingup so abruptly that her cap dropped sideways almost to her ear. ForDavid Bittacy behind his crackling paper had uttered a sharp exclamationof surprise. He had lowered the sheet and was staring at her over thetops of his gold glasses. 

"Listen to this, if you please, " he said, a note of eagerness in hisvoice, "listen to this, my dear Sophia. It's from an address by FrancisDarwin before the Royal Society. He is president, you know, and son ofthe great Darwin. Listen carefully, I beg you. It is _most_ significant. "

"I _am_ listening, David, " she said with some astonishment, looking up. She stopped her knitting. For a second she glanced behind her. Somethinghad suddenly changed in the room, and it made her feel wide awake, though before she had been almost dozing. Her husband's voice and mannerhad introduced this new thing. Her instincts rose in warning. "_Do_read it, dear. " He took a deep breath, looking first again over the rimsof his glasses to make quite sure of her attention. He had evidentlycome across something of genuine interest, although herself she oftenfound the passages from these "Addresses" somewhat heavy. 

In a deep, emphatic voice he read aloud:

'"It is impossible to know whether or not plants are conscious; but itis consistent with the doctrine of continuity that in all living thingsthere is something psychic, and if we accept this point of view--'"

"_If_, " she interrupted, scenting danger. 

He ignored the interruption as a thing of slight value he was accustomedto. 

'"If we accept this point of view, '" he continued, '"we must believethat in plants there exists a faint copy of _what we know asconsciousness in ourselves_ . '"

He laid the paper down and steadily stared at her. Their eyes met. Hehad italicized the last phrase. 

For a minute or two his wife made no reply or comment. They stared atone another in silence. He waited for the meaning of the words to reachher understanding with full import. Then he turned and read them againin part, while she, released from that curious driving look in his eyes, instinctively again glanced over her shoulder round the room. It wasalmost as if she felt some one had come in to them unnoticed. 

"We must believe that in plants there exists a faint copy of what weknow as consciousness in ourselves. "

"_If_, " she repeated lamely, feeling before the stare of thosequestioning eyes she must say something, but not yet having gathered herwits together quite. 

"_Consciousness_, " he rejoined. And then he added gravely: "That, mydear, is the statement of a scientific man of the Twentieth Century. "

Mrs. Bittacy sat forward in her chair so that her silk flounces crackledlouder than the newspaper. She made a characteristic little soundbetween sniffling and snorting. She put her shoes closely together, withher hands upon her knees. 

"David, " she said quietly, "I think these scientific men are simplylosing their heads. There is nothing in the Bible that I can rememberabout any such thing whatsoever. "

"Nothing, Sophia, that I can remember either, " he answered patiently. Then, after a pause, he added, half to himself perhaps more than to her:"And, now that I come to think about it, it seems that Sanderson oncesaid something to me that was similar. 

"Then Mr. Sanderson is a wise and thoughtful man, and a safe man, " shequickly took up, "if he said that. "

For she thought her husband referred to her remark about the Bible, andnot to her judgment of the scientific men. And he did not correct hermistake. 

"And plants, you see, dear, are not the same as trees, " she drove heradvantage home, "not quite, that is. "

"I agree, " said David quietly; "but both belong to the great vegetablekingdom. "

There was a moment's pause before she answered. 

"Pah! the vegetable kingdom, indeed!" She tossed her pretty old head. And into the words she put a degree of contempt that, could thevegetable kingdom have heard it, might have made it feel ashamed forcovering a third of the world with its wonderful tangled network ofroots and branches, delicate shaking leaves, and its millions of spiresthat caught the sun and wind and rain. Its very right to existenceseemed in question. 

~II~

Sanderson accordingly came down, and on the whole his short visitwas a success. Why he came at all was a mystery to those who heard ofit, for he never paid visits and was certainly not the kind of man tocourt a customer. There must have been something in Bittacy he liked. 

Mrs. Bittacy was glad when he left. He brought no dress-suit for onething, not even a dinner-jacket, and he wore very low collars with bigballoon ties like a Frenchman, and let his hair grow longer than wasnice, she felt. Not that these things were important, but that sheconsidered them symptoms of something a little disordered. The ties wereunnecessarily flowing. 

For all that he was an interesting man, and, in spite of hiseccentricities of dress and so forth, a gentleman. "Perhaps, " shereflected in her genuinely charitable heart, "he had other uses for thetwenty guineas, an invalid sister or an old mother to support!" She hadno notion of the cost of brushes, frames, paints, and canvases. Also sheforgave him much for the sake of his beautiful eyes and his eagerenthusiasm of manner. So many men of thirty were already blase. 

Still, when the visit was over, she felt relieved. She said nothingabout his coming a second time, and her husband, she was glad to notice, had likewise made no suggestion. For, truth to tell, the way the youngerman engrossed the older, keeping him out for hours in the Forest, talking on the lawn in the blazing sun, and in the evenings when thedamp of dusk came creeping out from the surrounding woods, allregardless of his age and usual habits, was not quite to her taste. Ofcourse, Mr. Sanderson did not know how easily those attacks of Indianfever came back, but David surely might have told him. 

They talked trees from morning to night. It stirred in her the oldsubconscious trail of dread, a trail that led ever into the darkness ofbig woods; and such feelings, as her early evangelical training taughther, were temptings. To regard them in any other way was to play withdanger. 

Her mind, as she watched these two, was charged with curious thoughts ofdread she could not understand, yet feared the more on that account. Theway they studied that old mangy cedar was a trifle unnecessary, unwise, she felt. It was disregarding the sense of proportion which deity hadset upon the world for men's safe guidance. 

Even after dinner they smoked their cigars upon the low branches thatswept down and touched the lawn, until at length she insisted on theircoming in. Cedars, she had somewhere heard, were not safe after sundown;it was not wholesome to be too near them; to sleep beneath them was evendangerous, though what the precise danger was she had forgotten. Theupas was the tree she really meant. 

At any rate she summoned David in, and Sanderson came presently afterhim. 

For a long time, before deciding on this peremptory step, she hadwatched them surreptitiously from the drawing-room window--her husbandand her guest. The dusk enveloped them with its damp veil of gauze. Shesaw the glowing tips of their cigars, and heard the drone of voices. Bats flitted overhead, and big, silent moths whirred softly over therhododendron blossoms. And it came suddenly to her, while she watched, that her husband had somehow altered these last few days--since Mr. Sanderson's arrival in fact. A change had come over him, though what itwas she could not say. She hesitated, indeed, to search. That was theinstinctive dread operating in her. Provided it passed she would rathernot know. Small things, of course, she noticed; small outward signs. Hehad neglected _The Times_ for one thing, left off his speckledwaistcoats for another. He was absent-minded sometimes; showed vaguenessin practical details where hitherto he showed decision. And--he hadbegun to talk in his sleep again. 

These and a dozen other small peculiarities came suddenly upon her withthe rush of a combined attack. They brought with them a faint distressthat made her shiver. Momentarily her mind was startled, then confused, as her eyes picked out the shadowy figures in the dusk, the cedarcovering them, the Forest close at their backs. And then, before shecould think, or seek internal guidance as her habit was, this whisper, muffled and very hurried, ran across her brain: "It's Mr. Sanderson. Call David in at once!"

And she had done so. Her shrill voice crossed the lawn and died awayinto the Forest, quickly smothered. No echo followed it. The sound felldead against the rampart of a thousand listening trees. 

"The damp is so very penetrating, even in summer, " she murmured whenthey came obediently. She was half surprised at her open audacity, halfrepentant. They came so meekly at her call. "And my husband is sensitiveto fever from the East. No, _please do not throw away your cigars. Wecan sit by the open window and enjoy the evening while you smoke_. "

She was very talkative for a moment; subconscious excitement was thecause. 

"It is so still--so wonderfully still, " she went on, as no one spoke;"so peaceful, and the air so very sweet . .. And God is always near tothose who need His aid. " The words slipped out before she realized quitewhat she was saying, yet fortunately, in time to lower her voice, for noone heard them. They were, perhaps, an instinctive expression of relief. It flustered her that she could have said the thing at all. 

Sanderson brought her shawl and helped to arrange the chairs; shethanked him in her old-fashioned, gentle way, declining the lamps whichhe had offered to light. "They attract the moths and insects so, Ithink!"

The three of them sat there in the gloaming. Mr. Bittacy's whitemoustache and his wife's yellow shawl gleaming at either end of thelittle horseshoe, Sanderson with his wild black hair and shining eyesmidway between them. The painter went on talking softly, continuingevidently the conversation begun with his host beneath the cedar. Mrs. Bittacy, on her guard, listened--uneasily. 

"For trees, you see, rather conceal themselves in daylight. They revealthemselves fully only after sunset. I never _know_ a tree, " he bowedhere slightly towards the lady as though to apologize for something hefelt she would not quite understand or like, "until I've seen it in thenight. Your cedar, for instance, " looking towards her husband again sothat Mrs. Bittacy caught the gleaming of his turned eyes, "I failed withbadly at first, because I did it in the morning. You shall see to-morrowwhat I mean--that first sketch is upstairs in my portfolio; it's quiteanother tree to the one you bought. That view"--he leaned forward, lowering his voice--"I caught one morning about two o'clock in veryfaint moonlight and the stars. I saw the naked being of the thing--"

"You mean that you went out, Mr. Sanderson, at that hour?" the old ladyasked with astonishment and mild rebuke. She did not care particularlyfor his choice of adjectives either. 

"I fear it was rather a liberty to take in another's house, perhaps, " heanswered courteously. "But, having chanced to wake, I saw the tree frommy window, and made my way downstairs. "

"It's a wonder Boxer didn't bit you; he sleeps loose in the hall, " shesaid. 

"On the contrary. The dog came out with me. I hope, " he added, "thenoise didn't disturb you, though it's rather late to say so. I feelquite guilty. " His white teeth showed in the dusk as he smiled. A smellof earth and flowers stole in through the window on a breath ofwandering air. 

Mrs. Bittacy said nothing at the moment. "We both sleep like tops, " putin her husband, laughing. "You're a courageous man, though, Sanderson, and, by Jove, the picture justifies you. Few artist would have taken somuch trouble, though I read once that Holman Hunt, Rossetti, or some oneof that lot, painted all night in his orchard to get an effect ofmoonlight that he wanted. "

He chattered on. His wife was glad to hear his voice; it made her feelmore easy in her mind. But presently the other held the floor again, andher thoughts grew darkened and afraid. Instinctively she feared theinfluence on her husband. The mystery and wonder that lie in woods, inforests, in great gatherings of trees everywhere, seemed so real andpresent while he talked. 

"The Night transfigures all things in a way, " he was saying; "butnothing so searchingly as trees. From behind a veil that sunlight hangsbefore them in the day they emerge and show themselves. Even buildingsdo that--in a measure--but trees particularly. In the daytime theysleep; at night they wake, they manifest, turn active--live. Youremember, " turning politely again in the direction of his hostess, "howclearly Henley understood that?"

"That socialist person, you mean?" asked the lady. Her tone and accentmade the substantive sound criminal. It almost hissed, the way sheuttered it. 

"The poet, yes, " replied the artist tactfully, "the friend of Stevenson, you remember, Stevenson who wrote those charming children's verses. "

He quoted in a low voice the lines he meant. It was, for once, the time, the place, and the setting all together. The words floated out acrossthe lawn towards the wall of blue darkness where the big Forest sweptthe little garden with its league-long curve that was like theshore-line of a sea. A wave of distant sound that was like surfaccompanied his voice, as though the wind was fain to listen too:

 Not to the staring Day, For all the importunate questionings he pursues In his big, violent voice, Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude, The trees--God's sentinels . .. Yield of their huge, unutterable selves But at the word Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night, Night of many secrets, whose effect-- Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread-- Themselves alone may fully apprehend, They tremble and are changed: In each the uncouth, individual soul Looms forth and glooms Essential, and, their bodily presences Touched with inordinate significance, Wearing the darkness like a livery Of some mysterious and tremendous guild, They brood--they menace--they appall. 

The voice of Mrs. Bittacy presently broke the silence that followed. 

"I like that part about God's sentinels, " she murmured. There was nosharpness in her tone; it was hushed and quiet. The truth, so musicallyuttered, muted her shrill objections though it had not lessened heralarm. Her husband made no comment; his cigar, she noticed, had goneout. 

"And old trees in particular, " continued the artist, as though tohimself, "have very definite personalities. You can offend, wound, please them; the moment you stand within their shade you feel whetherthey come out to you, or whether they withdraw. " He turned abruptlytowards his host. "You know that singular essay of Prentice Mulford's, no doubt 'God in the Trees'--extravagant perhaps, but yet with a finetrue beauty in it? You've never read it, no?" he asked. 

But it was Mrs. Bittacy who answered; her husband keeping his curiousdeep silence. 

"I never did!" It fell like a drip of cold water from the face muffledin the yellow shawl; even a child could have supplied the remainder ofthe unspoken thought. 

"Ah, " said Sanderson gently, "but there _is_ 'God' in the trees. God ina very subtle aspect and sometimes--I have known the trees express ittoo--that which is _not_ God--dark and terrible. Have you ever noticed, too, how clearly trees show what they want--choose their companions, atleast? How beeches, for instance, allow no life too near them--birds orsquirrels in their boughs, nor any growth beneath? The silence in thebeech wood is quite terrifying often! And how pines like bilberry bushesat their feet and sometimes little oaks--all trees making a clear, deliberate choice, and holding firmly to it? Some trees obviously--it'svery 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 gardenin the cool of the evening"--the gulp betrayed the effort that it costher--"but we are nowhere told that He hid in the trees, or anything likethat. 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 lieshidden in our own souls lies also hidden, I venture to assert, in thestupidity and silence of a mere potato. "

The observation was not meant to be amusing. It was _not_ amusing. Noone laughed. On the contrary, the words conveyed in too literal a sensethe feeling that haunted all that conversation. Each one in his own wayrealized--with beauty, with wonder, with alarm--that the talk hadsomehow brought the whole vegetable kingdom nearer to that of man. Somelink had been established between the two. It was not wise, with thatgreat Forest listening at their very doors, to speak so plainly. Theforest edged up closer while they did so. 

And Mrs. Bittacy, anxious to interrupt the horrid spell, broke suddenlyin upon it with a matter-of-fact suggestion. She did not like herhusband's prolonged silence, stillness. He seemed so negative--sochanged. 

"David, " she said, raising her voice, "I think you're feeling thedampness. It's grown chilly. The fever comes so suddenly, you know, andit might be wide to take the tincture. I'll go and get it, dear, atonce. It's better. " And before he could object she had left the room tobring the homeopathic dose that she believed in, and that, to pleaseher, he swallowed by the tumbler-full from week to week. 

And the moment the door closed behind her, Sanderson began again, thoughnow in quite a different tone. Mr. Bittacy sat up in his chair. The twomen obviously resumed the conversation--the real conversationinterrupted beneath the cedar--and left aside the sham one which was somuch dust merely thrown in the old lady's eyes. 

"Trees love you, that's the fact, " he said earnestly. "Your service tothem all these years abroad has made them know you. "

"Know me?"

"Made them, yes, "--he paused a moment, then added, --"made them _awareof your presence_; aware of a force outside themselves thatdeliberately seeks their welfare, don't you see?"

"By Jove, Sanderson--!" This put into plain language actual sensationshe had felt, yet had never dared to phrase in words before. "They getinto touch with me, as it were?" he ventured, laughing at his ownsentence, yet laughing only with his lips. 

"Exactly, " was the quick, emphatic reply. "They seek to blend withsomething they feel instinctively to be good for them, helpful to theiressential beings, encouraging to their best expression--their life. "

"Good Lord, Sir!" Bittacy heard himself saying, "but you're putting myown thoughts into words. D'you know, I've felt something like that foryears. 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 seek tomerge; evil to separate; that's why Good in the end must always win theday--everywhere. The accumulation in the long run becomes overwhelming. Evil tends to separation, dissolution, death. The comradeship of trees, their instinct to run together, is a vital symbol. Trees in a mass aregood; alone, you may take it generally, are--well, dangerous. Look at amonkey-puzzler, or better still, a holly. Look at it, watch it, understand it. Did you ever see more plainly an evil thought madevisible? They're wicked. Beautiful too, oh yes! There's a strange, miscalculated beauty often in evil--"

"That cedar, then--?"

"Not evil, no; but alien, rather. Cedars grow in forests all together. The poor thing has drifted, that is all. "

They were getting rather deep. Sanderson, talking against time, spoke sofast. It was too condensed. Bittacy hardly followed that last bit. Hismind floundered among his own less definite, less sorted thoughts, tillpresently another sentence from the artist startled him into attentionagain. 

"That cedar will protect you here, though, because you both havehumanized it by your thinking so lovingly of its presence. The otherscan't get past it, as it were. "

"Protect me!" he exclaimed. "Protect me from their love?"

Sanderson laughed. "We're getting rather mixed, " he said; "we're talkingof one thing in the terms of another really. But what I mean is--yousee--that their love for you, their 'awareness' of your personality andpresence involves the idea of winning you--across the border--intothemselves--into their world of living. It means, in a way, taking youover. "

The ideas the artist started in his mind ran furious wild races to andfro. It was like a maze sprung suddenly into movement. The whirling ofthe intricate lines bewildered him. They went so fast, leaving but halfan explanation of their goal. He followed first one, then another, but anew one always dashed across to intercept before he could get anywhere. 

"But India, " he said, presently in a lower voice, "India is so faraway--from this little English forest. The trees, too, are utterlydifferent for one thing?"

The rustle of skirts warned of Mrs. Bittacy's approach. This was asentence he could turn round another way in case she came up and pressedfor explanation. 

"There is communion among trees all the world over, " was the strangequick reply. "They always know. "

"They always know! You think then--?"

"The winds, you see--the great, swift carriers! They have their ancientrights of way about the world. An easterly wind, for instance, carryingon stage by stage as it were--linking dropped messages and meanings fromland to land like the birds--an easterly wind--"

Mrs. Bittacy swept in upon them with the tumbler--

"There, David, " she said, "that will ward off any beginnings of attack. Just a spoonful, dear. Oh, oh! not _all_ !" for he had swallowed halfthe contents at a single gulp as usual; "another dose before you go tobed, and the balance in the morning, first thing when you wake. "

She turned to her guest, who put the tumbler down for her upon a tableat his elbow. She had heard them speak of the east wind. She emphasizedthe warning she had misinterpreted. The private part of the conversationcame to an abrupt end. 

"It is the one thing that upsets him more than any other--an east wind, "she said, "and I am glad, Mr. Sanderson, to hear you think so too. "

~III~

A deep hush followed, in the middle of which an owl was heard callingits muffled note in the forest. A big moth whirred with a soft collisionagainst one of the windows. Mrs. Bittacy started slightly, but no onespoke. Above the trees the stars were faintly visible. From the distancecame the barking of a dog. 

Bittacy, relighting his cigar, broke the little spell of silence thathad caught all three. 

"It's rather a comforting thought, " he said, throwing the match out ofthe window, "that life is about us everywhere, and that there is reallyno dividing line between what we call organic and inorganic. "

"The universe, yes, " said Sanderson, "is all one, really. We're puzzledby the gaps we cannot see across, but as a fact, I suppose, there are nogaps at all. "

Mrs. Bittacy rustled ominously, holding her peace meanwhile. She fearedlong words she did not understand. Beelzebub lay hid among too manysyllables. 

"In trees and plants especially, there dreams an exquisite life that noone yet has proved unconscious. "

"Or conscious either, Mr. Sanderson, " she neatly interjected. "It's onlyman that was made after His image, not shrubberies and things. .. . "

Her husband interposed without delay. 

"It is not necessary, " he explained suavely, "to say that they're alivein the sense that we are alive. At the same time, " with an eye to hiswife, "I see no harm in holding, dear, that all created things containsome measure of His life Who made them. It's only beautiful to hold thatHe created nothing dead. We are not pantheists for all that!" he addedsoothingly. 

"Oh, no! Not that, I hope!" The word alarmed her. It was worse thanpope. Through her puzzled mind stole a stealthy, dangerous thing . .. Like a panther. 

"I like to think that even in decay there's life, " the painter murmured. "The falling apart of rotten wood breeds sentiency, there's force andmotion in the falling of a dying leaf, in the breaking up and crumblingof everything indeed. And take an inert stone: it's crammed with heatand weight and potencies of all sorts. What holds its particles togetherindeed? We understand it as little as gravity or why a needle alwaysturns to the 'North. ' Both things may be a mode of life. .. . "

"You think a compass has a soul, Mr. Sanderson?" exclaimed the lady witha crackling of her silk flounces that conveyed a sense of outrage evenmore plainly than her tone. The artist smiled to himself in thedarkness, but it was Bittacy who hastened to reply. 

"Our friend merely suggests that these mysterious agencies, " he saidquietly, "may be due to some kind of life we cannot understand. Whyshould water only run downhill? Why should trees grow at right angles tothe surface of the ground and towards the sun? Why should the worldsspin for ever on their axes? Why should fire change the form ofeverything it touches without really destroying them? To say thesethings follow the law of their being explains nothing. Mr. Sandersonmerely suggests--poetically, my dear, of course--that these may bemanifestations of life, though life at a different stage to ours. "

"The '_ breath_ of life, ' we read, 'He breathed into them. These thingsdo not breathe. " She said it with triumph. 

Then Sanderson put in a word. But he spoke rather to himself or to hishost than by way of serious rejoinder to the ruffled lady. 

"But plants do breathe too, you know, " he said. "They breathe, they eat, they digest, they move about, and they adapt themselves to theirenvironment as men and animals do. They have a nervous system too. .. Atleast a complex system of nuclei which have some of the qualities ofnerve cells. They may have memory too. Certainly, they know definiteaction in response to stimulus. And though this may be physiological, noone has proved that it is only that, and not--psychological. "

He did not notice, apparently, the little gasp that was audible behindthe yellow shawl. Bittacy cleared his throat, threw his extinguishedcigar upon the lawn, crossed and recrossed his legs. 

"And in trees, " continued the other, "behind a great forest, forinstance, " pointing towards the woods, "may stand a rather splendidEntity that manifests through all the thousand individual trees--somehuge collective life, quite as minutely and delicately organized as ourown. It might merge and blend with ours under certain conditions, sothat we could understand it by _being_ it, for a time at least. Itmight even engulf human vitality into the immense whirlpool of its ownvast dreaming life. The pull of a big forest on a man can be tremendousand utterly overwhelming. "

The mouth of Mrs. Bittacy was heard to close with a snap. Her shawl, andparticularly her crackling dress, exhaled the protest that burned withinher like a pain. She was too distressed to be overawed, but at the sametime too confused 'mid the litter of words and meanings half understood, to find immediate phrases she could use. Whatever the actual meaning ofhis language might be, however, and whatever subtle dangers layconcealed behind them meanwhile, they certainly wove a kind of gentlespell with the glimmering darkness that held all three delicatelyenmeshed there by that open window. The odors of dewy lawn, flowers, trees, and earth formed part of it. 

"The moods, " he continued, "that people waken in us are due to theirhidden life affecting our own. Deep calls to sleep. A person, forinstance, joins you in an empty room: you both instantly change. The newarrival, though in silence, has caused a change of mood. May not themoods of Nature touch and stir us in virtue of a similar prerogative?The sea, the hills, the desert, wake passion, joy, terror, as the casemay be; for a few, perhaps, " he glanced significantly at his host sothat Mrs. Bittacy again caught the turning of his eyes, "emotions of acurious, flaming splendor that are quite nameless. Well . .. Whence comethese powers? Surely from nothing that is . .. Dead! Does not theinfluence of a forest, its sway and strange ascendancy over certainminds, betray a direct manifestation of life? It lies otherwise beyondall explanation, this mysterious emanation of big woods. Some natures, of course, deliberately invite it. The authority of a host oftrees, "--his voice grew almost solemn as he said the words--"issomething not to be denied. One feels it here, I think, particularly. "

There was considerable tension in the air as he ceased speaking. Mr. Bittacy had not intended that the talk should go so far. They haddrifted. He did not wish to see his wife unhappy or afraid, and he wasaware--acutely so--that her feelings were stirred to a point he did notcare about. Something in her, as he put it, was "working up" towardsexplosion. 

He sought to generalize the conversation, diluting this accumulatedemotion by spreading it. 

"The sea is His and He made it, " he suggested vaguely, hoping Sandersonwould take the hint, "and with the trees it is the same. .. . "

"The whole gigantic vegetable kingdom, yes, " the artist took him up, "all at the service of man, for food, for shelter and for a thousandpurposes of his daily life. Is it not striking what a lot of the globethey cover . .. Exquisitely organized life, yet stationary, always readyto our had when we want them, never running away? But the taking them, for all that, not so easy. One man shrinks from picking flowers, anotherfrom cutting down trees. And, it's curious that most of the forest talesand legends are dark, mysterious, and somewhat ill-omened. Theforest-beings are rarely gay and harmless. The forest life was felt asterrible. Tree-worship still survives to-day. Wood-cutters. .. Those whotake the life of trees. .. You see a race of haunted men. .. . "

He stopped abruptly, a singular catch in his voice. Bittacy feltsomething even before the sentences were over. His wife, he knew, feltit still more strongly. For it was in the middle of the heavy silencefollowing upon these last remarks, that Mrs. Bittacy, rising with aviolent abruptness from her chair, drew the attention of the others tosomething moving towards them across the lawn. It came silently. Inoutline it was large and curiously spread. It rose high, too, for thesky above the shrubberies, still pale gold from the sunset, was dimmedby its passage. She declared afterwards that it move in "loopingcircles, " but what she perhaps meant to convey was "spirals. "

She screamed faintly. "It's come at last! And it's you that brought it!"

She turned excitedly, half afraid, half angry, to Sanderson. With abreathless sort of gasp she said it, politeness all forgotten. "I knewit . .. If you went on. I knew it. Oh! Oh!" And she cried again, "Yourtalking has brought it out!" The terror that shook her voice was ratherdreadful. 

But the confusion of her vehement words passed unnoticed in the firstsurprise they caused. For a moment nothing happened. 

"What is it you think you see, my dear?" asked her husband, startled. Sanderson said nothing. All three leaned forward, the men still sitting, but Mrs. Bittacy had rushed hurriedly to the window, placing herself ofa purpose, as it seemed, between her husband and the lawn. She pointed. Her little hand made a silhouette against the sky, the yellow shawlhanging from the arm like a cloud. 

"Beyond the cedar--between it and the lilacs. " The voice had lost itsshrillness; it was thin and hushed. "There . .. Now you see it goinground upon itself again--going back, thank God!. .. Going back to theForest. " It sank to a whisper, shaking. She repeated, with a greatdropping sigh of relief--"Thank God! I thought . .. At first . .. It wascoming here . .. To us!. .. David . .. To _you_ !"

She stepped back from the window, her movements confused, feeling in thedarkness for the support of a chair, and finding her husband'soutstretched hand instead. "Hold me, dear, hold me, please . .. Tight. Donot let me go. " She was in what he called afterwards "a regular state. "He drew her firmly down upon her chair again. 

"Smoke, Sophie, my dear, " he said quickly, trying to make his voice calmand natural. "I see it, yes. It's smoke blowing over from the gardener'scottage. .. . "

"But, David, "--and there was a new horror in her whisper now--"it made anoise. It makes it still. I hear it swishing. " Some such word sheused--swishing, sishing, rushing, or something of the kind. "David, I'mvery frightened. It's something awful! That man has called it out. .. !"

"Hush, hush, " whispered her husband. He stroked her trembling handbeside him. 

"It is in the wind, " said Sanderson, speaking for the first time, veryquietly. The expression on his face was not visible in the gloom, buthis voice was soft and unafraid. At the sound of it, Mrs. Bittacystarted violently again. Bittacy drew his chair a little forward toobstruct her view of him. He felt bewildered himself, a little, hardlyknowing quite what to say or do. It was all so very curious and sudden. 

But Mrs. Bittacy was badly frightened. It seemed to her that what shesaw came from the enveloping forest just beyond their little garden. Itemerged in a sort of secret way, moving towards them as with a purpose, stealthily, difficultly. Then something stopped it. It could not advancebeyond the cedar. The cedar--this impression remained with herafterwards too--prevented, kept it back. Like a rising sea the Foresthad surged a moment in their direction through the covering darkness, and this visible movement was its first wave. Thus to her mind itseemed. .. Like that mysterious turn of the tide that used to frightenand mystify her in childhood on the sands. The outward surge of someenormous Power was what she felt. .. Something to which every instinct inher being rose in opposition because it threatened her and hers. In thatmoment she realized the Personality of the Forest. .. Menacing. 

In the stumbling movement that she made away from the window and towardsthe bell she barely caught the sentence Sanderson--or was it herhusband?--murmured to himself: "It came because we talked of it; ourthinking made it aware of us and brought it out. But the cedar stops it. It cannot cross the lawn, you see. .. . "

All three were standing now, and her husband's voice broke in withauthority while his wife's fingers touched the bell. 

"My dear, I should _not_ say anything to Thompson. " The anxiety he feltwas manifest in his voice, but his outward composure had returned. "Thegardener can go. .. . "

Then Sanderson cut him short. "Allow me, " he said quickly. "I'll see ifanything's wrong. " And before either of them could answer or object, hewas gone, leaping out by the open window. They saw his figure vanishwith a run across the lawn into the darkness. 

A moment later the maid entered, in answer to the bell, and with hercame the loud barking of the terrier from the hall. 

"The lamps, " said her master shortly, and as she softly closed the doorbehind her, they heard the wind pass with a mournful sound of singinground the outer walls. A rustle of foliage from the distance passedwithin it. 

"You see, the wind _is_ rising. It _was_ the wind!" He put acomforting arm about her, distressed to feel that she was trembling. Buthe knew that he was trembling too, though with a kind of odd elationrather than alarm. "And it _was_ smoke that you saw coming fromStride's cottage, or from the rubbish heaps he's been burning in thekitchen garden. The noise we heard was the branches rustling in thewind. Why should you be so nervous?"

A thin whispering voice answered him:

"I was afraid for _you_, dear. Something frightened me for _you_. That man makes me feel so uneasy and uncomfortable for his influenceupon you. It's very foolish, I know. I think. .. I'm tired; I feel sooverwrought and restless. " The words poured out in a hurried jumble andshe kept turning to the window while she spoke. 

"The strain of having a visitor, " he said soothingly, "has taxed you. We're so unused to having people in the house. He goes to-morrow. " Hewarmed her cold hands between his own, stroking them tenderly. More, forthe life of him, he could not say or do. The joy of a strange, internalexcitement made his heart beat faster. He knew not what it was. He knewonly, perhaps, whence it came. 

She peered close into his face through the gloom, and said a curiousthing. "I thought, David, for a moment. .. You seemed. .. Different. Mynerves are all on edge to-night. " She made no further reference to herhusband's visitor. 

A sound of footsteps from the lawn warned of Sanderson's return, as heanswered quickly in a lowered tone--"There's no need to be afraid on myaccount, dear girl. There's nothing wrong with me. I assure you; I neverfelt so well and happy in my life. "

Thompson came in with the lamps and brightness, and scarcely had shegone again when Sanderson in turn was seen climbing through the window. 

"There's nothing, " he said lightly, as he closed it behind him. "Somebody's been burning leaves, and the smoke is drifting a littlethrough the trees. The wind, " he added, glancing at his host a momentsignificantly, but in so discreet a way that Mrs. Bittacy did notobserve it, "the wind, too, has begun to roar. .. In the Forest. .. Further out. "

But Mrs. Bittacy noticed about him two things which increased heruneasiness. She noticed the shining of his eyes, because a similar lighthad suddenly come into her husband's; and she noticed, too, the apparentdepth of meaning he put into those simple words that "the wind had begunto roar in the Forest . .. Further out. " Her mind retained thedisagreeable impression that he meant more than he said. In his tone layquite another implication. It was not actually "wind" he spoke of, andit would not remain "further out". .. Rather, it was coming in. Anotherimpression she got too--still more unwelcome--was that her husbandunderstood his hidden meaning. 

~IV~

"David, dear, " she observed gently as soon as they were aloneupstairs, "I have a horrible uneasy feeling about that man. I cannot getrid of it. " The tremor in per voice caught all his tenderness. 

He turned to look at her. "Of what kind, my dear? You're so imaginativesometimes, aren't you?"

"I think, " she hesitated, stammering a little, confused, stillfrightened, "I mean--isn't he a hypnotist, or full of those theosophicalideas, or something of the sort? You know what I mean--"

He was too accustomed to her little confused alarms to explain them awayseriously as a rule, or to correct her verbal inaccuracies, but to-nighthe felt she needed careful, tender treatment. He soothed her as best hecould. 

"But there's no harm in that, even if he is, " he answered quietly. "Those are only new names for very old ideas, you know, dear. " There wasno trace of impatience in his voice. 

"That's what I mean, " she replied, the texts he dreaded rising in anunuttered crowd behind the words. "He's one of those things that we arewarned would come--one of those Latter-Day things. " For her mind stillbristled with the bogeys of the Antichrist and Prophecy, and she hadonly escaped the Number of the Beast, as it were, by the skin of herteeth. The Pope drew most of her fire usually, because she couldunderstand him; the target was plain and she could shoot. But thistree-and-forest business was so vague and horrible. It terrified her. "He makes me think, " she went on, "of Principalities and Powers in highplaces, and of things that walk in the darkness. I did _not_ like theway he spoke of trees getting alive in the night, and all that; it mademe think of wolves in sheep's clothing. And when I saw that awful thingin the sky above the lawn--"

But he interrupted her at once, for that was something he had decided itwas best to leave unmentioned. Certainly it was better not discussed. 

"He only meant, I think, Sophie, " he put in gravely, yet with a littlesmile, "that trees may have a measure of conscious life--rather a niceidea on the whole, surely, --something like that bit we read in the Timesthe other night, you remember--and that a big forest may possess a sortof Collective Personality. Remember, he's an artist, and poetical. "

"It's dangerous, " she said emphatically. "I feel it's playing with fire, unwise, unsafe--"

"Yet all to the glory of God, " he urged gently. "We must not shut ourears and eyes to knowledge--of any kind, must we?"

"With you, David, the wish is always farther than the thought, " sherejoined. For, like the child who thought that "suffered under PontiusPilate" was "suffered under a bunch of violets, " she heard her proverbsphonetically and reproduced them thus. She hoped to convey her warningin the quotation. "And we must always try the spirits whether they be ofGod, " she added tentatively. 

"Certainly, dear, we can always do that, " he assented, getting into bed. 

But, after a little pause, during which she blew the light out, DavidBittacy settling down to sleep with an excitement in his blood that wasnew and bewilderingly delightful, realized that perhaps he had not saidquite enough to comfort her. She was lying awake by his side, stillfrightened. He put his head up in the darkness. 

"Sophie, " he said softly, "you must remember, too, that in any casebetween us and--and all that sort of thing--there is a great gulf fixed, a gulf that cannot be crossed--er--while we are still in the body. "

And hearing no reply, he satisfied himself that she was already asleepand happy. But Mrs. Bittacy was not asleep. She heard the sentence, onlyshe said nothing because she felt her thought was better unexpressed. She was afraid to hear the words in the darkness. The Forest outside waslistening and might hear them too--the Forest that was "roaring furtherout. "

And the thought was this: That gulf, of course, existed, but Sandersonhad somehow bridged it. 

It was much later than night when she awoke out of troubled, uneasydreams and heard a sound that twisted her very nerves with fear. Itpassed immediately with full waking, for, listen as she might, there wasnothing audible but the inarticulate murmur of the night. It was in herdreams she heard it, and the dreams had vanished with it. But the soundwas recognizable, for it was that rushing noise that had come across thelawn; only this time closer. Just above her face while she slept hadpassed this murmur as of rustling branches in the very room, a sound offoliage whispering. "A going in the tops of the mulberry trees, " ranthrough her mind. She had dreamed that she lay beneath a spreading treesomewhere, a tree that whispered with ten thousand soft lips of green;and the dream continued for a moment even after waking. 

She sat up in bed and stared about her. The window was open at the top;she saw the stars; the door, she remembered, was locked as usual; theroom, of course, was empty. The deep hush of the summer night lay overall, broken only by another sound that now issued from the shadows closebeside the bed, a human sound, yet unnatural, a sound that seized thefear with which she had waked and instantly increased it. And, althoughit was one she recognized as familiar, at first she could not name it. Some seconds certainly passed--and, they were very long ones--before sheunderstood that it was her husband talking in his sleep. 

The direction of the voice confused and puzzled her, moreover, for itwas not, as she first supposed, beside her. There was distance in it. The next minute, by the light of the sinking candle flame, she saw hiswhite figure standing out in the middle of the room, half-way towardsthe window. The candle-light slowly grew. She saw him move then nearerto the window, with arms outstretched. His speech was low and mumbled, the words running together too much to be distinguishable. 

And she shivered. To her, sleep-talking was uncanny to the point ofhorror; it was like the talking of the dead, mere parody of a livingvoice, unnatural. 

"David!" she whispered, dreading the sound of her own voice, and halfafraid to interrupt him and see his face. She could not bear the sightof the wide-opened eyes. "David, you're walking in your sleep. Do--comeback to bed, dear, _please!_"

Her whisper seemed so dreadfully loud in the still darkness. At thesound of her voice he paused, then turned slowly round to face her. Hiswidely-opened eyes stared into her own without recognition; they lookedthrough her into something beyond; it was as though he knew thedirection of the sound, yet cold not see her. They were shining, shenoticed, as the eyes of Sanderson had shone several hours ago; and hisface was flushed, distraught. Anxiety was written upon every feature. And, instantly, recognizing that the fever was upon him, she forgot herterror temporarily in practical considerations. He came back to bedwithout waking. She closed his eyelids. Presently he composed himselfquietly to sleep, or rather to deeper sleep. She contrived to make himswallow something from the tumbler beside the bed. 

Then she rose very quietly to close the window, feeling the night airblow in too fresh and keen. She put the candle where it could not reachhim. The sight of the big Baxter Bible beside it comforted her a little, but all through her under-being ran the warnings of a curious alarm. Andit was while in the act of fastening the catch with one hand and pullingthe string of the blind with the other, that her husband sat up again inbed and spoke in words this time that were distinctly audible. The eyeshad opened wide again. He pointed. She stood stock still and listened, her shadow distorted on the blind. He did not come out towards her as atfirst she feared. 

The whispering voice was very clear, horrible, too, beyond all she hadever known. 

"They are roaring in the Forest further out. .. And I. .. Must go andsee. " He stared beyond her as he said it, to the woods. "They areneeding me. They sent for me. .. . " Then his eyes wandering back again tothings within the room, he lay down, his purpose suddenly changed. Andthat change was horrible as well, more horrible, perhaps, because of itsrevelation of another detailed world he moved in far away from her. 

The singular phrase chilled her blood, for a moment she was utterlyterrified. That tone of the somnambulist, differing so slightly yet sodistressingly from normal, waking speech, seemed to her somehow wicked. Evil and danger lay waiting thick behind it. She leaned against thewindow-sill, shaking in every limb. She had an awful feeling for amoment that something was coming in to fetch him. 

"Not yet, then, " she heard in a much lower voice from the bed, "butlater. It will be better so. .. I shall go later. .. . "

The words expressed some fringe of these alarms that had haunted her solong, and that the arrival and presence of Sanderson seemed to havebrought to the very edge of a climax she could not even dare to thinkabout. They gave it form; they brought it closer; they sent her thoughtsto her Deity in a wild, deep prayer for help and guidance. For here wasa direct, unconscious betrayal of a world of inner purposes and claimsher husband recognized while he kept them almost wholly to himself. 

By the time she reached his side and knew the comfort of his touch, theeyes had closed again, this time of their own accord, and the head laycalmly back upon the pillows. She gently straightened the bed clothes. She watched him for some minutes, shading the candle carefully with onehand. There was a smile of strangest peace upon the face. 

Then, blowing out the candle, she knelt down and prayed before gettingback into bed. But no sleep came to her. She lay awake all nightthinking, wondering, praying, until at length with the chorus of thebirds and the glimmer of the dawn upon the green blind, she fell into aslumber of complete exhaustion. 

But while she slept the wind continued roaring in the Forest furtherout. The sound came closer--sometimes very close indeed. 

~V~

With the departure of Sanderson the significance of the curiousincidents waned, because the moods that had produced them passed away. Mrs. Bittacy soon afterwards came to regard them as some growth ofdisproportion that had been very largely, perhaps, in her own mind. Itdid not strike her that this change was sudden for it came about quitenaturally. For one thing her husband never spoke of the matter, and foranother she remembered how many things in life that had seemedinexplicable and singular at the time turned out later to have beenquite commonplace. 

Most of it, certainly, she put down to the presence of the artist and tohis wild, suggestive talk. With his welcome removal, the world turnedordinary again and safe. The fever, though it lasted as usual a shorttime only, had not allowed of her husband's getting up to say good-bye, and she had conveyed his regrets and adieux. In the morning Mr. Sanderson had seemed ordinary enough. In his town hat and gloves, as shesaw him go, he seemed tame and unalarming. 

"After all, " she thought as she watched the pony-cart bear him off, "he's only an artist!" What she had thought he might be otherwise herslim imagination did not venture to disclose. Her change of feeling waswholesome and refreshing. She felt a little ashamed of her behavior. Shegave him a smile--genuine because the relief she felt was genuine--as hebent over her hand and kissed it, but she did not suggest a secondvisit, and her husband, she noted with satisfaction and relief, had saidnothing either. 

The little household fell again into the normal and sleepy routine towhich it was accustomed. The name of Arthur Sanderson was rarely if evermentioned. Nor, for her part, did she mention to her husband theincident of his walking in his sleep and the wild words he used. But toforget it was equally impossible. Thus it lay buried deep within herlike a center of some unknown disease of which it was a mysterioussymptom, waiting to spread at the first favorable opportunity. Sheprayed against it every night and morning: prayed that she might forgetit--that God would keep her husband safe from harm. 

For in spite of much surface foolishness that many might have read asweakness. Mrs. Bittacy had balance, sanity, and a fine deep faith. Shewas greater than she knew. Her love for her husband and her God weresomehow one, an achievement only possible to a single-hearted nobilityof soul. 

There followed a summer of great violence and beauty; of beauty, becausethe refreshing rains at night prolonged the glory of the spring andspread it all across July, keeping the foliage young and sweet; ofviolence, because the winds that tore about the south of England brushedthe whole country into dancing movement. They swept the woodsmagnificently, and kept them roaring with a perpetual grand voice. Theirdeepest notes seemed never to leave the sky. They sang and shouted, andtorn leaves raced and fluttered through the air long before theirusually appointed time. Many a tree, after days of roaring and dancing, fell exhausted to the ground. The cedar on the lawn gave up two limbsthat fell upon successive days, at the same hour too--just before dusk. The wind often makes its most boisterous effort at that time, before itdrops with the sun, and these two huge branches lay in dark ruincovering half the lawn. They spread across it and towards the house. They left an ugly gaping space upon the tree, so that the Lebanon lookedunfinished, half destroyed, a monster shorn of its old-time comelinessand splendor. Far more of the Forest was now visible than before; itpeered through the breach of the broken defenses. They could see fromthe windows of the house now--especially from the drawing-room andbedroom windows--straight out into the glades and depths beyond. 

Mrs. Bittacy's niece and nephew, who were staying on a visit at thetime, enjoyed themselves immensely helping the gardeners carry off thefragments. It took two days to do this, for Mr. Bittacy insisted on thebranches being moved entire. He would not allow them to be chopped;also, he would not consent to their use as firewood. Under hissuperintendence the unwieldy masses were dragged to the edge of thegarden and arranged upon the frontier line between the Forest and thelawn. The children were delighted with the scheme. They entered into itwith enthusiasm. At all costs this defense against the inroads of theForest must be made secure. They caught their uncle's earnestness, felteven something of a hidden motive that he had; and the visit, usuallyrather dreaded, became the visit of their lives instead. It was AuntSophia this time who seemed discouraging and dull. 

"She's got so old and funny, " opined Stephen. 

But Alice, who felt in the silent displeasure of her aunt some secretthing that alarmed her, said:

"I think she's afraid of the woods. She never comes into them with us, you see. "

"All the more reason then for making this wall impreg--all fat and thickand solid, " he concluded, unable to manage the longer word. "Thennothing--simply _nothing_--can get through. Can't it, Uncle David?"

And Mr. Bittacy, jacket discarded and working in his speckled waistcoat, went puffing to their aid, arranging the massive limb of the cedar likea hedge. 

"Come on, " he said, "whatever happens, you know, we must finish beforeit's dark. Already the wind is roaring in the Forest further out. " AndAlice caught the phrase and instantly echoed it. "Stevie, " she criedbelow her breath, "look sharp, you lazy lump. Didn't you hear what UncleDavid said? It'll come in and catch us before we've done!"

They worked like Trojans, and, sitting beneath the wisteria tree thatclimbed the southern wall of the cottage, Mrs. Bittacy with her knittingwatched them, calling from time to time insignificant messages ofcounsel and advice. The messages passed, of course, unheeded. Mostly, indeed, they were unheard, for the workers were too absorbed. She warnedher husband not to get too hot, Alice not to tear her dress, Stephen notto strain his back with pulling. Her mind hovered between thehomeopathic medicine-chest upstairs and her anxiety to see the businessfinished. 

For this breaking up of the cedar had stirred again her slumberingalarms. It revived memories of the visit of Mr. Sanderson that had beensinking into oblivion; she recalled his queer and odious way of talking, and many things she hoped forgotten drew their heads up from thatsubconscious region to which all forgetting is impossible. They lookedat her and nodded. They were full of life; they had no intention ofbeing pushed aside and buried permanently. "Now look!" they whispered, "didn't we tell you so?" They had been merely waiting the right momentto assert their presence. And all her former vague distress crept overher. Anxiety, uneasiness returned. That dreadful sinking of the heartcame too. 

This incident of the cedar's breaking up was actually so unimportant, and yet her husband's attitude towards it made it so significant. Therewas nothing that he said in particular, or did, or left undone thatfrightened, her, but his general air of earnestness seemed sounwarranted. She felt that he deemed the thing important. He was soexercised about it. This evidence of sudden concern and interest, buriedall the summer from her sight and knowledge, she realized now had beenburied purposely, he had kept it intentionally concealed. Deeplysubmerged in him there ran this tide of other thoughts, desires, hopes. What were they? Whither did they lead? The accident to the tree betrayedit most unpleasantly, and, doubtless, more than he was aware. 

She watched his grave and serious face as he worked there with thechildren, and as she watched she felt afraid. It vexed her that thechildren worked so eagerly. They unconsciously supported him. The thingshe feared she would not even name. But it was waiting. 

Moreover, as far as her puzzled mind could deal with a dread so vagueand incoherent, the collapse of the cedar somehow brought it nearer. Thefact that, all so ill-explained and formless, the thing yet lay in herconsciousness, out of reach but moving and alive, filled her with a kindof puzzled, dreadful wonder. Its presence was so very real, its power sogripping, its partial concealment so abominable. Then, out of the dimconfusion, she grasped one thought and saw it stand quite clear beforeher eyes. She found difficulty in clothing it in words, but its meaningperhaps was this: That cedar stood in their life for something friendly;its downfall meant disaster; a sense of some protective influence aboutthe cottage, and about her husband in particular, was thereby weakened. 

"Why do you fear the big winds so?" he had asked her several daysbefore, after a particularly boisterous day; and the answer she gavesurprised her while she gave it. One of those heads poked upunconsciously, and let slip the truth. 

"Because, David, I feel they--bring the Forest with them, " she faltered. "They blow something from the trees--into the mind--into the house. "

He looked at her keenly for a moment. 

"That must be why I love them then, " he answered. "They blow the soulsof the trees about the sky like clouds. "

The conversation dropped. She had never heard him talk in quite that waybefore. 

And another time, when he had coaxed her to go with him down one of thenearer glades, she asked why he took the small hand-axe with him, andwhat he wanted it for. 

"To cut the ivy that clings to the trunks and takes their life away, " hesaid. 

"But can't the verdurers do that?" she asked. "That's what they're paidfor, isn't it?"

Whereupon he explained that ivy was a parasite the trees knew not how tofight alone, and that the verdurers were careless and did not do itthoroughly. They gave a chop here and there, leaving the tree to do therest for itself if it could. 

"Besides, I like to do it for them. I love to help them and protect, " headded, the foliage rustling all about his quiet words as they went. 

And these stray remarks, as his attitude towards the broken cedar, betrayed this curious, subtle change that was going forward to hispersonality. Slowly and surely all the summer it had increased. 

It was growing--the thought startled her horribly--just as a tree grows, the outer evidence from day to day so slight as to be unnoticeable, yetthe rising tide so deep and irresistible. The alteration spread allthrough and over him, was in both mind and actions, sometimes almost inhis face as well. Occasionally, thus, it stood up straight outsidehimself and frightened her. His life was somehow becoming linked sointimately with trees, and with all that trees signified. His interestsbecame more and more their interests, his activity combined with theirs, his thoughts and feelings theirs, his purpose, hope, desire, his fate--

His fate! The darkness of some vague, enormous terror dropped its shadowon her when she thought of it. Some instinct in her heart she dreadedinfinitely more than death--for death meant sweet translation for hissoul--came gradually to associate the thought of him with the thought oftrees, in particular with these Forest trees. Sometimes, before shecould face the thing, argue it away, or pray it into silence, she foundthe thought of him running swiftly through her mind like a thought ofthe Forest itself, the two most intimately linked and joined together, each a part and complement of the other, one being. 

The idea was too dim for her to see it face to face. Its merepossibility dissolved the instant she focused it to get the truth behindit. It was too utterly elusive, made, protćan. Under the attack of evena minute's concentration the very meaning of it vanished, melted away. The idea lay really behind any words that she could ever find, beyondthe touch of definite thought. 

Her mind was unable to grapple with it. But, while it vanished, thetrail of its approach and disappearance flickered a moment before hershaking vision. The horror certainly remained. 

Reduced to the simple human statement that her temperament soughtinstinctively, it stood perhaps at this: Her husband loved her, and heloved the trees as well; but the trees came first, claimed parts of himshe did not know. _She_ loved her God and him. _He_ loved the treesand her. 

Thus, in guise of some faint, distressing compromise, the matter shapeditself for her perplexed mind in the terms of conflict. A silent, hiddenbattle raged, but as yet raged far away. The breaking of the cedar was avisible outward fragment of a distant and mysterious encounter that wascoming daily closer to them both. The wind, instead of roaring in theForest further out, now cam nearer, booming in fitful gusts about itsedge and frontiers. 

Meanwhile the summer dimmed. The autumn winds went sighing through thewoods, leaves turned to golden red, and the evenings were drawing inwith cozy shadows before the first sign of anything seriously untowardmade its appearance. It came then with a flat, decided kind of violencethat indicated mature preparation beforehand. It was not impulsive norill-considered. In a fashion it seemed expected, and indeed inevitable. For within a fortnight of their annual change to the little village ofSeillans above St. Raphael--a change so regular for the past ten yearsthat it was not even discussed between them--David Bittacy abruptlyrefused to go. 

Thompson had laid the tea-table, prepared the spirit lamp beneath theurn, pulled down the blinds in that swift and silent way she had, andleft the room. The lamps were still unlit. The fire-light shone on thechintz armchairs, and Boxer lay asleep on the black horse-hair rug. Uponthe walls the gilt picture frames gleamed faintly, the picturesthemselves indistinguishable. Mrs. Bittacy had warmed the teapot and wasin the act of pouring the water in to heat the cups when her husband, looking up from his chair across the hearth, made the abruptannouncement:

"My dear, " he said, as though following a train of thought of which sheonly heard this final phrase, "it's really quite impossible for me togo. "

And so abrupt, inconsequent, it sounded that she at first misunderstood. She thought he meant to go out into the garden or the woods. But herheart leaped all the same. The tone of his voice was ominous. 

"Of course not, " she answered, "it would be _most_ unwise. Why shouldyou--?" She referred to the mist that always spread on autumn nightsupon the lawn, but before she finished the sentence she knew that _he_referred to something else. And her heart then gave its second horribleleap. 

"David! You mean abroad?" she gasped. 

"I mean abroad, dear, yes. "

It reminded her of the tone he used when saying good-bye years ago, before one of those jungle expeditions she dreaded. His voice then wasso serious, so final. It was serious and final now. For several momentsshe could think of nothing to say. She busied herself with the teapot. She had filled one cup with hot water till it overflowed, and sheemptied it slowly into the slop-basin, trying with all her might not tolet him see the trembling of her hand. The firelight and the dimness ofthe room both helped her. But in any case he would hardly have noticedit. His thoughts were far away. .. . 

~VI~

Mrs. Bittacy had never liked their present home. She preferred a flat, more open country that left approaches clear. She liked to see thingscoming. This cottage on the very edge of the old hunting grounds ofWilliam the Conqueror had never satisfied her ideal of a safe andpleasant place to settle down in. The sea-coast, with treeless downsbehind and a clear horizon in front, as at Eastbourne, say, was herideal of a proper home. 

It was curious, this instinctive aversion she felt to being shut in--bytrees especially; a kind of claustrophobia almost; probably due, as hasbeen said, to the days in India when the trees took her husband off andsurrounded him with dangers. In those weeks of solitude the feeling hadmatured. She had fought it in her fashion, but never conquered it. Apparently routed, it had a way of creeping back in other forms. In thisparticular case, yielding to his strong desire, she thought the battlewon, but the terror of the trees came back before the first month hadpassed. They laughed in her face. 

She never lost knowledge of the fact that the leagues of forest layabout their cottage like a mighty wall, a crowding, watching, listeningpresence that shut them in from freedom and escape. Far from morbidnaturally, she did her best to deny the thought, and so simple andunartificial was her type of mind that for weeks together she wouldwholly lose it. Then, suddenly it would return upon her with a rush ofbleak reality. It was not only in her mind; it existed apart from anymere mood; a separate fear that walked alone; it came and went, yet whenit went--went only to watch her from another point of view. It was inabeyance--hidden round the corner. 

The Forest never let her go completely. It was ever ready to encroach. All the branches, she sometimes fancied, stretched one way--towardstheir tiny cottage and garden, as though it sought to draw them in andmerge them in itself. Its great, deep-breathing soul resented themockery, the insolence, the irritation of the prim garden at its verygates. It would absorb and smother them if it could. And every wind thatblew its thundering message over the huge sounding-board of the million, shaking trees conveyed the purpose that it had. They had angered itsgreat soul. At its heart was this deep, incessant roaring. 

All this she never framed in words, the subtleties of language lay farbeyond her reach. But instinctively she felt it; and more besides. Ittroubled her profoundly. Chiefly, moreover, for her husband. Merely forherself, the nightmare might have left her cold. It was David's peculiarinterest in the trees that gave the special invitation. Jealousy, then, in its most subtle aspect came to strengthen this aversion and dislike, for it came in a form that no reasonable wife could possibly object to. Her husband's passion, she reflected, was natural and inborn. It haddecided his vocation, fed his ambition, nourished his dreams, desires, hopes. All his best years of active life had been spent in the care andguardianship of trees. He knew them, understood their secret life andnature, "managed" them intuitively as other men "managed" dogs andhorses. He could not live for long away from them without a strange, acute nostalgia that stole his peace of mind and consequently hisstrength of body. A forest made him happy and at peace; it nursed andfed and soothed his deepest moods. Trees influenced the sources of hislife, lowered or raised the very heart-beat in him. Cut off from them helanguished as a lover of the sea can droop inland, or a mountaineer maypine in the flat monotony of the plains. 

This she could understand, in a fashion at least, and make allowancesfor. She had yielded gently, even sweetly, to his choice of theirEnglish home; for in the little island there is nothing that suggeststhe woods of wilder countries so nearly as the New Forest. It has thegenuine air and mystery, the depth and splendor, the loneliness, andthere and there the strong, untamable quality of old-time forests asBittacy of the Department knew them. 

In a single detail only had he yielded to her wishes. He consented to acottage on the edge, instead of in the heart of it. And for a dozenyears now they had dwelt in peace and happiness at the lips of thisgreat spreading thing that covered so many leagues with its tangle ofswamps and moors and splendid ancient trees. 

Only with the last two years or so--with his own increasing age, andphysical decline perhaps--had come this marked growth of passionateinterest in the welfare of the Forest. She had watched it grow, at firsthad laughed at it, then talked sympathetically so far as sinceritypermitted, then had argued mildly, and finally come to realize that itstreatment lay altogether beyond her powers, and so had come to fear itwith all her heart. 

The six weeks they annually spent away from their English home, eachregarded very differently, of course. For her husband it meant a painfulexile that did his health no good; he yearned for his trees--the sightand sound and smell of them; but for herself it meant release from ahaunting dread--escape. To renounce those six weeks by the sea on thesunny, shining coast of France, was almost more than this little woman, even with her unselfishness, could face. 

After the first shock of the announcement, she reflected as deeply asher nature permitted, prayed, wept in secret--and made up her mind. Duty, she felt clearly, pointed to renouncement. The discipline wouldcertainly be severe--she did not dream at the moment how severe!--butthis fine, consistent little Christian saw it plain; she accepted it, too, without any sighing of the martyr, though the courage she showedwas of the martyr order. Her husband should never know the cost. In allbut this one passion his unselfishness was ever as great as her own. Thelove she had borne him all these years, like the love she bore heranthropomorphic deity, was deep and real. She loved to suffer for themboth. Besides, the way her husband had put it to her was singular. Itdid not take the form of a mere selfish predilection. Something higherthan two wills in conflict seeking compromise was in it from thebeginning. 

"I feel, Sophia, it would be really more than I could manage, " he saidslowly, gazing into the fire over the tops of his stretched-out muddyboots. "My duty and my happiness lie here with the Forest and with you. My life is deeply rooted in this place. Something I can't defineconnects my inner being with these trees, and separation would make meill--might even kill me. My hold on life would weaken; here is my sourceof supply. I cannot explain it better than that. " He looked up steadilyinto her face across the table so that she saw the gravity of hisexpression and the shining of his steady eyes. 

"David, you feel it as strongly as that!" she said, forgetting the teathings altogether. 

"Yes, " he replied, "I do. And it's not of the body only, I feel it in mysoul. "

The reality of what he hinted at crept into that shadow-covered roomlike an actual Presence and stood beside them. It came not by thewindows or the door, but it filled the entire space between the wallsand ceiling. It took the heat from the fire before her face. She feltsuddenly cold, confused a little, frightened. She almost felt the rushof foliage in the wind. It stood between them. 

"There are things--some things, " she faltered, "we are not intended toknow, I think. " The words expressed her general attitude to life, notalone to this particular incident. 

And after a pause of several minutes, disregarding the criticism asthough he had not heard it--"I cannot explain it better than that, yousee, " his grave voice answered. "There is this deep, tremendouslink, --some secret power they emanate that keeps me well and happyand--alive. If you cannot understand, I feel at least you may be ableto--forgive. " His tone grew tender, gentle, soft. "My selfishness, Iknow, must seem quite unforgivable. I cannot help it somehow; thesetrees, this ancient Forest, both seem knitted into all that makes melive, and if I go--"

There was a little sound of collapse in his voice. He stopped abruptly, and sank back in his chair. And, at that, a distinct lump came up intoher throat which she had great difficulty in managing while she wentover and put her arms about him. 

"My dear, " she murmured, "God will direct. We will accept His guidance. He has always shown the way before. "

"My selfishness afflicts me--" he began, but she would not let himfinish. 

"David, He will direct. Nothing shall harm you. You've never once beenselfish, and I cannot bear to hear you say such things. The way willopen that is best for you--for both of us. " She kissed him, she wouldnot let him speak; her heart was in her throat, and she felt for him farmore than for herself. 

And then he had suggested that she should go alone perhaps for a shortertime, and stay in her brother's villa with the children, Alice andStephen. It was always open to her as she well knew. 

"You need the change, " he said, when the lamps had been lit and theservant had gone out again; "you need it as much as I dread it. I couldmanage somehow until you returned, and should feel happier that way ifyou went. I cannot leave this Forest that I love so well. I even feel, Sophie dear"--he sat up straight and faced her as he half whisperedit--"that I can _never_ leave it again. My life and happiness lie heretogether. "

And eve while scorning the idea that she could leave him alone with theInfluence of the Forest all about him to have its unimpeded way, shefelt the pangs of that subtle jealousy bite keen and close. He loved theForest better than herself, for he placed it first. Behind the words, moreover, hid the unuttered thought that made her so uneasy. The terrorSanderson had brought revived and shook its wings before her very eyes. For the whole conversation, of which this was a fragment, conveyed theunutterable implication that while he could not spare the trees, theyequally could not spare him. The vividness with which he managed toconceal and yet betray the fact brought a profound distress that crossedthe border between presentiment and warning into positive alarm. 

He clearly felt that the trees would miss him--the trees he tended, guarded, watched over, loved. 

"David, I shall stay here with you. I think you need me really, --don'tyou?" Eagerly, with a touch of heart-felt passion, the words poured out. 

"Now more than ever, dear. God bless you for you sweet unselfishness. And your sacrifice, " he added, "is all the greater because you cannotunderstand the thing that makes it necessary for me to stay. "

"Perhaps in the spring instead--" she said, with a tremor in the voice. 

"In the spring--perhaps, " he answered gently, almost beneath his breath. "For they will not need me then. All the world can love them in thespring. It's in the winter that they're lonely and neglected. I wish tostay with them particularly then. I even feel I ought to--and I must. "

And in this way, without further speech, the decision was made. Mrs. Bittacy, at least, asked no more questions. Yet she could not bringherself to show more sympathy than was necessary. She felt, for onething, that if she did, it might lead him to speak freely, and to tellher things she could not possibly bear to know. And she dared not takethe risk of that. 

~VII~

This was at the end of summer, but the autumn followed close. Theconversation really marked the threshold between the two seasons, andmarked at the same time the line between her husband's negative andaggressive state. She almost felt she had done wrong to yield; he grewso bold, concealment all discarded. He went, that is, quite openly tothe woods, forgetting all his duties, all his former occupations. Heeven sought to coax her to go with him. The hidden thing blazed outwithout disguise. And, while she trembled at his energy, she admired thevirile passion he displayed. Her jealousy had long ago retired beforeher fear, accepting the second place. Her one desire now was to protect. The wife turned wholly mother. 

He said so little, but--he hated to come in. From morning to night hewandered in the Forest; often he went out after dinner; his mind wascharged with trees--their foliage, growth, development; their wonder, beauty, strength; their loneliness in isolation, their power in a herdedmass. He knew the effect of every wind upon them; the danger from theboisterous north, the glory from the west, the eastern dryness, and thesoft, moist tenderness that a south wind left upon their thinningboughs. He spoke all day of their sensations: how they drank the fadingsunshine, dreamed in the moonlight, thrilled to the kiss of stars. Thedew could bring them half the passion of the night, but frost sent themplunging beneath the ground to dwell with hopes of a later comingsoftness in their roots. They nursed the life they carried--insects, larvae, chrysalis--and when the skies above them melted, he spoke ofthem standing "motionless in an ecstasy of rain, " or in the noon ofsunshine "self-poised upon their prodigy of shade. "

And once in the middle of the night she woke at the sound of his voice, and heard him--wide awake, not talking in his sleep--but talking towardsthe window where the shadow of the cedar fell at noon:

 O art thou sighing for Lebanon In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East? Sighing for Lebanon, Dark cedar;

and, when, half charmed, half terrified, she turned and called to himby name, he merely said--

"My dear, I felt the loneliness--suddenly realized it--the aliendesolation of that tree, set here upon our little lawn in England whenall her Eastern brothers call her in sleep. " And the answer seemed soqueer, so "un-evangelical, " that she waited in silence till he sleptagain. The poetry passed her by. It seemed unnecessary and out of place. It made her ache with suspicion, fear, jealousy. 

The fear, however, seemed somehow all lapped up and banished soonafterwards by her unwilling admiration of the rushing splendor of herhusband's state. Her anxiety, at any rate, shifted from the religious tothe medical. She thought he might be losing his steadiness of mind alittle. How often in her prayers she offered thanks for the guidancethat had made her stay with him to help and watch is impossible to say. It certainly was twice a day. 

She even went so far once, when Mr. Mortimer, the vicar, called, andbrought with him a more or less distinguished doctor--as to tell theprofessional man privately some symptoms of her husband's queerness. Andhis answer that there was "nothing he could prescribe for" added not alittle to her sense of unholy bewilderment. No doubt Sir James had neverbeen "consulted" under such unorthodox conditions before. His sense ofwhat was becoming naturally overrode his acquired instincts as a skilledinstrument that might help the race. 

"No fever, you think?" she asked insistently with hurry, determined toget something from him. 

"Nothing that _I_ can deal with, as I told you, Madam, " replied theoffended allopathic Knight. 

Evidently he did not care about being invited to examine patients inthis surreptitious way before a teapot on the lawn, chance of a fee mostproblematical. He liked to see a tongue and feel a thumping pulse; toknow the pedigree and bank account of his questioner as well. It wasmost unusual, in abominable taste besides. Of course it was. But thedrowning woman seized the only straw she could. 

For now the aggressive attitude of her husband overcame her to the pointwhere she found it difficult even to question him. Yet in the house hewas so kind and gentle, doing all he could to make her sacrifice as easyas possible. 

"David, you really _are_ unwise to go out now. The night is damp andvery chilly. The ground is soaked in dew. You'll catch your death ofcold. "

His face lightened. "Won't you come with me, dear, --just for once? I'monly going to the corner of the hollies to see the beech that stands solonely by itself. "

She had been out with him in the short dark afternoon, and they hadpassed that evil group of hollies where the gypsies camped. Nothing elsewould grow there, but the hollies thrive upon the stony soil. 

"David, the beech is all right and safe. " She had learned hisphraseology a little, made clever out of due season by her love. "There's no wind to-night. "

"But it's rising, " he answered, "rising in the east. I heard it in thebare and hungry larches. They need the sun and dew, and always cry outwhen the wind's upon them from the east. "

She sent a short unspoken prayer most swiftly to her deity as she heardhim say it. For every time now, when he spoke in this familiar, intimateway of the life of the trees, she felt a sheet of cold fasten tightagainst her very skin and flesh. She shivered. How could he possiblyknow such things?

Yet, in all else, and in the relations of his daily life, he was saneand reasonable, loving, kind and tender. It was only on the subject ofthe trees he seemed unhinged and queer. Most curiously it seemed that, since the collapse of the cedar they both loved, though in differentfashion, his departure from the normal had increased. Why else did hewatch them as a man might watch a sickly child? Why did he hungerespecially in the dusk to catch their "mood of night" as he called it?Why think so carefully upon them when the frost was threatening or thewind appeared to rise?

As she put it so frequently now herself--How could he possibly _know_such things?

He went. As she closed the front door after him she heard the distantroaring in the Forest. 

And then it suddenly struck her: How could she know them too?

It dropped upon her like a blow that she felt at once all over, uponbody, heart and mind. The discovery rushed out from its ambush tooverwhelm. The truth of it, making all arguing futile, numbed herfaculties. But though at first it deadened her, she soon revived, andher being rose into aggressive opposition. A wild yet calculated couragelike that which animates the leaders of splendid forlorn hopes flamed inher little person--flamed grandly, and invincible. While knowing herselfinsignificant and weak, she knew at the same time that power at her backwhich moves the worlds. The faith that filled her was the weapon in herhands, and the right by which she claimed it; but the spirit of utter, selfless sacrifice that characterized her life was the means by whichshe mastered its immediate use. For a kind of white and faultlessintuition guided her to the attack. Behind her stood her Bible and herGod. 

How so magnificent a divination came to her at all may well be a matterfor astonishment, though some clue of explanation lies, perhaps, in thevery simpleness of her nature. At any rate, she saw quite clearlycertain things; saw them in moments only--after prayer, in the stillsilence of the night, or when left alone those long hours in the housewith her knitting and her thoughts--and the guidance which then flashedinto her remained, even after the manner of its coming was forgotten. 

They came to her, these things she saw, formless, wordless; she couldnot put them into any kind of language; but by the very fact of beinguncaught in sentences they retained their original clear vigor. 

Hours of patient waiting brought the first, and the others followedeasily afterwards, by degrees, on subsequent days, a little and alittle. Her husband had been gone since early morning, and had taken hisluncheon with him. She was sitting by the tea things, the cups andteapot warmed, the muffins in the fender keeping hot, all ready for hisreturn, when she realized quite abruptly that this thing which took himoff, which kept him out so many hours day after day, this thing that wasagainst her own little will and instincts--was enormous as the sea. Itwas no mere prettiness of single Trees, but something massed andmountainous. About her rose the wall of its huge opposition to the sky, its scale gigantic, its power utterly prodigious. What she knew of ithitherto as green and delicate forms waving and rustling in the windswas but, as it were the spray of foam that broke into sight upon thenearer edge of viewless depths far, far away. The trees, indeed, weresentinels set visibly about the limits of a camp that itself remainedinvisible. The awful hum and murmur of the main body in the distancepassed into that still room about her with the firelight and hissingkettle. Out yonder--in the Forest further out--the thing that was everroaring at the center was dreadfully increasing. 

The sense of definite battle, too--battle between herself and the Forestfor his soul--came with it. Its presentiment was as clear as thoughThompson had come into the room and quietly told her that the cottagewas surrounded. "Please, ma'am, there are trees come up about thehouse, " she might have suddenly announced. And equally might have heardher own answer: "It's all right, Thompson. The main body is still faraway. "

Immediately upon its heels, then, came another truth, with a closereality that shocked her. She saw that jealousy was not confined to thehuman and animal world alone, but ran though all creation. The VegetableKingdom knew it too. So-called inanimate nature shared it with the rest. Trees felt it. This Forest just beyond the window--standing there in thesilence of the autumn evening across the little lawn--this Forestunderstood it equally. The remorseless, branching power that sought tokeep exclusively for itself the thing it loved and needed, spread like arunning desire through all its million leaves and stems and roots. Inhumans, of course, it was consciously directed; in animals it acted withfrank instinctiveness; but in trees this jealousy rose in some blindtide of impersonal and unconscious wrath that would sweep oppositionfrom its path as the wind sweeps powdered snow from the surface of theice. Their number was a host with endless reinforcements, and once itrealized its passion was returned the power increased. .. . Her husbandloved the trees. .. . They had become aware of it. .. . They would take himfrom her in the end. .. . 

Then, while she heard his footsteps in the hall and the closing of thefront door, she saw a third thing clearly;--realized the widening of thegap between herself and him. This other love had made it. All theseweeks of the summer when she felt so close to him, now especially whenshe had made the biggest sacrifice of her life to stay by his side andhelp him, he had been slowly, surely--drawing away. The estrangement washere and now--a fact accomplished. It had been all this time maturing;there yawned this broad deep space between them. Across the emptydistance she saw the change in merciless perspective. It revealed hisface and figure, dearly-loved, once fondly worshipped, far on the otherside in shadowy distance, small, the back turned from her, and movingwhile she watched--moving away from her. 

They had their tea in silence then. She asked no questions, hevolunteered no information of his day. The heart was big within her, andthe terrible loneliness of age spread through her like a rising icymist. She watched him, filling all his wants. His hair was untidy andhis boots were caked with blackish mud. He moved with a restless, swaying motion that somehow blanched her cheek and sent a miserableshivering down her back. It reminded her of trees. His eyes were verybright. 

He brought in with him an odor of the earth and forest that seemed tochoke her and make it difficult to breathe; and--what she noticed with aclimax of almost uncontrollable alarm--upon his face beneath thelamplight shone traces of a mild, faint glory that made her think ofmoonlight falling upon a wood through speckled shadows. It was hisnew-found happiness that shone there, a happiness uncaused by her and inwhich she had no part. 

In his coat was a spray of faded yellow beech leaves. "I brought thisfrom the Forest to you, " he said, with all the air that belonged to hislittle acts of devotion long ago. And she took the spray of leavesmechanically with a smile and a murmured "thank you, dear, " as though hehad unknowingly put into her hands the weapon for her own destructionand she had accepted it. 

And when the tea was over and he left the room, he did not go to hisstudy, or to change his clothes. She heard the front door softly shutbehind him as he again went out towards the Forest. 

A moment later she was in her room upstairs, kneeling beside thebed--the side she slept on--and praying wildly through a flood of tearsthat God would save and keep him to her. Wind brushed the window panesbehind her while she knelt. 

~VIII~

One sunny November morning, when the strain had reached a pitch thatmade repression almost unmanageable, she came to an impulsive decision, and obeyed it. Her husband had again gone out with luncheon for the day. She took adventure in her hands and followed him. The power ofseeing-clear was strong upon her, forcing her up to some unnatural levelof understanding. To stay indoors and wait inactive for his returnseemed suddenly impossible. She meant to know what he knew, feel what hefelt, put herself in his place. She would dare the fascination of theForest--share it with him. It was greatly daring; but it would give hergreater understanding how to help and save him and therefore greaterPower. She went upstairs a moment first to pray. 

In a thick, warm skirt, and wearing heavy boots--those walking boots sheused with him upon the mountains about Seillans--she left the cottage bythe back way and turned towards the Forest. She could not actuallyfollow him, for he had started off an hour before and she knew notexactly his direction. What was so urgent in her was the wish to be withhim in the woods, to walk beneath leafless branches just as he did: tobe there when he was there, even though not together. For it had come toher that she might thus share with him for once this horrible mightylife and breathing of the trees he loved. In winter, he had said, theyneeded him particularly, and winter now was coming. Her love must bringher something of what he felt himself--the huge attraction, the suctionand the pull of all the trees. Thus, in some vicarious fashion, shemight share, though unknown to himself, this very thing that was takinghim away from her. She might thus even lessen its attack upon himself. 

The impulse came to her clairvoyantly, and she obeyed without a sign ofhesitation. Deeper comprehension would come to her of the whole awfulpuzzle. And come it did, yet not in the way she imagined and expected. 

The air was very still, the sky a cold pale blue, but cloudless. Theentire Forest stood silent, at attention. It knew perfectly well thatshe had come. It knew the moment when she entered; watched and followedher; and behind her something dropped without a sound and shut her in. Her feet upon the glades of mossy grass fell silently, as the oaks andbeeches shifted past in rows and took up their positions at her back. Itwas not pleasant, this way they grew so dense behind her the instant shehad passed. She realized that they gathered in an ever-growing army, massed, herded, trooped, between her and the cottage, shutting offescape. They let her pass so easily, but to get out again she would knowthem differently--thick, crowded, branches all drawn and hostile. Already their increasing numbers bewildered her. In front, they lookedso sparse and scattered, with open spaces where the sunshine fell; butwhen she turned it seemed they stood so close together, a serried army, darkening the sunlight. They blocked the day, collected all the shadows, stood with their leafless and forbidding rampart like the night. Theyswallowed down into themselves the very glade by which she came. Forwhen she glanced behind her--rarely--the way she had come was shadowyand lost. 

Yet the morning sparkled overhead, and a glance of excitement ranquivering through the entire day. It was what she always knew as"children's weather, " so clear and harmless, without a sign of danger, nothing ominous to threaten or alarm. Steadfast in her purpose, lookingback as little as she dared, Sophia Bittacy marched slowly anddeliberately into the heart of the silent woods, deeper, ever deeper. 

And then, abruptly, in an open space where the sunshine fell unhindered, she stopped. It was one of the breathing places of the forest. Dead, withered bracken lay in patches of unsightly grey. There were bits ofheather too. All round the trees stood looking on--oak, beech, holly, ash, pine, larch, with here and there small groups of juniper. On thelips of this breathing space of the woods she stopped to rest, disobeying her instinct for the first time. For the other instinct inher was to go on. She did not really want to rest. 

This was the little act that brought it to her--the wireless messagefrom a vast Emitter. 

"I've been stopped, " she thought to herself with a horrid qualm. 

She looked about her in this quiet, ancient place. Nothing stirred. There was no life nor sign of life; no birds sang; no rabbits scuttledoff at her approach. The stillness was bewildering, and gravity hungdown upon it like a heavy curtain. It hushed the heart in her. Couldthis be part of what her husband felt--this sense of thick entanglementwith stems, boughs, roots, and foliage?

"This has always been as it is now, " she thought, yet not knowing whyshe thought it. "Ever since the Forest grew it has been still and secrethere. It has never changed. " The curtain of silence drew closer whileshe said it, thickening round her. "For a thousand years--I'm here witha thousand years. And behind this place stand all the forests of theworld!"

So foreign to her temperament were such thoughts, and so alien to allshe had been taught to look for in Nature, that she strove against them. She made an effort to oppose. But they clung and haunted just the same;they refused to be dispersed. The curtain hung dense and heavy as thoughits texture thickened. The air with difficulty came through. 

And then she thought that curtain stirred. There was movement somewhere. That obscure dim thing which ever broods behind the visible appearancesof trees came nearer to her. She caught her breath and stared about her, listening intently. The trees, perhaps because she saw them more indetail now, it seemed to her had changed. A vague, faint alterationspread over them, at first so slight she scarcely would admit it, thengrowing steadily, though still obscurely, outwards. "They tremble andare changed, " flashed through her mind the horrid line that Sandersonhad quoted. Yet the change was graceful for all the uncouthnessattendant upon the size of so vast a movement. They had turned in herdirection. That was it. _They saw her. _ In this way the changeexpressed itself in her groping, terrified thought. Till now it had beenotherwise: she had looked at them from her own point of view; now theylooked at her from theirs. They stared her in the face and eyes; theystared at her all over. In some unkind, resentful, hostile way, theywatched her. Hitherto in life she had watched them variously, insuperficial ways, reading into them what her own mind suggested. Nowthey read into her the things they actually _were_, and not merelyanother's interpretations of them. 

They seemed in their motionless silence there instinct with life, alife, moreover, that breathed about her a species of terrible softenchantment that bewitched. It branched all through her, climbing to thebrain. The Forest held her with its huge and giant fascination. In thissecluded breathing spot that the centuries had left untouched, she hadstepped close against the hidden pulse of the whole collective mass ofthem. They were aware of her and had turned to gaze with their myriad, vast sight upon the intruder. They shouted at her in the silence. Forshe wanted to look back at them, but it was like staring at a crowd, andher glance merely shifted from one tree to another, hurriedly, findingin none the one she sought. They saw her so easily, each and all. Therows that stood behind her also stared. But she could not return thegaze. Her husband, she realized, could. And their steady stare shockedher as though in some sense she knew that she was naked. They saw somuch of her: she saw of them--so little. 

Her efforts to return their gaze were pitiful. The constant shiftingincreased her bewilderment. Conscious of this awful and enormous sightall over her, she let her eyes first rest upon the ground, and then sheclosed them altogether. She kept the lids as tight together as ever theywould go. 

But the sight of the trees came even into that inner darkness behind thefastened lids, for there was no escaping it. Outside, in the light, shestill knew that the leaves of the hollies glittered smoothly, that thedead foliage of the oaks hung crisp in the air about her, that theneedles of the little junipers were pointing all one way. The spreadperception of the Forest was focused on herself, and no mere shutting ofthe eyes could hide its scattered yet concentrated stare--theall-inclusive vision of great woods. 

There was no wind, yet here and there a single leaf hanging by itsdried-up stalk shook all alone with great rapidity--rattling. It was thesentry drawing attention to her presence. And then, again, as once longweeks before, she felt their Being as a tide about her. The tide hadturned. That memory of her childhood sands came back, when the nursesaid, "The tide has turned now; we must go in, " and she saw the mass ofpiled-up waters, green and heaped to the horizon, and realized that itwas slowly coming in. The gigantic mass of it, too vast for hurry, loaded with massive purpose, she used to feel, was moving towardsherself. The fluid body of the sea was creeping along beneath the sky tothe very spot upon the yellow sands where she stood and played. Thesight and thought of it had always overwhelmed her with a sense ofawe--as though her puny self were the object of the whole sea's advance. "The tide has turned; we had better now go in. "

This was happening now about her--the same thing was happening in thewoods--slow, sure, and steady, and its motion as little discernible asthe sea's. The tide had turned. The small human presence that hadventured among its green and mountainous depths, moreover, was itsobjective. 

That all was clear within her while she sat and waited with tight-shutlids. But the next moment she opened her eyes with a sudden realizationof something more. The presence that it sought was after all not hers. It was the presence of some one other than herself. And then sheunderstood. Her eyes had opened with a click, it seemed, but the sound, in reality, was outside herself. 

Across the clearing where the sunshine lay so calm and still, she sawthe figure of her husband moving among the trees--a man, like a tree, walking. 

With hands behind his back, and head uplifted, he moved quite slowly, asthough absorbed in his own thoughts. Hardly fifty paces separated them, but he had no inkling of her presence there so near. With mind intentand senses all turned inwards, he marched past her like a figure in adream, and like a figure in a dream she saw him go. Love, yearning, pityrose in a storm within her, but as in nightmare she found no words ormovement possible. She sat and watched him go--go from her--go into thedeeper reaches of the green enveloping woods. Desire to save, to bid himstop and turn, ran in a passion through her being, but there was nothingshe could do. She saw him go away from her, go of his own accord andwillingly beyond her; she saw the branches drop about his steps and hidhim. His figure faded out among the speckled shade and sunlight. Thetrees covered him. The tide just took him, all unresisting and contentto go. Upon the bosom of the green soft sea he floated away beyond herreach of vision. Her eyes could follow him no longer. He was gone. 

And then for the first time she realized, even at that distance, thatthe look upon his face was one of peace and happiness--rapt, and caughtaway in joy, a look of youth. That expression now he never showed toher. But she _had_ known it. Years ago, in the early days of theirmarried life, she had seen it on his face. Now it no longer obeyed thesummons of her presence and her love. The woods alone could call itforth; it answered to the trees; the Forest had taken every part ofhim--from her--his very heart and soul. 

Her sight that had plunged inwards to the fields of faded memory nowcame back to outer things again. She looked about her, and her love, returning empty-handed and unsatisfied, left her open to the invading ofthe bleakest terror she had ever known. That such things could be realand happen found her helpless utterly. Terror invaded the quietestcorners of her heart, that had never yet known quailing. She couldnot--for moments at any rate--reach either her Bible or her God. Desolate in an empty world of fear she sat with eyes too dry and hot fortears, yet with a coldness as of ice upon her very flesh. She stared, unseeing, about her. That horror which stalks in the stillness of thenoonday, when the glare of an artificial sunshine lights up themotionless trees, moved all about her. In front and behind she was awareof it. Beyond this stealthy silence, just within the edge of it, thethings of another world were passing. But she could not know them. Herhusband knew them, knew their beauty and their awe, yes, but for herthey were out of reach. She might not share with him the very least ofthem. It seemed that behind and through the glare of this wintry noondayin the heart of the woods there brooded another universe of life andpassion, for her all unexpressed. The silence veiled it, the stillnesshid it; but he moved with it all and understood. His love interpretedit. 

She rose to her feet, tottered feebly, and collapsed again upon themoss. Yet for herself she felt no terror; no little personal fear couldtouch her whose anguish and deep longing streamed all out to him whomshe so bravely loved. In this time of utter self-forgetfulness, when sherealized that the battle was hopeless, thinking she had lost even herGod, she found Him again quite close beside her like a little Presencein this terrible heart of the hostile Forest. But at first she did notrecognize that He was there; she did not know Him in that strangelyunacceptable guise. For He stood so very close, so very intimate, sovery sweet and comforting, and yet so hard to understand--asResignation. 

Once more she struggled to her feet, and this time turned successfullyand slowly made her way along the mossy glade by which she came. And atfirst she marveled, though only for a moment, at the ease with which shefound the path. For a moment only, because almost at once she saw thetruth. The trees were glad that she should go. They helped her on herway. The Forest did not want her. 

The tide was coming in, indeed, yet not for her. 

And so, in another of those flashes of clear-vision that of late hadlifted life above the normal level, she saw and understood the wholeterrible thing complete. 

Till now, though unexpressed in thought or language, her fear had beenthat the woods her husband loved would somehow take him from her--tomerge his life in theirs--even to kill him on some mysterious way. Thistime she saw her deep mistake, and so seeing, let in upon herself thefuller agony of horror. For their jealousy was not the petty jealousy ofanimals or humans. They wanted him because they loved him, but they did_ not_ want him dead. Full charged with his splendid life and enthusiasmthey wanted him. They wanted him--alive. 

It was she who stood in their way, and it was she whom they intended toremove. 

This was what brought the sense of abject helplessness. She stood uponthe sands against an entire ocean slowly rolling in against her. For, asall the forces of a human being combine unconsciously to eject a grainof sand that has crept beneath the skin to cause discomfort, so theentire mass of what Sanderson had called the Collective Consciousness ofthe Forest strove to eject this human atom that stood across the path ofits desire. Loving her husband, she had crept beneath its skin. It washer they would eject and take away; it was her they would destroy, nothim. Him, whom they loved and needed, they would keep alive. They meantto take him living. She reached the house in safety, though she neverremembered how she found her way. It was made all simple for her. Thebranches almost urged her out. 

But behind her, as she left the shadowed precincts, she felt as thoughsome towering Angel of the Woods let fall across the threshold theflaming sword of a countless multitude of leaves that formed behind hera barrier, green, shimmering, and impassable. Into the Forest she neverwalked again. 

And she went about her daily duties with a calm and quietness that was aperpetual astonishment even to herself, for it hardly seemed of thisworld at all. She talked to her husband when he came in for tea--afterdark. Resignation brings a curious large courage--when there is nothingmore to lose. The soul takes risks, and dares. Is it a curious short-cutsometimes to the heights?

"David, I went into the Forest, too, this morning, soon after you Iwent. I saw you there. "

"Wasn't it wonderful?" he answered simply, inclining his head a little. There was no surprise or annoyance in his look; a mild and gentle_ennui_ rather. He asked no real question. She thought of some gardentree the wind attacks too suddenly, bending it over when it does notwant to bend--the mild unwillingness with which it yields. She often sawhim this way now, in the terms of trees. 

"It was very wonderful indeed, dear, yes, " she replied low, her voicenot faltering though indistinct. "But for me it was too--too strange andbig. "

The passion of tears lay just below the quiet voice all unbetrayed. Somehow she kept them back. 

There was a pause, and then he added:

"I find it more and more so every day. " His voice passed through thelamp-lit room like a murmur of the wind in branches. The look of youthand happiness she had caught upon his face out there had wholly gone, and an expression of weariness was in its place, as of a man distressedvaguely at finding himself in uncongenial surroundings where he isslightly ill at ease. It was the house he hated--coming back to roomsand walls and furniture. The ceilings and closed windows confined him. Yet, in it, no suggestion that he found _her_ irksome. Her presenceseemed of no account at all; indeed, he hardly noticed her. For wholelong periods he lost her, did not know that she was there. He had noneed of her. He lived alone. Each lived alone. 

The outward signs by which she recognized that the awful battle wasagainst her and the terms of surrender accepted were pathetic. She putthe medicine-chest away upon the shelf; she gave the orders for hispocket-luncheon before he asked; she went to bed alone and early, leaving the front door unlocked, with milk and bread and butter in thehall beside the lamp--all concessions that she felt impelled to make. Fore more and more, unless the weather was too violent, he went outafter dinner even, staying for hours in the woods. But she never sleptuntil she heard the front door close below, and knew soon afterwards hiscareful step come creeping up the stairs and into the room so softly. Until she heard his regular deep breathing close beside her, she layawake. All strength or desire to resist had gone for good. The thingagainst her was too huge and powerful. Capitulation was complete, a factaccomplished. She dated it from the day she followed him to the Forest. 

Moreover, the time for evacuation--her own evacuation--seemedapproaching. It came stealthily ever nearer, surely and slowly as therising tide she used to dread. At the high-water mark she stood waitingcalmly--waiting to be swept away. Across the lawn all those terribledays of early winter the encircling Forest watched it come, guiding itssilent swell and currents towards her feet. Only she never once gave upher Bible or her praying. This complete resignation, moreover, hadsomehow brought to her a strange great understanding, and if she couldnot share her husband's horrible abandonment to powers outside himself, she could, and did, in some half-groping way grasp at shadowy meaningsthat might make such abandonment--possible, yes, but more than merelypossible--in some extraordinary sense not evil. 

Hitherto she had divided the beyond-world into two sharp halves--spiritsgood or spirits evil. But thoughts came to her now, on soft and verytentative feet, like the footsteps of the gods which are on wool, thatbesides these definite classes, there might be other Powers as well, belonging definitely to neither one nor other. Her thought stopped deadat that. But the big idea found lodgment in her little mind, and, owingto the largeness of her heart, remained there unejected. It even broughta certain solace with it. 

The failure--or unwillingness, as she preferred to state it--of her Godto interfere and help, that also she came in a measure to understand. For here, she found it more and more possible to imagine, was perhaps nopositive evil at work, but only something that usually stands away fromhumankind, something alien and not commonly recognized. There _was_ agulf fixed between the two, and Mr. Sanderson _had_ bridged it, by histalk, his explanations, his attitude of mind. Through these her husbandhad found the way into it. His temperament and natural passion for thewoods had prepared the soul in him, and the moment he saw the way to gohe took it--the line of least resistance. Life was, of course, open toall, and her husband had the right to choose it where he would. He hadchosen it--away from her, away from other men, but not necessarily awayfrom God. This was an enormous concession that she skirted, never reallyfaced; it was too revolutionary to face. But its possibility peeped intoher bewildered mind. It might delay his progress, or it might advanceit. Who could know? And why should God, who ordered all things with suchmagnificent detail, from the pathway of a sun to the falling of asparrow, object to his free choice, or interfere to hinder him and stop?

She came to realize resignation, that is, in another aspect. It gave hercomfort, if not peace. She fought against all belittling of her God. Itwas, perhaps, enough that He--knew. 

"You are not alone, dear in the trees out there?" she ventured onenight, as he crept on tiptoe into the room not far from midnight. "Godis with you?"

"Magnificently, " was the immediate answer, given with enthusiasm, "forHe is everywhere. And I only wish that you--"

But she stuffed the clothes against her ears. That invitation on hislips was more than she could bear to hear. It seemed like asking her tohurry to her own execution. She buried her face among the sheets andblankets, shaking all over like a leaf. 

~IX~

And so the thought that she was the one to go remained and grew. It was, perhaps, first sign of that weakening of the mind which indicated thesingular manner of her going. For it was her mental opposition, thetrees felt, that stood in their way. Once that was overcome, obliterated, her physical presence did not matter. She would beharmless. 

Having accepted defeat, because she had come to feel that his obsessionwas not actually evil, she accepted at the same time the conditions ofan atrocious loneliness. She stood now from her husband farther thanfrom the moon. They had no visitors. Callers were few and far between, and less encouraged than before. The empty dark of winter was beforethem. Among the neighbors was none in whom, without disloyalty to herhusband, she could confide. Mr. Mortimer, had he been single, might havehelped her in this desert of solitude that preyed upon her mind, but hiswife was there the obstacle; for Mrs. Mortimer wore sandals, believedthat nuts were the complete food of man, and indulged in otheridiosyncrasies that classed her inevitably among the "latter signs"which Mrs. Bittacy had been taught to dread as dangerous. She stood mostdesolately alone. 

Solitude, therefore, in which the mind unhindered feeds upon its owndelusions, was the assignable cause of her gradual mental disruption andcollapse. 

With the definite arrival of the colder weather her husband gave up hisrambles after dark; evenings were spent together over the fire; he readThe Times; they even talked about their postponed visit abroad in thecoming spring. No restlessness was on him at the change; he seemedcontent and easy in his mind; spoke little of the trees and woods;enjoyed far better health than if there had been change of scene, and toherself was tender, kind, solicitous over trifles, as in the distantdays of their first honeymoon. 

But this deep calm could not deceive her; it meant, she fullyunderstood, that he felt sure of himself, sure of her, and sure of thetrees as well. It all lay buried in the depths of him, too secure anddeep, too intimately established in his central being to permit of thosesurface fluctuations which betray disharmony within. His life was hidwith trees. Even the fever, so dreaded in the damp of winter, left himfree. She now knew why: the fever was due to their efforts to obtainhim, his efforts to respond and go--physical results of a fierce unresthe had never understood till Sanderson came with his wickedexplanations. Now it was otherwise. The bridge was made. And--he hadgone. 

And she, brave, loyal, and consistent soul, found herself utterly alone, even trying to make his passage easy. It seemed that she stood at thebottom of some huge ravine that opened in her mind, the walls whereofinstead of rock were trees that reached enormous to the sky, engulfingher. God alone knew that she was there. He watched, permitted, evenperhaps approved. At any rate--He knew. 

During those quiet evenings in the house, moreover, while they sat overthe fire listening to the roaming winds about the house, her husbandknew continual access to the world his alien love had furnished for him. Never for a single instant was he cut off from it. She gazed at thenewspaper spread before his face and knees, saw the smoke of his cherootcurl up above the edge, noticed the little hole in his evening socks, and listened to the paragraphs he read aloud as of old. But this was alla veil he spread about himself of purpose. Behind it--he escaped. It wasthe conjurer's trick to divert the sight to unimportant details whilethe essential thing went forward unobserved. He managed wonderfully; sheloved him for the pains he took to spare her distress; but all the whileshe knew that the body lolling in that armchair before her eyescontained the merest fragment of his actual self. It was little betterthan a corpse. It was an empty shell. The essential soul of him was outyonder with the Forest--farther out near that ever-roaring heart of it. 

And, with the dark, the Forest came up boldly and pressed against thevery walls and windows, peering in upon them, joining hands above theslates and chimneys. The winds were always walking on the lawn andgravel paths; steps came and went and came again; some one seemed alwaystalking in the woods, some one was in the building too. She passed themon the stairs, or running soft and muffled, very large and gentle, downthe passages and landings after dusk, as though loose fragments of theDay had broken off and stayed there caught among the shadows, trying toget out. They blundered silently all about the house. They waited tillshe passed, then made a run for it. And her husband always knew. She sawhim more than once deliberately avoid them--because _she_ was there. More than once, too, she saw him stand and listen when he thought shewas not near, then heard herself the long bounding stride of theirapproach across the silent garden. Already _he_ had heard them in thewindy distance of the night, far, far away. They sped, she well knew, along that glade of mossy turf by which she last came out; it cushionedtheir tread exactly as it had cushioned her own. 

It seemed to her the trees were always in the house with him, and intheir very bedroom. He welcomed them, unaware that she also knew, andtrembled. 

One night in their bedroom it caught her unawares. She woke out of deepsleep and it came upon her before she could gather her forces forcontrol. 

The day had been wildly boisterous, but now the wind had dropped, onlyits rags went fluttering through the night. The rays of the full moonfell in a shower between the branches. Overhead still raced the scud andwrack, shaped like hurrying monsters; but below the earth was quiet. Still and dripping stood the hosts of trees. Their trunks gleamed wetand sparkling where the moon caught them. There was a strong smell ofmould and fallen leaves. The air was sharp--heavy with odor. 

And she knew all this the instant that she woke; for it seemed to herthat she had been elsewhere--following her husband--as though she hadbeen _out_! There was no dream at all, merely the definite, hauntingcertainty. It dived away, lost, buried in the night. She sat upright inbed. She had come back. 

The room shone pale in the moonlight reflected through the windows, forthe blinds were up, and she saw her husband's form beside her, motionless in deep sleep. But what caught her unawares was the horridthing that by this fact of sudden, unexpected waking she had surprisedthese other things in the room, beside the very bed, gathered closeabout him while he slept. It was their dreadful boldness--herself of noaccount as it were--that terrified her into screaming before she couldcollect her powers to prevent. She screamed before she realized what shedid--a long, high shriek of terror that filled the room, yet made solittle actual sound. For wet and shimmering presences stood grouped allround that bed. She saw their outline underneath the ceiling, the green, spread bulk of them, their vague extension over walls and furniture. They shifted to and fro, massed yet translucent, mild yet thick, movingand turning within themselves to a hushed noise of multitudinous softrustling. In their sound was something very sweet and sinning that fellinto her with a spell of horrible enchantment. They were so mild, eachone alone, yet so terrific in their combination. Cold seized her. Thesheets against her body had turned to ice. 

She screamed a second time, though the sound hardly issued from herthroat. The spell sank deeper, reaching to the heart; for it softenedall the currents of her blood and took life from her in astream--towards themselves. Resistance in that moment seemed impossible. 

Her husband then stirred in his sleep, and woke. And, instantly, theforms drew up, erect, and gathered themselves in some amazing waytogether. They lessened in extent--then scattered through the air likean effect of light when shadows seek to smother it. It was tremendous, yet most exquisite. A sheet of pale-green shadow that yet had form andsubstance filled the room. There was a rush of silent movement, as thePresences drew past her through the air, --and they were gone. 

But, clearest of all, she saw the manner of their going; for sherecognized in their tumult of escape by the window open at the top, thesame wide "looping circles"--spirals as it seemed--that she had seenupon the lawn those weeks ago when Sanderson had talked. The room oncemore was empty. 

In the collapse that followed, she heard her husband's voice, as thoughcoming from some great distance. Her own replies she heard as well. Bothwere so strange and unlike their normal speech, the very wordsunnatural. 

"What is it, dear? Why do you wake me _now_ ?" And his voice whisperedit with a sighing sound, like wind in pine boughs. 

"A moment since something went past me through the air of the room. Backto the night outside it went. " Her voice, too, held the same note as ofwind entangled among too many leaves. 

"My dear, it _was_ the wind. "

"But it called, David. It was calling _you_--by name!"

"The air of the branches, dear, was what you heard. Now, sleep again, Ibeg you, sleep. "

"It had a crowd of eyes all through and over it--before and behind--"Her voice grew louder. But his own in reply sank lower, far away, andoddly hushed. 

"The moonlight, dear, upon the sea of twigs and boughs in the rain, waswhat you saw. "

"But it frightened me. I've lost my God--and you--I'm cold as death!"

"My dear, it is the cold of the early morning hours. The whole worldsleeps. Now sleep again yourself. "

He whispered close to her ear. She felt his hand stroking her. His voicewas soft and very soothing. But only a part of him was there; only apart of him was speaking; it was a half-emptied body that lay beside herand uttered these strange sentences, even forcing her own singularchoice of words. The horrible, dim enchantment of the trees was closeabout them in the room--gnarled, ancient, lonely trees of winter, whispering round the human life they loved. 

"And let me sleep again, " she heard him murmur as he settled down amongthe clothes, "sleep back into that deep, delicious peace from which youcalled me. "

His dreamy, happy tone, and that look of youth and joy she discernedupon his features even in the filtered moonlight, touched her again aswith the spell of those shining, mild green presences. It sank down intoher. She felt sleep grope for her. On the threshold of slumber one ofthose strange vagrant voices that loss of consciousness lets loose criedfaintly in her heart--

"There is joy in the Forest over one sinner that--"

Then sleep took her before she had time to realize even that she wasvilely parodying one of her most precious texts, and that theirreverence was ghastly. 

And though she quickly slept again, her sleep was not as usual, dreamless. It was not woods and trees she dreamed of, but a small andcurious dream that kept coming again and again upon her; that she stoodupon a wee, bare rock I the sea, and that the tide was rising. The waterfirst came to her feet, then to her knees, then to her waist. Each timethe dream returned, the tide seemed higher. Once it rose to her neck, once even to her mouth, covering her lips for a moment so that she couldnot breathe. She did not wake between the dreams; a period of drab anddreamless slumber intervened. But, finally, the water rose above hereyes and face, completely covering her head. 

And then came explanation--the sort of explanation dreams bring. Sheunderstood. For, beneath the water, she had seen the world of seaweedrising from the bottom of the sea like a forest of dense green-long, sinuous stems, immense thick branches, millions of feelers spreadingthrough the darkened watery depths the power of their ocean foliage. TheVegetable Kingdom was even in the sea. It was everywhere. Earth, air, and water helped it, way of escape there was none. 

And even underneath the sea she heard that terrible sound ofroaring--was it surf or wind or voices?--further out, yet comingsteadily towards her. 

And so, in the loneliness of that drab English winter, the mind of Mrs. Bittacy, preying upon itself, and fed by constant dread, went lost indisproportion. Dreariness filled the weeks with dismal, sunless skiesand a clinging moisture that knew no wholesome tonic of keen frosts. Alone with her thoughts, both her husband and her God withdrawn intodistance, she counted the days to Spring. She groped her way, stumblingdown the long dark tunnel. Through the arch at the far end lay abrilliant picture of the violet sea sparkling on the coast of France. There lay safety and escape for both of them, could she but hold on. Behind her the trees blocked up the other entrance. She never oncelooked back. 

She drooped. Vitality passed from her, drawn out and away as by somesteady suction. Immense and incessant was this sensation of her powersdraining off. The taps were all turned on. Her personality, as it were, streamed steadily away, coaxed outwards by this Power that never weariedand seemed inexhaustible. It won her as the full moon wins the tide. Shewaned; she faded; she obeyed. 

At first she watched the process, and recognized exactly what was goingon. Her physical life, and that balance of mind which depends onphysical well-being, were being slowly undermined. She saw that clearly. Only the soul, dwelling like a star apart from these and independent ofthem, lay safe somewhere--with her distant God. That sheknew--tranquilly. The spiritual love that linked her to her husband wassafe from all attack. Later, in His good time, they would merge togetheragain because of it. But meanwhile, all of her that had kinship with theearth was slowly going. This separation was being remorselesslyaccomplished. Every part of her the trees could touch was being steadilydrained from her. She was being--removed. 

After a time, however, even this power of realization went, so that sheno longer "watched the process" or knew exactly what was going on. Theone satisfaction she had known--the feeling that it was sweet to sufferfor his sake--went with it. She stood utterly alone with this terror ofthe trees . .. Mid the ruins of her broken and disordered mind. 

She slept badly; woke in the morning with hot and tired eyes; her headached dully; she grew confused in thought and lost the clues of dailylife in the most feeble fashion. At the same time she lost sight, too, of that brilliant picture at the exist of the tunnel; it faded away intoa tiny semicircle of pale light, the violet sea and the sunshine themerest point of white, remote as a star and equally inaccessible. Sheknew now that she could never reach it. And through the darkness thatstretched behind, the power of the trees came close and caught her, twining about her feet and arms, climbing to her very lips. She woke atnight, finding it difficult to breathe. There seemed wet leaves pressingagainst her mouth, and soft green tendrils clinging to her neck. Herfeet were heavy, half rooted, as it were, in deep, thick earth. Hugecreepers stretched along the whole of that black tunnel, feeling abouther person for points where they might fasten well, as ivy or the giantparasites of the Vegetable Kingdom settle down on the trees themselvesto sap their life and kill them. 

Slowly and surely the morbid growth possessed her life and held her. Shefeared those very winds that ran about the wintry forest. They were inleague with it. They helped it everywhere. 

"Why don't you sleep, dear?" It was her husband now who played the rôleof nurse, tending her little wants with an honest care that at leastaped the services of love. He was so utterly unconscious of the ragingbattle he had caused. "What is it keeps you so wide awake and restless?"

"The winds, " she whispered in the dark. For hours she had been watchingthe tossing of the trees through the blindless windows. "They go walkingand talking everywhere to-night, keeping me awake. And all the time theycall so loudly to you. "

And his strange whispered answer appalled her for a moment until themeaning of it faded and left her in a dark confusion of the mind thatwas now becoming almost permanent. 

"The trees excite them in the night. The winds are the great swiftcarriers. Go with them, dear--and not against. You'll find sleep thatway if you do. "

"The storm is rising, " she began, hardly knowing what she said. 

"All the more then--go with them. Don't resist. They'll take you to thetrees, that's all. "

Resist! The word touched on the button of some text that once had helpedher. 

"Resist the devil and he will flee from you, " she heard her whisperedanswer, and the same second had buried her face beneath the clothes in aflood of hysterical weeping. 

But her husband did not seem disturbed. Perhaps he did not hear it, forthe wind ran just then against the windows with a booming shout, and theroaring of the Forest farther out came behind the blow, surging into theroom. Perhaps, too, he was already asleep again. She slowly regained asort of dull composure. Her face emerged from the tangle of sheets andblankets. With a growing terror over her--she listened. The storm wasrising. It came with a sudden and impetuous rush that made all furthersleep for her impossible. 

Alone in a shaking world, it seemed, she lay and listened. That storminterpreted for her mind the climax. The Forest bellowed out its victoryto the winds; the winds in turn proclaimed it to the Night. The wholeworld knew of her complete defeat, her loss, her little human pain. Thiswas the roar and shout of victory that she listened to. 

For, unmistakably, the trees were shouting in the dark. These weresounds, too, like the flapping of great sails, a thousand at a time, andsometimes reports that resembled more than anything else the distantbooming of enormous drums. The trees stood up--the whole beleagueringhost of them stood up--and with the uproar of their million branchesdrummed the thundering message out across the night. It seemed as ifthey had all broken loose. Their roots swept trailing over field andhedge and roof. They tossed their bushy heads beneath the clouds with awild, delighted shuffling of great boughs. With trunks upright theyraced leaping through the sky. There was upheaval and adventure in theawful sound they made, and their cry was like the cry of a sea that hasbroken through its gates and poured loose upon the world. .. . 

Through it all her husband slept peacefully as though he heard it not. It was, as she well knew, the sleep of the semi-dead. For he was outwith all that clamoring turmoil. The part of him that she had lost wasthere. The form that slept so calmly at her side was but the shell, halfemptied. 

And when the winter's morning stole upon the scene at length, with apale, washed sunshine that followed the departing tempest, the firstthing she saw, as she crept to the window and looked out, was the ruinedcedar lying on the lawn. Only the gaunt and crippled trunk of itremained. The single giant bough that had been left to it lay dark uponthe grass, sucked endways towards the Forest by a great wind eddy. Itlay there like a mass of drift-wood from a wreck, left by the ebbing ofa high spring-tide upon the sands--remnant of some friendly, splendidvessel that once sheltered men. 

And in the distance she heard the roaring of the Forest further out. Herhusband's voice was in it.