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IX...........................................................................................................................................................35

HE PAINTED trees as by some special divining instinct of their essential qualities. He understood them. He

knew why in an oak forest, for instance, each individual was utterly distinct from its fellows, and why no two

beeches in the whole world were alike. People asked him down to paint a favourite lime or silver birch, for he

caught the individuality of a tree as some catch the individuality of a horse. How he managed it was

something of a puzzle, for he never had painting lessons, his drawing was often wildly inaccurate, and, while

his perception of a Tree Personality was true and vivid, his rendering of it might almost approach the

ludicrous. Yet the character and personality of that particular tree stood there alive beneath his

brushshining, frowning, dreaming, as the case might be, friendly or hostile, good or evil. It emerged.

There was nothing else in the wide world that he could paint; flowers and landscapes he only muddled away

into a smudge; with people he was helpless and hopeless; also with animals. Skies he could sometimes

manage, or effects of wind in foliage, but as a rule he left these all severely alone. He kept to trees, wisely

following an instinct that was guided by love. It was quite arresting, this way he had of making a tree look

"Yes, Sanderson knows what he's doing when he paints a tree!" thought old David Bittacy, C. B., late of the

Woods and Forests. "Why, you can almost hear it rustle. You can smell the thing. You can hear the rain drip

through its leaves. You can almost see the branches move. It grows." For in this way somewhat he expressed

his satisfaction, half to persuade himself that the twenty guineas were well spent (since his wife thought

otherwise), and half to explain this uncanny reality of life that lay in the fine old cedar framed above his study

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 of nature that had been fostered by years spent in the forests and jungles of

the eastern world. It was odd for an Englishman, due possibly to that Eurasian ancestor. Surreptitiously, as

though half ashamed of it, he had kept alive a sense of beauty that hardly belonged to his type, and was

unusual for its vitality. Trees, in particular, nourished it. He, also, understood trees, felt a subtle sense of

communion with them, born perhaps of those years he had lived in caring for them, guarding, protecting,

nursing, years of solitude among their great shadowy presences. He kept it largely to himself, of course,

because he knew the world he lived in. HE also kept it from his wifeto some extent. He knew it came

between them, knew that she feared it, was opposed. But what he did not know, or realise at any rate, was the

extent to which she grasped the power which they wielded over his life. Her fear, he judged, was simply due

to those years in India, when for weeks at a time his calling took him away from her into the jungle forests,

while she remained at home dreading all manner of evils that might befall him. This, of course, explained her

instinctive opposition to the passion for woods that still influenced and clung to him. It was a natural survival

For Mrs. Bittacy, daughter of an evangelical clergyman, was a selfsacrificing woman, who in most things

found a happy duty in sharing her husband's joys and sorrows to the point of selfobliteration. Only in this

matter of the trees she was less successful than in others. It remained a problem difficult of compromise.

He knew, for instance, that what she objected to in this portrait of the cedar on their lawn was really not the

price he had given for it, but the unpleasant way in which the transaction emphasised this breach between

Sanderson, the artist, earned little enough money by his strange talent; such cheques were few and far

between. The owners of fine or interesting trees 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 own delight. Even were there buyers, he

would not sell them. Only a few, and these peculiarly intimate friends, might even see them, for he disliked to

hear the undiscerning criticisms of those who did not understand. Not that he minded laughter at his

craftmanshiphe admitted it with scornbut that remarks about the personality of the tree itself could

easily wound or anger him. He resented slighting observations concerning them, as though insults offered to

personal friends who could not answer for themselves. He was instantly up in arms.

"It really is extraordinary," said a Woman who Understood, "that you can make that cypress seem an

And though the bit of calculated flattery had come so near to saying the right, true, thing, Sanderson flushed

as though she had slighted a friend beneath his very nose. Abruptly he passe din front of her and turned the

"Almost as queer," he answered rudely, copying her silly emphasis, "as that 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 was the money for which she had married

him, Sanderson's relations with that particular family terminated on the spot, chance of prospective orders

with it. His sensitiveness, perhaps, was morbid. At any rate the way to reach 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 a man's

inspiration, be it music, religion, or a woman, is never a safe thing to criticise.

"I do think, perhaps, it was just a little extravagant, dear," said Mrs. Bittacy, referring to the cedar cheque,

"It reminds me of a certain day, Sophia," replied the old gentleman, looking first proudly at herself, then

fondly at the picture, "now long gone by. It reminds me of another treethat Kentish lawn in the spring,

birds singing in the lilacs, and some one in a muslin frock waiting patiently beneath a certain cedarnot the

"I was not waiting," she said indignantly, "I was picking fircones for the schoolroom fire"

"Fircones, my dear, do not grow on cedars, and schoolroom fires were not made in June in my young days."

"It has made me fond of all cedars for its sake," he answered, "and it reminds me that you are the same young

She crossed the room to his side, and together they looked out of the window where, upon the lawn of their

"You're as full of dreams as ever," she said gently, "and I don't regret the cheque a bitreally. Only it would

"That was blown down years ago. I passed the place last year, and there's not a sign of it left," he replied

tenderly. And presently, when he released her from his side, she went up to the wall and carefully dusted the

picture Sanderson had made of the cedar on their present lawn. She went all round the frame with her tiny

"What I like about it," said the old fellow to himself when his wife had left the room, "is the way he has made

it live. All trees have it, of course, but a cedar taught it to me firstthe 'something' trees possess that make

them know I'm there when I stand close and watch. I suppose I felt it then because I was in love, and love

reveals life everywhere." He glanced a moment at the Lebanon looming gaunt and sombre through the

gathering dusk. A curious wistful expression danced a moment through his eyes. "Yes, Sanderson has seen it

as it is," he murmured, "solemnly dreaming there its dim hidden life against the Forest edge, and as different

from that other tree in Kent as I am fromfrom 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. Friendly thoughyes, on the

whole quite friendly. He's painted the friendliness right 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 between this cottage and the

Forestyet somehow more in sympathy with us than with the mass of woods behinda sort of gobetween.

That I never noticed before. I see it nowthrough his eyes. It stands there like a sentinelprotective rather."

He turned away abruptly to look through the window. He saw the great encircling mass of gloom that was the

Forest, fringing their little lawn. It pressed up closer in the darkness. The prim garden with its formal beds of

flowers seemed an impertinence almostsome little coloured insect that sought to settle on a sleeping

monstersome gaudy fly that danced impudently down the edge of a great river that could engulf it with a

toss of its smallest wave. That Forest with its thousand years of growth and its deep spreading being was

some such slumbering monster, yes. Their cottage and garden stood too near its running lip. When the winds

were strong and lifted its shadowy skirts of black and purple. . . . He loved this feeling of the Forest

"Queer," he reflected, "awfully queer, that trees should bring me such a sense of dim, vast living! I used to

feel it particularly, I remember, in India; in Canadian woods as well; but never in little English woods till

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 the picture that he loved. A thrill of unaccustomed life ran through him as he looked. "I

wonder; by Jove, I wonder," his thoughts ran on, "whether a treeerin any lawful meaning of the term

can bealive. I remember some writing fellow telling me long ago that trees had once been moving things,

animal organisms of some sort, that had stood so long feeding, sleeping, dreaming, or something, in the same

Fancies flew pellmell about his mind, and, lighting a cheroot, he dropped into an armchair beside the open

window and let them play. Outside the blackbirds whistled in the shrubberies across the lawn. He smelt the

earth and trees and flowers, the perfume of mown grass, and the bits of open heathland far away in the heart

of the woods. The summer wind stirred very faintly through the leaves. But the great New Forest hardly

Mr. Bittacy, however, knew intimately every detail of that wilderness of trees within. He knew all the purple

coombs splashed with yellow waves of gorse; sweet with juniper and myrtle, and gleaming with clear and

darkeyed pools that watched the sky. There hawks hovered, circling hour by hour, and the flicker of the

peewit's flight with its melancholy, petulant cry, deepened the sense of stillness. He knew the solitary pines,

dwarfed, tufted, vigorous, that sang to every lost wind, travellers like the gipsies who pitched their bushlike

tents beneath them; he knew the shaggy ponies, with foals like baby centaurs; the chattering jays, the milky

call of the cuckoos in the spring, and the boom of the bittern from the lonely marshes. The undergrowth of

watching hollies, he knew too, strange and mysterious, with their dark, suggestive beauty, and the yellow

Here all the Forest lived and breathed in safety, secure from mutilation. No terror of the axe could haunt the

peace of its vast subconscious life, no terror of devastating Man afflict it with the dread of premature death. It

knew itself supreme; it spread and preened itself without concealment. It set no spires to carry warnings, for

But, once its leafy portals left behind, the trees of the countryside were otherwise. The houses threatened

them; they knew themselves in danger. The roads were no longer glades of silent turf, but noisy, cruel ways

by which men came to attack them. They were civilised, cared forbut cared for in order that some day they

might be put to death. Even in the villages, where the solemn and immemorial repose of giant chestnuts aped

security, the tossing of a silver birch against their mass, impatient in the littlest wind, brought warning. Dust

clogged their leaves. The inner humming of their quiet life became inaudible beneath the scream and shriek

of clattering traffic. They longed and prayed to enter the great Peace of the Forest yonder, but they could not

move. They knew, moreover, that the Forest with its august, deep splendour despised and pitied them. They

were a thing of artificial gardens, 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 which he returned at length to the things of

practical life. "I wonder if Sophia would mind him for a bit?" He rose with the sound of the gong,

brushing the ashes from his speckled waistcoat. He pulled the waistcoat down. HE was slim and spare in

figure, active in his movements. In the dim light, but for that silvery moustache, he might easily have passed

for a man of forty. "I'll suggest it to her anyhow," he decided on his way upstairs to dress. His thought really

was that Sanderson could probably explain his world of things he had always felt abouttrees. A man who

"Why not?" she gave her verdict later over the breadandbutter pudding; "unless you think he'd find it dull

"He would paint all day in the Forest, dear. I'd like to pick his brains a bit, too, if I could manage it."

"You can manage anything, David," was what she answered, for this elderly childless couple used an

affectionate politeness long since deemed oldfashioned. The remark, however, displeased her, making her

feel uneasy, and she did not notice his rejoinder, smiling his pleasur eand content"Except yourself and our

bank account, my dear." This passion of his for trees was of old a bone of contention, though very mild

contention. It frightened her. That was the truth. The Bible, her Baedeker for earth and heaven, did not

mention it. Her husband, while humouring her, could never alter that instinctive dread she had. He soothed,

but never changed her. She liked the woods, perhaps as spots for shade and picnics, but she could not, as he

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 thought might interest her. The custom was invariable, except on Sundays,

when, to please his wife, he dozed over Tennyson or Farrar as their mood might be. She knitted while he

read, asked gentle questions, told him his voice was a "lovely reading voice," and enjoyed the little

discussions that occasions prompted because he always let her with them with "Ah, Sophia, I had never

thought of it quite in that way before; but now you mention it I must say I think there's something in it. . . . "

For David Bittacy was wise. It was long after marriage, during his months of loneliness spent with trees and

forests in India, his wife waiting at home in the Bungalow, that his other, deeper side had developed the

strange passion that she could not understand. And after one or two serious attempts to let her share it with

him, he had given up and learned to hide it from her. He learned, that is, to speak of it only casually; for since

she knew it was there, to keep silence altogether would only increase her pain. So from time to time he

skimmed the surface just to let her show him where he was wrong and think she won the day. It remained a

debatable land of compromise. He listened with patience to her criticisms, her excursions and alarms,

knowing that while it gave her satisfaction, it could not change himself. The thing lay in him too deep and

true for change. But, for peace' sake, some meetingplace was desirable, and he found it thus.

It was her one fault in his eyes, this religious mania carried over from her upbringing, and it did no serious

harm. Great emotion could shake it sometimes out of her. She clung to it because her father taught it her and

not because she had thought it out for herself. Indeed, like many women, she never really thought at all, but

merely reflected the images of others' thinking which she had learned to see. So, wise in his knowledge of

human nature, old David Bittacy accepted the pain of being obliged to keep a portion of his inner life shut off

from the woman he deeply loved. He regarded her litle biblical phrases as oddities that still clung to a rather

fine, big soullike horns and little useless things some animals have not yet lost in the course of evolution

"My dear, what is it? You frightened me!" She asked it suddenly, sitting up so abruptly that her cap dropped

sideways almost to her ear. For David Bittacy behind his crackling paper had uttered a sharp exclamation of

surprise. He had lowered the sheet and was staring at her over the tops of his gold glasses.

"Listen to this, if you please," he said, a note of eagerness in his voice, "listen to this, my dear Sophia. It's

from an address by Francis Darwin before the Royal Society. He is president, you know, and son of the great

"I am listening, David," she said with some astonishment, looking up. She stopped her knitting. For a second

she glanced behind her. Something had suddenly changed in the room, and it made her feel wide awake,

though before she had been almost dozing. Her husband's voice and manner had introduced this new thing.

Her instincts rose in warning. "Do read it, dear." He took a deep breath, looking first again over the rims of

his glasses to make quite sure of her attention. He had evidently come across something of genuine interest,

although herself she often found the passages from these "Addresses" somewhat heavy.

"'It is impossible to know whether or not plants are conscious; but it is consistent with the doctrine of

continuity that in all living things there is something psychic, and if we accept this point of view'"

"'If we accept this point of view,'" he continued, "'we must believe that in plants there exists a faint copy of

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

For a minute or two his wife made no reply or comment. They stared at one another in silence. He waited for

the meaning of the words to reach her understanding with full import. Then he turned and read them again in

part, while she, released from that curious driving look in his eyes, instinctively again glanced over her

shoulder round the room. It was almost 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 we know as consciousness in ourselves."

"If," she repeated lamely, feeling before the stare of those questioning eyes she must say something, but not

"Consciousness," he rejoined. And then he added gravely: "That, my dear, is the statement of a scientific man

Mrs. Bittacy sat forward in her chair so that her silk flounces crackled louder than the newspaper. She made a

characteristic little sound between sniffling and snorting. She put her shoes closely together, with her hands

"David," she said quietly, "I think these scientific men are simply losing their heads. There is nothing in the

"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 once said

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

For she thought her husband referred to her remark about the Bible, and not to her judgment of the scientific

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

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

"Pah! the vegetable kingdom, indeed!" She tossed her pretty old head. And into the words she put a degree of

contempt that, could the vegetable kingdom have heard it, might have made it feel ashamed for covering a

third of the world with its wonderful tangled network of roots and branches, delicate shaking leaves, and its

millions of spires that caught the sun and wind and rain. Its very right to existence seemed in question.

SANDERSON accordingly came down, and on the whole his short visit was a success. Why he came at all

was a mystery to those who heard of it, for he never paid visits and was certainly not the kind of man to court

Mrs. Bittacy was glad when he left. He brought no dresssuit for one thing, not even a dinnerjacket, and he

wore very low collars with big balloon ties like a Frenchman, and let his hair grow longer than was nice, she

felt. Not that these things were important, but that she considered them symptoms of something a little

For all that he was an interesting man, and, in spire of his eccentricities of dress and so forth, a gentleman.

"Perhaps," she reflected in her genuinely charitable heart, "he had other uses for the twenty guineas, an

invalid sister or an old mother to support!" She had no notion of the cost of brushes, frames, paints, and

canvases. Also she forgave him much for the sake of his beautiful eyes and his eager enthusiasm of manner.

Still, when the visit was over, she felt relieved. She said nothing about 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 younger man

engrossed the older, keeping him out for hours in the Forest, talking on the lawn in the blazing sun, and in the

evenings when the damp of dusk came creeping out from the surrounding woods, all regardless of his age and

usual habits, was not quite to her taste. Of course, Mr. Sanderson did not know how easily those attacks of

They talked trees from morning to night. It stirred in her the old subconscious trail of dread, a trail that led

ever into the darkness of big woods; and such feelings, as her early evangelical training taught her, were

Her mind, as she watched these two, was charged with curious thoughts of dread she could not understand,

yet feared the more on that account. The way they studied that old mangy cedar was a trifle unnecessary,

unwise, she felt. It was disregarding the sense of proportion which deity had set upon the world for men's safe

Even after dinner they smoked their cigars upon the low branches that swept down and touched the lawn,

until at length she insisted on their coming 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 even dangerous, though what

the precise danger was she had forgotten. The upas was the tree she really meant.

For a long time, before deciding on this peremptory step, she had watched them surreptitiously from the

drawingroom windowher husband and her guest. The dusk enveloped them with its damp veil of gauze.

She saw the glowing tips of their cigars, and heard the drone of voices. Bats flitted overhead, and big, silent

moths whirred softly over the rhododendron blossoms. And it came suddenly to her, while she watched, that

her husband had somehow altered these last few dayssince Mr. Sanderson's arrival in fact. A change had

come over him, though what it was she could not say. She hesitated, indeed, to search. That was the

instinctive dread operating in her. Provided it passed she would rather not know. Small things, of course, she

noticed; small outward signs. He had neglected The Times for one thing, left off his speckled waistcoats for

another. He was absentminded sometimes; showed vagueness in practical details where hitherto he showed

These and a dozen other small peculiarities came suddenly upon her with the rush of a combined attack. They

brought with them a faint distress that made her shiver. Momentarily her mind was startled, then confused, as

her eyes picked out the shadowy figures in the dusk, the cedar covering them, the Forest close at their backs.

And then, before she could think, or seek internal guidance as her habit was, this whisper, muffled and very

And she had done so. Her shrill voice crossed the lawn and died away into the Forest, quickly smothered. No

echo followed it. The sound fell dead against the rampart of a thousand listening trees.

"The damp is so very penetrating, even in summer," she murmured when they came obediently. She was half

surprised at her open audacity, half repentant. They came so meekly at her call. "And my husband is sensitive

to fever from the East. No, do not throw away your cigars. We can sit by the open window and enjoy the

"It is so stillso wonderfully still," she went on, as no one spoke; "so peaceful, and the air so very sweet . . .

and God is always near to those who need His aid." The words slipped out before she realised quite what she

wa saying, yet fortunately, in time to lower her voice, for no one 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; she thanked him in her oldfashioned, gentle

way, declining the lamps which he had offered to light. "They attract the moths and insects so, I think!"

The three of them sat there in the gloaming. Mr. Bittacy's white moustache and his wife's yellow shawl

gleaming at either end of the little horseshoe, Sanderson with his wild black hair and shining eyes midway

between them. The painter went on talking softly, continuing evidently the conversation begun with his host

"For trees, you see, rather conceal themselves in daylight. They reveal themselves fully only after sunset. I

never know a tree," he bowed here slightly towards the lady as though to apologise for something he felt she

would not quite understand or like, "until I've seen it in the night. Your cedar, for instance," looking towards

her husband again so that Mrs. Bittacy caught the gleaming of his turned eyes, "I failed with badly at first,

because I did it in the morning. You shall see tomorrow what I meanthat first sketch is upstairs in my

portfolio; it's quite another tree to the one you bought. That view"he leaned forward, lowering his

voice"I caught one morning about two o'clock in very faint moonlight and the stars. I saw the naked being

"You mean that you went out, Mr. Sanderson, at that hour?" the old lady asked with astonishment and mild

"I fear it was rather a liberty to take in another's house, perhaps," he answered courteously. "But, having

"On the contrary. The dog came out with me. I hope," he added, "the noise didn't disturb you, though it's

rather late to say so. I feel quite guilty." His white teeth showed in the dusk as he smiled. A smell of earth and

Mrs. Bittacy said nothing at the moment. "We both sleep like tops," put in her husband, laughing. "You're a

courageous man, though, Sanderson, and, by Jove, the picture justifies you. Few artist would have taken so

much trouble, though I read once that Holman Hunt, Rossetti, or some one of that lot, painted all night in his

He chattered on. His wife was glad to hear his voice; it made her feel more easy in her mind. But presently

the other held the floor again, and her thoughts grew darkened and afraid. Instinctively she feared the

influence on her husband. They mystery and wonder that lie in woods, in forests, in great gatherings of trees

"The Night transfigures all things in a way," he was saying; "but nothing so searchingly as trees. From behind

a veil that sunlight hangs before them in the day they emerge and show themselves. Even buildings do

thatin a measurebut trees particularly. In the daytime they sleep; at night they wake, they manifest, turn

activelive. You remember," turning politely again in the direction of his hostess, "how clearly Henley

"That socialist person, you mean?" asked the lady. Her tone and accent made the substantive sound criminal.

"The poet, yes," replied the artist tactfully, "the friend of Stevenson, you remember, Stevenson who wrote

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 across the lawn towards the wall of blue darkness where the big Forest swept the little

garden with its leaguelong curve that was like the shoreline of a sea. A wave of distant sound that was like

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 treesGod'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

"I like that part about God's sentinels," she murmured. There was no sharpness in her tone; it was hushed and

quiet. The truth, so musically uttered, muted her shrill objections though it had not lessened her alarm. Her

"And old trees in particular," continued the artist, as though to himself, "have very definite personalities. You

can offend, wound, please them; the moment you stand within their shade you feel whether they come out to

you, or whether they withdraw." He turned abruptly towards his host. "You know that singular essay of

Prentice Mulford's, no doubt 'God in the Trees'extravagant perhaps, but yet with a fine true beauty in it?

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

"I never did!" It fell like a drip of cold water from the face muffled in the yellow shawl; even a child could

"Ah," said Sanderson gently, "but there is 'God' in the trees. God in a very subtle aspect and sometimesI

have known the trees express it toothat which is not Goddark and terrible. Have you ever noticed, too,

how clearly trees show what they wantchoose their companions, at least? How beeches, for instance, allow

no life too near thembirds or squirrels in their boughs, nor any growth beneath? The silence in the beech

wood is quite terrifying often! And how pines like bilberry bushes at their feet and sometimes little oaksall

trees making a clear, deliberate choice, and holding firmly to it? Some trees obviouslyit's very strange and

The old lady sat up crackling, for this was more than she could permit. Her stiff silk dress emitted little sharp

"We know," she answered, "that He was said to have walked in the garden in the cool of the evening"the

gulp betrayed the effort that it cost her"but we are nowhere told that He hid in the trees, or anything like

"True," was the soft answer, "but in everything that grows, has life, that is, there's mystery past all finding

out. The wonder that lies hidden in our own souls lies also hidden, I venture to assert, in the stupidity and

The observation was not meant to be amusing. It was not amusing. No one laughed. On the contrary, the

words conveyed in too literal a sense the feeling that haunted all that conversation. Each one in his own way

realisedwith beauty, with wonder, with alarmthat the talk had somehow brought the whole vegetable

kingdom nearer to that of man. Some link had been established between the two. It was not wise, with that

great Forest listening at their very doors, to speak so plainly. The forest edged up closer while they did so.

And Mrs. Bittacy, anxious to interrupt the horrid spell, broke suddenly in upon it with a matteroffact

suggestion. She did not like her husband's prolonged silence, stillness. He seemed so negativeso changed.

"David," she said, raising her voice, "I think you're feeling the dampness. It's grown chilly. The fever comes

so suddenly, you know, and it might be wide to take the tincture. I'll go and get it, dear, at once. It's better."

And before he could object she had left the room to bring the homeopathic dose that she believed in, and that,

And the moment the door closed behind her, Sanderson began again, though now in quite a different tone.

Mr. Bittacy sat up in his chair. The two men obviously resumed the conversationthe real conversation

interrupted beneath the cedarand left aside the sham one which was so much dust merely thrown in the old

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

"Made them, yes,"he paused a moment, then added,"made them aware of your presence; aware of a

"By Jove, Sanderson!" This put into plain language actual sensations he had felt, yet had never dared to

phrase in words before. "They get into touch with me, as it were?" he ventured, laughing at his own sentence,

"Exactly," was the quick, emphatic reply. "They seek to blend with something they feel instinctively to be

good for them, helpful to their essential beings, encouraging to their best expressiontheir life."

"Good Lord, Sir!" Bittacy heard himself saying, "but you're putting my own thoughts into words. D'you

know, I've felt something like that for years. As though" he looked round to make sure his wife was not

"'Amalgamate' seems the best word, perhaps," said Sanderson slowly. "They would draw you to themselves.

Good forces, you see, always seek to merge; evil to separate; that's why Good in the end must always win the

dayeverywhere. 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

are good; alone, you may take it generally, arewell, dangerous. Look at a monkeypuzzler, or better still, a

holly. Look at it, watch it, understand it. Did you ever see more plainly an evil thought made visible? They're

wicked. Beautiful too, oh yes! There's a strange, miscalculated beauty often in evil"

"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 so fast. It was too condensed. Bittacy

hardly followed that last bit. His mind floundered among his own less definite, less sorted thoughts, till

"That cedar will protect you here, though, because you both have humanised it by your thinking so lovingly

Sanderson laughed. "We're getting rather mixed," he said; "we're talking of one thing in the terms of another

really. But what I mean isyou seethat their love for you, their 'awareness' of your personality and

presence involves the idea of winning youacross the borderinto themselvesinto their world of living.

The ideas the artist started in his mind ran furious wild races to and fro. It was like a maze sprung suddenly

into movement. The whirling of the intricate lines bewildered him. They went so fast, leaving but half an

explanation of their goal. He followed first one, then another, but a new one always dashed across to intercept

"But India," he said, presently in a lower voice, "India is so far awayfrom this little English forest. The

The rustle of skirts warned of Mrs. Bittacy's approach. This was a sentence he could turn round another way

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

"The winds, you seethe great, swift carriers! They have their ancient rights of way about the world. An

easterly wind, for instance, carrying on stage by stage as it werelinking dropped messages and meanings

"There, David," she said, "that will ward off any beginnings of attack. Just a spoonful, dear. Oh, oh! not all!"

for he had swallowed half the contents at a single gulp as usual; "another dose before you go to bed, and the

She turned to her guest, who put the tumbler down for her upon a table at his elbow. She had heard them

speak of the east wind. She emphasised the warning she had misinterpreted. The private part of the

"It is the one thing that upsets him more than any otheran east wind," she said, "and I am glad, Mr.

A DEEP HUSH followed, in the middle of which an owl was heard calling its muffled note in the forest. A

big moth whirred with a soft collision against one of the windows. Mrs. Bittacy started slightly, but no one

spoke. Above the trees the stars were faintly visible. From the distance came the barking of a dog.

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

"It's rather a comforting thought," he said, throwing the match out of the window, "that life is about us

everywhere, and that there is really no dividing line between what we call organic and inorganic."

"The universe, yes," said Sanderson, "is all one, really. We're puzzled by the gaps we cannot see across, but

Mrs. Bittacy rustled ominously, holding her peace meanwhile. She feared long words she did not understand.

"In trees and plants especially, there dreams an exquisite life that no one yet has proved unconscious."

"Or conscious either, Mr. Sanderson," she neatly interjected. "It's only man that was made after His image,

"It is not necessary," he explained suavely, "to say that they're alive in the sense that we are alive. At the

same time," with an eye to his wife, "I see no harm in holding, dear, that all created things contain some

measure of His life Who made them. It's only beautiful to hold that He created nothing dead. We are not

"Oh, no! Not that, I hope!" The word alarmed her. It was worse than pope. Through her puzzled mind stole a

"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 and motion in the falling of a dying leaf, in the breaking up and crumbling of

everything indeed. And take an inert stone: it's crammed with heat and weight and potencies of all sorts.

What holds its particles together indeed? We understand it as little as gravity or why a needle always turns to

"You think a compass has a soul, Mr. Sanderson?" exclaimed the lady with a crackling of her silk flounces

that conveyed a sense of outrage even more plainly than her tone. The artist smiled to himself I the darkness,

"Our friend merely suggests that these mysterious agencies," he said quietly, "may be due to some kind of life

we cannot understand. Why should water only run downhill? Why should trees grow at right angles to the

surface of the ground and towards the sun? Why should the worlds spin for ever on their axes? Why should

fire change the form of everything it touches without really destroying them? To say these things follow the

law of their being explains nothing. Mr. Sanderson merely suggestspoetically, my dear, of coursethat

"The 'breath of life,' we read, 'He breathed into them.' These things do not breathe." She said it with triumph.

Then Sanderson put in a word. But he spoke rather to himself or to his host than by way of serious rejoinder

"But plants do breathe too, you know," he said. "They breathe, they eat, they digest, they move about, and

they adapt themselves to their environment as men and animals do. They have a nervous system too . . . at

least a complex system of nuclei which have some of the qualities of nerve cells. They may have memory

too. Certainly, they know definite action in response to stimulus. And though this may be physiological, no

He did not notice, apparently, the little gasp that was audible behind the yellow shawl. Bittacy cleared his

throat, threw his extinguished cigar upon the lawn, crossed and recrossed his legs.

"And in trees," continued the other, "behind a great forest, for instance," pointing towards the woods, "may

stand a rather splendid Entity that manifests through all the thousand individual treessome huge collective

life, quite as minutely and delicately organised as our own. It might merge and blend with ours under certain

conditions, so that we could understand it by being it, for a time at least. It might even engulf human vitality

into the immense whirlpool of its own vast dreaming life. The pull of a big forest on a man can be

The mouth of Mrs. Bittacy was heard to close with a snap. Her shawl, and particularly her crackling dress,

exhaled the protest that burned within her like a pain. She was too distressed to be overawed, but at the same

time too confused 'mid the litter of words and meanings half understood, to find immediate phrases she could

use. Whatever the actual meaning of his language might be, however, and whatever subtle dangers lay

concealed behind them meanwhile, they certainly wove a kind of gentle spell with the glimmering darkness

that held all three delicately enmeshed there by that open window. The odours of dewy lawn, flowers, trees,

"The moods," he continued, "that people waken in us are due to their hidden life affecting our own. Deep

calls to sleep. A person, for instance, joins you in an empty room: you both instantly change. The new arrival,

though in silence, has caused a change of mood. May not the moods of Nature touch and stir us in virtue of a

similar prerogative? The sea, the hills, the desert, wake passion, joy, terror, as the case may be; for a few,

perhaps," he glanced significantly at his host so that Mrs. Bittacy again caught the turning of his eyes,

"emotions of a curious, flaming splendour that are quite nameless. Well . . . whence come these powers?

Surely from nothing that is . . . dead! Does not the influence of a forest, its sway and strange ascendancy over

certain minds, betray a direct manifestation of life? It lies otherwise beyond all explanation, this mysterious

emanation of big woods. Some natures, of course, deliberately invite it. The authority of a host of

trees,"his voice grew almost solemn as he said the words"is something not to be denied. One feels it

There was considerable tension in the air as he ceased speaking. Mr. Bittacy had not intended that the talk

should go so far. They had drifted. He did not wish to see his wife unhappy or afraid, and he was

awareacutely sothat her feelings were stirred to a point he did not care about. Something in her, as he

He sought to generalise the conversation, diluting this accumulated emotion by spreading it.

"The sea is His and He made it," he suggested vaguely, hoping Sanderson would take the hint, "and with the

"The whole gigantic vegetable kingdom, yes," the artist took him up, "all at the service of man, for food, for

shelter and for a thousand purposes of his daily life. Is it not striking what a lot of the globe they cover . . .

exquisitely organised life, yet stationary, always ready to 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, another from cutting

down trees. And, it's curious that most of the forest tales and legends are dark, mysterious, and somewhat

illomened. The forestbeings are rarely gay and harmless. The forest life was felt as terrible. Treeworship

still survives today. Woodcutters . . . those who take the life of trees . . . you see a race of haunted men. . .

He stopped abruptly, a singular catch in his voice. Bittacy felt something even before the sentences were

over. His wife, he knew, felt it still more strongly. For it was in the middle of the heavy silence following

upon these last remarks, that Mrs. Bittacy, rising with a violent abruptness from her chair, drew the attention

of the others to something moving towards them across the lawn. It came silently. In outline it was large and

curiously spread. It rose high, too, for the sky above the shrubberies, still pale gold from the sunset, was

dimmed by its passage. She declared afterwards that it move in "looping circles," but what she perhaps meant

She turned excitedly, half afraid, half angry, to Sanderson. With a breathless sort of gasp she said it,

politeness all forgotten. "I knew it . . . if you went on. I knew it. Oh! Oh!" And she cried again, "Your talking

But the confusion of her vehement words passed unnoticed in the first surprise they caused. For a moment

"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 of a

purpose, as it seemed, between her husband and the lawn. She pointed. Her little hand made a silhouette

"Beyond the cedarbetween it and the lilacs." The voice had lost its shrillness; it was thin and hushed.

"There . . . now you see it going round upon itself againgoing back, thank God! . . . going back to the

Forest." It sank to a whisper, shaking. She repeated, with a great dropping sigh of relief"Thank God! I

thought . . . at first . . . it was coming here . . . to us! . . . David . . . to you!"

She stepped back from the window, her movements confused, feeling in the darkness for the support of a

chair, and finding her husband's outstretched hand instead. "Hold me, dear, hold me, please . . . tight. Do not

let me go." She was in what he called afterwards "a regular state." He drew her firmly down upon her chair

"Smoke, Sophie, my dear," he said quickly, trying to make his voice calm and natural. "I see it, yes. It's

"But, David,"and there was a new horror in her whisper now"it made a noise. It makes it still. I hear it

swishing." Some such word she usedswishing, sishing, rushing, or something of the kind. "David, I'm very

"It is in the wind," said Sanderson, speaking for the first time, very quietly. The expression on his face was

not visible in the gloom, but his voice was soft and unafraid. At the sound of it, Mrs. Bittacy started violently

again. Bittacy drew his chair a little forward to obstruct her view of him. He felt bewildered himself, a little,

But Mrs. Bittacy was badly frightened. It seemed to her that what she saw came from the enveloping forest

just beyond their little garden. It emerged in a sort of secret way, moving towards them as with a purpose,

stealthily, difficultly. Then something stopped it. It could not advance beyond the cedar. The cedarthis

impression remained with her afterwards tooprevented, kept it back. Like a rising sea the Forest had

surged a moment in their direction through the covering darkness, and this visible movement was its first

wave. Thus to her mind it seemed . . . like that mysterious turn of the tide that used to frighten and mystify

her in childhood on the sands. The outward surge of some enormous Power was what she felt . . . something

to which every instinct in her being rose in opposition because it threatened her and hers. In that moment she

In the stumbling movement that she made away from the window and towards the bell she barely caught the

sentence Sandersonor was it her husband?murmured to himself: "It came because we talked of it; our

thinking 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 with authority while his wife's fingers touched

"My dear, I should not say anything to Thompson." The anxiety he felt was manifest in his voice, but his

Then Sanderson cut him short. "Allow me," he said quickly. "I'll see if anything's wrong." And before either

of them could answer or object, he was gone, leaping out by the open window. They saw his figure vanish

A moment later the maid entered, in answer to the bell, and with her came the loud barking of the terrier from

"The lamps," said her master shortly, and as she softly closed the door behind her, they heard the wind pass

with a mournful sound of singing round the outer walls. A rustle of foliage from the distance passed within it.

"You see, the wind is rising. It was the wind!" He put a comforting arm about her, distressed to feel that she

was trembling. But he knew that he was trembling too, though with a kind of odd elation rather than alarm.

"And it was smoke that you saw coming from Stride's cottage, or from the rubbish heaps he's been burning in

the kitchen garden. The noise we heard was the branches rustling in the wind. Why should you be so

"I was afraid for you, dear. Something frightened me for you. That man makes me feel so uneasy and

uncomfortable for his influence upon you. It's very foolish, I know. I think . . . I'm tired; I feel so

overwrought and restless." The words poured out in a hurried jumble and she kept turning to the window

"The strain of having a visitor," he said soothingly, "has taxed you. We're so unused to having people in the

house. He goes tomorrow." He warmed her cold hands between his own, stroking them tenderly. More, for

the life of him, he could not say or do. The joy of a strange, internal excitement made his heart beat faster. He

She peered close into his face through the gloom, and said a curious thing. "I thought, David, for a moment . .

. you seemed . . . different. My nerves are all on edge tonight." She made no further reference to her

A sound of footsteps from the lawn warned of Sanderson's return, as he answered quickly in a lowered

tone"There's no need to be afraid on my account, dear girl. There's nothing wrong with me. I assure you; I

Thompson came in with the lamps and brightness, and scarcely had she gone again when Sanderson in turn

"There's nothing," he said lightly, as he closed it behind him. "Somebody's been burning leaves, and the

smoke is drifting a little through the trees. The wind," he added, glancing at his host a moment significantly,

but in so discreet a way that Mrs. Bittacy did not observe it, "the wind, too, has begun to roar . . . in the Forest

But Mrs. Bittacy noticed about him two things which increased her uneasiness. She noticed the shining of his

eyes, because a similar light had suddenly come into her husband's; and she noticed, too, the apparent depth

of meaning he put into those simple words that "the wind had begun to roar in the Forest . . . further out." Her

mind retained the disagreeable impression that he meant more than he said. In his tone lay quite another

implication. It was not actually "wind" he spoke of, and it would not remain "further out" . . . rather, it was

coming in. Another impression she got toostill more unwelcomewas that her husband understood his

"DAVID, DEAR," she observed gently as soon as they were alone upstairs, "I have a horrible uneasy feeling

about that man. I cannot get rid 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 imaginative sometimes, aren't you?"

"I think," she hesitated, stammering a little, confused, still frightened, "I meanisn't he a hypnotist, or full of

He was too accustomed to her little confused alarms to explain them away seriously as a rule, or to correct

her verbal inaccuracies, but tonight he felt she needed careful, tender treatment. He soothed her as best he

"But there's no harm in that, even if he is," he answered quietly. "Those are only new names for very old

"That's what I mean," she replied, the texts he dreaded rising in an unuttered crowd behind the words. "He's

one of those things that we are warned would comeone of those LatterDay things." For her mind still

bristled with the bogeys of the Antichrist and Prophecy, and she had only escaped the Number of the Beast,

as it were, by the skin of her teeth. The Pope drew most of her fire usually, because she could understand

him; the target was plain and she could shoot. But this treeandforest business was so vague and horrible. It

terrified her. "He makes me think," she went on, "of Principalities and Powers in high places, and of things

that walk in the darkness. I did not like the way he spoke of trees getting alive in the night, and all that; it

made me think of wolves in sheep's clothing. And when I saw that awful thing in the sky above the

But he interrupted her at once, for that was something he had decided it was best to leave unmentioned.

"He only meant, I think, Sophie," he put in gravely, yet with a little smile, "that trees may have a measure of

conscious liferather a nice idea on the whole, surely,something like that bit we read in the Times the

other night, you rememberand that a big forest may possess a sort of Collective Personality. Remember,

"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 our ears and eyes to knowledgeof any

"With you, David, the wish is always farther than the thought," she rejoined. For, like the child who thought

that "suffered under Pontius Pilate" was "suffered under a bunch of violets," she heard her proverbs

phonetically and reproduced them thus. She hoped to convey her warning in the quotation. "And we must

But, after a little pause, during which she blew the light out, David Bittacy settling down to sleep with an

excitement in his blood that was new and bewilderingly delightful, realised that perhaps he had not said quite

enough to comfort her. She was lying awake by his side, still frightened. HE put his head up in the darkness.

"Sophie," he said softly, "you must remember, too, that in any case between us andand all that sort of

thingthere is a great gulf fixed, a gulf that cannot be crossederwhile we are still in the body."

And hearing no reply, he satisfied himself that she was already asleep and happy. But Mrs. Bittacy was not

asleep. She heard the sentence, only she said nothing because she felt her thought was better unexpressed.

She was afraid to hear the words in the darkness. The Forest outside was listening and might hear them

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

It was much later than night when she awoke out of troubled, uneasy dreams and heard a sound that twisted

her very nerves with fear. It passed immediately with full waking, for, listen as she might, there was nothing

audible but the inarticulate murmur of the night. It was in her dreams she heard it, and the dreams had

vanished with it. But the sound was recognisable, for it was that rushing noise that had come across the lawn;

only this time closer. Just above her face while she slept had passed this murmur as of rustling branches in the

very room, a sound of foliage whispering. "A going in the tops of the mulberry trees," ran through her mind.

She had dreamed that she lay beneath a spreading tree somewhere, a tree that whispered with ten thousand

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; the room, of course, was empty. The deep hush of the summer night lay

over all, broken only by another sound that now issued from the shadows close beside the bed, a human

sound, yet unnatural, a sound that seized the fear with which she had waked and instantly increased it. And,

although it was one she recognised as familiar, at first she could not name it. Some seconds certainly

passedand, they were very long onesbefore she understood that it was her husband talking in his sleep.

The direction of the voice confused and puzzled her, moreover, for it was 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 his white

figure standing out in the middle of the room, halfway towards the window. The candlelight slowly grew.

She saw him move then nearer to the window, with arms outstretched. His speech was low and mumbled, the

And she shivered. To her, sleeptalking was uncanny to the point of horror; it was like the talking of the

"David!" she whispered, dreading the sound of her own voice, and half afraid to interrupt him and see his

face. She could not bear the sight of the wideopened eyes. "David, you're walking in your sleep. Docome

Her whisper seemed so dreadfully loud in the still darkness. At the sound of her voice he paused, then turned

slowly round to face her. His widelyopened eyes stared into her own without recognition; they looked

through her into something beyond; it was as though he knew the direction of the sound, yet cold not see her.

They were shining, she noticed, as the eyes of Sanderson had shone several hours ago; and his face was

flushed, distraught. Anxiety was written upon every feature. And, instantly, recognising that the fever was

upon him, she forgot her terror temporarily in practical considerations. He came back to bed without waking.

She closed his eyelids. Presently he composed himself quietly to sleep, or rather to deeper sleep. She

Then she rose very quietly to close the window, feeling the night air blow in too fresh and keen. She put the

candle where it could not reach him. The sight of the big Baxter Bible beside it comforted her a little, but all

through her underbeing ran the warnings of a curious alarm. And it was while in the act of fastening the

catch with one hand and pulling the string of the blind with the other, that her husband sat up again in bed

and spoke in words this time that were distinctly audible. The eyes had 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 at first

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

"They are roaring in the Forest further out . . . and I . . . must go and see." He stared beyond her as he said it,

to the woods. "They are needing me. They sent for me. . . ." Then his eyes wandering back again to things

within the room, he lay down, his purpose suddenly changed. And that change was horrible as well, more

horrible, perhaps, because of its revelation of another detailed world he moved in far away from her.

The singular phrase chilled her blood, for a moment she was utterly terrified. That tone of the somnambulist,

differing so slightly yet so distressingly from normal, waking speech, seemed to her somehow wicked. Evil

and danger lay waiting thick behind it. She leaned against the windowsill, shaking in every limb. She had an

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

The words expressed some fringe of these alarms that had haunted her so long, and that the arrival and

presence of Sanderson seemed to have brought to the very edge of a climax she could not even dare to think

about. They gave it form; they brought it closer; they sent her thoughts to her Deity in a wild, deep prayer for

help and guidance. For here was a direct, unconscious betrayal of a world of inner purposes and claims her

By the time she reached his side and knew the comfort of his touch, the eyes had closed again, this time of

their own accord, and the head lay calmly back upon the pillows. She gently straightened the bed clothes. She

watched him for some minutes, shading the candle carefully with one hand. There was a smile of strangest

Then, blowing out the candle, she knelt down and prayed before getting back into bed. But no sleep came to

her. She lay awake all night thinking, wondering, praying, until at length with the chorus of the birds and the

glimmer of the dawn upon the green blind, she fell into a slumber of complete exhaustion.

But while she slept the wind continued roaring in the Forest further out. The sound came closersometimes

WITH THE DEPARTURE of Sanderson the significance of the curious incidents waned, because the moods

that had produced them passed away. Mrs. Bittacy soon afterwards came to regard them as some growth of

disproportion that had been very largely, perhaps, in her own mind. It did not strike her that this change was

sudden for it came about quite naturally. For one thing her husband never spoke of the matter, and for another

she remembered how many things in life that had seemed inexplicable and singular at the time turned out

Most of it, certainly, she put down to the presence of the artist and to his wild, suggestive talk. With his

welcome removal, the world turned ordinary again and safe. The fever, though it lasted as usual a short time

only, had not allowed of her husband's getting up to say goodbye, and she had conveyed his regrets and

adieux. In the morning Mr. Sanderson had seemed ordinary enough. In his town hat and gloves, as she saw

"After all," she thought as she watched the ponycart bear him off, "he's only an artist!" What she had

thought he might be otherwise her slim imagination did not venture to disclose. Her change of feeling was

wholesome and refreshing. She felt a little ashamed of her behaviour. She gave him a smilegenuine

because the relief she felt was genuineas he bent over her hand and kissed it, but she did not suggest a

second visit, and her husband, she noted with satisfaction and relief, had said nothing either.

The little household fell again into the normal and sleepy routine to which it was accustomed. The name of

Arthur Sanderson was rarely if ever mentioned. Nor, for her part, did she mention to her husband the incident

of his walking in his sleep and the wild words he used. But to forget it was equally impossible. Thus it lay

buried deep within her like a centre of some unknown disease of which it was a mysterious symptom, waiting

to spread at the first favourable opportunity. She prayed against it every night and morning: prayed that she

For in spite of much surface foolishness that many might have read as weakness. Mrs. Bittacy had balance,

sanity, and a fine deep faith. She was greater than she knew. Her love for her husband and her God were

There followed a summer of great violence and beauty; of beauty, because the refreshing rains at night

prolonged the glory of the spring and spread it all across July, keeping the foliage young and sweet; of

violence, because the winds that tore about the south of England brushed the whole country into dancing

movement. They swept the woods magnificently, and kept them roaring with a perpetual grand voice. Their

deepest notes seemed never to leave the sky. They sang and shouted, and torn leaves raced and fluttered

through the air long before their usually appointed time. Many a tree, after days of roaring and dancing, fell

exhausted to the ground. The cedar on the lawn gave up two limbs that fell upon successive days, at the same

hour toojust before dusk. The wind often makes its most boisterous effort at that time, before it drops with

the sun, and these two huge branches lay in dark ruin covering half the lawn. They spread across it and

towards the house. They left an ugly gaping space upon the tree, so that the Lebanon looked unfinished, half

destroyed, a monster shorn of its oldtime comeliness and splendour. Far more of the Forest was now visible

than before; it peered through the breach of the broken defences. They could see from the windows of the

house nowespecially from the drawingroom and bedroom windowsstraight out into the glades and

Mrs. Bittacy's niece and nephew, who were staying on a visit at the time, enjoyed themselves immensely

helping the gardeners carry off the fragments. It took two days to do this, for Mr. Bittacy insisted on the

branches being moved entire. He would not allow them to be chopped; also, he would not consent to their use

as firewood. Under his superintendence the unwieldy masses were dragged to the edge of the garden and

arranged upon the frontier line between the Forest and the lawn. The children were delighted with the

scheme. They entered into it with enthusiasm. At all costs this defence against the inroads of the Forest must

be made secure. They caught their uncle's earnestness, felt even something of a hidden motive that he had;

and the visit, usually rather dreaded, became the visit of their lives instead. It was Aunt Sophia this time who

But Alice, who felt in the silent displeasure of her aunt some secret thing 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 impregall fat and thick and solid," he concluded, unable to

manage the longer word. "Then nothingsimply nothingcan get through. Can't it, Uncle David?"

And Mr. Bittacy, jacket discarded and working in his speckled waistcoat, went puffing to their aid, arranging

"Come on," he said, "whatever happens, you know, we must finish before it's dark. Already the wind is

roaring in the Forest further out." And Alice caught the phrase and instantly echoed it. "Stevie," she cried

below her breath, "look sharp, you lazy lump. Didn't you hear what Uncle David said? It'll come in and catch

They worked like Trojans, and, sitting beneath the wistaria tree that climbed the southern wall of the cottage,

Mrs. Bittacy with her knitting watched them, calling from time to time insignificant messages of counsel and

advice. The messages passed, of course, unheeded. Mostly, indeed, they were unheard, for the workers were

too absorbed. She warned her husband not to get too hot, Alice not to tear her dress, Stephen not to strain his

back with pulling. Her mind hovered between the homeopathic medicinechest upstairs and her anxiety to

For this breaking up of the cedar had stirred again her slumbering alarms. It revived memories of the visit of

Mr. Sanderson that had been sinking into oblivion; she recalled his queer and odious way of talking, and

many things she hoped forgotten drew their heads up from that subconscious region to which all forgetting is

impossible. They looked at her and nodded. They were full of life; they had no intention of being pushed

aside and buried permanently. "Now look!" they whispered, "didn't we tell you so?" They had been merely

waiting the right moment to assert their presence. And all her former vague distress crept over her. Anxiety,

This incident of the cedar's breaking up was actually so unimportant, and yet her husband's attitude towards it

made it so significant. There was nothing that he said in particular, or did, or left undone that frightened, her,

but his general air of earnestness seemed so unwarranted. She felt that he deemed the thing important. He was

so exercised about it. This evidence of sudden concern and interest, buried all the summer from her sight and

knowledge, she realised now had been buried purposely; he had kept it intentionally concealed. Deeply

submerged in him there ran this tide of other thoughts, desires, hopes. What were they? Whither did they

lead? The accident to the tree betrayed it most unpleasantly; and, doubtless, more than he was aware.

She watched his grave and serious face as he worked there with the children, and as she watched she felt

afraid. It vexed her that the children worked so eagerly. They unconsciously supported him. The thing she

Moreover, as far as her puzzled mind could deal with a dread so vague and incoherent, the collapse of the

cedar somehow brought it nearer. The fact that, all so illexplained and formless, the thing yet lay in her

consciousness, out of reach but moving and alive, filled her with a kind of puzzled, dreadful wonder. Its

presence was so very real, its power so gripping, its partial concealment so abominable. Then, out of the dim

confusion, she grasped one thought and saw it stand quite clear before her eyes. She found difficulty in

clothing it in words, but its meaning perhaps was this: That cedar stood in their life for something friendly; its

downfall meant disaster; a sense of some protective influence about the cottage, and about her husband in

"Why do you fear the big winds so?" he had asked her several days before, after a particularly boisterous day;

and the answer she gave surprised her while she gave it. One of those heads poked up unconsciously, and let

"Because, David, I feel theybring the Forest with them," she faltered. "They blow something from the

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

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

And another time, when he had coaxed her to go with him down one of the nearer glades, she asked why he

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

Whereupon he explained that ivy was a parasite the trees knew not how to fight alone, and that the verdurers

were careless and did not do it thoroughly. They gave a chop here and there, leaving the tree to do the rest for

"Besides, I like to do it for them. I love to help them and protect," he added, the foliage rustling all about his

And these stray remarks, as his attitude towards the broken cedar, betrayed this curious, subtle change that

was going forward to his personality. Slowly and surely all the summer it had increased.

It was growingthe thought startled her horriblyjust as a tree grows, the outer evidence from day to day

so slight as to be unnoticeable, yet the rising tide so deep and irresistible. The alteration spread all through

and over him, was in both mind and actions, sometimes almost in his face as well. Occasionally, thus, it stood

up straight outside himself and frightened her. His life was somehow becoming linked so intimately with

trees, and with all that trees signified. His interests became 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 shadow on her when she thought of it.

Some instinct in her heart she dreaded infinitely more than deathfor death meant sweet translation for his

soulcame gradually to associate the thought of him with the thought of trees, in particular with these Forest

trees. Sometimes, before she could face the thing, argue it away, or pray it into silence, she found the thought

of him running swiftly through her mind like a thought of the Forest itself, the two most intimately linked and

The idea was too dim for her to see it face to face. Its mere possibility dissolved the instant she focussed it to

get the truth behind it. It was too utterly elusive, made, prot�an. Under the attack of even a minute's

concentration the very meaning of it vanished, melted away. The idea lay really behind any words that she

could ever find, beyond the touch of definite thought. Her mind was unable to grapple with it. But, while it

vanished, the trail of its approach and disappearance flickered a moment before her shaking vision. The

Reduced to the simple human statement that her temperament sought instinctively, it stood perhaps at this:

Her husband loved her, and he loved the trees as well; but the trees came first, claimed parts of him she did

Thus, in guise of some faint, distressing compromise, the matter shaped itself for her perplexed mind in the

terms of conflict. A silent, hidden battle raged, but as yet raged far away. The breaking of the cedar was a

visible outward fragment of a distant and mysterious encounter that was coming daily closer to them both.

The wind, instead of roaring in the Forest further out, now cam nearer, booming in fitful gusts about its edge

Meanwhile the summer dimmed. The autumn winds went sighing through the woods, leaves turned to golden

red, and the evenings were drawing in with cosy shadows before the first sign of anything seriously untoward

made its appearance. It came then with a flat, decided kind of violence that indicated mature preparation

beforehand. It was not impulsive nor illconsidered. In a fashion it seemed expected, and indeed inevitable.

For within a fortnight of their annual change to the little village of Seillans above St. Raphaela change so

regular for the past ten years that it was not even discussed between themDavid Bittacy abruptly refused to

Thompson had laid the teatable, prepared the spirit lamp beneath the urn, pulled down the blinds in that

swift and silent way she had, and left the room. The lamps were still unlit. The firelight shone on the chintz

armchairs, and Boxer lay asleep on the black horsehair rug. Upon the walls the gilt picture frames gleamed

faintly, the pictures themselves indistinguishable. Mrs. Bittacy had warmed the teapot and was in the act of

pouring the water in to heat the cups when her husband, looking up from his chair across the hearth, made the

"My dear," he said, as though following a train of thought of which she only heard this final phrase, "it's

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 her heart leaped all the same. The tone of his voice was ominous.

"Of course not," she answered, "it would be most unwise. Why should you?" She referred to the mist

that always spread on autumn nights upon the lawn, but before she finished the sentence she knew that he

It reminded her of the tone he used when saying goodbye years ago, before one of those jungle expeditions

she dreaded. His voice then was so serious, so final. It was serious and final now. For several moments she

could think of nothing to say. She busied herself with the teapot. She had filled one cup with hot water till it

overflowed, and she emptied it slowly into the slopbasin, trying with all her might not to let him see the

trembling of her hand. The firelight and the dimness of the room both helped her. But in any case he would

MRS. BITTACY had never liked their present home. She preferred a flat, more open country that left

approaches clear. She liked to see things coming. This cottage on the very edge of the old hunting grounds of

William the Conqueror had never satisfied her ideal of a safe and pleasant place to settle down in. The

seacoast, with treeless downs behind and a clear horizon in front, as at Eastbourne, say, was her ideal of a

It was curious, this instinctive aversion she felt to being shut inby trees especially; a kind of claustrophobia

almost; probably due, as has been said, to the days in India when the trees took her husband off and

surrounded him with dangers. In those weeks of solitude the feeling had matured. She had fought it in her

fashion, but never conquered it. Apparently routed, it had a way of creeping back in other forms. In this

particular case, yielding to his strong desire, she thought the battle won, but the terror of the trees came back

She never lost knowledge of the fact that the leagues of forest lay about their cottage like a mighty wall, a

crowding, watching, listening presence that shut them in from freedom and escape. Far from morbid

naturally, she did her best to deny the thought, and so simple and unartificial was her type of mind that for

weeks together she would wholly lose it. Then, suddenly it would return upon her with a rush of bleak reality.

It was not only in her mind; it existed apart from any mere mood; a separate fear that walked alone; it came

and went, yet when it wentwent only to watch her from another point of view. It was in abeyancehidden

The Forest never let her go completely. It was ever ready to encroach. All the branches, she sometimes

fancied, stretched one waytowards their tiny cottage and garden, as though it sought to draw them in and

merge them in itself. Its great, deepbreathing soul resented the mockery, the insolence, the irritation of the

prim garden at its very gates. It would absorb and smother them if it could. And every wind that blew its

thundering message over the huge soundingboard of the million, shaking trees conveyed the purpose that it

had. They had angered its great soul. At its heart was this deep, incessant roaring.

All this she never framed in words, the subtleties of language lay far beyond her reach. But instinctively she

felt it; and more besides. It troubled her profoundly. Chiefly, moreover, for her husband. Merely for herself,

the nightmare might have left her cold. It was David's peculiar interest in the trees that gave the special

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

had decided his vocation, fed his ambition, nourished his dreams, desires, hopes. All his best years of active

life had been spent in the care and guardianship of trees. He knew them, understood their secret life and

nature, "managed" them intuitively as other men "managed" dogs and horses. He could not live for long away

from them without a strange, acute nostalgia that stole his peace of mind and consequently his strength of

body. A forest made him happy and at peace; it nursed and fed and soothed his deepest moods. Trees

influenced the sources of his life, lowered or raised the very heartbeat in him. Cut off from them he

languished as a lover of the sea can droop inland, or a mountaineer may pine in the flat monotony of the

This she could understand, in a fashion at least, and make allowances for. She had yielded gently, even

sweetly, to his choice of their English home; for in the little island there is nothing that suggests the woods of

wilder countries so nearly as the New Forest. It has the genuine air and mystery, the depth and splendour, the

loneliness, and there and there the strong, untamable quality of oldtime forests as Bittacy of the Department

In a single detail only had he yielded to her wishes. He consented to a cottage on the edge, instead of in the

heart of it. And for a dozen years now they had dwelt in peace and happiness at the lips of this great

spreading thing that covered so many leagues with its tangle of swamps and moors and splendid ancient trees.

Only with the last two years or sowith his own increasing age, and physical decline perhapshad come

this marked growth of passionate interest in the welfare of the Forest. She had watched it grow, at first had

laughed at it, then talked sympathetically so far as sincerity permitted, then had argued mildly, and finally

come to realise that its treatment lay altogether beyond her powers, and so had come to fear it with all her

The six weeks they annually spent away from their English home, each regarded very differently, of course.

For her husband it meant a painful exile that did his health no good; he yearned for his treesthe sight and

sound and smell of them; but for herself it meant release from a haunting dreadescape. To renounce those

six weeks by the sea on the sunny, shining coast of France, was almost more than this little woman, even with

After the first shock of the announcement, she reflected as deeply as her nature permitted, prayed, wept in

secretand made up her mind. Duty, she felt clearly, pointed to renouncement. The discipline would

certainly be severeshe did not dream at the moment how severe!but this fine, consistent little Christian

saw it plain; she accepted it, too, without any sighing of the martyr, thought he courage she showed was of

the martyr order. Her husband should never know the cost. In all but this one passion his unselfishness was

ever as great as her own. The love she had borne him all these years, like the love she bore her

anthropomorphic deity, was deep and real. She loved to suffer for them both. Besides, the way her husband

had put it to her was singular. It did not take the form of a mere selfish predilection. Something higher than

"I feel, Sophia, it would be really more than I could manage," he said slowly, gazing into the fire over the

tops of his stretchedout muddy boots. "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 define connects my inner being with these trees, and

separation would make me illmight even kill me. My hold on life would weaken; here is my source of

supply. I cannot explain it better than that." He looked up steadily into her face across the table so that she

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

The reality of what he hinted at crept into that shadowcovered room like an actual Presence and stood

beside them. It came not by the windows or the door, but it filled the entire space between the walls and

ceiling. It took the heat from the fire before her face. She felt suddenly cold, confused a little, frightened. She

"There are thingssome things," she faltered, "we are not intended to know, I think." The words expressed

And after a pause of several minutes, disregarding the criticism as though he had not heard it"I cannot

explain it better than that, you see," his grave voice answered. "There is this deep, tremendous link,some

secret power they emanate that keeps me well and happy andalive. If you cannot understand, I feel at least

you may be able toforgive." His tone grew tender, gentle, soft. "My selfishness, I know, must seem quite

unforgivable. I cannot help it somehow; these trees, this ancient Forest, both seem knitted into all that makes

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 into her throat which she had great difficulty in managing while she went over and

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

"David, He will direct. Nothing shall harm you. You've never once been selfish, and I cannot bear to hear you

say such things. The way will open that is best for youfor both of us." She kissed him, she would not let

him speak; her heart was in her throat, and she felt for him far more than for herself.

And then he had suggested that she should go alone perhaps for a shorter time, and stay in her brother's villa

with the children, Alice and Stephen. It was always open to her as she well knew.

"You need the change," he said, when the lamps had been lit and the servant had gone out again; "you need it

as much as I dread it. I could manage somehow until you returned, and should feel happier that way if you

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 whispered it"that I can never leave it again. My life and happiness lie here together."

And eve while scorning the idea that she could leave him alone with the Influence of the Forest all about him

to have its unimpeded way, she felt the pangs of that subtle jealousy bite keen and close. He loved the Forest

better than herself, for he placed it first. Behind the words, moreover, hid the unuttered thought that made her

so uneasy. The terror Sanderson had brought revived and shook its wings before her very eyes. For the whole

conversation, of which this was a fragment, conveyed the unutterable implication that while he could not

spare the trees, they equally could not spare him. The vividness with which he managed to conceal and yet

betray the fact brought a profound distress that crossed the border between presentiment and warning into

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

"David, I shall stay here with you. I think you need me really,don't you?" Eagerly, with a touch of

"Now more than ever, dear. God bless you for you sweet unselfishness. And your sacrifice," he added, "is all

the greater because you cannot understand the thing that makes it necessary for me to stay."

"In the springperhaps," he answered gently, almost beneath his breath. "For they will not need me then. All

the world can love them in the spring. It's in the winter that they're lonely and neglected. I wish to stay with

And in this way, without further speech, the decision was made. Mrs. Bittacy, at least, asked no more

questions. Yet she could not bring herself to show more sympathy than was necessary. She felt, for one thing,

that if she did, it might lead him to speak freely, and to tell her things she could not possibly bear to know.

THIS WAS at the end of summer, but the autumn followed close. The conversation really marked the

threshold between the two seasons, and marked at the same time the line between her husband's negative and

aggressive state. She almost felt she had done wrong to yield; he grew so bold, concealment all discarded. He

went, that is, quite openly to the woods, forgetting all his duties, all his former occupations. He even sought

to coax her to go with him. The hidden thing blazed out without disguise. And, while she trembled at his

energy, she admired the virile passion he displayed. Her jealousy had long ago retired before her fear,

accepting the second place. Her one desire now was to protect. The wife turned wholly mother.

He said so little, buthe hated to come in. From morning to night he wandered in the Forest; often he went

out after dinner; his mind was charged with treestheir foliage, growth, development; their wonder, beauty,

strength; their loneliness in isolation, their power in a herded mass. He knew the effect of every wind upon

them; the danger from the boisterous north, the glory from the west, the eastern dryness, and the soft, moist

tenderness that a south wind left upon their thinning boughs. He spoke all day of their sensations: how they

drank the fading sunshine, dreamed in the moonlight, thrilled to the kiss of stars. The dew could bring them

half the passion of the night, but frost sent them plunging beneath the ground to dwell with hopes of a later

coming softness in their roots. They nursed the life they carriedinsects, larvae, chrysalisand when the

skies above them melted, he spoke of them standing "motionless in an ecstasy of rain," or in the noon of

And once in the middle of the night she woke at the sound of his voice, and heard himwide awake, not

talking in his sleepbut talking towards the window where the shadow of the cedar fell at noon:

and, when, half charmed, half terrified, she turned and called to him by name, he merely said

"My dear, I felt the lonelinesssuddenly realised itthe alien desolation of that tree, set here upon our little

lawn in England when all her Eastern brothers call her in sleep." And the answer seemed so queer, so

"unevangelical," that she waited in silence till he slept again. The poetry passed her by. It seemed

The fear, however, seemed somehow all lapped up and banished soon afterwards by her unwilling admiration

of the rushing splendour of her husband's state. Her anxiety, at any rate, shifted from the religious to the

medical. She thought he might be losing his steadiness of mind a little. How often in her prayers she offered

thanks for the guidance that had made her stay with him to help and watch is impossible to say. It certainly

She even went so far once, when Mr. Mortimer, the vicar, called, and brought with him a more or less

distinguished doctoras to tell the professional man privately some symptoms of her husband's queerness.

And his answer that there was "nothing he could prescribe for" added not a little to her sense of unholy

bewilderment. No doubt Sir James had never been "consulted" under such unorthodox conditions before. His

sense of what was becoming naturally overrode his acquired instincts as a skilled instrument that might help

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

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

Evidently he did not care about being invited to examine patients in this surreptitious way before a teapot on

the lawn, chance of a fee most problematical. He liked to see a tongue and feel a thumping pulse; to know the

pedigree and bank account of his questioner as well. It was most unusual, in abominable taste besides. Of

For now the aggressive attitude of her husband overcame her to the point where she found it difficult even to

question him. Yet in the house he was so kind and gentle, doing all he could to make her sacrifice as easy as

"David, you really are unwise to go out now. The night is damp and very chilly. The ground is soaked in dew.

His face lightened. "Won't you come with me, dear,just for once? I'm only going to the corner of the

She had been out with him in the short dark afternoon, and they had passed that evil group of hollies where

the gipsies camped. Nothing else would grow there, but the hollies throve upon the stony soil.

"David, the beech is all right and safe." She had learned his phraseology a little, made clever out of due

"But it's rising," he answered, "rising in the east. I heard it in the bare and hungry larches. They need the sun

She sent a short unspoken prayer most swiftly to her deity as she heard him say it. For every time now, when

he spoke in this familiar, intimate way of the life of the trees, she felt a sheet of cold fasten tight against her

Yet, in all else, and in the relations of his daily life, he was sane and reasonable, loving, kind and tender. It

was only on the subject of the trees he seemed unhinged and queer. Most curiously it seemed that, since the

collapse of the cedar they both loved, though in different fashion, his departure from the normal had

increased. Why else did he watch them as a man might watch a sickly child? Why did he hunger especially in

the dusk to catch their "mood of night" as he called it? Why think so carefully upon them when the frost was

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

It dropped upon her like a blow that she felt at once all over, upon body, heart and mind. The discovery

rushed out from its ambush to overwhelm. The truth of it, making all arguing futile, numbed her faculties.

But though at first it deadened her, she soon revived, and her being rose into aggressive opposition. A wild

yet calculated courage like that which animates the leaders of splendid forlorn hopes flamed in her little

personflamed grandly, and invincible. While knowing herself insignificant and weak, she knew at the

same time that power at her back which moves the worlds. The faith that filled her was the weapon in her

hands, and the right by which she claimed it; but the spirit of utter, selfless sacrifice that characterised her life

was the means by which she mastered its immediate use. For a kind of white and faultless intuition guided

How so magnificent a divination came to her at all may well be a matter for astonishment, though some clue

of explanation lies, perhaps, in the very simpleness of her nature. At any rate, she saw quite clearly certain

things; saw them in moments onlyafter prayer, in the still silence of the night, or when left alone those

long hours in the house with her knitting and her thoughtsand the guidance which then flashed into her

They came to her, these things she saw, formless, wordless; she could not put them into any kind of language;

but by the very fact of being uncaught in sentences they retained their original clear vigour.

Hours of patient waiting brought the first, and the others followed easily afterwards, by degrees, on

subsequent days, a little and a little. Her husband had been gone since early morning, and had taken his

luncheon with him. She was sitting by the tea things, the cups and teapot warmed, the muffins in the fender

keeping hot, all ready for his return, when she realised quite abruptly that this thing which took him off,

which kept him out so many hours day after day, this thing that was against her own little will and

instinctswas enormous as the sea. It was no mere prettiness of single Trees, but something massed and

mountainous. About her rose the wall of its huge opposition to the sky, its scale gigantic, its power utterly

prodigious. What she knew of it hitherto as green and delicate forms waving and rustling in the winds was

but, as it were the spray of foam that broke into sight upon the nearer edge of viewless depths far, far away.

The trees, indeed, were sentinels set visibly about the limits of a camp that itself remained invisible. The

awful hum and murmur of the main body in the distance passed into that still room about her with the

firelight and hissing kettle. Out yonderin the Forest further outthe thing that was ever roaring at the

The sense of definite battle, toobattle between herself and the Forest for his soulcame with it. Its

presentiment was as clear as though Thompson had come into the room and quietly told her that the cottage

was surrounded. "Please, ma'am, there are trees come up about the house," she might have suddenly

announced. And equally might have heard her own answer: "It's all right, Thompson. The main body is still

Immediately upon its heels, then, came another truth, with a close reality that shocked her. She saw that

jealousy was not confined to the human and animal world alone, but ran though all creation. The Vegetable

Kingdom knew it too. Socalled inanimate nature shared it with the rest. Trees felt it. This Forest just beyond

the windowstanding there in the silence of the autumn evening across the little lawnthis Forest

understood it equally. The remorseless, branching power that sought to keep exclusively for itself the thing it

loved and needed, spread like a running desire through all its million leaves and stems and roots. In humans,

of course, it was consciously directed; in animals it acted with frank instinctiveness; but in trees this jealousy

rose in some blind tide of impersonal and unconscious wrath that would sweep opposition from its path as the

wind sweeps powdered snow from the surface of the ice. Their number was a host with endless

reinforcements, and once it realised its passion was returned the power increased. . . . Her husband loved the

trees. . . . They had become aware of it. . . . They would take him from her in the end. . . .

Then, while she heard his footsteps in the hall and the closing of the front door, she saw a third thing

clearly;realised the widening of the gap between herself and him. This other love had made it. All these

weeks of the summer when she felt so close to him, now especially when she had made the biggest sacrifice

of her life to stay by his side and help him, he had been slowly, surelydrawing away. The estrangement

was here and nowa fact accomplished. It had been all this time maturing; there yawned this broad deep

space between them. Across the empty distance she saw the change in merciless perspective. It revealed his

face and figure, dearlyloved, once fondly worshipped, far on the other side in shadowy distance, small, the

They had their tea in silence then. She asked no questions, he volunteered no information of his day. The

heart was big within her, and the terrible loneliness of age spread through her like a rising icy mist. She

watched him, filling all his wants. His hair was untidy and his boots were caked with blackish mud. He

moved with a restless, swaying motion that somehow blanched her cheek and sent a miserable shivering

He brought in with him an odour of the earth and forest that seemed to choke her and make it difficult to

breathe; andwhat she noticed with a climax of almost uncontrollable alarmupon his face beneath the

lamplight shone traces of a mild, faint glory that made her think of moonlight falling upon a wood through

speckled shadows. It was his newfound happiness that shone there, a happiness uncaused by her and in

In his coat was a spray of faded yellow beech leaves. "I brought this from the Forest to you," he said, with all

the air that belonged to his little acts of devotion long ago. And she took the spray of leaves mechanically

with a smile and a murmured "thank you, dear," as though he had unknowingly put into her hands the weapon

And when the tea was over and he left the room, he did not go to his study, or to change his clothes. She

heard the front door softly shut behind him as he again went out towards the Forest.

A moment later she was in her room upstairs, kneeling beside the bedthe side she slept onand praying

wildly through a flood of tears that God would save and keep him to her. Wind brushed the window panes

ONE SUNNY November morning, when the strain had reached a pitch that made 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 of seeingclear was

strong upon her, forcing her up to some unnatural level of understanding. To stay indoors and wait inactive

for his return seemed suddenly impossible. She meant to know what he knew, feel what he felt, put herself in

his place. She would dare the fascination of the Forestshare it with him. It was greatly daring; but it would

give her greater understanding how to help and save him and therefore greater Power. She went upstairs a

In a thick, warm skirt, and wearing heavy bootsthose walking boots she used with him upon the mountains

about Seillansshe left the cottage by the back way and turned towards the Forest. She could not actually

follow him, for he had started off an hour before and she knew not exactly his direction. What was so urgent

in her was the wish to be with him in the woods, to walk beneath leafless branches just as he did: to be there

when he was there, even though not together. For it had come to her that she might thus share with him for

once this horrible mighty life and breathing of the trees he loved. In winter, he had said, they needed him

particularly, and winter now was coming. Her love must bring her something of what he felt himselfthe

huge attraction, the suction and the pull of all the trees. Thus, in some vicarious fashion, she might share,

though unknown to himself, this very thing that was taking him away from her. She might thus even lessen

The impulse came to her clairvoyantly, and she obeyed without a sign of hesitation. Deeper comprehension

would come to her of the whole awful puzzle. And come it did, yet not in the way she imagined and

The air was very still, the sky a cold pale blue, but cloudless. The entire Forest stood silent, at attention. It

knew perfectly well that she had come. It knew the moment when she entered; watched and followed her; 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 and beeches shifted past in rows and took up their positions at her back. It was not

pleasant, this way they grew so dense behind her the instant she had passed. She realised that they gathered in

an evergrowing army, massed, herded, trooped, between her and the cottage, shutting off escape. They let

her pass so easily, but to get out again she would know them differentlythick, crowded, branches all drawn

and hostile. Already their increasing numbers bewildered her. In front, they looked so sparse and scattered,

with open spaces where the sunshine fell; but when 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. They swallowed down into themselves the very glade by which

she came. For when she glanced behind herrarelythe way she had come was shadowy and lost.

Yet the morning sparkled overhead, and a glance of excitement ran quivering 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, looking back as little as she dared, Sophia Bittacy

marched slowly and deliberately 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 of

heather too. All round the trees stood looking onoak, beech, holly, ash, pine, larch, with here and there

small groups of juniper. On the lips of this breathing space of the woods she stopped to rest, disobeying her

instinct for the first time. For the other instinct in her was to go on. She did not really want to rest.

This was the little act that brought it to herthe wireless message from a vast Emitter.

She looked about her in this quiet, ancient place. Nothing stirred. There was no life nor sign of life; no birds

sang; no rabbits scuttled off at her approach. The stillness was bewildering, and gravity hung down upon it

like a heavy curtain. It hushed the heart in her. Could this be part of what her husband feltthis sense of

"This has always been as it is now," she thought, yet not knowing why she thought it. "Ever since the Forest

grew it has been still and secret here. It has never changed." The curtain of silence drew closer while she said

it, thickening round her. "For a thousand yearsI'm here with a thousand years. And behind this place stand

So foreign to her temperament were such thoughts, and so alien to all she 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 though its texture thickened. The air with

And then she thought that curtain stirred. There was movement somewhere. That obscure dim thing which

ever broods behind the visible appearances of trees came nearer to her. She caught her breath and stared

about her, listening intently. The trees, perhaps because she saw them more in detail now, it seemed to her

had changed. A vague, faint alteration spread over them, at first so slight she scarcely would admit it, then

growing steadily, though still obscurely, outwards. "They tremble and are changed," flashed through her

mind the horrid line that Sanderson had quoted. Yet the change was graceful for all the uncouthness attendant

upon the size of so vast a movement. They had turned in her direction. That was it. They saw her.

In this way the change expressed itself in her groping, terrified thought. Till now it had been otherwise: she

had looked at them from her own point of view; now they looked at her from theirs. They stared her in the

face and eyes; they stared at her all over. In some unkind, resentful, hostile way, they watched her. Hitherto

in life she had watched them variously, in superficial ways, reading into them what her own mind suggested.

Now they read into her the things they actually were, and not merely another's interpretations of them.

They seemed in their motionless silence there instinct with life, a life, moreover, that breathed about her a

species of terrible soft enchantment that bewitched. It branched all through her, climbing to the brain. The

Forest held her with its huge and giant fascination. In this secluded breathing spot that the centuries had left

untouched, she had stepped close against the hidden pulse of the whole collective mass of them. 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. For she wanted to look back at them, but it was like staring at a crowd, and her glance merely shifted

from one tree to another, hurriedly, finding in none the one she sought. They saw her so easily, each and all.

The rows that stood behind her also stared. But she could not return the gaze. Her husband, she realised,

could. And their steady stare shocked her as though in some sense she knew that she was naked. They saw so

Her efforts to return their gaze were pitiful. The constant shifting increased her bewilderment. Conscious of

this awful and enormous sight all over her, she let her eyes first rest upon the ground, and then she closed

But the sight of the trees came even into that inner darkness behind the fastened lids, for there was no

escaping it. Outside, in the light, she still knew that the leaves of the hollies glittered smoothly, that the dead

foliage of the oaks hung crisp in the air about her, that the needles of the little junipers were pointing all one

way. The spread perception of the Forest was focussed on herself, and no mere shutting of the eyes could

hide its scattered yet concentrated starethe allinclusive vision of great woods.

There was no wind, yet here and there a single leaf hanging by its driedup stalk shook all alone with great

rapidityrattling. It was the sentry drawing attention to her presence. And then, again, as once long weeks

before, she felt their Being as a tide about her. The tide had turned. That memory of her childhood sands

came back, when the nurse said, "The tide has turned now; we must go in," and she saw the mass of piledup

waters, green and heaped to the horizon, and realised that it was slowly coming in. The gigantic mass of it,

too vast for hurry, loaded with massive purpose, she used to feel, was moving towards herself. The fluid body

of the sea was creeping along beneath the sky to the very spot upon the yellow sands where she stood and

played. The sight and thought of it had always overwhelmed her with a sense of aweas 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 herthe same thing was happening in the woodsslow, sure, and steady,

and its motion as little discernible as the sea's. The tide had turned. The small human presence that had

That all was clear within her while she sat and waited with tightshut lids. But the next moment she opened

her eyes with a sudden realization of something more. The presence that it sought was after all not hers. It

was the presence of some one other than herself. And then she understood. 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 saw the figure of her husband moving among the treesa man, like a tree, walking.

With hands behind his back, and head uplifted, he moved quite slowly, as though absorbed in his own

thoughts. Hardly fifty paces separated them, but he had no inkling of her presence there so near. With mind

intent and senses all turned inwards, he marched past her like a figure in a dream, and like a figure in a dream

she saw him go. Love, yearning, pity rose in a storm within her, but as in nightmare she found no words or

movement possible. She sat and watched him gogo from hergo into the deeper reaches of the green

enveloping woods. Desire to save, to bid him stop and turn, ran in a passion through her being, but there was

nothing she could do. She saw him go away from her, go of his own accord and willingly beyond her; she

saw the branches drop about his steps and hid him. His figure faded out among the speckled shade and

sunlight. The trees covered him. The tide just took him, all unresisting and content to go. Upon the bosom of

the green soft sea he floated away beyond her reach of vision. Her eyes could follow him no longer. He was

And then for the first time she realised, even at that distance, that the look upon his face was one of peace and

happinessrapt, and caught away in joy, a look of youth. That expression now he never showed to her. But

she had known it. Years ago, in the early days of their married life, she had seen it on his face. Now it no

longer obeyed the summons of her presence and her love. The woods alone could call it forth; it answered to

the trees; the Forest had taken every part of himfrom herhis very heart and soul.

Her sight that had plunged inwards to the fields of faded memory now came back to outer things again. She

looked about her, and her love, returning emptyhanded and unsatisfied, left her open to the invading of the

bleakest terror she had ever known. That such things could be real and happen found her helpless utterly.

Terror invaded the quietest corners of her heart, that had never yet known quailing. She could notfor

moments at any ratereach either her Bible or her God. Desolate in an empty world of fear she sat with eyes

too dry and hot for tears, yet with a coldness as of ice upon her very flesh. She stared, unseeing, about her.

That horror which stalks in the stillness of the noonday, when the glare of an artificial sunshine lights up the

motionless trees, moved all about her. In front and behind she was aware of it. Beyond this stealthy silence,

just within the edge of it, the things of another world were passing. But she could not know them. Her

husband knew them, knew their beauty and their awe, yes, but for her they were out of reach. She might not

share with him the very least of them. It seemed that behind and through he glare of this wintry noonday in

the heart of the woods there brooded another universe of life and passion, for her all unexpressed. The silence

veiled it, the stillness hid it; but he moved with it all and understood. His love interpreted it.

She rose to her feet, tottered feebly, and collapsed again upon the moss. Yet for herself she felt no terror; no

little personal fear could touch her whose anguish and deep longing streamed all out to him whom she so

bravely loved. In this time of utter selfforgetfulness, when she realised that the battle was hopeless, thinking

she had lost even her God, she found Him again quite close beside her like a little Presence in this terrible

heart of the hostile Forest. But at first she did not recognise that He was there; she did not know Him in that

strangely unacceptable guise. For He stood so very close, so very intimate, so very sweet and comforting, and

Once more she struggled to her feet, and this time turned successfully and slowly made her way along the

mossy glade by which she came. And at first she marvelled, though only for a moment, at the ease with

which she found the path. For a moment only, because almost at once she saw the truth. The trees were glad

And so, in another of those flashes of clearvision that of late had lifted life above the normal level, she saw

Till now, though unexpressed in thought or language, her fear had been that the woods her husband loved

would somehow take him from herto merge his life in theirseven to kill him on some mysterious way.

This time she saw her deep mistake, and so seeing, let in upon herself the fuller agony of horror. For their

jealousy was ot the petty jealousy of animals or humans. They wanted him because they loved him, but they

did not want him dead. Full charged with his splendid life and enthusiasm they wanted him. They wanted

This was what brought the sense of abject helplessness. She stood upon the sands against an entire ocean

slowly rolling in against her. For, as all the forces of a human being combine unconsciously to eject a grain of

sand that has crept beneath the skin to cause discomfort, so the entire mass of what Sanderson had called the

Collective Consciousness of the Forest strove to eject this human atom that stood across the path of its desire.

Loving her husband, she had crept beneath its skin. It was her they would eject and take away; it was her they

would destroy, not him. Him, whom they loved and needed, they would keep alive. They meant to take him

She reached the house in safety, though she never remembered how she found her way. It was made all

But behind her, as she left the shadowed precincts, she felt as though some towering Angel of the Woods let

fall across the threshold the flaming sword of a countless multitude of leaves that formed behind her a barrier,

And she went about her daily duties with a calm and quietness that was a perpetual astonishment even to

herself, for it hardly seemed of this world at all. She talked to her husband when he came in for teaafter

dark. Resignation brings a curious large couragewhen there is nothing more to lose. The soul takes risks,

"David, I went into the Forest, too, this morning, soon after you I went. 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 garden tree the wind

attacks too suddenly, bending it over when it does not want to bendthe mild unwillingness with which it

"It was very wonderful indeed, dear, yes," she replied low, her voice not faltering though indistinct. "But for

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

"I find it more and more so every day." His voice passed through the lamplit room like a murmur of the

wind in branches. The look of youth and 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 distressed vaguely at finding himself in

uncongenial surroundings where he is slightly ill at ease. It was the house he hatedcoming back to rooms

and walls and furniture. The ceilings and closed windows confined him. Yet, in it, no suggestion that he

found her irksome. Her presence seemed of no account at all; indeed, he hardly noticed her. For whole long

periods he lost her, did not know that she was there. He had no need of her. He lived alone. Each lived alone.

The outward signs by which she recognised that the awful battle was against her and the terms of surrender

accepted were pathetic. She put the medicinechest away upon the shelf; she gave the orders for his

pocketluncheon before he asked; she went to bed alone and early, leaving the front door unlocked, with

milk and bread and butter in the hall beside the lampall concessions that she felt impelled to make. Fore

more and more, unless the weather was too violent, he went out after dinner even, staying for hours in the

woods. But she never slept until she heard the front door close below, and knew soon afterwards his careful

step come creeping up the stairs and into the room so softly. Until she heard his regular deep breathing close

beside her, she lay awake. All strength or desire to resist had gone for good. The thing against her was too

huge and powerful. Capitulation was complete, a fact accomplished. She dated it from the day she followed

Moreover, the time for evacuationher own evacuationseemed approaching. It came stealthily ever

nearer, surely and slowly as the rising tide she used to dread. At the highwater mark she stood waiting

calmlywaiting to be swept away. Across the lawn all those terrible days of early winter the encircling

Forest watched it come, guiding its silent swell and currents towards her feet. Only she never once gave up

her Bible or her praying. This complete resignation, moreover, had somehow brought to her a strange great

understanding, and if she could not share her husband's horrible abandonment to powers outside himself, she

could, and did, in some halfgroping way grasp at shadowy meanings that might make such

abandonmentpossible, yes, but more than merely possiblein some extraordinary sense not evil.

Hitherto she had divided the beyondworld into two sharp halvesspirits good or spirits evil. But thoughts

came to her now, on soft and very tentative feet, like the footsteps of the gods which are on wool, that besides

these definite classes, there might be other Powers as well, belonging definitely to neither one nor other. Her

thought stopped dead at that. But the big idea found lodgment in her little mind, and, owing to the largeness

of her heart, remained there unejected. It even brought a certain solace with it.

The failureor unwillingness, as she preferred to state itof her God to 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 no

positive evil at work, but only something that usually stands away from humankind, something alien and not

commonly recognised. There was a gulf fixed between the two, and Mr. Sanderson had bridged it, by his talk,

his explanations, his attitude of mind. Through these her husband had found the way into it. His temperament

and natural passion for the woods had prepared the soul in him, and the moment he saw the way to go he took

itthe line of least resistance. Life was, of course, open to all, and her husband had the right to choose it

where he would. He had chosen itaway from her, away from other men, but not necessarily away from

God. This was an enormous concession that she skirted, never really faced; it was too revolutionary to face.

But its possibility peeped into her bewildered mind. It might delay his progress, or it might advance it. Who

could know? And why should God, who ordered all things with such magnificent detail, from the pathway of

a sun to the falling of a sparrow, object to his free choice, or interfere to hinder him and stop?

She came to realise resignation, that is, in another aspect. It gave her comfort, if not peace. She fought against

"You are not alone, dear in the trees out there?" she ventured one night, as he crept on tiptoe into the room

"Magnificently," was the immediate answer, given with enthusiasm, "for He is everywhere. And I only wish

But she stuffed the clothes against her ears. That invitation on his lips was more than she could bear to hear.

It seemed like asking her to hurry to her own execution. She buried her face among the sheets and blankets,

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 the singular manner of her going. For it was her mental opposition,

the trees felt, that stood in their way. Once that was overcome, obliterated, her physical presence did not

Having accepted defeat, because she had come to feel that his obsession was not actually evil, she accepted at

the same time the conditions of an atrocious loneliness. She stood now from her husband farther than from

the moon. They had no visitors. Callers were few and far between, and less encouraged than before. The

empty dark of winter was before them. Among the neighbors was none in whom, without disloyalty to her

husband, she could confide. Mr. Mortimer, had he been single, might have helped her in this desert of

solitude that preyed upon her mind, but his wife was there the obstacle; for Mrs. Mortimer wore sandals,

believed that nuts were the complete food of man, and indulged in other idiosyncracies that classed her

inevitably among the "latter signs" which Mrs. Bittacy had been taught to dread as dangerous. She stood most

Solitude, therefore, in which the mind unhindered feeds upon its own delusions, was the assignable cause of

With the definite arrival of the colder weather her husband gave up his rambles after dark; evenings were

spent together over the fire; he read The Times; they even talked about their postponed visit abroad in the

coming spring. No restlessness was on him at the change; he seemed content 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 to herself

was tender, kind, solicitous over trifles, as in the distant days of their first honeymoon.

But this deep calm could not deceive her; it meant, she fully understood, that he felt sure of himself, sure of

her, and sure of the trees as well. It all lay buried in the depths of him, too secure and deep, too intimately

established in his central being to permit of those surface fluctuations which betray disharmony within. His

life was hid with trees. Even the fever, so dreaded in the damp of winter, left him free. She now knew why.

the fever was due to their efforts to obtain him, his efforts to respond and gophysical results of a fierce

unrest he had never understood till Sanderson came with his wicked explanations. Now it was otherwise. The

And she, brave, loyal, and consistent soul, found herself utterly alone, even trying to make his passage easy.

It seemed that she stood at the bottom of some huge ravine that opened in her mind, the walls whereof instead

of rock were trees that reached enormous to the sky, engulfing her. God alone knew that she was there. He

During those quiet evenings in the house, moreover, while they sat over the fire listening to the roaming

winds about the house, her husband knew 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 the newspaper spread before his face and knees,

saw the smoke of his cheroot curl 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 all a veil he spread about himself of purpose. Behind

ithe escaped. It was the conjurer's trick to divert the sight to unimportant details while the essential thing

went forward unobserved. He managed wonderfully; she loved him for the pains he took to spare her distress;

but all the while she knew that the body lolling in that armchair before her eyes contained the merest

fragment of his actual self. It was little better than a corpse. It was an empty shell. The essential soul of him

And, with the dark, the Forest came up boldly and pressed against the very walls and windows, peering in

upon them, joining hands above the slates and chimneys. The winds were always walking on the lawn and

gravel paths; steps came and went and came again; some one seemed always talking in the woods, some one

was in the building too. She passed them on the stairs, or running soft and muffled, very large and gentle,

down the passages and landings after dusk, as though loose fragments of the Day had broken off and stayed

there caught among the shadows, trying to get out. They blundered silently all about the house. They waited

till she passed, then made a run for it. And her husband always knew. She saw him more than once

deliberately avoid thembecause she was there. More than once, too, she saw him stand and listen when he

thought she was not near, then heard herself the long bounding stride of their approach across the silent

garden. Already he had heard them in the windy 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 cushioned their tread exactly as it had

It seemed to her the trees were always in the house with him, and in their very bedroom. He welcomed them,

One night in their bedroom it caught her unawares. She woke out of deep sleep and it came upon her before

The day had been wildly boisterous, but now the wind had dropped, only its rags went fluttering through the

night. The rays of the full moon fell in a shower between the branches. Overhead still raced the scud and

wrack, shaped like hurrying monsters; but below the earth was quiet. Still and dripping stood the hosts of

trees. Their trunks gleamed wet and sparkling where the moon caught them. There was a strong smell of

And she knew all this the instant that she woke; for it seemed to her that she had been elsewherefollowing

her husbandas though she had been out! There was no dream at all, merely the definite, haunting certainty.

It dived away, lost, buried in the night. She sat upright in bed. She had come back.

The room shone pale in the moonlight reflected through the windows, for the blinds were up, and she saw her

husband's form beside her, motionless in deep sleep. But what caught her unawares was the horrid thing that

by this fact of sudden, unexpected waking she had surprised these other things in the room, beside the very

bed, gathered close about him while he slept. It was their dreadful boldnessherself of no account as it

werethat terrified her into screaming before she could collect her powers to prevent. She screamed before

she realised what she dida long, high shriek of terror that filled the room, yet made so little actual sound.

For wet and shimmering presences stood grouped all round 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, moving and turning within themselves to a hushed noise of

multitudinous soft rustling. In their sound was something very sweet and sinning that fell into her with a spell

of horrible enchantment. They were so mild, each one alone, yet so terrific in their combination. Cold seized

She screamed a second time, though the sound hardly issued from her throat. The spell sank deeper, reaching

to the heart; for it softened all the currents of her blood and took life from her in a streamtowards

Her husband then stirred in his sleep, and woke. And, instantly, the forms drew up, erect, and gathered

themselves in some amazing way together. They lessened in extentthen scattered through the air like an

effect of light when shadows seek to smother it. It was tremendous, yet most exquisite. A sheet of palegreen

shadow that yet had form and substance filled the room. There was a rush of silent movement, as the

But, clearest of all, she saw the manner of their going; for she recognised in their tumult of escape by the

window open at the top, the same wide "looping circles"spirals as it seemedthat she had seen upon the

In the collapse that followed, she heard her husband's voice, as though coming from some great distance. Her

own replies she heard as well. Both were so strange and unlike their normal speech, the very words unnatural.

"What is it, dear? Why do you wake me now?" And his voice whispered it with a sighing sound, like wind in

"A moment since something went past me through the air of the room. Back to the night outside it went." Her

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

"It had a crowd of eyes all through and over itbefore and behind" Her voice grew louder. But his own

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

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

He whispered close to her ear. She felt his hand stroking her. His voice was soft and very soothing. But only

a part of him was there; only a part of him was speaking; it was a halfemptied body that lay beside her and

uttered these strange sentences, even forcing her own singular choice of words. The horrible, dim

enchantment of the trees was close about them in the roomgnarled, ancient, lonely trees of winter,

"And let me sleep again," she heard him murmur as he settled down among the clothes, "sleep back into that

His dreamy, happy tone, and that look of youth and joy she discerned upon his features even in the filtered

moonlight, touched her again as with the spell of those shining, mild green presences. It sank down into her.

She felt sleep grope for her. On the threshold of slumber one of those strange vagrant voices that loss of

Then sleep took her before she had time to realise even that she was vilely parodying one of her most

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 and curious dream that kept coming again and again upon her; that she stood upon a

wee, bare rock I the sea, and that the tide was rising. The water first came to her feet, then to her knees, then

to her waist. Each time the 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 could not breathe. She did not wake between the dreams; a

period of drab and dreamless slumber intervened. But, finally, the water rose above her eyes and face,

And then came explanationthe sort of explanation dreams bring. She understood. For, beneath the water,

she had seen the world of seaweed rising from the bottom of the sea like a forest of dense greenlong,

sinuous stems, immense thick branches, millions of feelers spreading through the darkened watery depths the

power of their ocean foliage. The Vegetable Kingdom was even in the sea. It was everywhere. Earth, air, and

And even underneath the sea she heard that terrible sound of roaringwas it surf or wind or

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 in disproportion. Dreariness filled the weeks with dismal, sunless skies and a

clinging moisture that knew no wholesome tonic of keen frosts. Alone with her thoughts, both her husband

and her God withdrawn into distance, she counted the days to Spring. She groped her way, stumbling down

the long dark tunnel. Through the arch at the far end lay a brilliant 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

She drooped. Vitality passed from her, drawn out and away as by some steady suction. Immense and

incessant was this sensation of her powers draining off. The taps were all turned on. Her personality, as it

were, streamed steadily away, coaxed outwards by this Power that never wearied and seemed inexhaustible.

At first she watched the process, and recognised exactly what was going on. Her physical life, and that

balance of mind which depends on physical wellbeing, were being slowly undermined. She saw that clearly.

Only the soul, dwelling like a star apart from these and independent of them, lay safe somewherewith her

distant God. That she knewtranquilly. The spiritual love that linked her to her husband was safe from all

attack. Later, in His good time, they would merge together again because of it. But meanwhile, all of her that

had kinship with the earth was slowly going. This separation was being remorselessly accomplished. Every

part of her the trees could touch was being steadily drained from her. She was beingremoved.

After a time, however, even this power of realisation went, so that she no longer "watched the process" or

knew exactly what was going on. The one satisfaction she had knownthe feeling that it was sweet to suffer

for his sakewent with it. She stood utterly alone with this terror of the trees . . . mid the ruins of her broken

She slept badly; woke in the morning with hot and tired eyes; her head ached dully; she grew confused in

thought and lost the clues of daily life 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 into a tiny semicircle of pale light, the violet sea and

the sunshine the merest point of white, remote as a star and equally inaccessible. She knew now that she

could never reach it. And through the darkness that stretched behind, the power of the trees came close and

caught her, twining about her feet and arms, climbing to her very lips. She woke at night, finding it difficult

to breathe. There seemed wet leaves pressing against her mouth, and soft green tendrils clinging to her neck.

Her feet were heavy, half rooted, as it were, in deep, thick earth. Huge creepers stretched along the whole of

that black tunnel, feeling about her person for points where they might fasten well, as ivy or the giant

parasites of the Vegetable Kingdom settle down on the trees themselves to sap their life and kill them.

Slowly and surely the morbid growth possessed her life and held her. She feared those very winds that ran

about the wintry forest. They were in league with it. They helped it everywhere.

"Why don't you sleep, dear?" It was her husband now who played the r�le of nurse, tending her little wants

with an honest care that at least aped the services of love. He was so utterly unconscious of the raging battle

"The winds," she whispered in the dark. For hours she had been watching the tossing of the trees through the

blindless windows. "They go walking and talking everywhere tonight, keeping me awake. And all the time

And his strange whispered answer appalled her for a moment until the meaning of it faded and left her in a

"The trees excite them in the night. The winds are the great swift carriers. Go with them, dearand not

"All the more thengo with them. Don't resist. They'll take you to the trees, that's all."

"Resist the devil and he will flee from you," she heard her whispered answer, and the same second had buried

But her husband did not seem disturbed. Perhaps he did not hear it, for the wind ran just then against the

windows with a booming shout, and the roaring of the Forest farther out came behind the blow, surging into

the room. Perhaps, too, he was already asleep again. She slowly regained a sort of dull composure. Her face

emerged from the tangle of sheets and blankets. With a growing terror over hershe listened. The storm was

rising. It came with a sudden and impetuous rush that made all further sleep for her impossible.

Alone in a shaking world, it seemed, she lay and listened. That storm interpreted for her mind the climax. The

Forest bellowed out its victory to the winds; the winds in turn proclaimed it to the Night. The whole world

knew of her complete defeat, her loss, her little human pain. This was the roar and shout of victory that she

For, unmistakably, the trees were shouting in the dark. These were sounds, too, like the flapping of great

sails, a thousand at a time, and sometimes reports that resembled more than anything else the distant booming

of enormous drums. The trees stood upthe whole beleaguering host of them stood upand with the uproar

of their million branches drummed the thundering message out across the night. It seemed as if they had all

broken loose. Their roots swept trailing over field and hedge and roof. They tossed their bushy heads beneath

the clouds with a wild, delighted shuffling of great boughs. With trunks upright they raced leaping through

the sky. There was upheaval and adventure in the awful sound they made, and their cry was like the cry of a

Through it all her husband slept peacefully as though he heard it not. It was, as she well knew, the sleep of

the semidead. For he was out with all that clamouring turmoil. The part of him that she had lost was there.

And when the winter's morning stole upon the scene at length, with a pale, washed sunshine that followed the

departing tempest, the first thing she saw, as she crept to the window and looked out, was the ruined cedar

lying on the lawn. Only the gaunt and crippled trunk of it remained. The single giant bough that had been left

to it lay dark upon the grass, sucked endways towards the Forest by a great wind eddy. It lay there like a mass

of driftwood from a wreck, left by the ebbing of a high springtide upon the sandsremnant of some

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