The Trees of Pride

Etext prepared by Dianne Bean of Phoenix, Arizona.

THE TREES OF PRIDE

by Gilbert K. Chesterton

1922

THE TREES OF PRIDE:

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

THE TREES OF PRIDE

I. THE TALE OF THE PEACOCK TREES

Squire Vane was an elderly schoolboy of English education and Irish extraction. His English education, at one of the great public schools, had preserved his intellect perfectly and permanently at the stage of boyhood. But his Irish extraction subconsciously upset in him the proper solemnity of an old boy, and sometimes gave him back the brighter outlook of a naughty boy. He had a bodily impatience which played tricks upon him almost against his will, and had already rendered him rather too radiant a failure in civil and diplomatic service. Thus it is true that compromise is the key of British policy, especially as effecting an impartiality among the religions of India; but Vane’s attempt to meet the Moslem halfway by kicking off one boot at the gates of the mosque, was felt not so much to indicate true impartiality as something that could only be called an aggressive indifference. Again, it is true that an English aristocrat can hardly enter fully into the feelings of either party in a quarrel between a Russian Jew and an Orthodox procession carrying relics; but Vane’s idea that the procession might carry the Jew as well, himself a venerable and historic relic, was misunderstood on both sides. In short, he was a man who particularly prided himself on having no nonsense about him; with the result that he was always doing nonsensical things. He seemed to be standing on his head merely to prove that he was hard-headed.

He had just finished a hearty breakfast, in the society of his daughter, at a table under a tree in his garden by the Cornish coast. For, having a glorious circulation, he insisted on as many outdoor meals as possible, though spring had barely touched the woods and warmed the seas round that southern extremity of England. His daughter Barbara, a good-looking girl with heavy red hair and a face as grave as one of the garden statues, still sat almost motionless as a statue when her father rose. A fine tall figure in light clothes, with his white hair and mustache flying backwards rather fiercely from a face that was good-humored enough, for he carried his very wide Panama hat in his hand, he strode across the terraced garden, down some stone steps flanked with old ornamental urns to a more woodland path fringed with little trees, and so down a zigzag road which descended the craggy Cliff to the shore, where he was to meet a guest arriving by boat. A yacht was already in the blue bay, and he could see a boat pulling toward the little paved pier.

And yet in that short walk between the green turf and the yellow sands he was destined to find his hard-headedness provoked into a not unfamiliar phase which the world was inclined to call hot-headedness. The fact was that the Cornish peasantry, who composed his tenantry and domestic establishment, were far from being people with no nonsense about them. There was, alas! a great deal of nonsense about them; with ghosts, witches, and traditions as old as Merlin, they seemed to surround him with a fairy ring of nonsense. But the magic circle had one center: there was one point in which the curving conversation of the rustics always returned. It was a point that always pricked the Squire to exasperation, and even in this short walk he seemed to strike it everywhere. He paused before descending the steps from the lawn to speak to the gardener about potting some foreign shrubs, and the gardener seemed to be gloomily gratified, in every line of his leathery brown visage, at the chance of indicating that he had formed a low opinion of foreign shrubs.

“We wish you’d get rid of what you’ve got here, sir,” he observed, digging doggedly. “Nothing’ll grow right with them here.”

“Shrubs!” said the Squire, laughing. “You don’t call the peacock trees shrubs, do you? Fine tall trees—you ought to be proud of them.”

“Ill weeds grow apace,” observed the gardener. “Weeds can grow as houses when somebody plants them.” Then he added: “Him that sowed tares in the Bible, Squire.”

“Oh, blast your—” began the Squire, and then replaced the more apt and alliterative word “Bible” by the general word “superstition.” He was himself a robust rationalist, but he went to church to set his tenants an example. Of what, it would have puzzled him to say.

A little way along the lower path by the trees he encountered a woodcutter, one Martin, who was more explicit, having more of a grievance. His daughter was at that time seriously ill with a fever recently common on that coast, and the Squire, who was a kind-hearted gentleman, would normally have made allowances for low spirits and loss of temper. But he came near to losing his own again when the peasant persisted in connecting his tragedy with the traditional monomania about the foreign trees.

“If she were well enough I’d move her,” said the woodcutter, “as we can’t move them, I suppose. I’d just like to get my chopper into them and feel ‘em come crashing down.”

“One would think they were dragons,” said Vane.

“And that’s about what they look like,” replied Martin. “Look at ‘em!”

The woodman was naturally a rougher and even wilder figure than the gardener. His face also was brown, and looked like an antique parchment, and it was framed in an outlandish arrangement of raven beard and whiskers, which was really a fashion fifty years ago, but might have been five thousand years old or older. Phoenicians, one felt, trading on those strange shores in the morning of the world, might have combed or curled or braided their blue-black hair into some such quaint patterns. For this patch of population was as much a corner of Cornwall as Cornwall is a corner of England; a tragic and unique race, small and interrelated like a Celtic clan. The clan was older than the Vane family, though that was old as county families go. For in many such parts of England it is the aristocrats who are the latest arrivals. It was the sort of racial type that is supposed to be passing, and perhaps has already passed.

The obnoxious objects stood some hundred yards away from the speaker, who waved toward them with his ax; and there was something suggestive in the comparison. That coast, to begin with, stretching toward the sunset, was itself almost as fantastic as a sunset cloud. It was cut out against the emerald or indigo of the sea in graven horns and crescents that might be the cast or mold of some such crested serpents; and, beneath, was pierced and fretted by caves and crevices, as if by the boring of some such titanic worms. Over and above this draconian architecture of the earth a veil of gray woods hung thinner like a vapor; woods which the witchcraft of the sea had, as usual, both blighted and blown out of shape. To the right the trees trailed along the sea front in a single line, each drawn out in thin wild lines like a caricature. At the other end of their extent they multiplied into a huddle of hunchbacked trees, a wood spreading toward a projecting part of the high coast. It was here that the sight appeared to which so many eyes and minds seemed to be almost automatically turning.

Out of the middle of this low, and more or less level wood, rose three separate stems that shot up and soared into the sky like a lighthouse out of the waves or a church spire out of the village roofs. They formed a clump of three columns close together, which might well be the mere bifurcation, or rather trifurcation, of one tree, the lower part being lost or sunken in the thick wood around. Everything about them suggested something stranger and more southern than anything even in that last peninsula of Britain which pushes out farthest toward Spain and Africa and the southern stars. Their leathery leafage had sprouted in advance of the faint mist of yellow-green around them, and it was of another and less natural green, tinged with blue, like the colors of a kingfisher. But one might fancy it the scales of some three-headed dragon towering over a herd of huddled and fleeing cattle.

“I am exceedingly sorry your girl is so unwell,” said Vane shortly. “But really—” and he strode down the steep road with plunging strides.

The boat was already secured to the little stone jetty, and the boatman, a younger shadow of the woodcutter—and, indeed, a nephew of that useful malcontent—saluted his territorial lord with the sullen formality of the family. The Squire acknowledged it casually and had soon forgotten all such things in shaking hands with the visitor who had just come ashore. The visitor was a long, loose man, very lean to be so young, whose long, fine features seemed wholly fitted together of bone and nerve, and seemed somehow to contrast with his hair, that showed in vivid yellow patches upon his hollow temples under the brim of his white holiday hat. He was carefully dressed in exquisite taste, though he had come straight from a considerable sea voyage; and he carried something in his hand which in his long European travels, and even longer European visits, he had almost forgotten to call a gripsack.

Mr. Cyprian Paynter was an American who lived in Italy. There was a good deal more to be said about him, for he was a very acute and cultivated gentleman; but those two facts would, perhaps, cover most of the others. Storing his mind like a museum with the wonder of the Old World, but all lit up as by a window with the wonder of the New, he had fallen heir to some thing of the unique critical position of Ruskin or Pater, and was further famous as a discoverer of minor poets. He was a judicious discoverer, and he did not turn all his minor poets into major prophets. If his geese were swans, they were not all Swans of Avon. He had even incurred the deadly suspicion of classicism by differing from his young friends, the Punctuist Poets, when they produced versification consisting exclusively of commas and colons. He had a more humane sympathy with the modern flame kindled from the embers of Celtic mythology, and it was in reality the recent appearance of a Cornish poet, a sort of parallel to the new Irish poets, which had brought him on this occasion to Cornwall. He was, indeed, far too well-mannered to allow a host to guess that any pleasure was being sought outside his own hospitality. He had a long standing invitation from Vane, whom he had met in Cyprus in the latter’s days of undiplomatic diplomacy; and Vane was not aware that relations had only been thus renewed after the critic had read Merlin and Other Verses, by a new writer named John Treherne. Nor did the Squire even begin to realize the much more diplomatic diplomacy by which he had been induced to invite the local bard to lunch on the very day of the American critic’s arrival.

Mr. Paynter was still standing with his gripsack, gazing in a trance of true admiration at the hollowed crags, topped by the gray, grotesque wood, and crested finally by the three fantastic trees.

“It is like being shipwrecked on the coast of fairyland,” he said,

“I hope you haven’t been shipwrecked much,” replied his host, smiling. “I fancy Jake here can look after you very well.”

Mr. Paynter looked across at the boatman and smiled also. “I am afraid,” he said, “our friend is not quite so enthusiastic for this landscape as I am.”

“Oh, the trees, I suppose!” said the Squire wearily.

The boatman was by normal trade a fisherman; but as his house, built of black tarred timber, stood right on the foreshore a few yards from the pier, he was employed in such cases as a sort of ferryman. He was a big, black-browed youth generally silent, but something seemed now to sting him into speech.

“Well, sir,” he said, “everybody knows it’s not natural. Everybody knows the sea blights trees and beats them under, when they’re only just trees. These things thrive like some unholy great seaweed that don’t belong to the land at all. It’s like the—the blessed sea serpent got on shore, Squire, and eating everything up.”

“There is some stupid legend,” said Squire Vane gruffly. “But come up into the garden; I want to introduce you to my daughter.”

When, however, they reached the little table under the tree, the apparently immovable young lady had moved away after all, and it was some time before they came upon the track of her. She had risen, though languidly, and wandered slowly along the upper path of the terraced garden looking down on the lower path where it ran closer to the main bulk of the little wood by the sea.

Her languor was not a feebleness but rather a fullness of life, like that of a child half awake; she seemed to stretch herself and enjoy everything without noticing anything. She passed the wood, into the gray huddle of which a single white path vanished through a black hole. Along this part of the terrace ran something like a low rampart or balustrade, embowered with flowers at intervals; and she leaned over it, looking down at another glimpse of the glowing sea behind the clump of trees, and on another irregular path tumbling down to the pier and the boatman’s cottage on the beach.

As she gazed, sleepily enough, she saw that a strange figure was very actively climbing the path, apparently coming from the fisherman’s cottage; so actively that a moment afterwards it came out between the trees and stood upon the path just below her. It was not only a figure strange to her, but one somewhat strange in itself. It was that of a man still young, and seeming somehow younger than his own clothes, which were not only shabby but antiquated; clothes common enough in texture, yet carried in an uncommon fashion. He wore what was presumably a light waterproof, perhaps through having come off the sea; but it was held at the throat by one button, and hung, sleeves and all, more like a cloak than a coat. He rested one bony hand on a black stick; under the shadow of his broad hat his black hair hung down in a tuft or two. His face, which was swarthy, but rather handsome in itself, wore something that may have been a slightly embarrassed smile, but had too much the appearance of a sneer.

Whether this apparition was a tramp or a trespasser, or a friend of some of the fishers or woodcutters, Barbara Vane was quite unable to guess. He removed his hat, still with his unaltered and rather sinister smile, and said civilly: “Excuse me. The Squire asked me to call.” Here he caught sight of Martin, the woodman, who was shifting along the path, thinning the thin trees; and the stranger made a familiar salute with one finger.

The girl did not know what to say. “Have you—have you come about cutting the wood?” she asked at last.

“I would I were so honest a man,” replied the stranger. “Martin is, I fancy, a distant cousin of mine; we Cornish folk just round here are nearly all related, you know; but I do not cut wood. I do not cut anything, except, perhaps, capers. I am, so to speak, a jongleur.”

“A what?” asked Barbara.

“A minstrel, shall we say?” answered the newcomer, and looked up at her more steadily. During a rather odd silence their eyes rested on each other. What she saw has been already noted, though by her, at any rate, not in the least understood. What he saw was a decidedly beautiful woman with a statuesque face and hair that shone in the sun like a helmet of copper.

“Do you know,” he went on, “that in this old place, hundreds of years ago, a jongleur may really have stood where I stand, and a lady may really have looked over that wall and thrown him money?”

“Do you want money?” she asked, all at sea.

“Well,” drawled the stranger, “in the sense of lacking it, perhaps, but I fear there is no place now for a minstrel, except nigger minstrel. I must apologize for not blacking my face.”

She laughed a little in her bewilderment, and said: “Well, I hardly think you need do that.”

“You think the natives here are dark enough already, perhaps,” he observed calmly. “After all, we are aborigines, and are treated as such.”

She threw out some desperate remark about the weather or the scenery, and wondered what would happen next.

“The prospect is certainly beautiful,” he assented, in the same enigmatic manner. “There is only one thing in it I am doubtful about.”

While she stood in silence he slowly lifted his black stick like a long black finger and pointed it at the peacock trees above the wood. And a queer feeling of disquiet fell on the girl, as if he were, by that mere gesture, doing a destructive act and could send a blight upon the garden.

The strained and almost painful silence was broken by the voice of Squire Vane, loud even while it was still distant.

“We couldn’t make out where you’d got to, Barbara,” he said. “This is my friend, Mr. Cyprian Paynter.” The next moment he saw the stranger and stopped, a little puzzled. It was only Mr. Cyprian Paynter himself who was equal to the situation. He had seen months ago a portrait of the new Cornish poet in some American literary magazine, and he found himself, to his surprise, the introducer instead of the introduced.

“Why, Squire,” he said in considerable astonishment, “don’t you know Mr. Treherne? I supposed, of course, he was a neighbor.”

“Delighted to see you, Mr. Treherne,” said the Squire, recovering his manners with a certain genial confusion. “So pleased you were able to come. This is Mr. Paynter---my daughter,” and, turning with a certain boisterous embarrassment, he led the way to the table under the tree.

Cyprian Paynter followed, inwardly revolving a puzzle which had taken even his experience by surprise. The American, if intellectually an aristocrat, was still socially and subconsciously a democrat. It had never crossed his mind that the poet should be counted lucky to know the squire and not the squire to know the poet. The honest patronage in Vane’s hospitality was something which made Paynter feel he was, after all, an exile in England.

The Squire, anticipating the trial of luncheon with a strange literary man, had dealt with the case tactfully from his own standpoint. County society might have made the guest feel like a fish out of water; and, except for the American critic and the local lawyer and doctor, worthy middle-class people who fitted into the picture, he had kept it as a family party. He was a widower, and when the meal had been laid out on the garden table, it was Barbara who presided as hostess. She had the new poet on her right hand and it made her very uncomfortable. She had practically offered that fallacious jongleur money, and it did not make it easier to offer him lunch.

“The whole countryside’s gone mad,” announced the Squire, by way of the latest local news. “It’s about this infernal legend of ours.”

“I collect legends,” said Paynter, smiling.

“You must remember I haven’t yet had a chance to collect yours. And this,” he added, looking round at the romantic coast, “is a fine theater for anything dramatic.”

“Oh, it’s dramatic in its way,” admitted Vane, not without a faint satisfaction. “It’s all about those things over there we call the peacock trees—I suppose, because of the queer color of the leaf, you know, though I have heard they make a shrill noise in a high wind that’s supposed to be like the shriek of a peacock; something like a bamboo in the botanical structure, perhaps. Well, those trees are supposed to have been brought over from Barbary by my ancestor Sir Walter Vane, one of the Elizabethan patriots or pirates, or whatever you call them. They say that at the end of his last voyage the villagers gathered on the beach down there and saw the boat standing in from the sea, and the new trees stood up in the boat like a mast, all gay with leaves out of season, like green bunting. And as they watched they thought at first that the boat was steering oddly, and then that it wasn’t steering at all; and when it drifted to the shore at last every man in that boat was dead, and Sir Walter Vane, with his sword drawn, was leaning up against the tree trunk, as stiff as the tree.”

“Now this is rather curious,” remarked Paynter thoughtfully. “I told you I collected legends, and I fancy I can tell you the beginning of the story of which that is the end, though it comes hundreds of miles across the sea.”

He tapped meditatively on the table with his thin, taper fingers, like a man trying to recall a tune. He had, indeed, made a hobby of such fables, and he was not without vanity about his artistic touch in telling them.

“Oh, do tell us your part of it?” cried Barbara Vane, whose air of sunny sleepiness seemed in some vague degree to have fallen from her.

The American bowed across the table with a serious politeness, and then began playing idly with a quaint ring on his long finger as he talked.

“If you go down to the Barbary Coast, where the last wedge of the forest narrows down between the desert and the great tideless sea, you will find the natives still telling a strange story about a saint of the Dark Ages. There, on the twilight border of the Dark Continent, you feel the Dark Ages. I have only visited the place once, though it lies, so to speak, opposite to the Italian city where I lived for years, and yet you would hardly believe how the topsy-turvydom and transmigration of this myth somehow seemed less mad than they really are, with the wood loud with lions at night and that dark red solitude beyond. They say that the hermit St. Securis, living there among trees, grew to love them like companions; since, though great giants with many arms like Briareus, they were the mildest and most blameless of the creatures; they did not devour like the lions, but rather opened their arms to all the little birds. And he prayed that they might be loosened from time to time to walk like other things. And the trees were moved upon the prayers of Securis, as they were at the songs of Orpheus. The men of the desert were stricken from afar with fear, seeing the saint walking with a walking grove, like a schoolmaster with his boys. For the trees were thus freed under strict conditions of discipline. They were to return at the sound of the hermit’s bell, and, above all, to copy the wild beasts in walking only to destroy and devour nothing. Well, it is said that one of the trees heard a voice that was not the saint’s; that in the warm green twilight of one summer evening it became conscious of some thing sitting and speaking in its branches in the guise of a great bird, and it was that which once spoke from a tree in the guise of a great serpent. As the voice grew louder among its murmuring leaves the tree was torn with a great desire to stretch out and snatch at the birds that flew harmlessly about their nests, and pluck them to pieces. Finally, the tempter filled the tree-top with his own birds of pride, the starry pageant of the peacocks. And the spirit of the brute overcame the spirit of the tree, and it rent and consumed the blue-green birds till not a plume was left, and returned to the quiet tribe of trees. But they say that when spring came all the other trees put forth leaves, but this put forth feathers of a strange hue and pattern. And by that monstrous assimilation the saint knew of the sin, and he rooted that one tree to the earth with a judgment, so that evil should fall on any who removed it again. That, Squire, is the beginning in the deserts of the tale that ended here, almost in this garden.”

“And the end is about as reliable as the beginning, I should say,” said Vane. “Yours is a nice plain tale for a small tea-party; a quiet little bit of still-life, that is.”

“What a queer, horrible story,” exclaimed Barbara. “It makes one feel like a cannibal.”

“Ex Africa,” said the lawyer, smiling. “It comes from a cannibal country. I think it’s the touch of the tar-brush, that nightmare feeling that you don’t know whether the hero is a plant or a man or a devil. Don’t you feel it sometimes in ‘Uncle Remus’?”

“True,” said Paynter. “Perfectly true.” And he looked at the lawyer with a new interest. The lawyer, who had been introduced as Mr. Ashe, was one of those people who are more worth looking at than most people realize when they look. If Napoleon had been red-haired, and had bent all his powers with a curious contentment upon the petty lawsuits of a province, he might have looked much the same; the head with the red hair was heavy and powerful; the figure in its dark, quiet clothes was comparatively insignificant, as was Napoleon’s. He seemed more at ease in the Squire’s society than the doctor, who, though a gentleman, was a shy one, and a mere shadow of his professional brother.

“As you truly say,” remarked Paynter, “the story seems touched with quite barbarous elements, probably Negro. Originally, though, I think there was really a hagiological story about some hermit, though some of the higher critics say St. Securis never existed, but was only an allegory of arboriculture, since his name is the Latin for an ax.”

“Oh, if you come to that,” remarked the poet Treherne, “you might as well say Squire Vane doesn’t exist, and that he’s only an allegory for a weathercock.” Something a shade too cool about this sally drew the lawyer’s red brows together. He looked across the table and met the poet’s somewhat equivocal smile.

“Do I understand, Mr. Treherne,” asked Ashe, “that you support the miraculous claims of St. Securis in this case. Do you, by any chance, believe in the walking trees?”

“I see men as trees walking,” answered the poet, “like the man cured of blindness in the Gospel. By the way, do I understand that you support the miraculous claims of that—thaumaturgist?”

Paynter intervened swiftly and suavely. “Now that sounds a fascinating piece of psychology. You see men as trees?”

“As I can’t imagine why men should walk, I can’t imagine why trees shouldn’t,” answered Treherne.

“Obviously, it is the nature of the organism”, interposed the medical guest, Dr. Burton Brown; “it is necessary in the very type of vegetable structure.”

“In other words, a tree sticks in the mud from year’s end to year’s end,” answered Treherne. “So do you stop in your consulting room from ten to eleven every day. And don’t you fancy a fairy, looking in at your window for a flash after having just jumped over the moon and played mulberry bush with the Pleiades, would think you were a vegetable structure, and that sitting still was the nature of the organism?”

“I don’t happen to believe in fairies,” said the doctor rather stiffly, for the argumentum ad hominem was becoming too common. A sulphurous subconscious anger seemed to radiate from the dark poet.

“Well, I should hope not, Doctor,” began the Squire, in his loud and friendly style, and then stopped, seeing the other’s attention arrested. The silent butler waiting on the guests had appeared behind the doctor’s chair, and was saying something in the low, level tones of the well-trained servant. He was so smooth a specimen of the type that others never noticed, at first, that he also repeated the dark portrait, however varnished, so common in this particular family of Cornish Celts. His face was sallow and even yellow, and his hair indigo black. He went by the name of Miles. Some felt oppressed by the tribal type in this tiny corner of England. They felt somehow as if all these dark faces were the masks of a secret society.

The doctor rose with a half apology. “I must ask pardon for disturbing this pleasant party; I am called away on duty. Please don’t let anybody move. We have to be ready for these things, you know. Perhaps Mr. Treherne will admit that my habits are not so very vegetable, after all.” With this Parthian shaft, at which there was some laughter, he strode away very rapidly across the sunny lawn to where the road dipped down toward the village.

“He is very good among the poor,” said the girl with an honorable seriousness.

“A capital fellow,” agreed the Squire. “Where is Miles? You will have a cigar, Mr. Treherne?” And he got up from the table; the rest followed, and the group broke up on the lawn.

“Remarkable man, Treherne,” said the American to the lawyer conversationally.

“Remarkable is the word,” assented Ashe rather grimly. “But I don’t think I’ll make any remark about him.”

The Squire, too impatient to wait for the yellow-faced Miles, had betaken himself indoors for the cigars, and Barbara found herself once more paired off with the poet, as she floated along the terrace garden; but this time, symbolically enough, upon the same level of lawn. Mr. Treherne looked less eccentric after having shed his curious cloak, and seemed a quieter and more casual figure.

“I didn’t mean to be rude to you just now,” she said abruptly.

“And that’s the worst of it,” replied the man of letters, “for I’m horribly afraid I did mean to be rude to you. When I looked up and saw you up there something surged up in me that was in all the revolutions of history. Oh, there was admiration in it too! Perhaps there was idolatry in all the iconoclasts.”

He seemed to have a power of reaching rather intimate conversation in one silent and cat-like bound, as he had scaled the steep road, and it made her feel him to be dangerous, and perhaps unscrupulous. She changed the subject sharply, not without it movement toward gratifying her own curiosity.

“What DID you mean by all that about walking trees?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you really believe in a magic tree that eats birds!”

“I should probably surprise you,” said Treherne gravely, “more by what I don’t believe than by what I do.”

Then, after a pause, he made a general gesture toward the house and garden. “I’m afraid I don’t believe in all this; for instance, in Elizabethan houses and Elizabethan families and the way estates have been improved, and the rest of it. Look at our friend the woodcutter now.” And he pointed to the man with the quaint black beard, who was still plying his ax upon the timber below.

“That man’s family goes back for ages, and it was far richer and freer in what you call the Dark Ages than it is now. Wait till the Cornish peasant writes a history of Cornwall.”

“But what in the world,” she demanded, “has this to do with whether you believe in a tree eating birds?”

“Why should I confess what I believe in?” he said, a muffled drum of mutiny in his voice. “The gentry came here and took our land and took our labor and took our customs. And now, after exploitation, a viler thing, education! They must take our dreams!”

“Well, this dream was rather a nightmare, wasn’t it?” asked Barbara, smiling; and the next moment grew quite grave, saying almost anxiously: “But here’s Doctor Brown back again. Why, he looks quite upset.”

The doctor, a black figure on the green lawn, was, indeed, coming toward them at a very vigorous walk. His body and gait very much younger than his face, which seemed prematurely lined as with worry; his brow was bald, and projected from the straight, dark hair behind it. He was visibly paler than when he left the lunch table.

“I am sorry to say, Miss Vane,” he said, “that I am the bearer of bad news to poor Martin, the woodman here. His daughter died half an hour ago.”

“Oh,” cried Barbara warmly, “I am SO sorry!”

“So am I,” said the doctor, and passed on rather abruptly; he ran down the stone steps between the stone urns; and they saw him in talk with the woodcutter. They could not see the woodcutter’s face. He stood with his back to them, but they saw something that seemed more moving than any change of countenance. The man’s hand holding the ax rose high above his head, and for a flash it seemed as if he would have cut down the doctor. But in fact he was not looking at the doctor. His face was set toward the cliff, where, sheer out of the dwarf forest, rose, gigantic and gilded by the sun, the trees of pride.

The strong brown hand made a movement and was empty. The ax went circling swiftly through the air, its head showing like a silver crescent against the gray twilight of the trees. It did not reach its tall objective, but fell among the undergrowth, shaking up a flying litter of birds. But in the poet’s memory, full of primal things, something seemed to say that he had seen the birds of some pagan augury, the ax of some pagan sacrifice.

A moment after the man made a heavy movement forward, as if to recover his tool; but the doctor put a hand on his arm.

“Never mind that now,” they heard him say sadly and kindly. “The Squire will excuse you any more work, I know.”

Something made the girl look at Treherne. He stood gazing, his head a little bent, and one of his black elf-locks had fallen forward over his forehead. And again she had the sense of a shadow over the grass; she almost felt as if the grass were a host of fairies, and that the fairies were not her friends.

II. THE WAGER OF SQUIRE VANE

It was more than a month before the legend of the peacock trees was again discussed in the Squire’s circle. It fell out one evening, when his eccentric taste for meals in the garden that gathered the company round the same table, now lit with a lamp and laid out for dinner in a glowing spring twilight. It was even the same company, for in the few weeks intervening they had insensibly grown more and more into each other’s lives, forming a little group like a club. The American aesthete was of course the most active agent, his resolution to pluck out the heart of the Cornish poet’s mystery leading him again and again to influence his flighty host for such reunions. Even Mr. Ashe, the lawyer, seemed to have swallowed his half-humorous prejudices; and the doctor, though a rather sad and silent, was a companionable and considerate man. Paynter had even read Treherne’s poetry aloud, and he read admirably; he had also read other things, not aloud, grubbing up everything in the neighborhood, from guidebooks to epitaphs, that could throw a light on local antiquities. And it was that evening when the lamplight and the last daylight had kindled the colors of the wine and silver on the table under the tree, that he announced a new discovery.

“Say, Squire,” he remarked, with one of his rare Americanisms, “about those bogey trees of yours; I don’t believe you know half the tales told round here about them. It seems they have a way of eating things. Not that I have any ethical objection to eating things,” he continued, helping himself elegantly to green cheese. “But I have more or less, broadly speaking, an objection to eating people.”

“Eating people!” repeated Barbara Vane.

“I know a globe-trotter mustn’t be fastidious,” replied Mr. Paynter. “But I repeat firmly, an objection to eating people. The peacock trees seem to have progressed since the happy days of innocence when they only ate peacocks. If you ask the people here— the fisherman who lives on that beach, or the man that mows this very lawn in front of us—they’ll tell you tales taller than any tropical one I brought you from the Barbary Coast. If you ask them what happened to the fisherman Peters, who got drunk on All Hallows Eve, they’ll tell you he lost his way in that little wood, tumbled down asleep under the wicked trees, and then—evaporated, vanished, was licked up like dew by the sun. If you ask them where Harry Hawke is, the widow’s little son, they’ll just tell you he’s swallowed; that he was dared to climb the trees and sit there all night, and did it. What the trees did God knows; the habits of a vegetable ogre leave one a little vague. But they even add the agreeable detail that a new branch appears on the tree when somebody has petered out in this style.”

“What new nonsense is this?” cried Vane. “I know there’s some crazy yarn about the trees spreading fever, though every educated man knows why these epidemics return occasionally. And I know they say you can tell the noise of them among other trees in a gale, and I dare say you can. But even Cornwall isn’t a lunatic asylum, and a tree that dines on a passing tourist—”

“Well, the two tales are reconcilable enough,” put in the poet quietly. “If there were a magic that killed men when they came close, it’s likely to strike them with sickness when they stand far off. In the old romance the dragon, that devours people, often blasts others with a sort of poisonous breath.”

Ashe looked across at the speaker steadily, not to say stonily.

“Do I understand,” he inquired, “that you swallow the swallowing trees too?”

Treherne’s dark smile was still on the defensive; his fencing always annoyed the other, and he seemed not without malice in the matter.

“Swallowing is a metaphor,” he said, “about me, if not about the trees. And metaphors take us at once into dreamland—no bad place, either. This garden, I think, gets more and more like a dream at this corner of the day and night, that might lead us anywhere.”

The yellow horn of the moon had appeared silently and as if suddenly over the black horns of the seaweed, seeming to announce as night something which till then had been evening. A night breeze came in between the trees and raced stealthily across the turf, and as they ceased speaking they heard, not only the seething grass, but the sea itself move and sound in all the cracks and caves round them and below them and on every side. They all felt the note that had been struck—the American as an art critic and the poet as a poet; and the Squire, who believed himself boiling with an impatience purely rational, did not really understand his own impatience. In him, more perhaps than the others—more certainly than he knew himself— the sea wind went to the head like wine.

“Credulity is a curious thing,” went on Treherne in a low voice. “It is more negative than positive, and yet it is infinite. Hundreds of men will avoid walking under a ladder; they don’t know where the door of the ladder will lead. They don’t really think God would throw a thunderbolt at them for such a thing. They don’t know what would happen, that is just the point; but yet they step aside as from a precipice. So the poor people here may or may not believe anything; they don’t go into those trees at night.”

“I walk under a ladder whenever I can,” cried Vane, in quite unnecessary excitement.

“You belong to a Thirteen Club,” said the poet. “You walk under a ladder on Friday to dine thirteen at a table, everybody spilling the salt. But even you don’t go into those trees at night.”

Squire Vane stood up, his silver hair flaming in the wind.

“I’ll stop all night in your tomfool wood and up your tomfool trees,” he said. “I’ll do it for twopence or two thousand pounds, if anyone will take the bet.”

Without waiting for reply, he snatched up his wide white hat and settled it on with a fierce gesture, and had gone off in great leonine strides across the lawn before anyone at the table could move.

The stillness was broken by Miles, the butler, who dropped and broke one of the plates he carried. He stood looking after his master with his long, angular chin thrust out, looking yellower where it caught the yellow light of the lamp below. His face was thus sharply in shadow, but Paynter fancied for a moment it was convulsed by some passion passing surprise. But the face was quite as usual when it turned, and Paynter realized that a night of fancies had begun, like the cross purposes of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The wood of the strange trees, toward which the Squire was walking, lay so far forward on the headland, which ultimately almost overhung the sea, that it could be approached by only one path, which shone clearly like a silver ribbon in the twilight. The ribbon ran along the edge of the cliff, where the single row of deformed trees ran beside it all the way, and eventually plunged into the closer mass of trees by one natural gateway, a mere gap in the wood, looking dark, like a lion’s mouth. What became of the path inside could not be seen, but it doubtless led round the hidden roots of the great central trees. The Squire was already within a yard or two of this dark entry when his daughter rose from the table and took a step or two after him as if to call him back.

Treherne had also risen, and stood as if dazed at the effect of his idle defiance. When Barbara moved he seemed to recover himself, and stepping after her, said something which Paynter did not hear. He said it casually and even distantly enough, but it clearly suggested something to her mind; for, after a moment’s thought, she nodded and walked back, not toward the table, but apparently toward the house. Paynter looked after her with a momentary curiosity, and when he turned again the Squire had vanished into the hole in the wood.

“He’s gone,” said Treherne, with a clang of finality in his tones, like the slamming of a door.

“Well, suppose he has?” cried the lawyer, roused at the voice. “The Squire can go into his own wood, I suppose! What the devil’s all the fuss about, Mr. Paynter? Don’t tell me you think there’s any harm in that plantation of sticks.”

“No, I don’t,” said Paynter, throwing one leg over another and lighting a cigar. “But I shall stop here till he comes out.”

“Very well,” said Ashe shortly, “I’ll stop with you, if only to see the end of this farce.”

The doctor said nothing, but he also kept his seat and accepted one of the American’s cigars. If Treherne had been attending to the matter he might have noted, with his sardonic superstition, a curious fact—that, while all three men were tacitly condemning themselves to stay out all night if necessary, all, by one blank omission or oblivion, assumed that it was impossible to follow their host into the wood just in front of them. But Treherne, though still in the garden, had wandered away from the garden table, and was pacing along the single line of trees against the dark sea. They had in their regular interstices, showing the sea as through a series of windows, something of the look of the ghost or skeleton of a cloister, and he, having thrown his coat once more over his neck, like a cape, passed to and fro like the ghost of some not very sane monk.

All these men, whether skeptics or mystics, looked back for the rest of their lives on that night as on something unnatural. They sat still or started up abruptly, and paced the great garden in long detours, so that it seemed that no three of them were together at a time, and none knew who would be his companion; yet their rambling remained within the same dim and mazy space. They fell into snatches of uneasy slumber; these were very brief, and yet they felt as if the whole sitting, strolling, or occasional speaking had been parts of a single dream.

Paynter woke once, and found Ashe sitting opposite him at a table otherwise empty; his face dark in shadow and his cigar-end like the red eye of a Cyclops. Until the lawyer spoke, in his steady voice, Paynter was positively afraid of him. He answered at random and nodded again; when he again woke the lawyer was gone, and what was opposite him was the bald, pale brow of the doctor; there seemed suddenly something ominous in the familiar fact that he wore spectacles. And yet the vanishing Ashe had only vanished a few yards away, for he turned at that instant and strolled back to the table. With a jerk Paynter realized that his nightmare was but a trick of sleep or sleeplessness, and spoke in his natural voice, but rather loud.

“So you’ve joined us again; where’s Treherne?”

“Oh, still revolving, I suppose, like a polar bear under those trees on the cliff,” replied Ashe, motioning with his cigar, “looking at what an older (and you will forgive me for thinking a somewhat better) poet called the wine-dark sea. It really has a sort of purple shade; look at it.”

Paynter looked; he saw the wine-dark sea and the fantastic trees that fringed it, but he did not see the poet; the cloister was already empty of its restless monk.

“Gone somewhere else,” he said, with futility far from characteristic. “He’ll be back here presently. This is an interesting vigil, but a vigil loses some of its intensity when you can’t keep awake. Ah! Here’s Treherne; so we’re all mustered, as the politician said when Mr. Colman came late for dinner. No, the doctor’s off again. How restless we all are!” The poet had drawn near, his feet were falling soft on the grass, and was gazing at them with a singular attentiveness.

“It will soon be over,” he said.

“What?” snapped Ashe very abruptly.

“The night, of course,” replied Treherne in a motionless manner. “The darkest hour has passed.”

“Didn’t some other minor poet remark,” inquired Paynter flippantly, “that the darkest hour before the dawn—? My God, what was that? It was like a scream.”

“It was a scream,” replied the poet. “The scream of a peacock.”

Ashe stood up, his strong pale face against his red hair, and said furiously: “What the devil do you mean?”

“Oh, perfectly natural causes, as Dr. Brown would say,” replied Treherne. “Didn’t the Squire tell us the trees had a shrill note of their own when the wind blew? The wind’s beating up again from the sea; I shouldn’t wonder if there was a storm before dawn.”

Dawn indeed came gradually with a growing noise of wind, and the purple sea began to boil about the dark volcanic cliffs. The first change in the sky showed itself only in the shapes of the wood and the single stems growing darker but clearer; and above the gray clump, against a glimpse of growing light, they saw aloft the evil trinity of the trees. In their long lines there seemed to Paynter something faintly serpentine and even spiral. He could almost fancy he saw them slowly revolving as in some cyclic dance, but this, again, was but a last delusion of dreamland, for a few seconds later he was again asleep. In dreams he toiled through a tangle of inconclusive tales, each filled with the same stress and noise of sea and sea wind; and above and outside all other voices the wailing of the Trees of Pride.

When he woke it was broad day, and a bloom of early light lay on wood and garden and on fields and farms for miles away. The comparative common sense that daylight brings even to the sleepless drew him alertly to his feet, and showed him all his companions standing about the lawn in similar attitudes of expectancy. There was no need to ask what they were expecting. They were waiting to hear the nocturnal experiences, comic or commonplace or whatever they might prove to be, of that eccentric friend, whose experiment (whether from some subconscious fear or some fancy of honor) they had not ventured to interrupt. Hour followed hour, and still nothing stirred in the wood save an occasional bird. The Squire, like most men of his type, was an early riser, and it was not likely that he would in this case sleep late; it was much more likely, in the excitement in which he had left them, that he would not sleep at all. Yet it was clear that he must be sleeping, perhaps by some reaction from a strain. By the time the sun was high in heaven Ashe the lawyer, turning to the others, spoke abruptly and to the point.

“Shall we go into the wood now?” asked Paynter, and almost seemed to hesitate.

“I will go in,” said Treherne simply. Then, drawing up his dark head in answer to their glances, he added:

“No, do not trouble yourselves. It is never the believer who is afraid.”

For the second time they saw a man mount the white curling path and disappear into the gray tangled wood, but this time they did not have to wait long to see him again.

A few minutes later he reappeared in the woodland gateway, and came slowly toward them across the grass. He stopped before the doctor, who stood nearest, and said something. It was repeated to the others, and went round the ring with low cries of incredulity. The others plunged into the wood and returned wildly, and were seen speaking to others again who gathered from the house; the wild wireless telegraphy which is the education of countryside communities spread it farther and farther before the fact itself was fully realized; and before nightfall a quarter of the county knew that Squire Vane had vanished like a burst bubble.

Widely as the wild story was repeated, and patiently as it was pondered, it was long before there was even the beginning of a sequel to it. In the interval Paynter had politely removed himself from the house of mourning, or rather of questioning, but only so far as the village inn; for Barbara Vane was glad of the traveler’s experience and sympathy, in addition to that afforded her by the lawyer and doctor as old friends of the family. Even Treherne was not discouraged from his occasional visits with a view to helping the hunt for the lost man. The five held many counsels round the old garden table, at which the unhappy master of the house had dined for the last time; and Barbara wore her old mask of stone, if it was now a more tragic mask. She had shown no passion after the first morning of discovery, when she had broken forth once, speaking strangely enough in the view of some of her hearers.

She had come slowly out of the house, to which her own or some one else’s wisdom had relegated her during the night of the wager; and it was clear from her face that somebody had told her the truth; Miles, the butler, stood on the steps behind her; and it was probably he.

“Do not be much distressed, Miss Vane,” said Doctor Brown, in a low and rather uncertain voice. “The search in the wood has hardly begun. I am convinced we shall find—something quite simple.”

“The doctor is right,” said Ashe, in his firm tones; “I myself—”

“The doctor is not right,” said the girl, turning a white face on the speaker, “I know better. The poet is right. The poet is always right. Oh, he has been here from the beginning of the world, and seen wonders and terrors that are all round our path, and only hiding behind a bush or a stone. You and your doctoring and your science— why, you have only been here for a few fumbling generations; and you can’t conquer even your own enemies of the flesh. Oh, forgive me, Doctor, I know you do splendidly; but the fever comes in the village, and the people die and die for all that. And now it’s my poor father. God help us all! The only thing left is to believe in God; for we can’t help believing in devils.” And she left them, still walking quite slowly, but in such a fashion that no one could go after her.

The spring had already begun to ripen into summer, and spread a green tent from the tree over the garden table, when the American visitor, sitting there with his two professional companions, broke the silence by saying what had long been in his mind.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose whatever we may think it wise to say, we have all begun to think of a possible conclusion. It can’t be put very delicately anyhow; but, after all, there’s a very necessary business side to it. What are we going to do about poor Vane’s affairs, apart from himself? I suppose you know,” he added, in a low voice to the lawyer, “whether he made a will?”

“He left everything to his daughter unconditionally,” replied Ashe. “But nothing can be done with it. There’s no proof whatever that he’s dead.” “No legal proof?” remarked Paynter dryly. A wrinkle of irritation had appeared in the big bald brow of Doctor Brown; and he made an impatient movement.

“Of course he’s dead,” he said. “What’s the sense of all this legal fuss? We were watching this side of the wood, weren’t we? A man couldn’t have flown off those high cliffs over the sea; he could only have fallen off. What else can he be but dead?”

“I speak as a lawyer,” returned Ashe, raising his eyebrows. “We can’t presume his death, or have an inquest or anything till we find the poor fellow’s body, or some remains that may reasonably be presumed to be his body.”

“I see,” observed Paynter quietly. “You speak as a lawyer; but I don’t think it’s very hard to guess what you think as a man.”

“I own I’d rather be a man than a lawyer,” said the doctor, rather roughly. “I’d no notion the law was such an ass. What’s the good of keeping the poor girl out of her property, and the estate all going to pieces? Well, I must be off, or my patients will be going to pieces too.”

And with a curt salutation he pursued his path down to the village.

“That man does his duty, if anybody does,” remarked Paynter. “We must pardon his—shall I say manners or manner?”

“Oh, I bear him no malice,” replied Ashe good-humoredly, “But I’m glad he’s gone, because—well, because I don’t want him to know how jolly right he is.” And he leaned back in his chair and stared up at the roof of green leaves.

“You are sure,” said Paynter, looking at the table, “that Squire Vane is dead?”

“More than that,” said Ashe, still staring at the leaves. “I’m sure of how he died.”

“Ah!” said the American, with an intake of breath, and they remained for a moment, one gazing at the tree and the other at the table.

“Sure is perhaps too strong a word,” continued Ashe. “But my conviction will want some shaking. I don’t envy the counsel for the defense.”

“The counsel for the defense,” repeated Paynter, and looked up quickly at his companion. He was struck again by the man’s Napoleonic chin and jaw, as he had been when they first talked of the legend of St. Securis.

“Then,” he began, “you don’t think the trees—”

“The trees be damned!” snorted the lawyer. “The tree had two legs on that evening. What our friend the poet,” he added, with a sneer, “would call a walking tree. Apropos of our friend the poet, you seemed surprised that night to find he was not walking poetically by the sea all the time, and I fear I affected to share your ignorance. I was not so sure then as I am now.”

“Sure of what?” demanded the other.

“To begin with,” said Ashe, “I’m sure our friend the poet followed Vane into the wood that night, for I saw him coming out again.”

Paynter leaned forward, suddenly pale with excitement, and struck the wooden table so that it rattled.

“Mr. Ashe, you’re wrong,” he cried. “You’re a wonderful man and you’re wrong. You’ve probably got tons of true convincing evidence, and you’re wrong. I know this poet; I know him as a poet; and that’s just what you don’t. I know you think he gave you crooked answers, and seemed to be all smiles and black looks at once; but you don’t understand the type. I know now why you don’t understand the Irish. Sometimes you think it’s soft, and sometimes sly, and sometimes murderous, and sometimes uncivilized; and all the time it’s only civilized; quivering with the sensitive irony of understanding all that you don’t understand.”

“Well,” said Ashe shortly, “we’ll see who’s right.”

“We will,” cried Cyprian, and rose suddenly from the table. All the drooping of the aesthete had dropped from him; his Yankee accent rose high, like a horn of defiance, and there was nothing about him but the New World.

“I guess I will look into this myself,” he said, stretching his long limbs like an athlete. “I search that little wood of yours to-morrow. It’s a bit late, or I’d do it now.”

“The wood has been searched,” said the lawyer, rising also.

“Yes,” drawled the American. “It’s been searched by servants, policemen, local policeman, and quite a lot of people; and do you know I have a notion that nobody round here is likely to have searched it at all.”

“And what are you going to do with it?” asked Ashe.

“What I bet they haven’t done,” replied Cyprian. “I’m going to climb a tree.”

And with a quaint air of renewed cheerfulness he took himself away at a rapid walk to his inn.

He appeared at daybreak next morning outside the Vane Arms with all the air of one setting out on his travels in distant lands. He had a field glass slung over his shoulder, and a very large sheath knife buckled by a belt round his waist, and carried with the cool bravado of the bowie knife of a cowboy. But in spite of this backwoodsman’s simplicity, or perhaps rather because of it, he eyed with rising relish the picturesque plan and sky line of the antiquated village, and especially the wooden square of the old inn sign that hung over his head; a shield, of which the charges seemed to him a mere medley of blue dolphins, gold crosses, and scarlet birds. The colors and cubic corners of that painted board pleased him like a play or a puppet show. He stood staring and straddling for some moments on the cobbles of the little market place; then he gave a short laugh and began to mount the steep streets toward the high park and garden beyond. From the high lawn, above the tree and table, he could see on one side the land stretch away past the house into a great rolling plain, which under the clear edges of the dawn seemed dotted with picturesque details. The woods here and there on the plain looked like green hedgehogs, as grotesque as the incongruous beasts found unaccountably walking in the blank spaces of mediaeval maps. The land, cut up into colored fields, recalled the heraldry of the signboard; this also was at once ancient and gay. On the other side the ground to seaward swept down and then up again to the famous or infamous wood; the square of strange trees lay silently tilted on the slope, also suggesting, if not a map, or least a bird’s-eye view. Only the triple centerpiece of the peacock trees rose clear of the sky line; and these stood up in tranquil sunlight as things almost classical, a triangular temple of the winds. They seemed pagan in a newer and more placid sense; and he felt a newer and more boyish curiosity and courage for the consulting of the oracle. In all his wanderings he had never walked so lightly, for the connoisseur of sensations had found something to do at last; he was fighting for a friend.

He was brought to a standstill once, however, and that at the very gateway of the garden of the trees of knowledge. Just outside the black entry of the wood, now curtained with greener and larger leafage, he came on a solitary figure.

It was Martin, the woodcutter, wading in the bracken and looking about him in rather a lost fashion. The man seemed to be talking to himself.

“I dropped it here,” he was saying. “But I’ll never work with it again I reckon. Doctor wouldn’t let me pick it up, when I wanted to pick it up; and now they’ve got it, like they’ve got the Squire. Wood and iron, wood and iron, but eating it’s nothing to them.”

“Come!” said Paynter kindly, remembering the man’s domestic trouble. “Miss Vane will see you have anything you want, I know. And look here, don’t brood on all those stories about the Squire. Is there the slightest trace of the trees having anything to do with it? Is there even this extra branch the idiots talked about?”

There had been growing on Paynter the suspicion that the man before him was not perfectly sane; yet he was much more startled by the sudden and cold sanity that looked for an instant out of the woodman’s eyes, as he answered in his ordinary manner.

“Well, sir, did you count the branches before?”

Then he seemed to relapse; and Paynter left him wandering and wavering in the undergrowth; and entered the wood like one across whose sunny path a shadow has fallen for an instant.

Diving under the wood, he was soon threading a leafy path which, even under that summer sun, shone only with an emerald twilight, as if it were on the floor of the sea. It wound about more shakily than he had supposed, as if resolved to approach the central trees as if they were the heart of the maze at Hampton Court. They were the heart of the maze for him, anyhow; he sought them as straight as a crooked road would carry him; and, turning a final corner, he beheld, for the first time, the foundations of those towers of vegetation he had as yet only seen from above, as they stood waist-high in the woodland. He found the suspicion correct which supposed the tree branched from one great root, like a candelabrum; the fork, though stained and slimy with green fungoids, was quite near the ground, and offered a first foothold. He put his foot in it, and without a flash of hesitation went aloft, like Jack climbing the Bean stalk.

Above him the green roof of leaves and boughs seemed sealed like a firmament of foliage; but, by bending and breaking the branches to right and left he slowly forced a passage upward; and had at last, and suddenly, the sensation coming out on the top of the world. He felt as if he had never been in the open air before. Sea and land lay in a circle below and about him, as he sat astride a branch of the tall tree; he was almost surprised to see the sun still comparatively low in the sky; as if he were looking over a land of eternal sunrise.

“Silent upon a peak in Darien,” he remarked, in a needlessly loud and cheerful voice; and though the claim, thus expressed, was illogical, it was not inappropriate. He did feel as if he were a primitive adventurer just come to the New World, instead of a modern traveler just come from it.

“I wonder,” he proceeded, “whether I am really the first that ever burst into this silent tree. It looks like it. Those—”

He stopped and sat on his branch quite motionless, but his eyes were turned on a branch a little below it, and they were brilliant with a vigilance, like those of a man watching a snake.

What he was looking at might, at first sight, have been a large white fungus spreading on the smooth and monstrous trunk; but it was not.

Leaning down dangerously from his perch, he detached it from the twig on which it had caught, and then sat holding it in his hand and gazing at it. It was Squire Vane’s white Panama hat, but there was no Squire Vane under it. Paynter felt a nameless relief in the very fact that there was not.

There in the clear sunlight and sea air, for an instant, all the tropical terrors of his own idle tale surrounded and suffocated him. It seemed indeed some demon tree of the swamps; a vegetable serpent that fed on men. Even the hideous farce in the fancy of digesting a whole man with the exception of his hat, seemed only to simplify the nightmare. And he found himself gazing dully at one leaf of the tree, which happened to be turned toward him, so that the odd markings, which had partly made the legend, really looked a little like the eye in a peacock’s feather. It was as if the sleeping tree had opened one eye upon him.

With a sharp effort he steadied himself in mind and posture on the bough; his reason returned, and he began to descend with the hat in his teeth. When he was back in the underworld of the wood, he studied the hat again and with closer attention. In one place in the crown there was a hole or rent, which certainly had not been there when it had last lain on the table under the garden tree. He sat down, lit a cigarette, and reflected for a long time.

A wood, even a small wood, is not an easy thing to search minutely; but he provided himself with some practical tests in the matter. In one sense the very density of the thicket was a help; he could at least see where anyone had strayed from the path, by broken and trampled growths of every kind. After many hours’ industry, he had made a sort of new map of the place; and had decided beyond doubt that some person or persons had so strayed, for some purpose, in several defined directions. There was a way burst through the bushes, making a short cut across a loop of the wandering path; there was another forking out from it as an alternative way into the central space. But there was one especially which was unique, and which seemed to him, the more he studied it, to point to some essential of the mystery.

One of these beaten and broken tracks went from the space under the peacock trees outward into the wood for about twenty yards and then stopped. Beyond that point not a twig was broken nor a leaf disturbed. It had no exit, but he could not believe that it had no goal. After some further reflection, he knelt down and began to cut away grass and clay with his knife, and was surprised at the ease with which they detached themselves. In a few moments a whole section of the soil lifted like a lid; it was a round lid and presented a quaint appearance, like a flat cap with green feathers. For though the disc itself was made of wood, there was a layer of earth on it with the live grass still growing there. And the removal of the round lid revealed a round hole, black as night and seemingly bottomless. Paynter understood it instantly. It was rather near the sea for a well to be sunk, but the traveler had known wells sunk even nearer. He rose to his feet with the great knife in his hand, a frown on his face, and his doubts resolved. He no longer shrank from naming what he knew. This was not the first corpse that had been thrown down a well; here, without stone or epitaph, was the grave of Squire Vane. In a flash all the mythological follies about saints and peacocks were forgotten; he was knocked on the head, as with a stone club, by the human common sense of crime.

Cyprian Paynter stood long by the well in the wood, walked round it in meditation, examined its rim and the ring of grass about it, searched the surrounding soil thoroughly, came back and stood beside the well once more. His researches and reflections had been so long that he had not realized that the day had passed and that the wood and the world round it were beginning already to be steeped in the enrichment of evening. The day had been radiantly calm; the sea seemed to be as still as the well, and the well was as still as a mirror. And then, quite without warning, the mirror moved of itself like a living thing.

In the well, in the wood, the water leapt and gurgled, with a grotesque noise like something swallowing, and then settled again with a second sound. Cyprian could not see into the well clearly, for the opening, from where he stood, was an ellipse, a mere slit, and half masked by thistles and rank grass like a green beard. For where he stood now was three yards away from the well, and he had not yet himself realized that he had sprung back all that distance from the brink when the water spoke.

III. THE MYSTERY OF THE WELL

Cyprian Paynter did not know what he expected to see rise out of the well—the corpse of the murdered man or merely the spirit of the fountain. Anyhow, neither of them rose out of it, and he recognized after an instant that this was, after all, perhaps the more natural course of things. Once more he pulled himself together, walked to the edge of the well and looked down. He saw, as before, a dim glimmer of water, at that depth no brighter than ink; he fancied he still heard a faint convulsion and murmur, but it gradually subsided to an utter stillness. Short of suicidally diving in, there was nothing to be done. He realized that, with all his equipment, he had not even brought anything like a rope or basket, and at length decided to return for them. As he retraced his steps to the entrance, he recurred to, and took stock of, his more solid discoveries. Somebody had gone into the wood, killed the Squire and thrown him down the well, but he did not admit for a moment that it was his friend the poet; but if the latter had actually been seen coming out of the wood the matter was serious. As he walked the rapidly darkening twilight was cloven with red gleams, that made him almost fancy for a moment that some fantastic criminal had set fire to the tiny forest as he fled. A second glance showed him nothing but one of those red sunsets in which such serene days sometimes close.

As he came out of the gloomy gate of trees into the full glow he saw a dark figure standing quite still in the dim bracken, on the spot where he had left the woodcutter. It was not the woodcutter.

It was topped by a tall black hat of a funeral type, and the whole figure stood so black against the field of crimson fire that edged the sky line that he could not for an instant understand or recall it. When he did, it was with an odd change in the whole channel of his thoughts.

“Doctor Brown!” he cried. “Why, what are you doing up here?”

“I have been talking to poor Martin,” answered the doctor, and made a rather awkward movement with his hand toward the road down to the village. Following the gesture, Paynter dimly saw another dark figure walking down in the blood-red distance. He also saw that the hand motioning was really black, and not merely in shadow; and, coming nearer, found the doctor’s dress was really funereal, down to the detail of the dark gloves. It gave the American a small but queer shock, as if this were actually an undertaker come up to bury the corpse that could not be found.

“Poor Martin’s been looking for his chopper,” observed Doctor Brown, “but I told him I’d picked it up and kept it for him. Between ourselves, I hardly think he’s fit to be trusted with it.” Then, seeing the glance at his black garb, he added: “I’ve just been to a funeral. Did you know there’s been another loss? Poor Jake the fisherman’s wife, down in the cottage on the shore, you know. This infernal fever, of course.”

As they both turned, facing the red evening light, Paynter instinctively made a closer study, not merely of the doctor’s clothes, but of the doctor. Dr. Burton Brown was a tall, alert man, neatly dressed, who would otherwise have had an almost military air but for his spectacles and an almost painful intellectualism in his lean brown face and bald brow. The contrast was clinched by the fact that, while his face was of the ascetic type generally conceived as clean-shaven, he had a strip of dark mustache cut too short for him to bite, and yet a mouth that often moved as if trying to bite it. He might have been a very intelligent army surgeon, but he had more the look of an engineer or one of those services that combine a military silence with a more than military science. Paynter had always respected something ruggedly reliable about the man, and after a little hesitation he told him all the discoveries.

The doctor took the hat of the dead Squire in his hand, and examined it with frowning care. He put one finger through the hole in the crown and moved it meditatively. And Paynter realized how fanciful his own fatigue must have made him; for so silly a thing as the black finger waggling through the rent in that frayed white relic unreasonably displeased him. The doctor soon made the same discovery with professional acuteness, and applied it much further. For when Paynter began to tell him of the moving water in the well he looked at him a moment through his spectacles, and then said:

“Did you have any lunch?”

Paynter for the first time realized that he had, as a fact, worked and thought furiously all day without food.

“Please don’t fancy I mean you had too much lunch,” said the medical man, with mournful humor. “On the contrary, I mean you had too little. I think you are a bit knocked out, and your nerves exaggerate things. Anyhow, let me advise you not to do any more to-night. There’s nothing to be done without ropes or some sort of fishing tackle, if with that; but I think I can get you some of the sort of grappling irons the fishermen use for dragging. Poor Jake’s got some, I know; I’ll bring them round to you tomorrow morning. The fact is, I’m staying there for a bit as he’s rather in a state, and I think is better for me to ask for the things and not a stranger. I am sure you’ll understand.”

Paynter understood sufficiently to assent, and hardly knew why he stood vacantly watching the doctor make his way down the steep road to the shore and the fisher’s cottage. Then he threw off thoughts he had not examined, or even consciously entertained, and walked slowly and rather heavily back to the Vane Arms.

The doctor, still funereal in manner, though no longer so in costume, appeared punctually under the wooden sign next morning, laden with what he had promised; an apparatus of hooks and a hanging net for hoisting up anything sunk to a reasonable depth. He was about to proceed on his professional round, and said nothing further to deter the American from proceeding on his own very unprofessional experiment as a detective. That buoyant amateur had indeed recovered most, if not all, of yesterday’s buoyancy, was now well fitted to pass any medical examination, and returned with all his own energy to the scene of yesterday’s labors.

It may well have brightened and made breezier his second day’s toil that he had not only the sunlight and the bird’s singing in the little wood, to say nothing of a more scientific apparatus to work with, but also human companionship, and that of the most intelligent type. After leaving the doctor and before leaving the village he had bethought himself of seeking the little court or square where stood the quiet brown house of Andrew Ashe, solicitor, and the operations of dragging were worked in double harness. Two heads were peering over the well in the wood: one yellow-haired, lean and eager; the other redhaired, heavy and pondering; and if it be true that two heads are better than one, it is truer that four hands are better than two. In any case, their united and repeated efforts bore fruit at last, if anything so hard and meager and forlorn can be called a fruit. It weighed loosely in the net as it was lifted, and rolled out on the grassy edge of the well; it was a bone.

Ashe picked it up and stood with it in his hand, frowning.

“We want Doctor Brown here,” he said. “This may be the bone of some animal. Any dog or sheep might fall into a hidden well.” Then he broke off, for his companion was already detaching a second bone from the net.

After another half hour’s effort Paynter had occasion to remark, “It must have been rather a large dog.” There were already a heap of such white fragments at his feet.

“I have seen nothing yet,” said Ashe, speaking more plainly. “That is certainly a human bone.” “I fancy this must be a human bone,” said the American.

And he turned away a little as he handed the other a skull.

There was no doubt of what sort of skull; there was the one unique curve that holds the mystery of reason, and underneath it the two black holes that had held human eyes. But just above that on the left was another and smaller black hole, which was not an eye.

Then the lawyer said, with something like an effort: “We may admit it is a man without admitting it is—any particular man. There may be something, after all, in that yarn about the drunkard; he may have tumbled into the well. Under certain conditions, after certain natural processes, I fancy, the bones might be stripped in this way, even without the skill of any assassin. We want the doctor again.”

Then he added suddenly, and the very sound of his voice suggested that he hardly believed his own words.

“Haven’t you got poor Vane’s hat there?”

He took it from the silent American’s hand, and with a sort of hurry fitted it on the bony head.

“Don’t!” said the other involuntarily.

The lawyer had put his finger, as the doctor had done, through the hole in the hat, and it lay exactly over the hole in the skull.

“I have the better right to shrink,” he said steadily, but in a vibrant voice. “I think I am the older friend.”

Paynter nodded without speech, accepting the final identification. The last doubt, or hope, had departed, and he turned to the dragging apparatus, and did not speak till he had made his last find.

The singing of the birds seemed to grow louder about them, and the dance of the green summer leaves was repeated beyond in the dance of the green summer sea. Only the great roots of the mysterious trees could be seen, the rest being far aloft, and all round it was a wood of little, lively and happy things. They might have been two innocent naturalists, or even two children fishing for eels or tittlebats on that summer holiday when Paynter pulled up something that weighed in the net more heavily than any bone. It nearly broke the meshes, and fell against a mossy stone with a clang.

“Truth lies at the bottom of a well,” cried the American, with lift in his voice. “The woodman’s ax.”

It lay, indeed, flat and gleaming in the grasses by the well in the wood, just as it had lain in the thicket where the woodman threw it in the beginning of all these things. But on one corner of the bright blade was a dull brown stain.

“I see,” said Ashe, “the woodman’s ax, and therefore the Woodman. Your deductions are rapid.”

“My deductions are reasonable,” said Paynter, “Look here, Mr. Ashe; I know what you’re thinking. I know you distrust Treherne; but I’m sure you will be just for all that. To begin with, surely the first assumption is that the woodman’s ax is used by the Woodman. What have you to say to it?”

“I say ‘No’ to it,” replied the lawyer. “The last weapon a woodman would use would be a woodman’s ax; that is if he is a sane man.”

“He isn’t,” said Paynter quietly; “you said you wanted the doctor’s opinion just now. The doctor’s opinion on this point is the same as my own. We both found him meandering about outside there; it’s obvious this business has gone to his head, at any rate. If the murderer were a man of business like yourself, what you say might be sound. But this murderer is a mystic. He was driven by some fanatical fad about the trees. It’s quite likely he thought there was something solemn and sacrificial about the ax, and would have liked to cut off Vane’s head before a crowd, like Charles I’s. He’s looking for the ax still, and probably thinks it a holy relic.”

“For which reason,” said Ashe, smiling, “he instantly chucked it down a well.”

Paynter laughed.

“You have me there certainly,” he said. “But I think you have something else in your mind. You’ll say, I suppose, that we were all watching the wood; but were we? Frankly, I could almost fancy the peacock trees did strike me with a sort of sickness— a sleeping sickness.”

“Well,” admitted Ashe, “you have me there too. I’m afraid I couldn’t swear I was awake all the time; but I don’t put it down to magic trees—only to a private hobby of going to bed at night. But look here, Mr. Paynter; there’s another and better argument against any outsider from the village or countryside having committed the crime. Granted he might have slipped past us somehow, and gone for the Squire. But why should he go for him in the wood? How did he know he was in the wood? You remember how suddenly the poor old boy bolted into it, on what a momentary impulse. It’s the last place where one would normally look for such a man, in the middle of the night. No, it’s an ugly thing to say, but we, the group round that garden table, were the only people who knew. Which brings me back to the one point in your remarks which I happen to think perfectly true.”

“What was that?” inquired the other.

“That the murderer was a mystic,” said Ashe. “But a cleverer mystic than poor old Martin.”

Paynter made a murmur of protest, and then fell silent.

“Let us talk plainly,” resumed the lawyer. “Treherne had all those mad motives you yourself admit against the woodcutter. He had the knowledge of Vane’s whereabouts, which nobody can possibly attribute to the woodcutter. But he had much more. Who taunted and goaded the Squire to go into the wood at all? Treherne. Who practically prophesied, like an infernal quack astrologer, that something would happen to him if he did go into the wood? Treherne. Who was, for some reason, no matter what, obviously burning with rage and restlessness all that night, kicking his legs impatiently to and fro on the cliff, and breaking out with wild words about it being all over soon? Treherne. And on top of all this, when I walked closer to the wood, whom did I see slip out of it swiftly and silently like a shadow, but turning his face once to the moon? On my oath and on my honor—Treherne.”

“It is awful,” said Paynter, like a man stunned. “What you say is simply awful.”

“Yes,” said Ashe seriously, “very awful, but very simple. Treherne knew where the ax was originally thrown. I saw him, on that day he lunched here first, watching it like a wolf, while Miss Vane was talking to him. On that dreadful night he could easily have picked it up as he went into the wood. He knew about the well, no doubt; who was so likely to know any old traditions about the peacock trees? He hid the hat in the trees, where perhaps he hoped (though the point is unimportant) that nobody would dare to look. Anyhow, he hid it, simply because it was the one thing that would not sink in the well. Mr. Paynter, do you think I would say this of any man in mere mean dislike? Could any man say it of any man unless the case was complete, as this is complete?”

“It is complete,” said Paynter, very pale. “I have nothing left against it but a faint, irrational feeling; a feeling that, somehow or other, if poor Vane could stand alive before us at this moment he might tell some other and even more incredible tale.”

Ashe made a mournful gesture.

“Can these dry bones live?” he said.

“Lord Thou knowest,” answered the other mechanically. “Even these dry bones—”

And he stopped suddenly with his mouth open, a blinding light of wonder in his pale eyes.

“See here,” he said hoarsely and hastily. “You have said the word. What does it mean? What can it mean? Dry? Why are these bones dry?”

The lawyer started and stared down at the heap.

“Your case complete!” cried Paynter, in mounting excitement. “Where is the water in the well? The water I saw leap like a flame? Why did it leap? Where is it gone to? Complete! We are buried under riddles.”

Ashe stooped, picked up a bone and looked at it.

“You are right,” he said, in a low and shaken voice: “this bone is as dry—as a bone.”

“Yes, I am right,” replied Cyprian. “And your mystic is still as mysterious as a mystic.”

There was a long silence. Ashe laid down the bone, picked up the ax and studied it more closely. Beyond the dull stain at the corner of the steel there was nothing unusual about it save a broad white rag wrapped round the handle, perhaps to give a better grip. The lawyer thought it worth noting, however, that the rag was certainly newer and cleaner than the chopper. But both were quite dry.

“Mr. Paynter,” he said at last, “I admit you have scored, in the spirit if not in the letter. In strict logic, this greater puzzle is not a reply to my case. If this ax has not been dipped in water, it has been dipped in blood; and the water jumping out of the well is not an explanation of the poet jumping out of the wood. But I admit that morally and practically it does make a vital difference. We are not faced with a colossal contradiction, and we don’t know how far it extends. The body might have been broken up or boiled down to its bones by the murderer, though it may be hard to connect it with the conditions of the murder. It might conceivably have been so reduced by some property in the water and soil, for decomposition varies vastly with these things. I should not dismiss my strong prima facie case against the likely person because of these difficulties. But here we have something entirely different. That the bones themselves should remain dry in a well full of water, or a well that yesterday was full of water— that brings us to the edge of something beyond which we can make no guess. There is a new factor, enormous and quite unknown. While we can’t fit together such prodigious facts, we can’t fit together a case against Treherne or against anybody. No; there is only one thing to be done now. Since we can’t accuse Treherne, we must appeal to him. We must put the case against him frankly before him, and trust he has an explanation—and will give it. I suggest we go back and do it now.”

Paynter, beginning to follow, hesitated a moment, and then said: “Forgive me for a kind of liberty; as you say, you are an older friend of the family. I entirely agree with your suggestion, but before you act on your present suspicions, do you know, I think Miss Vane ought to be warned a little? I rather fear all this will be a new shock to her.”

“Very well,” said Ashe, after looking at him steadily for an instant. “Let us go across to her first.”

From the opening of the wood they could see Barbara Vane writing at the garden table, which was littered with correspondence, and the butler with his yellow face waiting behind her chair. As the lengths of grass lessened between them, and the little group at the table grew larger and clearer in the sunlight, Paynter had a painful sense of being part of an embassy of doom. It sharpened when the girl looked up from the table and smiled on seeing them.

“I should like to speak to you rather particularly if I may,” said the lawyer, with a touch of authority in his respect; and when the butler was dismissed he laid open the whole matter before her, speaking sympathetically, but leaving out nothing, from the strange escape of the poet from the wood to the last detail of the dry bones out of the well. No fault could be found with any one of his tones or phrases, and yet Cyprian, tingling in every nerve with the fine delicacy of his nation about the other sex, felt as if she were faced with an inquisitor. He stood about uneasily, watched the few colored clouds in the clear sky and the bright birds darting about the wood, and he heartily wished himself up the tree again.

Soon, however, the way the girl took it began to move him to perplexity rather than pity. It was like nothing he had expected, and yet he could not name the shade of difference. The final identification of her father’s skull, by the hole in the hat, turned her a little pale, but left her composed; this was, perhaps, explicable, since she had from the first taken the pessimistic view. But during the rest of the tale there rested on her broad brows under her copper coils of hair, a brooding spirit that was itself a mystery. He could only tell himself that she was less merely receptive, either firmly or weakly, than he would have expected. It was as if she revolved, not their problem, but her own. She was silent a long time, and said at last:

“Thank you, Mr. Ashe, I am really very grateful for this. After all, it brings things to the point where they must have come sooner or later.” She looked dreamily at the wood and sea, and went on: “I’ve not only had myself to consider, you see; but if you’re really thinking THAT, it’s time I spoke out, without asking anybody. You say, as if it were something very dreadful, ‘Mr. Treherne was in the wood that night.’ Well, it’s not quite so dreadful to me, you see, because I know he was. In fact, we were there together.”

“Together!” repeated the lawyer.

“We were together,” she said quietly, “because we had a right to be together.”

“Do you mean,” stammered Ashe, surprised out of himself, “that you were engaged?”

“No, no,” she said. “We were married.”

Then, amid a startled silence, she added, as a kind of afterthought:

“In fact, we are still.”

Strong as was his composure, the lawyer sat back in his chair with a sort of solid stupefaction at which Paynter could not help smiling.

“You will ask me, of course,” went on Barbara in the same measured manner, “why we should be married secretly, so that even my poor father did not know. Well, I answer you quite frankly to begin with; because, if he had known, he would certainly have cut me off with a shilling. He did not like my husband, and I rather fancy you do not like him either. And when I tell you this, I know perfectly well what you will say— the usual adventurer getting hold of the usual heiress. It is quite reasonable, and, as it happens, it is quite wrong. If I had deceived my father for the sake of the money, or even for the sake of a man, I should be a little ashamed to talk to you about it. And I think you can see that I am not ashamed.”

“Yes,” said the American, with a grave inclination, “yes, I can see that.”

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, as if seeking words for an obscure matter, and then said:

“Do you remember, Mr. Paynter, that day you first lunched here and told us about the African trees? Well, it was my birthday; I mean my first birthday. I was born then, or woke up or something. I had walked in this garden like a somnambulist in the sun. I think there are many such somnambulists in our set and our society; stunned with health, drugged with good manners, fitting their surroundings too well to be alive. Well, I came alive somehow; and you know how deep in us are the things we first realize when we were babies and began to take notice. I began to take notice. One of the first things I noticed was your own story, Mr. Paynter. I feel as if I heard of St. Securis as children hear of Santa Claus, and as if that big tree were a bogey I still believed in. For I do still believe in such things, or rather I believe in them more and more; I feel certain my poor father drove on the rocks by disbelieving, and you are all racing to ruin after him. That is why I do honestly want the estate, and that is why I am not ashamed of wanting it. I am perfectly certain, Mr. Paynter, that nobody can save this perishing land and this perishing people but those who understand. I mean who understand a thousand little signs and guides in the very soil and lie of the land, and traces that are almost trampled out. My husband understands, and I have begun to understand; my father would never have understood. There are powers, there is the spirit of a place, there are presences that are not to be put by. Oh, don’t fancy I am sentimental and hanker after the good old days. The old days were not all good; that is just the point, and we must understand enough to know the good from the evil. We must understand enough to save the traces of a saint or a sacred tradition, or, where a wicked god has been worshiped, to destroy his altar and to cut down his grove.”

“His grove,” said Paynter automatically, and looked toward the little wood, where the sunbright birds were flying.

“Mrs. Treherne,” said Ashe, with a formidable quietness, “I am not so unsympathetic with all this as you may perhaps suppose. I will not even say it is all moonshine, for it is something better. It is, if I may say so, honeymoonshine. I will never deny the saying that it makes the world go round, if it makes people’s heads go round too. But there are other sentiments, madam, and other duties. I need not tell you your father was a good man, and that what has befallen him would be pitiable, even as the fate of the wicked. This is a horrible thing, and it is chiefly among horrors that we must keep our common sense. There are reasons for everything, and when my old friend lies butchered do not come to me with even the most beautiful fairy tales about a saint and his enchanted grove.”

“Well, and you!” she cried, and rose radiantly and swiftly. “With what kind of fairy tales do you come to me? In what enchanted groves are YOU walking? You come and tell me that Mr. Paynter found a well where the water danced and then disappeared; but of course miracles are all moonshine! You tell me you yourself fished bones from under the same water, and every bone was as dry as a biscuit; but for Heaven’s sake let us say nothing that makes anybody’s head go round! Really, Mr. Ashe, you must try to preserve your common sense!”

She was smiling, but with blazing eyes; and Ashe got to his feet with an involuntary laugh of surrender.

“Well, we must be going,” he said. “May I say that a tribute is really due to your new transcendental training? If I may say so, I always knew you had brains; and you’ve been learning to use them.”

The two amateur detectives went back to the wood for the moment, that Ashe might consider the removal of the unhappy Squire’s remains. As he pointed out, it was now legally possible to have an inquest, and, even at that early stage of investigations, he was in favor of having it at once.

“I shall be the coroner,” he said, “and I think it will be a case of ‘some person or persons unknown.’ Don’t be surprised; it is often done to give the guilty a false security. This is not the first time the police have found it convenient to have the inquest first and the inquiry afterward.”

But Paynter had paid little attention to the point; for his great gift of enthusiasm, long wasted on arts and affectations, was lifted to inspiration by the romance of real life into which he had just walked. He was really a great critic; he had a genius for admiration, and his admiration varied fittingly with everything he admired.

“A splendid girl and a splendid story,” he cried. “I feel as if I were in love again myself, not so much with her as with Eve or Helen of Troy, or some such tower of beauty in the morning of the world. Don’t you love all heroic things, that gravity and great candor, and the way she took one step from a sort of throne to stand in a wilderness with a vagabond? Oh, believe me, it is she who is the poet; she has the higher reason, and honor and valor are at rest in her soul.”

“In short, she is uncommonly pretty,” replied Ashe, with some cynicism. “I knew a murderess rather well who was very much like her, and had just that colored hair.”

“You talk as if a murderer could be caught red-haired instead of red-handed,” retorted Paynter. “Why, at this very minute, you could be caught red-haired yourself. Are you a murderer, by any chance?”

Ashe looked up quickly, and then smiled.

“I’m afraid I’m a connoisseur in murderers, as you are in poets,” he answered, “and I assure you they are of all colors in hair as well as temperament. I suppose it’s inhumane, but mine is a monstrously interesting trade, even in a little place like this. As for that girl, of course I’ve known her all her life, and—but—but that is just the question. Have I known her all her life? Have I known her at all? Was she even there to be known? You admire her for telling the truth; and so she did, by God, when she said that some people wake up late, who have never lived before. Do we know what they might do—we, who have only seen them asleep?”

“Great heavens!” cried Paynter. “You don’t dare suggest that she—”

“No, I don’t,” said the lawyer, with composure, “but there are other reasons… I don’t suggest anything fully, till we’ve had our interview with this poet of yours. I think I know where to find him.”

They found him, in fact, before they expected him, sitting on the bench outside the Vane Arms, drinking a mug of cider and waiting for the return of his American friend; so it was not difficult to open conversation with him. Nor did he in any way avoid the subject of the tragedy; and the lawyer, seating himself also on the long bench that fronted the little market place, was soon putting the last developments as lucidly as he had put them to Barbara.

“Well,” said Treherne at last, leaning back and frowning at the signboard, with the colored birds and dolphins, just about his head; “suppose somebody did kill the Squire. He’d killed a good many people with his hygiene and his enlightened landlordism.”

Paynter was considerably uneasy at this alarming opening; but the poet went on quite coolly, with his hands in his pockets and his feet thrust out into the street.

“When a man has the power of a Sultan in Turkey, and uses it with the ideas of a spinster in Tooting, I often wonder that nobody puts a knife in him. I wish there were more sympathy for murderers, somehow. I’m very sorry the poor old fellow’s gone myself; but you gentlemen always seem to forget there are any other people in the world. He’s all right; he was a good fellow, and his soul, I fancy, has gone to the happiest paradise of all.”

The anxious American could read nothing of the effect of this in the dark Napoleonic face of the lawyer, who merely said: “What do you mean?”

“The fool’s paradise,” said Treherne, and drained his pot of cider.

The lawyer rose. He did not look at Treherne, or speak to him; but looked and spoke straight across him to the American, who found the utterance not a little unexpected.

“Mr. Paynter,” said Ashe, “you thought it rather morbid of me to collect murderers; but it’s fortunate for your own view of the case that I do. It may surprise you to know that Mr. Treherne has now, in my eyes, entirely cleared himself of suspicion. I have been intimate with several assassins, as I remarked; but there’s one thing none of them ever did. I never knew a murderer to talk about the murder, and then at once deny it and defend it. No, if a man is concealing his crime, why should he go out of his way to apologize for it?”

“Well,” said Paynter, with his ready appreciation, “I always said you were a remarkable man; and that’s certainly a remarkable idea.”

“Do I understand,” asked the poet, kicking his heels on the cobbles, “that both you gentlemen have been kindly directing me toward the gallows?”

“No,” said Paynter thoughtfully. “I never thought you guilty; and even supposing I had, if you understand me, I should never have thought it quite so guilty to be guilty. It would not have been for money or any mean thing, but for something a little wilder and worthier of a man of genius. After all, I suppose, the poet has passions like great unearthly appetites; and the world has always judged more gently of his sins. But now that Mr. Ashe admits your innocence, I can honestly say I have always affirmed it.”

The poet rose also. “Well, I am innocent, oddly enough,” he said. “I think I can make a guess about your vanishing well, but of the death and dry bones I know no more than the dead; if so much. And, by the way, my dear Paynter”—and he turned two bright eyes on the art critic—“I will excuse you from excusing me for all the things I haven’t done; and you, I hope, will excuse me if I differ from you altogether about the morality of poets. As you suggest, it is a fashionable view, but I think it is a fallacy. No man has less right to be lawless than a man of imagination. For he has spiritual adventures, and can take his holidays when he likes. I could picture the poor Squire carried off to elfland whenever I wanted him carried off, and that wood needed no crime to make it wicked for me. That red sunset the other night was all that a murder would have been to many men. No, Mr. Ashe; show, when next you sit in judgment, a little mercy to some wretched man who drinks and robs because he must drink beer to taste it, and take it to drink it. Have compassion on the next batch of poor thieves, who have to hold things in order to have them. But if ever you find ME stealing one small farthing, when I can shut my eyes and see the city of El Dorado, then”—and he lifted his head like a falcon—“show me no mercy, for I shall deserve none.”

“Well,” remarked Ashe, after a pause, “I must go and fix things up for the inquest. Mr. Treherne, your attitude is singularly interesting; I really almost wish I could add you to my collection of murderers. They are a varied and extraordinary set.”

“Has it ever occurred to you,” asked Paynter, “that perhaps the men who have never committed murder are a varied and very extraordinary set? Perhaps every plain man’s life holds the real mystery, the secret of sins avoided.”

“Possibly,” replied Ashe. “It would be a long business to stop the next man in the street and ask him what crimes he never committed and why not. And I happen to be busy, so you’ll excuse me.”

“What,” asked the American, when he and the poet were alone, “is this guess of yours about the vanishing water?”

“Well, I’m not sure I’ll tell you yet,” answered Treherne, something of the old mischief coming back into his dark eyes. “But I’ll tell you something else, which may be connected with it; something I couldn’t tell until my wife had told you about our meeting in the wood.” His face had grown grave again, and he resumed after a pause:

“When my wife started to follow her father I advised her to go back first to the house, to leave it by another door and to meet me in the wood in half an hour. We often made these assignations, of course, and generally thought them great fun, but this time the question was serious, and I didn’t want the wrong thing done in a hurry. It was a question whether anything could be done to undo an experiment we both vaguely felt to be dangerous, and she especially thought, after reflection, that interference would make things worse. She thought the old sportsman, having been dared to do something, would certainly not be dissuaded by the very man who had dared him or by a woman whom he regarded as a child. She left me at last in a sort of despair, but I lingered with a last hope of doing something, and drew doubtfully near to the heart of the wood; and there, instead of the silence I expected, I heard a voice. It seemed as if the Squire must be talking to himself, and I had the unpleasant fancy that he had already lost his reason in that wood of witchcraft. But I soon found that if he was talking he was talking with two voices. Other fancies attacked me, as that the other was the voice of the tree or the voices of the three trees talking together, and with no man near. But it was not the voice of the tree. The next moment I knew the voice, for I had heard it twenty times across the table. It was the voice of that doctor of yours; I heard it as certainly as you hear my voice now.”

After a moment’s silence, he resumed: “I left the wood, I hardly knew why, and with wild and bewildered feelings; and as I came out into the faint moonshine I saw that old lawyer standing quietly, but staring at me like an owl. At least, the light touched his red hair with fire, but his square old face was in shadow. But I knew, if I could have read it, that it was the face of a hanging judge.”

He threw himself on the bench again, smiled a little, and added: “Only, like a good many hanging judges, I fancy, he was waiting patiently to hang the wrong man.”

“And the right man—” said Paynter mechanically. Treherne shrugged his shoulders, sprawling on the ale bench, and played with his empty pot.

IV. THE CHASE AFTER THE TRUTH

Some time after the inquest, which had ended in the inconclusive verdict which Mr. Andrew Ashe had himself predicted and achieved, Paynter was again sitting on the bench outside the village inn, having on the little table in front of it a tall glass of light ale, which he enjoyed much more as local color than as liquor. He had but one companion on the bench, and that a new one, for the little market place was empty at that hour, and he had lately, for the rest, been much alone. He was not unhappy, for he resembled his great countryman, Walt Whitman, in carrying a kind of universe with him like an open umbrella; but he was not only alone, but lonely. For Ashe had gone abruptly up to London, and since his return had been occupied obscurely with legal matters, doubtless bearing on the murder. And Treherne had long since taken up his position openly, at the great house, as the husband of the great lady, and he and she were occupied with sweeping reforms on the estate. The lady especially, being of the sort whose very dreams “drive at practice,” was landscape gardening as with the gestures of a giantess. It was natural, therefore, that so sociable a spirit as Paynter should fall into speech with the one other stranger who happened to be staying at the inn, evidently a bird of passage like himself. This man, who was smoking a pipe on the bench beside him, with his knapsack before him on the table, was an artist come to sketch on that romantic coast; a tall man in a velvet jacket, with a shock of tow-colored hair, a long fair beard, but eyes of dark brown, the effect of which contrast reminded Paynter vaguely, he hardly knew why, of a Russian. The stranger carried his knapsack into many picturesque corners; he obtained permission to set up his easel in that high garden where the late Squire had held his al fresco banquets. But Paynter had never had an opportunity of judging of the artist’s work, nor did he find it easy to get the artist even to talk of his art. Cyprian himself was always ready to talk of any art, and he talked of it excellently, but with little response. He gave his own reasons for preferring the Cubists to the cult of Picasso, but his new friend seemed to have but a faint interest in either. He insinuated that perhaps the Neo-Primitives were after all only thinning their line, while the true Primitives were rather tightening it; but the stranger seemed to receive the insinuation without any marked reaction of feeling. When Paynter had even gone back as far into the past as the Post-Impressionists to find a common ground, and not found it, other memories began to creep back into his mind. He was just reflecting, rather darkly, that after all the tale of the peacock trees needed a mysterious stranger to round it off, and this man had much the air of being one, when the mysterious stranger himself said suddenly:

“Well, I think I’d better show you the work I’m doing down here.”

He had his knapsack before him on the table, and he smiled rather grimly as he began to unstrap it. Paynter looked on with polite expressions of interest, but was considerably surprised when the artist unpacked and placed on the table, not any recognizable works of art, even of the most Cubist description, but (first) a quire of foolscap closely written with notes in black and red ink, and (second), to the American’s extreme amazement, the old woodman’s ax with the linen wrapper, which he had himself found in the well long ago.

“Sorry to give you a start, sir,” said the Russian artist, with a marked London accent. “But I’d better explain straight off that I’m a policeman.”

“You don’t look it,” said Paynter.

“I’m not supposed to,” replied the other. “Mr. Ashe brought me down here from the Yard to investigate; but he told me to report to you when I’d got anything to go on. Would you like to go into the matter now?

“When I took this matter up,” explained the detective, “I did it at Mr. Ashe’s request, and largely, of course, on Mr. Ashe’s lines. Mr. Ashe is a great criminal lawyer; with a beautiful brain, sir, as full as the Newgate Calendar. I took, as a working notion, his view that only you five gentlemen round the table in the Squire’s garden were acquainted with the Squire’s movements. But you gentlemen, if I may say so, have a way of forgetting certain other things and other people which we are rather taught to look for first. And as I followed Mr. Ashe’s inquiries through the stages you know already, through certain suspicions I needn’t discuss because they’ve been dropped, I found the thing shaping after all toward something, in the end, which I think we should have considered at the beginning. Now, to begin with, it is not true that there were five men round the table. There were six.”

The creepy conditions of that garden vigil vaguely returned upon Paynter; and he thought of a ghost, or something more nameless than a ghost. But the deliberate speech of the detective soon enlightened him.

“There were six men and five gentlemen, if you like to put it so,” he proceeded. “That man Miles, the butler, saw the Squire vanish as plainly as you did; and I soon found that Miles was a man worthy of a good deal of attention.”

A light of understanding dawned on Paynter’s face. “So that was it, was it!” he muttered.

“Does all our mythological mystery end with a policeman collaring a butler? Well, I agree with you he is far from an ordinary butler, even to look at; and the fault in imagination is mine. Like many faults in imagination, it was simply snobbishness.”

“We don’t go quite so fast as that,” observed the officer, in an impassive manner. “I only said I found the inquiry pointing to Miles; and that he was well worthy of attention. He was much more in the old Squire’s confidence than many people supposed; and when I cross-examined him he told me a good deal that was worth knowing. I’ve got it all down in these notes here; but at the moment I’ll only trouble you with one detail of it. One night this butler was just outside the Squire’s dining-room door, when he heard the noise of a violent quarrel. The Squire was a violent gentleman, from time to time; but the curious thing about this scene was that the other gentleman was the more violent of the two. Miles heard him say repeatedly that the Squire was a public nuisance, and that his death would be a good riddance for everybody. I only stop now to tell you that the other gentleman was Dr. Burton Brown, the medical man of this village.

“The next examination I made was that of Martin, the woodcutter. Upon one point at least his evidence is quite clear, and is, as you will see, largely confirmed by other witnesses. He says first that the doctor prevented him from recovering his ax, and this is corroborated by Mr. and Mrs. Treherne. But he says further that the doctor admitted having the thing himself; and this again finds support in other evidence by the gardener, who saw the doctor, some time afterward, come by himself and pick up the chopper. Martin says that Doctor Brown repeatedly refused to give it up, alleging some fanciful excuse every time. And, finally, Mr. Paynter, we will hear the evidence of the ax itself.”

He laid the woodman’s tool on the table in front of him, and began to rip up and unwrap the curious linen covering round the handle.

“You will admit this is an odd bandage,” he said. “And that’s just the odd thing about it, that it really is a bandage. This white stuff is the sort of lint they use in hospitals, cut into strips like this. But most doctors keep some; and I have the evidence of Jake the fisherman, with whom Doctor Brown lived for some time, that the doctor had this useful habit. And, last,” he added, flattening out a corner of the rag on the table, “isn’t it odd that it should be marked T.B.B.?”

The American gazed at the rudely inked initials, but hardly saw them. What he saw, as in a mirror in his darkened memory, was the black figure with the black gloves against the blood-red sunset, as he had seen it when he came out of the wood, and which had always haunted him, he knew not why.

“Of course, I see what you mean,” he said, “and it’s very painful for me, for I knew and respected the man. But surely, also, it’s very far from explaining everything. If he is a murderer, is he a magician? Why did the well water all evaporate in a night, and leave the dead man’s bones dry as dust? That’s not a common operation in the hospitals, is it?”

“As to the water, we do know the explanation,” said the detective. “I didn’t tumble to it at first myself, being a Cockney; but a little talk with Jake and the other fisherman about the old smuggling days put me straight about that. But I admit the dried remains still stump us all. All the same—”

A shadow fell across the table, and his talk was sharply cut short. Ashe was standing under the painted sign, buttoned up grimly in black, and with the face of the hanging judge, of which the poet had spoken, plain this time in the broad sunlight. Behind him stood two big men in plain clothes, very still; but Paynter knew instantly who they were.

“We must move at once,” said the lawyer. “Dr. Burton Brown is leaving the village.”

The tall detective sprang to his feet, and Paynter instinctively imitated him.

“He has gone up to the Trehernes possibly to say good-by,” went on Ashe rapidly. “I’m sorry, but we must arrest him in the garden there, if necessary. I’ve kept the lady out of the way, I think. But you”—addressing the factitious landscape painter—“must go up at once and rig up that easel of yours near the table and be ready. We will follow quietly, and come up behind the tree. We must be careful, for it’s clear he’s got wind of us, or he wouldn’t be doing a bolt.”

“I don’t like this job,” remarked Paynter, as they mounted toward the park and garden, the detective darting on ahead.

“Do you suppose I do?” asked Ashe; and, indeed, his strong, heavy face looked so lined and old that the red hair seemed unnatural, like a red wig. “I’ve known him longer than you, though perhaps I’ve suspected him longer as well.”

When they topped the slope of the garden the detective had already erected his easel, though a strong breeze blowing toward the sea rattled and flapped his apparatus and blew about his fair (and false) beard in the wind. Little clouds curled like feathers, were scudding seaward across the many-colored landscape, which the American art critic had once surveyed on a happier morning; but it is doubtful if the landscape painter paid much attention to it. Treherne was dimly discernible in the doorway of what was now his house; he would come no nearer, for he hated such a public duty more bitterly than the rest. The others posted themselves a little way behind the tree. Between the lines of these masked batteries the black figure of the doctor could be seen coming across the green lawn, traveling straight, as a bullet, as he had done when he brought the bad news to the woodcutter. To-day he was smiling, under the dark mustache that was cut short of the upper lip, though they fancied him a little pale, and he seemed to pause a moment and peer through his spectacles at the artist.

The artist turned from his easel with a natural movement, and then in a flash had captured the doctor by the coat collar.

“I arrest you—” he began; but Doctor Brown plucked himself free with startling promptitude, took a flying leap at the other, tore off his sham beard, tossing it into the air like one of the wild wisps of the cloud; then, with one wild kick, sent the easel flying topsy-turvy, and fled like a hare for the shore. Even at that dazzling instant Paynter felt that this wild reception was a novelty and almost an anticlimax; but he had no time for analysis when he and the whole pack had to follow in the hunt; even Treherne bringing up the rear with a renewed curiosity and energy.

The fugitive collided with one of the policemen who ran to head him off, sending him sprawling down the slope; indeed, the fugitive seemed inspired with the strength of a wild ape. He cleared at a bound the rampart of flowers, over which Barbara had once leaned to look at her future lover, and tumbled with blinding speed down the steep path up which that troubadour had climbed. Racing with the rushing wind they all streamed across the garden after him, down the path, and finally on to the seashore by the fisher’s cot, and the pierced crags and caverns the American had admired when he first landed. The runaway did not, however, make for the house he had long inhabited, but rather for the pier, as if with a mind to seize the boat or to swim. Only when he reached the other end of the small stone jetty did he turn, and show them the pale face with the spectacles; and they saw that it was still smiling.

“I’m rather glad of this,” said Treherne, with a great sigh. “The man is mad.”

Nevertheless, the naturalness of the doctor’s voice, when he spoke, startled them as much as a shriek.

“Gentleman,” he said, “I won’t protract your painful duties by asking you what you want; but I will ask at once for a small favor, which will not prejudice those duties in any way. I came down here rather in a hurry perhaps; but the truth is I thought I was late for an appointment.” He looked dispassionately at his watch. “I find there is still some fifteen minutes. Will you wait with me here for that short time; after which I am quite at your service.”

There was a bewildered silence, and then Paynter said: “For my part, I feel as if it would really be better to humor him.”

“Ashe,” said the doctor, with a new note of seriousness, “for old friendship, grant me this last little indulgence. It will make no difference; I have no arms or means of escape; you can search me if you like. I know you think you are doing right, and I also know you will do it as fairly as you can. Well, after all, you get friends to help you; look at our friend with the beard, or the remains of the beard. Why shouldn’t I have a friend to help me? A man will be here in a few minutes in whom I put some confidence; a great authority on these things. Why not, if only out of curiosity, wait and hear his view of the case?”

“This seems all moonshine,” said Ashe, “but on the chance of any light on things—well, from the moon—I don’t mind waiting a quarter of an hour. Who is this friend, I wonder; some amateur detective, I suppose.”

“I thank you,” said the doctor, with some dignity. “I think you will trust him when you have talked to him a little. And now,” he added with an air of amiably relaxing into lighter matters, “let us talk about the murder.

“This case,” he said in a detached manner, “will be found, I suspect, to be rather unique. There is a very clear and conclusive combination of evidence against Thomas Burton Brown, otherwise myself. But there is one peculiarity about that evidence, which you may perhaps have noticed. It all comes ultimately from one source, and that a rather unusual one. Thus, the woodcutter says I had his ax, but what makes him think so? He says I told him I had his ax; that I told him so again and again. Once more, Mr. Paynter here pulled up the ax out of the well; but how? I think Mr. Paynter will testify that I brought him the tackle for fishing it up, tackle he might never have got in any other way. Curious, is it not? Again, the ax is found to be wrapped in lint that was in my possession, according to the fisherman. But who showed the lint to the fisherman? I did. Who marked it with large letters as mine? I did. Who wrapped it round the handle at all? I did. Rather a singular thing to do; has anyone ever explained it?”

His words, which had been heard at first with painful coldness were beginning to hold more and more of their attention.

“Then there is the well itself,” proceeded the doctor, with the same air of insane calm. “I suppose some of you by this time know at least the secret of that. The secret of the well is simply that it is not a well. It is purposely shaped at the top so as to look like one, but it is really a sort of chimney opening from the roof of one of those caves over there; a cave that runs inland just under the wood, and indeed IS connected by tunnels and secret passages with other openings miles and miles away. It is a sort of labyrinth used by smugglers and such people for ages past. This doubtless explains many of those disappearances we have heard of. But to return to the well that is not a well, in case some of you still don’t know about it. When the sea rises very high at certain seasons it fills the low cave, and even rises a little way in the funnel above, making it look more like a well than ever. The noise Mr. Paynter heard was the natural eddy of a breaker from outside, and the whole experience depended on something so elementary as the tide.”

The American was startled into ordinary speech.

“The tide!” he said. “And I never even thought of it! I guess that comes of living by the Mediterranean.”

“The next step will be obvious enough,” continued the speaker, “to a logical mind like that of Mr. Ashe, for instance. If it be asked why, even so, the tide did not wash away the Squire’s remains that had lain there since his disappearance, there is only one possible answer. The remains had NOT lain there since his disappearance. The remains had been deliberately put there in the cavern under the wood, and put there AFTER Mr. Paynter had made his first investigation. They were put there, in short, after the sea had retreated and the cave was again dry. That is why they were dry; of course, much drier than the cave. Who put them there, I wonder?”

He was gazing gravely through his spectacles over their heads into vacancy, and suddenly he smiled.

“Ah,” he cried, jumping up from the rock with alacrity, “here is the amateur detective at last!”

Ashe turned his head over his shoulder, and for a few seconds did not move it again, but stood as if with a stiff neck. In the cliff just behind him was one of the clefts or cracks into which it was everywhere cloven. Advancing from this into the sunshine, as if from a narrow door, was Squire Vane, with a broad smile on his face.

The wind was tearing from the top of the high cliff out to sea, passing over their heads, and they had the sensation that everything was passing over their heads and out of their control. Paynter felt as if his head had been blown off like a hat. But none of this gale of unreason seemed to stir a hair on the white head of the Squire, whose bearing, though self-important and bordering on a swagger, seemed if anything more comfortable than in the old days. His red face was, however, burnt like a sailor’s, and his light clothes had a foreign look.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said genially, “so this is the end of the legend of the peacock trees. Sorry to spoil that delightful traveller’s tale, Mr. Paynter, but the joke couldn’t be kept up forever. Sorry to put a stop to your best poem, Mr. Treherne, but I thought all this poetry had been going a little too far. So Doctor Brown and I fixed up a little surprise for you. And I must say, without vanity, that you look a little surprised.”

“What on earth,” asked Ashe at last, “is the meaning of all this?”

The Squire laughed pleasantly, and even a little apologetically,

“I’m afraid I’m fond of practical jokes,” he said, “and this I suppose is my last grand practical joke. But I want you to understand that the joke is really practical. I flatter myself it will be of very practical use to the cause of progress and common sense, and the killing of such superstitions everywhere. The best part of it, I admit, was the doctor’s idea and not mine. All I meant to do was to pass a night in the trees, and then turn up as fresh as paint to tell you what fools you were. But Doctor Brown here followed me into the wood, and we had a little talk which rather changed my plans. He told me that a disappearance for a few hours like that would never knock the nonsense on the head; most people would never even hear of it, and those who did would say that one night proved nothing. He showed me a much better way, which had been tried in several cases where bogus miracles had been shown up. The thing to do was to get the thing really believed everywhere as a miracle, and then shown up everywhere as a sham miracle. I can’t put all the arguments as well as he did, but that was the notion, I think.”

The doctor nodded, gazing silently at the sand; and the Squire resumed with undiminished relish.

“We agreed that I should drop through the hole into the cave, and make my way through the tunnels, where I often used to play as a boy, to the railway station a few miles from here, and there take a train for London. It was necessary for the joke, of course, that I should disappear without being traced; so I made my way to a port, and put in a very pleasant month or two round my old haunts in Cyprus and the Mediterranean. There’s no more to say of that part of the business, except that I arranged to be back by a particular time; and here I am. But I’ve heard enough of what’s gone on round here to be satisfied that I’ve done the trick. Everybody in Cornwall and most people in South England have heard of the Vanishing Squire; and thousands of noodles have been nodding their heads over crystals and tarot cards at this marvelous proof of an unseen world. I reckon the Reappearing Squire will scatter their cards and smash their crystals, so that such rubbish won’t appear again in the twentieth century. I’ll make the peacock trees the laughing stock of all Europe and America.”

“Well,” said the lawyer, who was the first to rearrange his wits, “I’m sure we’re all only too delighted to see you again, Squire; and I quite understand your explanation and your own very natural motives in the matter. But I’m afraid I haven’t got the hang of everything yet. Granted that you wanted to vanish, was it necessary to put bogus bones in the cave, so as nearly to put a halter round the neck of Doctor Brown? And who put it there? The statement would appear perfectly maniacal; but so far as I can make head or tail out of anything, Doctor Brown seems to have put it there himself.”

The doctor lifted his head for the first time.

“Yes; I put the bones there,” he said. “I believe I am the first son of Adam who ever manufactured all the evidence of a murder charge against himself.”

It was the Squire’s turn to look astonished. The old gentleman looked rather wildly from one to the other.

“Bones! Murder charge!” he ejaculated. “What the devil is all this? Whose bones?”

“Your bones, in a manner of speaking,” delicately conceded the doctor. “I had to make sure you had really died, and not disappeared by magic.”

The Squire in his turn seemed more hopelessly puzzled than the whole crowd of his friends had been over his own escapade. “Why not?” he demanded. “I thought it was the whole point to make it look like magic. Why did you want me to die so much?”

Doctor Brown had lifted his head; and he now very slowly lifted his hand. He pointed with outstretched arm at the headland overhanging the foreshore, just above the entrance to the cave. It was the exact part of the beach where Paynter had first landed, on that spring morning when he had looked up in his first fresh wonder at the peacock trees. But the trees were gone.

The fact itself was no surprise to them; the clearance had naturally been one of the first of the sweeping changes of the Treherne regime. But though they knew it well, they had wholly forgotten it; and its significance returned on them suddenly like a sign in heaven.

“That is the reason,” said the doctor. “I have worked for that for fourteen years.”

They no longer looked at the bare promontory on which the feathery trees had once been so familiar a sight; for they had something else to look at. Anyone seeing the Squire now would have shifted his opinion about where to find the lunatic in that crowd. It was plain in a flash that the change had fallen on him like a thunderbolt; that he, at least, had never had the wildest notion that the tale of the Vanishing Squire had been but a prelude to that of the vanishing trees. The next half hour was full of his ravings and expostulations, which gradually died away into demands for explanation and incoherent questions repeated again and again. He had practically to be overruled at last, in spite of the respect in which he was held, before anything like a space and silence were made in which the doctor could tell his own story. It was perhaps a singular story, of which he alone had ever had the knowledge; and though its narration was not uninterrupted, it may be set forth consecutively in his own words.

“First, I wish it clearly understood that I believe in nothing. I do not even give the nothing I believe a name; or I should be an atheist. I have never had inside my head so much as a hint of heaven and hell. I think it most likely we are worms in the mud; but I happen to be sorry for the other worms under the wheel. And I happen myself to be a sort of worm that turns when he can. If I care nothing for piety, I care less for poetry. I’m not like Ashe here, who is crammed with criminology, but has all sorts of other culture as well. I know nothing about culture, except bacteria culture. I sometimes fancy Mr. Ashe is as much an art critic as Mr. Paynter; only he looks for his heroes, or villains, in real life. But I am a very practical man; and my stepping stones have been simply scientific facts. In this village I found a fact—a fever. I could not classify it; it seemed peculiar to this corner of the coast; it had singular reactions of delirium and mental breakdown. I studied it exactly as I should a queer case in the hospital, and corresponded and compared notes with other men of science. But nobody had even a working hypothesis about it, except of course the ignorant peasantry, who said the peacock trees were in some wild way poisonous.

“Well, the peacock trees were poisonous. The peacock trees did produce the fever. I verified the fact in the plain plodding way required, comparing all the degrees and details of a vast number of cases; and there were a shocking number to compare. At the end of it I had discovered the thing as Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood. Everybody was the worse for being near the things; those who came off best were exactly the exceptions that proved the rule, abnormally healthy and energetic people like the Squire and his daughter. In other words, the peasants were right. But if I put it that way, somebody will cry: ‘But do you believe it was supernatural then?’ In fact, that’s what you’ll all say; and that’s exactly what I complain of. I fancy hundreds of men have been left dead and diseases left undiscovered, by this suspicion of superstition, this stupid fear of fear. Unless you see daylight through the forest of facts from the first, you won’t venture into the wood at all. Unless we can promise you beforehand that there shall be what you call a natural explanation, to save your precious dignity from miracles, you won’t even hear the beginning of the plain tale. Suppose there isn’t a natural explanation! Suppose there is, and we never find it! Suppose I haven’t a notion whether there is or not! What the devil has that to do with you, or with me in dealing with the facts I do know? My own instinct is to think there is; that if my researches could be followed far enough it would be found that some horrible parody of hay fever, some effect analogous to that of pollen, would explain all the facts. I have never found the explanation. What I have found are the facts. And the fact is that those trees on the top there dealt death right and left, as certainly as if they had been giants, standing on a hill and knocking men down in crowds with a club. It will be said that now I had only to produce my proofs and have the nuisance removed. Perhaps I might have convinced the scientific world finally, when more and more processions of dead men had passed through the village to the cemetery. But I had not got to convince the scientific world, but the Lord of the Manor. The Squire will pardon my saying that it was a very different thing. I tried it once; I lost my temper, and said things I do not defend; and I left the Squire’s prejudices rooted anew, like the trees. I was confronted with one colossal coincidence that was an obstacle to all my aims. One thing made all my science sound like nonsense. It was the popular legend.

“Squire, if there were a legend of hay fever, you would not believe in hay fever. If there were a popular story about pollen, you would say that pollen was only a popular story. I had something against me heavier and more hopeless than the hostility of the learned; I had the support of the ignorant. My truth was hopelessly tangled up with a tale that the educated were resolved to regard as entirely a lie. I never tried to explain again; on the contrary, I apologized, affected a conversion to the common-sense view, and watched events. And all the time the lines of a larger, if more crooked plan, began to get clearer in my mind. I knew that Miss Vane, whether or no she were married to Mr. Treherne, as I afterward found she was, was so much under his influence that the first day of her inheritance would be the last day of the poisonous trees. But she could not inherit, or even interfere, till the Squire died. It became simply self-evident, to a rational mind, that the Squire must die. But wishing to be humane as well as rational, I desired his death to be temporary.

“Doubtless my scheme was completed by a chapter of accidents, but I was watching for such accidents. Thus I had a foreshadowing of how the ax would figure in the tale when it was first flung at the trees; it would have surprised the woodman to know how near our minds were, and how I was but laying a more elaborate siege to the towers of pestilence. But when the Squire spontaneously rushed on what half the countryside would call certain death, I jumped at my chance. I followed him, and told him all that he has told you. I don’t suppose he’ll ever forgive me now, but that shan’t prevent me saying that I admire him hugely for being what people would call a lunatic and what is really a sportsman. It takes rather a grand old man to make a joke in the grand style. He came down so quick from the tree he had climbed that he had no time to pull his hat off the bough it had caught in.

“At first I found I had made a miscalculation. I thought his disappearance would be taken as his death, at least after a little time; but Ashe told me there could be no formalities without a corpse. I fear I was a little annoyed, but I soon set myself to the duty of manufacturing a corpse. It’s not hard for a doctor to get a skeleton; indeed, I had one, but Mr. Paynter’s energy was a day too early for me, and I only got the bones into the well when he had already found it. His story gave me another chance, however; I noted where the hole was in the hat, and made a precisely corresponding hole in the skull. The reason for creating the other clues may not be so obvious. It may not yet be altogether apparent to you that I am not a fiend in human form. I could not substantiate a murder without at least suggesting a murderer, and I was resolved that if the crime happened to be traced to anybody, it should be to me. So I’m not surprised you were puzzled about the purpose of the rag round the ax, because it had no purpose, except to incriminate the man who put it there. The chase had to end with me, and when it was closing in at last the joke of it was too much for me, and I fear I took liberties with the gentleman’s easel and beard. I was the only person who could risk it, being the only person who could at the last moment produce the Squire and prove there had been no crime at all. That, gentlemen, is the true story of the peacock trees; and that bare crag up there, where the wind is whistling as it would over a wilderness, is a waste place I have labored to make, as many men have labored to make a cathedral.

“I don’t think there is any more to say, and yet something moves in my blood and I will try to say it. Could you not have trusted a little these peasants whom you already trust so much? These men are men, and they meant something; even their fathers were not wholly fools. If your gardener told you of the trees you called him a madman, but he did not plan and plant your garden like a madman. You would not trust your woodman about these trees, yet you trusted him with all the others. Have you ever thought what all the work of the world would be like if the poor were so senseless as you think them? But no, you stuck to your rational principle. And your rational principle was that a thing must be false because thousands of men had found it true; that BECAUSE many human eyes had seen something it could not be there.”

He looked across at Ashe with a sort of challenge, but though the sea wind ruffled the old lawyer’s red mane, his Napoleonic mask was unruffled; it even had a sort of beauty from its new benignity.

“I am too happy just now in thinking how wrong I have been,” he answered, “to quarrel with you, doctor, about our theories. And yet, in justice to the Squire as well as myself, I should demur to your sweeping inference. I respect these peasants, I respect your regard for them; but their stories are a different matter. I think I would do anything for them but believe them. Truth and fancy, after all, are mixed in them, when in the more instructed they are separate; and I doubt if you have considered what would be involved in taking their word for anything. Half the ghosts of those who died of fever may be walking by now; and kind as these people are, I believe they might still burn a witch. No, doctor, I admit these people have been badly used, I admit they are in many ways our betters, but I still could not accept anything in their evidence.”

The doctor bowed gravely and respectfully enough, and then, for the last time that day, they saw his rather sinister smile.

“Quite so,” he said. “But you would have hanged me on their evidence.”

And, turning his back on them, as if automatically, he set his face toward the village, where for so many years he had gone his round.

End of The Trees of Pride, by G. K. Chesterton

I. THE TALE OF THE PEACOCK TREES

Squire Vane was an elderly schoolboy of English education and Irish extraction. His English education, at one of the great public schools, had preserved his intellect perfectly and permanently at the stage of boyhood. But his Irish extraction subconsciously upset in him the proper solemnity of an old boy, and sometimes gave him back the brighter outlook of a naughty boy. He had a bodily impatience which played tricks upon him almost against his will, and had already rendered him rather too radiant a failure in civil and diplomatic service. Thus it is true that compromise is the key of British policy, especially as effecting an impartiality among the religions of India; but Vane’s attempt to meet the Moslem halfway by kicking off one boot at the gates of the mosque, was felt not so much to indicate true impartiality as something that could only be called an aggressive indifference. Again, it is true that an English aristocrat can hardly enter fully into the feelings of either party in a quarrel between a Russian Jew and an Orthodox procession carrying relics; but Vane’s idea that the procession might carry the Jew as well, himself a venerable and historic relic, was misunderstood on both sides. In short, he was a man who particularly prided himself on having no nonsense about him; with the result that he was always doing nonsensical things. He seemed to be standing on his head merely to prove that he was hard-headed.

He had just finished a hearty breakfast, in the society of his daughter, at a table under a tree in his garden by the Cornish coast. For, having a glorious circulation, he insisted on as many outdoor meals as possible, though spring had barely touched the woods and warmed the seas round that southern extremity of England. His daughter Barbara, a good-looking girl with heavy red hair and a face as grave as one of the garden statues, still sat almost motionless as a statue when her father rose. A fine tall figure in light clothes, with his white hair and mustache flying backwards rather fiercely from a face that was good-humored enough, for he carried his very wide Panama hat in his hand, he strode across the terraced garden, down some stone steps flanked with old ornamental urns to a more woodland path fringed with little trees, and so down a zigzag road which descended the craggy Cliff to the shore, where he was to meet a guest arriving by boat. A yacht was already in the blue bay, and he could see a boat pulling toward the little paved pier.

And yet in that short walk between the green turf and the yellow sands he was destined to find his hard-headedness provoked into a not unfamiliar phase which the world was inclined to call hot-headedness. The fact was that the Cornish peasantry, who composed his tenantry and domestic establishment, were far from being people with no nonsense about them. There was, alas! a great deal of nonsense about them; with ghosts, witches, and traditions as old as Merlin, they seemed to surround him with a fairy ring of nonsense. But the magic circle had one center: there was one point in which the curving conversation of the rustics always returned. It was a point that always pricked the Squire to exasperation, and even in this short walk he seemed to strike it everywhere. He paused before descending the steps from the lawn to speak to the gardener about potting some foreign shrubs, and the gardener seemed to be gloomily gratified, in every line of his leathery brown visage, at the chance of indicating that he had formed a low opinion of foreign shrubs.

“We wish you’d get rid of what you’ve got here, sir,” he observed, digging doggedly. “Nothing’ll grow right with them here.”

“Shrubs!” said the Squire, laughing. “You don’t call the peacock trees shrubs, do you? Fine tall trees—you ought to be proud of them.”

“Ill weeds grow apace,” observed the gardener. “Weeds can grow as houses when somebody plants them.” Then he added: “Him that sowed tares in the Bible, Squire.”

“Oh, blast your—” began the Squire, and then replaced the more apt and alliterative word “Bible” by the general word “superstition.” He was himself a robust rationalist, but he went to church to set his tenants an example. Of what, it would have puzzled him to say.

A little way along the lower path by the trees he encountered a woodcutter, one Martin, who was more explicit, having more of a grievance. His daughter was at that time seriously ill with a fever recently common on that coast, and the Squire, who was a kind-hearted gentleman, would normally have made allowances for low spirits and loss of temper. But he came near to losing his own again when the peasant persisted in connecting his tragedy with the traditional monomania about the foreign trees.

“If she were well enough I’d move her,” said the woodcutter, “as we can’t move them, I suppose. I’d just like to get my chopper into them and feel ‘em come crashing down.”

“One would think they were dragons,” said Vane.

“And that’s about what they look like,” replied Martin. “Look at ‘em!”

The woodman was naturally a rougher and even wilder figure than the gardener. His face also was brown, and looked like an antique parchment, and it was framed in an outlandish arrangement of raven beard and whiskers, which was really a fashion fifty years ago, but might have been five thousand years old or older. Phoenicians, one felt, trading on those strange shores in the morning of the world, might have combed or curled or braided their blue-black hair into some such quaint patterns. For this patch of population was as much a corner of Cornwall as Cornwall is a corner of England; a tragic and unique race, small and interrelated like a Celtic clan. The clan was older than the Vane family, though that was old as county families go. For in many such parts of England it is the aristocrats who are the latest arrivals. It was the sort of racial type that is supposed to be passing, and perhaps has already passed.

I. IL RACCONTO DEGLI ALBERI DEL PAVONE

Lo Squire Vane era un attempato scolaretto di educazione inglese ed estrazione irlandese. La sua educazione inglese, in una delle grandi scuole pubbliche, aveva conservato il suo intelletto perfettamente e permanentemente allo stadio della fanciullezza. Ma la sua estrazione irlandese sconvolgeva inconsciamente in lui la debita solennità di un ex allievo, e talvolta gli restituiva la più vivace prospettiva di un monello. Aveva un’impazienza corporea che gli giocava tiri quasi contro la sua volontà, e lo aveva già reso un fallimento un po’ troppo radioso nel servizio civile e diplomatico. È vero infatti che il compromesso è la chiave della politica britannica, specialmente nel realizzare un’imparzialità tra le religioni dell’India; ma il tentativo di Vane di venire incontro al musulmano a metà strada sfilandosi uno stivale alle porte della moschea fu avvertito non tanto come indice di vera imparzialità quanto come qualcosa che si poteva soltanto chiamare aggressiva indifferenza. Di nuovo, è vero che un aristocratico inglese difficilmente può entrare appieno nei sentimenti dell’una o dell’altra parte in una lite tra un ebreo russo e una processione ortodossa che porta reliquie; ma l’idea di Vane che la processione potesse portare anche l’ebreo, egli stesso una venerabile e storica reliquia, fu fraintesa da entrambe le parti. Insomma, era un uomo che si vantava in modo particolare di non avere fronzoli addosso; con il risultato che faceva sempre cose insensate. Sembrava mettersi a testa in giù solo per dimostrare di avere la testa a posto.

Aveva appena finito una robusta colazione, in compagnia della figlia, a un tavolo sotto un albero nel suo giardino presso la costa della Cornovaglia. Poiché, avendo una circolazione gloriosa, insisteva su quanti più pasti all’aperto possibile, benché la primavera avesse appena sfiorato i boschi e intiepidito i mari attorno a quella meridionale estremità dell’Inghilterra. Sua figlia Barbara, una bella ragazza dai folti capelli rossi e dal volto grave come una delle statue del giardino, sedeva ancora quasi immobile come una statua quando il padre si alzò. Bella figura alta in abiti chiari, coi capelli bianchi e i baffi che gli volavano all’indietro piuttosto fieramente da un volto abbastanza bonario, poiché teneva in mano il suo larghissimo cappello Panama, egli attraversò a grandi passi il giardino terrazzato, giù per alcuni gradini di pietra fiancheggiati da vecchie urne ornamentali fino a un sentiero più boscoso orlato di alberelli, e così giù per una strada a zigzag che scendeva la rupe scoscesa fino alla riva, dove doveva incontrare un ospite in arrivo via mare. Uno yacht era già nella baia azzurra, ed egli poteva vedere una barca vogare verso il piccolo molo lastricato.

Eppure in quella breve passeggiata tra il verde tappeto erboso e la gialla sabbia era destinato a trovare la sua testardaggine provocata a una fase non insolita che il mondo era incline a chiamare avventatezza. Il fatto era che i contadini della Cornovaglia, che componevano la sua servitù e il suo casato domestico, erano tutt’altro che gente senza fronzoli. C’era, ahimè!, una gran quantità di fronzoli in loro; con fantasmi, streghe e tradizioni antiche come Merlino, sembravano circondarlo con un cerchio fatato di sciocchezze. Ma il cerchio magico aveva un solo centro: c’era un punto in cui la sinuosa conversazione dei villici sempre ritornava. Era un punto che sempre pungeva lo Squire fino all’esasperazione, e perfino in questa breve passeggiata sembrava incapparvi ovunque. Si fermò prima di scendere i gradini dal prato per parlare al giardiniere di rinvasare certi arbusti stranieri, e il giardiniere sembrava cupamente compiaciuto, in ogni linea del suo coriaceo volto bruno, all’occasione di far notare che si era formato una bassa opinione degli arbusti stranieri.

«Vorremmo che vi sbarazzaste di ciò che avete qui, signore», osservò, scavando ostinatamente. «Niente crescerà a dovere con quelli qui.»

«Arbusti!» disse lo Squire, ridendo. «Non chiamerete arbusti gli alberi del pavone, vero? Begli alberi alti… dovreste esserne fieri.»

«La malerba cresce in fretta», osservò il giardiniere. «Le erbacce possono crescere come case, quando qualcuno le pianta.» Poi aggiunse: «Colui che seminò la zizzania nella Bibbia, Squire.»

«Oh, al diavolo la vostra…» cominciò lo Squire, e poi sostituì la parola più appropriata e allitterante «Bibbia» con la parola generica «superstizione». Egli stesso era un robusto razionalista, ma andava in chiesa per dare l’esempio ai suoi affittuari. Di che cosa, gli sarebbe stato imbarazzante dirlo.

Un po’ più avanti lungo il sentiero inferiore presso gli alberi incontrò un boscaiolo, un certo Martin, che era più esplicito, avendo più motivi di lagnanza. Sua figlia era in quel tempo gravemente malata di una febbre di recente comune su quella costa, e lo Squire, che era un gentiluomo di buon cuore, in circostanze normali avrebbe fatto la tara al malumore e alla perdita delle staffe. Ma fu sul punto di perdere di nuovo le proprie quando il contadino si ostinò a collegare la sua tragedia con la tradizionale monomania riguardo agli alberi stranieri.

«Se stesse abbastanza bene la sposterei», disse il boscaiolo, «dato che quelli non possiamo spostarli, suppongo. Vorrei solo affondarci dentro la scure e sentirli venir giù con fracasso.»

«Si direbbe che siano draghi», disse Vane.

«Ed è più o meno quel che sembrano», rispose Martin. «Guardateli!»

Il boscaiolo era naturalmente una figura più rude e persino più selvaggia del giardiniere. Anche il suo volto era bruno, e sembrava un’antica pergamena, ed era incorniciato da una stravagante disposizione di barba e basette corvine, che era davvero una moda di cinquant’anni fa, ma avrebbe potuto avere cinquemila anni o più. I Fenici, si sentiva, commerciando su quelle strane rive nel mattino del mondo, avrebbero potuto pettinare o arricciare o intrecciare i loro capelli nero-azzurri in qualche bizzarro disegno del genere. Poiché questa sacca di popolazione era tanto un angolo della Cornovaglia quanto la Cornovaglia è un angolo dell’Inghilterra; una razza tragica e unica, piccola e imparentata al suo interno come un clan celtico. Il clan era più antico della famiglia Vane, benché quella fosse antica come lo sono le famiglie di contea. Poiché in molte di tali parti dell’Inghilterra sono gli aristocratici gli ultimi arrivati. Era il tipo di stirpe razziale che si suppone stia scomparendo, e forse è già scomparsa.

The obnoxious objects stood some hundred yards away from the speaker, who waved toward them with his ax; and there was something suggestive in the comparison. That coast, to begin with, stretching toward the sunset, was itself almost as fantastic as a sunset cloud. It was cut out against the emerald or indigo of the sea in graven horns and crescents that might be the cast or mold of some such crested serpents; and, beneath, was pierced and fretted by caves and crevices, as if by the boring of some such titanic worms. Over and above this draconian architecture of the earth a veil of gray woods hung thinner like a vapor; woods which the witchcraft of the sea had, as usual, both blighted and blown out of shape. To the right the trees trailed along the sea front in a single line, each drawn out in thin wild lines like a caricature. At the other end of their extent they multiplied into a huddle of hunchbacked trees, a wood spreading toward a projecting part of the high coast. It was here that the sight appeared to which so many eyes and minds seemed to be almost automatically turning.

Out of the middle of this low, and more or less level wood, rose three separate stems that shot up and soared into the sky like a lighthouse out of the waves or a church spire out of the village roofs. They formed a clump of three columns close together, which might well be the mere bifurcation, or rather trifurcation, of one tree, the lower part being lost or sunken in the thick wood around. Everything about them suggested something stranger and more southern than anything even in that last peninsula of Britain which pushes out farthest toward Spain and Africa and the southern stars. Their leathery leafage had sprouted in advance of the faint mist of yellow-green around them, and it was of another and less natural green, tinged with blue, like the colors of a kingfisher. But one might fancy it the scales of some three-headed dragon towering over a herd of huddled and fleeing cattle.

“I am exceedingly sorry your girl is so unwell,” said Vane shortly. “But really—” and he strode down the steep road with plunging strides.

The boat was already secured to the little stone jetty, and the boatman, a younger shadow of the woodcutter—and, indeed, a nephew of that useful malcontent—saluted his territorial lord with the sullen formality of the family. The Squire acknowledged it casually and had soon forgotten all such things in shaking hands with the visitor who had just come ashore. The visitor was a long, loose man, very lean to be so young, whose long, fine features seemed wholly fitted together of bone and nerve, and seemed somehow to contrast with his hair, that showed in vivid yellow patches upon his hollow temples under the brim of his white holiday hat. He was carefully dressed in exquisite taste, though he had come straight from a considerable sea voyage; and he carried something in his hand which in his long European travels, and even longer European visits, he had almost forgotten to call a gripsack.

Mr. Cyprian Paynter was an American who lived in Italy. There was a good deal more to be said about him, for he was a very acute and cultivated gentleman; but those two facts would, perhaps, cover most of the others. Storing his mind like a museum with the wonder of the Old World, but all lit up as by a window with the wonder of the New, he had fallen heir to some thing of the unique critical position of Ruskin or Pater, and was further famous as a discoverer of minor poets. He was a judicious discoverer, and he did not turn all his minor poets into major prophets. If his geese were swans, they were not all Swans of Avon. He had even incurred the deadly suspicion of classicism by differing from his young friends, the Punctuist Poets, when they produced versification consisting exclusively of commas and colons. He had a more humane sympathy with the modern flame kindled from the embers of Celtic mythology, and it was in reality the recent appearance of a Cornish poet, a sort of parallel to the new Irish poets, which had brought him on this occasion to Cornwall. He was, indeed, far too well-mannered to allow a host to guess that any pleasure was being sought outside his own hospitality. He had a long standing invitation from Vane, whom he had met in Cyprus in the latter’s days of undiplomatic diplomacy; and Vane was not aware that relations had only been thus renewed after the critic had read Merlin and Other Verses, by a new writer named John Treherne. Nor did the Squire even begin to realize the much more diplomatic diplomacy by which he had been induced to invite the local bard to lunch on the very day of the American critic’s arrival.

Mr. Paynter was still standing with his gripsack, gazing in a trance of true admiration at the hollowed crags, topped by the gray, grotesque wood, and crested finally by the three fantastic trees.

“It is like being shipwrecked on the coast of fairyland,” he said,

“I hope you haven’t been shipwrecked much,” replied his host, smiling. “I fancy Jake here can look after you very well.”

Mr. Paynter looked across at the boatman and smiled also. “I am afraid,” he said, “our friend is not quite so enthusiastic for this landscape as I am.”

“Oh, the trees, I suppose!” said the Squire wearily.

The boatman was by normal trade a fisherman; but as his house, built of black tarred timber, stood right on the foreshore a few yards from the pier, he was employed in such cases as a sort of ferryman. He was a big, black-browed youth generally silent, but something seemed now to sting him into speech.

“Well, sir,” he said, “everybody knows it’s not natural. Everybody knows the sea blights trees and beats them under, when they’re only just trees. These things thrive like some unholy great seaweed that don’t belong to the land at all. It’s like the—the blessed sea serpent got on shore, Squire, and eating everything up.”

Gli oggetti odiosi si ergevano a un centinaio di metri dall’oratore, che verso di essi agitò la sua ascia; e nel paragone c’era qualcosa di suggestivo. Quella costa, tanto per cominciare, protesa verso il tramonto, era in sé quasi fantastica quanto una nuvola al calar del sole. Si stagliava contro lo smeraldo o l’indaco del mare in corni e falci incisi che avrebbero potuto essere l’impronta o il calco di simili serpenti crestati; e, più in basso, era trafitta e corrosa da caverne e fenditure, come per lo scavo di titanici vermi del genere. Al di sopra di questa architettura draconiana della terra pendeva, tenue come un vapore, un velo di boschi grigi; boschi che la stregoneria del mare aveva, come sempre, insieme avvizziti e deformati. A destra gli alberi si snodavano lungo la riva in un’unica fila, ciascuno tracciato in linee sottili e selvagge come una caricatura. All’altro capo della loro distesa si moltiplicavano in un ammasso di alberi gobbi, un bosco che si allargava verso uno sperone della costa alta. Era qui che appariva lo spettacolo verso cui tanti occhi e tante menti sembravano volgersi quasi automaticamente.

Dal mezzo di questo bosco basso e più o meno uniforme si levavano tre fusti distinti che si slanciavano e svettavano nel cielo come un faro dalle onde o un campanile dai tetti del villaggio. Formavano un gruppo di tre colonne ravvicinate, che bene potevano essere la semplice biforcazione, o piuttosto triforcazione, di un unico albero, la cui parte inferiore era perduta o affondata nel folto bosco all’intorno. Tutto in essi suggeriva qualcosa di più strano e più meridionale di qualunque cosa, persino in quell’ultima penisola della Britannia che più lontano si spinge verso la Spagna e l’Africa e le stelle del sud. Il loro fogliame coriaceo era spuntato prima della debole foschia verde-giallo che li circondava, ed era di un verde diverso e meno naturale, tinto d’azzurro, come i colori di un martin pescatore. Ma lo si sarebbe potuto immaginare come le scaglie di un drago a tre teste che torreggiava su una mandria di bestiame accalcato e in fuga.

«Mi dispiace immensamente che la sua ragazza stia così male», disse Vane secco. «Ma davvero…» e discese a grandi passi impetuosi per la ripida strada.

La barca era già ormeggiata al piccolo molo di pietra, e il barcaiolo, ombra più giovane del taglialegna—e in effetti nipote di quell’utile scontento—salutò il suo signore territoriale con la cupa formalità di famiglia. Lo Squire rispose con noncuranza e presto dimenticò ogni cosa simile nello stringere la mano al visitatore appena sbarcato. Il visitatore era un uomo lungo e sciolto, troppo magro per la sua giovane età, i cui lineamenti lunghi e fini parevano composti interamente d’osso e di nervo, e sembravano in qualche modo contrastare con i suoi capelli, che spuntavano in vividi ciuffi gialli sulle tempie incavate sotto la tesa del bianco cappello da vacanza. Era vestito con cura e gusto squisito, benché venisse diritto da un notevole viaggio per mare; e teneva in mano qualcosa che, nei suoi lunghi viaggi europei, e nei soggiorni europei ancor più lunghi, aveva quasi dimenticato di chiamare valigetta.

Il signor Cyprian Paynter era un americano che viveva in Italia. Ci sarebbe stato molto altro da dire su di lui, perché era un gentiluomo assai acuto e colto; ma quei due fatti, forse, avrebbero coperto gran parte degli altri. Riempiendo la mente come un museo con la meraviglia del Vecchio Mondo, ma tutta illuminata come da una finestra dalla meraviglia del Nuovo, aveva ereditato qualcosa dell’ineguagliabile posizione critica di Ruskin o di Pater, ed era inoltre celebre come scopritore di poeti minori. Era uno scopritore giudizioso, e non trasformava tutti i suoi poeti minori in profeti maggiori. Se le sue oche erano cigni, non erano tutti Cigni dell’Avon. Era incorso persino nel sospetto mortale di classicismo per aver dissentito dai suoi giovani amici, i Poeti Punteggisti, quando questi produssero una versificazione fatta esclusivamente di virgole e due punti. Nutriva una più umana simpatia per la fiamma moderna accesa dalle braci della mitologia celtica, e fu in realtà la recente comparsa di un poeta cornico, una sorta di parallelo ai nuovi poeti irlandesi, a condurlo in questa occasione in Cornovaglia. Era, invero, troppo bene educato per lasciare che un ospite intuisse che si cercava un qualche piacere al di fuori della sua ospitalità. Aveva un invito di vecchia data da parte di Vane, che aveva conosciuto a Cipro ai tempi della sua diplomazia poco diplomatica; e Vane ignorava che i rapporti erano stati così ripresi solo dopo che il critico aveva letto Merlino e Altri Versi, di un nuovo scrittore di nome John Treherne. Né lo Squire cominciava neppure a rendersi conto della diplomazia assai più diplomatica con cui era stato indotto a invitare il bardo locale a pranzo proprio nel giorno dell’arrivo del critico americano.

Il signor Paynter era ancora in piedi con la sua valigetta, fissando in un’estasi di sincera ammirazione le rupi scavate, sormontate dal bosco grigio e grottesco, e coronate infine dai tre alberi fantastici.

«È come naufragare sulla costa del paese delle fate», disse,

«Spero che lei non abbia fatto molti naufragi», rispose il suo ospite sorridendo. «Immagino che Jake, qui, possa badare a lei molto bene.»

Il signor Paynter guardò verso il barcaiolo e sorrise a sua volta. «Temo», disse, «che il nostro amico non sia entusiasta di questo paesaggio quanto lo sono io.»

«Oh, gli alberi, suppongo!» disse lo Squire con stanchezza.

Il barcaiolo era di mestiere un pescatore; ma poiché la sua casa, costruita di legno nero incatramato, sorgeva proprio sulla battigia a pochi metri dal molo, in casi simili era impiegato come una sorta di traghettatore. Era un giovane grosso, dalle sopracciglia nere, di solito silenzioso, ma qualcosa parve ora pungerlo a parlare.

«Beh, signore», disse, «tutti sanno che non è naturale. Tutti sanno che il mare avvizzisce gli alberi e li abbatte, quando non sono che alberi. Questi cosi prosperano come una gran malefica alga marina che non appartiene affatto alla terra. È come se il… il benedetto serpente di mare fosse sbarcato, Squire, e divorasse ogni cosa.»

“There is some stupid legend,” said Squire Vane gruffly. “But come up into the garden; I want to introduce you to my daughter.”

When, however, they reached the little table under the tree, the apparently immovable young lady had moved away after all, and it was some time before they came upon the track of her. She had risen, though languidly, and wandered slowly along the upper path of the terraced garden looking down on the lower path where it ran closer to the main bulk of the little wood by the sea.

Her languor was not a feebleness but rather a fullness of life, like that of a child half awake; she seemed to stretch herself and enjoy everything without noticing anything. She passed the wood, into the gray huddle of which a single white path vanished through a black hole. Along this part of the terrace ran something like a low rampart or balustrade, embowered with flowers at intervals; and she leaned over it, looking down at another glimpse of the glowing sea behind the clump of trees, and on another irregular path tumbling down to the pier and the boatman’s cottage on the beach.

As she gazed, sleepily enough, she saw that a strange figure was very actively climbing the path, apparently coming from the fisherman’s cottage; so actively that a moment afterwards it came out between the trees and stood upon the path just below her. It was not only a figure strange to her, but one somewhat strange in itself. It was that of a man still young, and seeming somehow younger than his own clothes, which were not only shabby but antiquated; clothes common enough in texture, yet carried in an uncommon fashion. He wore what was presumably a light waterproof, perhaps through having come off the sea; but it was held at the throat by one button, and hung, sleeves and all, more like a cloak than a coat. He rested one bony hand on a black stick; under the shadow of his broad hat his black hair hung down in a tuft or two. His face, which was swarthy, but rather handsome in itself, wore something that may have been a slightly embarrassed smile, but had too much the appearance of a sneer.

Whether this apparition was a tramp or a trespasser, or a friend of some of the fishers or woodcutters, Barbara Vane was quite unable to guess. He removed his hat, still with his unaltered and rather sinister smile, and said civilly: “Excuse me. The Squire asked me to call.” Here he caught sight of Martin, the woodman, who was shifting along the path, thinning the thin trees; and the stranger made a familiar salute with one finger.

The girl did not know what to say. “Have you—have you come about cutting the wood?” she asked at last.

“I would I were so honest a man,” replied the stranger. “Martin is, I fancy, a distant cousin of mine; we Cornish folk just round here are nearly all related, you know; but I do not cut wood. I do not cut anything, except, perhaps, capers. I am, so to speak, a jongleur.”

“A what?” asked Barbara.

“A minstrel, shall we say?” answered the newcomer, and looked up at her more steadily. During a rather odd silence their eyes rested on each other. What she saw has been already noted, though by her, at any rate, not in the least understood. What he saw was a decidedly beautiful woman with a statuesque face and hair that shone in the sun like a helmet of copper.

“Do you know,” he went on, “that in this old place, hundreds of years ago, a jongleur may really have stood where I stand, and a lady may really have looked over that wall and thrown him money?”

“Do you want money?” she asked, all at sea.

“Well,” drawled the stranger, “in the sense of lacking it, perhaps, but I fear there is no place now for a minstrel, except nigger minstrel. I must apologize for not blacking my face.”

She laughed a little in her bewilderment, and said: “Well, I hardly think you need do that.”

“You think the natives here are dark enough already, perhaps,” he observed calmly. “After all, we are aborigines, and are treated as such.”

She threw out some desperate remark about the weather or the scenery, and wondered what would happen next.

“The prospect is certainly beautiful,” he assented, in the same enigmatic manner. “There is only one thing in it I am doubtful about.”

While she stood in silence he slowly lifted his black stick like a long black finger and pointed it at the peacock trees above the wood. And a queer feeling of disquiet fell on the girl, as if he were, by that mere gesture, doing a destructive act and could send a blight upon the garden.

The strained and almost painful silence was broken by the voice of Squire Vane, loud even while it was still distant.

“We couldn’t make out where you’d got to, Barbara,” he said. “This is my friend, Mr. Cyprian Paynter.” The next moment he saw the stranger and stopped, a little puzzled. It was only Mr. Cyprian Paynter himself who was equal to the situation. He had seen months ago a portrait of the new Cornish poet in some American literary magazine, and he found himself, to his surprise, the introducer instead of the introduced.

“Why, Squire,” he said in considerable astonishment, “don’t you know Mr. Treherne? I supposed, of course, he was a neighbor.”

“Delighted to see you, Mr. Treherne,” said the Squire, recovering his manners with a certain genial confusion. “So pleased you were able to come. This is Mr. Paynter---my daughter,” and, turning with a certain boisterous embarrassment, he led the way to the table under the tree.

Cyprian Paynter followed, inwardly revolving a puzzle which had taken even his experience by surprise. The American, if intellectually an aristocrat, was still socially and subconsciously a democrat. It had never crossed his mind that the poet should be counted lucky to know the squire and not the squire to know the poet. The honest patronage in Vane’s hospitality was something which made Paynter feel he was, after all, an exile in England.

“C’è una leggenda stupida”, disse il signorotto Vane in tono burbero, “ma salga nel giardino; voglio presentarle mia figlia”.

Quando però raggiunsero il piccolo tavolo sotto l’albero, la giovane donna apparentemente immobile si era allontanata dopo tutto, e ci volle un po’ di tempo prima che la ritrovassero. Si era alzata, sebbene con languore, e aveva vagato lentamente lungo il sentiero superiore del giardino a terrazza guardando verso il basso sul sentiero inferiore dove si snodava più vicino alla massa principale del piccolo bosco accanto al mare.

Il suo languore non era debolezza ma piuttosto una pienezza di vita, come quella di un bambino mezzo sveglio; sembrava stiracchiarsi e godersi tutto senza notare nulla. Passò accanto al bosco, nella grigia confusione del quale un solo sentiero bianco scompariva in un buco nero. Lungo questa parte della terrazza correva qualcosa di simile a un basso bastione o ringhiera, avvolta da fiori a intervalli; e lei si chinò sopra di essa, guardando giù verso un altro scorcio del mare che brillava dietro il gruppo di alberi, e su un altro sentiero irregolare che scendeva verso il molo e la casetta del barcaiolo sulla spiaggia.

Mentre fissava con occhi assonnati, vide che una strana figura stava salendo il sentiero molto attivamente, apparentemente proveniente dalla casa del pescatore; così attivamente che un momento dopo uscì tra gli alberi e si fermò sul sentiero proprio sotto di lei. Non era solo una figura sconosciuta per lei, ma anche piuttosto strana in sé. Era quella di un uomo ancora giovane, e che sembrava in qualche modo più giovane dei suoi vestiti, i quali non erano solo logori ma antiquati; abiti comuni quanto a tessuto, ma indossati in maniera insolita. Indossava quello che presumibilmente era un impermeabile leggero, forse perché proveniva dal mare; ma era tenuto alla gola da un solo bottone e pendeva, maniche comprese, più come un mantello che come un cappotto. Si appoggiava una mano ossuta su un bastone nero; sotto l’ombra del suo largo cappello i suoi capelli neri cadevano in ciuffi qua e là. Il suo volto, scuro ma piuttosto bello di per sé, aveva qualcosa che poteva essere un sorriso leggermente imbarazzato, ma sembrava troppo simile a una smorfia.

Che quell’apparizione fosse un vagabondo o un intruso, oppure un amico di qualche pescatore o boscaiolo, Barbara Vane non era in grado di indovinare. L’uomo si tolse il cappello, sempre con quel suo sorriso immutato e piuttosto sinistro, e disse cortesemente: «Mi scusi. Il padrone mi ha chiesto di venire a farle visita». Qui vide Martin, il boscaiolo, che stava avanzando lungo il sentiero, diradando gli alberi già radi; e lo sconosciuto fece un saluto familiare con un dito.

La ragazza non sapeva cosa dire. «Siete venuto… siete venuto per tagliare la legna?» chiese infine.

«Vorrei essere un uomo così onesto», rispose lo sconosciuto. «Martin è, credo, un lontano cugino di mio; noi gente della Cornovaglia qui intorno siamo quasi tutti imparentati, sapete; ma io non taglio la legna. Non taglio nulla, tranne forse i capperi. Sono, per così dire, un giullare.»

«Un cosa?» chiese Barbara.

“Un menestrello, diciamo?” rispose il nuovo arrivato e la guardò più attentamente. Durante un piuttosto strano silenzio i loro occhi si posarono l’uno sull’altra. Quello che lei vide è già stato notato, anche se da parte sua, almeno, non fu affatto compreso. Quello che lui vide fu una donna decisamente bella con un volto statuario e capelli che brillavano al sole come un elmo di rame.

«Sapete», continuò, «che in questo vecchio posto, centinaia di anni fa, un giullare potrebbe davvero essere stato dove sono io ora e una dama potrebbe davvero aver guardato oltre quel muro e gli avrebbe gettato dei soldi?»

“Vuoi dei soldi?”, chiese, completamente disorientata.

«Beh,» disse lentamente lo sconosciuto «forse nel senso di non averne, ma temo che ora non ci sia posto per un menestrello, se non per un negro-menestrello. Devo scusarmi per non essermi nero in faccia.»

Rise un po’ nel suo smarrimento e disse: «Beh, non credo proprio che tu debba farlo».

«Pensate che gli indigeni qui siano già abbastanza scuri», osservò con calma. «Dopotutto siamo noi i nativi e veniamo trattati come tali.»

Lei lanciò qualche osservazione disperata sul tempo o sui paesaggi, e si chiese cosa sarebbe successo dopo.

«Il panorama è certamente bello», acconsentì nello stesso modo enigmatico, «ma c’è una cosa sola che mi lascia perplesso».

Mentre ella stava in silenzio egli sollevò lentamente il suo bastone nero come un lungo dito nero e lo puntò verso gli alberi pavonesi sopra la foresta. E una strana sensazione di disagio cadde sulla ragazza, come se con quel semplice gesto stesse compiendo un atto distruttivo e potesse mandare una maledizione sul giardino.

Il teso e quasi doloroso silenzio fu rotto dalla voce del Squire Vane, forte anche quando era ancora lontana.

«Non riuscivamo a capire dove fossi finita, Barbara», disse. «Questo è il mio amico, il signor Cyprian Paynter». Un attimo dopo vide lo sconosciuto e si fermò, un po’ perplesso. Fu solo il signor Cyprian Paynter stesso a essere all’altezza della situazione. Aveva visto mesi prima un ritratto del nuovo poeta di Cornovaglia su una rivista letteraria americana e si trovò, con sua sorpresa, a fare le presentazioni invece che ad esserne oggetto.

«Ma, signor Squaiross,» disse con grande stupore «non conoscete il signor Treherne? Certo credevo che fosse un vicino di casa».

«Sono felice di vederla, signor Treherne», disse il Squire, riprendendo i suoi modi con una certa confusione cordiale. «Sono così contento che sia potuto venire. Questo è il signor Paynter… mia figlia», e, voltandosi con un certo imbarazzo esuberante, fece strada verso il tavolo sotto l’albero.

Cyprian Paynter lo seguì, meditando interiormente su un enigma che aveva sorpreso persino la sua esperienza. L’americano, se intellettualmente era un aristocratico, socialmente e inconsciamente rimaneva comunque un democratico. Non gli era mai passato per la mente che il poeta dovesse considerarsi fortunato di conoscere lo squires e non viceversa. La sincera protezione nell’ospitalità di Vane era qualcosa che faceva sentire Paynter, dopotutto, un esiliato in Inghilterra.

The Squire, anticipating the trial of luncheon with a strange literary man, had dealt with the case tactfully from his own standpoint. County society might have made the guest feel like a fish out of water; and, except for the American critic and the local lawyer and doctor, worthy middle-class people who fitted into the picture, he had kept it as a family party. He was a widower, and when the meal had been laid out on the garden table, it was Barbara who presided as hostess. She had the new poet on her right hand and it made her very uncomfortable. She had practically offered that fallacious jongleur money, and it did not make it easier to offer him lunch.

“The whole countryside’s gone mad,” announced the Squire, by way of the latest local news. “It’s about this infernal legend of ours.”

“I collect legends,” said Paynter, smiling.

“You must remember I haven’t yet had a chance to collect yours. And this,” he added, looking round at the romantic coast, “is a fine theater for anything dramatic.”

“Oh, it’s dramatic in its way,” admitted Vane, not without a faint satisfaction. “It’s all about those things over there we call the peacock trees—I suppose, because of the queer color of the leaf, you know, though I have heard they make a shrill noise in a high wind that’s supposed to be like the shriek of a peacock; something like a bamboo in the botanical structure, perhaps. Well, those trees are supposed to have been brought over from Barbary by my ancestor Sir Walter Vane, one of the Elizabethan patriots or pirates, or whatever you call them. They say that at the end of his last voyage the villagers gathered on the beach down there and saw the boat standing in from the sea, and the new trees stood up in the boat like a mast, all gay with leaves out of season, like green bunting. And as they watched they thought at first that the boat was steering oddly, and then that it wasn’t steering at all; and when it drifted to the shore at last every man in that boat was dead, and Sir Walter Vane, with his sword drawn, was leaning up against the tree trunk, as stiff as the tree.”

“Now this is rather curious,” remarked Paynter thoughtfully. “I told you I collected legends, and I fancy I can tell you the beginning of the story of which that is the end, though it comes hundreds of miles across the sea.”

He tapped meditatively on the table with his thin, taper fingers, like a man trying to recall a tune. He had, indeed, made a hobby of such fables, and he was not without vanity about his artistic touch in telling them.

“Oh, do tell us your part of it?” cried Barbara Vane, whose air of sunny sleepiness seemed in some vague degree to have fallen from her.

The American bowed across the table with a serious politeness, and then began playing idly with a quaint ring on his long finger as he talked.

“If you go down to the Barbary Coast, where the last wedge of the forest narrows down between the desert and the great tideless sea, you will find the natives still telling a strange story about a saint of the Dark Ages. There, on the twilight border of the Dark Continent, you feel the Dark Ages. I have only visited the place once, though it lies, so to speak, opposite to the Italian city where I lived for years, and yet you would hardly believe how the topsy-turvydom and transmigration of this myth somehow seemed less mad than they really are, with the wood loud with lions at night and that dark red solitude beyond. They say that the hermit St. Securis, living there among trees, grew to love them like companions; since, though great giants with many arms like Briareus, they were the mildest and most blameless of the creatures; they did not devour like the lions, but rather opened their arms to all the little birds. And he prayed that they might be loosened from time to time to walk like other things. And the trees were moved upon the prayers of Securis, as they were at the songs of Orpheus. The men of the desert were stricken from afar with fear, seeing the saint walking with a walking grove, like a schoolmaster with his boys. For the trees were thus freed under strict conditions of discipline. They were to return at the sound of the hermit’s bell, and, above all, to copy the wild beasts in walking only to destroy and devour nothing. Well, it is said that one of the trees heard a voice that was not the saint’s; that in the warm green twilight of one summer evening it became conscious of some thing sitting and speaking in its branches in the guise of a great bird, and it was that which once spoke from a tree in the guise of a great serpent. As the voice grew louder among its murmuring leaves the tree was torn with a great desire to stretch out and snatch at the birds that flew harmlessly about their nests, and pluck them to pieces. Finally, the tempter filled the tree-top with his own birds of pride, the starry pageant of the peacocks. And the spirit of the brute overcame the spirit of the tree, and it rent and consumed the blue-green birds till not a plume was left, and returned to the quiet tribe of trees. But they say that when spring came all the other trees put forth leaves, but this put forth feathers of a strange hue and pattern. And by that monstrous assimilation the saint knew of the sin, and he rooted that one tree to the earth with a judgment, so that evil should fall on any who removed it again. That, Squire, is the beginning in the deserts of the tale that ended here, almost in this garden.”

“And the end is about as reliable as the beginning, I should say,” said Vane. “Yours is a nice plain tale for a small tea-party; a quiet little bit of still-life, that is.”

“What a queer, horrible story,” exclaimed Barbara. “It makes one feel like a cannibal.”

Lo Squire, prevedendo il cimento di un pranzo con uno strano uomo di lettere, aveva affrontato il caso con tatto dal proprio punto di vista. La società di contea avrebbe potuto far sentire l’ospite come un pesce fuor d’acqua; e, tranne il critico americano e l’avvocato e il medico locali, degne persone della classe media che ben si adattavano al quadro, l’aveva tenuto come un ritrovo di famiglia. Era vedovo, e quando il pasto fu apparecchiato sul tavolo del giardino, fu Barbara a presiedere come padrona di casa. Aveva alla sua destra il nuovo poeta e ciò la metteva molto a disagio. Aveva praticamente offerto del denaro a quel fallace giullare, e ciò non rendeva più facile offrirgli il pranzo.

«L’intera contrada è impazzita», annunciò lo Squire, a mo’ di ultime notizie locali. «Si tratta di questa nostra infernale leggenda.»

«Io colleziono leggende», disse Paynter, sorridendo.

«Dovete ricordare che non ho ancora avuto occasione di collezionare la vostra. E questo», aggiunse, guardandosi intorno alla romantica costa, «è un bel teatro per qualsiasi cosa drammatica.»

«Oh, è drammatica a suo modo», ammise Vane, non senza una lieve soddisfazione. «Riguarda tutta quelle cose laggiù che chiamiamo gli alberi del pavone… suppongo per il curioso colore della foglia, sapete, benché abbia sentito che emettono un suono acuto in un forte vento, che si suppone somigli allo strido di un pavone; qualcosa come un bambù nella struttura botanica, forse. Ebbene, si suppone che quegli alberi siano stati portati dalla Barberia dal mio antenato Sir Walter Vane, uno dei patrioti o pirati elisabettiani, o come volete chiamarli. Dicono che al termine del suo ultimo viaggio gli abitanti del villaggio si raccolsero sulla spiaggia laggiù e videro la barca avvicinarsi dal mare, e i nuovi alberi si ergevano nella barca come un albero maestro, tutti festosi di foglie fuori stagione, come verdi festoni. E mentre guardavano pensarono dapprima che la barca virasse in modo strano, e poi che non virasse affatto; e quando finalmente andò alla deriva verso la riva ogni uomo su quella barca era morto, e Sir Walter Vane, con la spada sguainata, era appoggiato al tronco dell’albero, rigido come l’albero.»

«Ora, questo è piuttosto curioso», osservò Paynter pensieroso. «Vi ho detto che collezionavo leggende, e credo di potervi raccontare l’inizio della storia di cui quella è la fine, benché venga da centinaia di miglia oltre il mare.»

Tamburellò meditabondo sul tavolo con le dita sottili e affusolate, come un uomo che cerca di ricordare un motivo. Aveva davvero fatto di tali favole un passatempo, e non era privo di vanità riguardo al suo tocco artistico nel raccontarle.

«Oh, raccontateci la vostra parte, vi prego!» esclamò Barbara Vane, la cui aria di solare sonnolenza sembrava in qualche vago modo esserle caduta di dosso.

L’americano s’inchinò attraverso il tavolo con seria cortesia, e poi cominciò a giocherellare oziosamente con un bizzarro anello sul suo lungo dito mentre parlava.

«Se scendete alla Costa di Barberia, dove l’ultimo cuneo della foresta si assottiglia tra il deserto e il grande mare senza maree, troverete gli indigeni che ancora raccontano una strana storia su un santo dei Secoli Bui. Là, sul confine crepuscolare del Continente Nero, si sentono i Secoli Bui. Ho visitato quel luogo una sola volta, benché giaccia, per così dire, di fronte alla città italiana dove vissi per anni, eppure stentereste a credere come lo sconvolgimento e la trasmigrazione di questo mito in qualche modo sembrassero meno folli di quanto realmente sono, col bosco risonante di leoni nella notte e quella cupa rossa solitudine oltre. Dicono che l’eremita San Securis, vivendo là tra gli alberi, giunse ad amarli come compagni; poiché, benché grandi giganti dalle molte braccia come Briareo, erano le più miti e innocenti delle creature; non divoravano come i leoni, ma piuttosto aprivano le braccia a tutti i piccoli uccelli. Ed egli pregava che potessero essere sciolti di tanto in tanto per camminare come le altre cose. E gli alberi furono commossi dalle preghiere di Securis, come lo furono ai canti di Orfeo. Gli uomini del deserto erano colpiti da lontano dalla paura, vedendo il santo camminare con un boschetto ambulante, come un maestro di scuola coi suoi ragazzi. Poiché gli alberi erano così liberati a rigorose condizioni di disciplina. Dovevano tornare al suono della campana dell’eremita, e, soprattutto, imitare le bestie selvagge nel camminare solo per distruggere e nel non divorare nulla. Ebbene, si dice che uno degli alberi udì una voce che non era quella del santo; che nel caldo verde crepuscolo di una sera d’estate si accorse di qualcosa seduto e parlante tra i suoi rami sotto le sembianze di un grande uccello, ed era ciò che un tempo parlò da un albero sotto le sembianze di un grande serpente. Man mano che la voce cresceva tra le sue mormoranti foglie l’albero fu lacerato da un gran desiderio di protendersi e ghermire gli uccelli che volavano innocui attorno ai loro nidi, e di farli a pezzi. Infine, il tentatore riempì la cima dell’albero dei propri uccelli d’orgoglio, lo stellato corteo dei pavoni. E lo spirito del bruto vinse lo spirito dell’albero, ed esso dilaniò e divorò gli uccelli verde-azzurri finché non ne rimase una piuma, e ritornò alla quieta tribù degli alberi. Ma dicono che quando venne la primavera tutti gli altri alberi misero fuori foglie, ma questo mise fuori penne di strana tinta e disegno. E da quella mostruosa assimilazione il santo conobbe il peccato, e radicò quell’unico albero alla terra con una sentenza, così che il male ricadesse su chiunque lo rimuovesse di nuovo. Questo, Squire, è l’inizio nei deserti del racconto che è finito qui, quasi in questo giardino.»

«E la fine è più o meno attendibile quanto l’inizio, direi», disse Vane. «Il vostro è un bel raccontino semplice per un piccolo tè; un tranquillo pezzetto di natura morta, ecco.»

«Che storia strana e orribile», esclamò Barbara. «Fa sentire come un cannibale.»

“Ex Africa,” said the lawyer, smiling. “It comes from a cannibal country. I think it’s the touch of the tar-brush, that nightmare feeling that you don’t know whether the hero is a plant or a man or a devil. Don’t you feel it sometimes in ‘Uncle Remus’?”

“True,” said Paynter. “Perfectly true.” And he looked at the lawyer with a new interest. The lawyer, who had been introduced as Mr. Ashe, was one of those people who are more worth looking at than most people realize when they look. If Napoleon had been red-haired, and had bent all his powers with a curious contentment upon the petty lawsuits of a province, he might have looked much the same; the head with the red hair was heavy and powerful; the figure in its dark, quiet clothes was comparatively insignificant, as was Napoleon’s. He seemed more at ease in the Squire’s society than the doctor, who, though a gentleman, was a shy one, and a mere shadow of his professional brother.

“As you truly say,” remarked Paynter, “the story seems touched with quite barbarous elements, probably Negro. Originally, though, I think there was really a hagiological story about some hermit, though some of the higher critics say St. Securis never existed, but was only an allegory of arboriculture, since his name is the Latin for an ax.”

“Oh, if you come to that,” remarked the poet Treherne, “you might as well say Squire Vane doesn’t exist, and that he’s only an allegory for a weathercock.” Something a shade too cool about this sally drew the lawyer’s red brows together. He looked across the table and met the poet’s somewhat equivocal smile.

“Do I understand, Mr. Treherne,” asked Ashe, “that you support the miraculous claims of St. Securis in this case. Do you, by any chance, believe in the walking trees?”

“I see men as trees walking,” answered the poet, “like the man cured of blindness in the Gospel. By the way, do I understand that you support the miraculous claims of that—thaumaturgist?”

Paynter intervened swiftly and suavely. “Now that sounds a fascinating piece of psychology. You see men as trees?”

“As I can’t imagine why men should walk, I can’t imagine why trees shouldn’t,” answered Treherne.

“Obviously, it is the nature of the organism”, interposed the medical guest, Dr. Burton Brown; “it is necessary in the very type of vegetable structure.”

“In other words, a tree sticks in the mud from year’s end to year’s end,” answered Treherne. “So do you stop in your consulting room from ten to eleven every day. And don’t you fancy a fairy, looking in at your window for a flash after having just jumped over the moon and played mulberry bush with the Pleiades, would think you were a vegetable structure, and that sitting still was the nature of the organism?”

“I don’t happen to believe in fairies,” said the doctor rather stiffly, for the argumentum ad hominem was becoming too common. A sulphurous subconscious anger seemed to radiate from the dark poet.

“Well, I should hope not, Doctor,” began the Squire, in his loud and friendly style, and then stopped, seeing the other’s attention arrested. The silent butler waiting on the guests had appeared behind the doctor’s chair, and was saying something in the low, level tones of the well-trained servant. He was so smooth a specimen of the type that others never noticed, at first, that he also repeated the dark portrait, however varnished, so common in this particular family of Cornish Celts. His face was sallow and even yellow, and his hair indigo black. He went by the name of Miles. Some felt oppressed by the tribal type in this tiny corner of England. They felt somehow as if all these dark faces were the masks of a secret society.

The doctor rose with a half apology. “I must ask pardon for disturbing this pleasant party; I am called away on duty. Please don’t let anybody move. We have to be ready for these things, you know. Perhaps Mr. Treherne will admit that my habits are not so very vegetable, after all.” With this Parthian shaft, at which there was some laughter, he strode away very rapidly across the sunny lawn to where the road dipped down toward the village.

“He is very good among the poor,” said the girl with an honorable seriousness.

“A capital fellow,” agreed the Squire. “Where is Miles? You will have a cigar, Mr. Treherne?” And he got up from the table; the rest followed, and the group broke up on the lawn.

“Remarkable man, Treherne,” said the American to the lawyer conversationally.

“Remarkable is the word,” assented Ashe rather grimly. “But I don’t think I’ll make any remark about him.”

The Squire, too impatient to wait for the yellow-faced Miles, had betaken himself indoors for the cigars, and Barbara found herself once more paired off with the poet, as she floated along the terrace garden; but this time, symbolically enough, upon the same level of lawn. Mr. Treherne looked less eccentric after having shed his curious cloak, and seemed a quieter and more casual figure.

“I didn’t mean to be rude to you just now,” she said abruptly.

“And that’s the worst of it,” replied the man of letters, “for I’m horribly afraid I did mean to be rude to you. When I looked up and saw you up there something surged up in me that was in all the revolutions of history. Oh, there was admiration in it too! Perhaps there was idolatry in all the iconoclasts.”

He seemed to have a power of reaching rather intimate conversation in one silent and cat-like bound, as he had scaled the steep road, and it made her feel him to be dangerous, and perhaps unscrupulous. She changed the subject sharply, not without it movement toward gratifying her own curiosity.

“What DID you mean by all that about walking trees?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you really believe in a magic tree that eats birds!”

“I should probably surprise you,” said Treherne gravely, “more by what I don’t believe than by what I do.”

«Ex Africa», disse l’avvocato, sorridendo. «Proviene da un paese di cannibali. Penso che sia il tocco della vernice nera, quella sensazione incubosa di non sapere se l’eroe è una pianta o un uomo o un diavolo. Non la provi a volte in ‘Zio Remus’?»

“È vero,” disse Paynter. “Assolutamente vero.” E guardò l’avvocato con un nuovo interesse. L’avvocato, che era stato presentato come il signor Ashe, era una di quelle persone che meritano più attenzione di quanta la maggior parte della gente si renda conto quando le guarda. Se Napoleone fosse stato rosso di capelli e avesse concentrato tutti i suoi poteri con un curioso contentamento sulle piccole cause di una provincia, avrebbe potuto avere un aspetto molto simile; la testa dai capelli rossi era pesante e possente; la figura nei suoi abiti scuri e tranquilli era relativamente insignificante, come quella di Napoleone. Sembrava più a suo agio nella società del Squire rispetto al dottore, che, sebbene gentiluomo, era timido e una mera ombra del fratello professionale.

“Come giustamente diciate,” osservò Paynter, “la storia sembra intessuta di elementi piuttosto barbarici, probabilmente neri. In origine, però, credo che ci fosse in realtà una storia agiografica su un eremita, anche se alcuni dei critici più accreditati sostengono che San Securis non sia mai esistito e fosse solo un’allegoria dell’arboricoltura, dato che il suo nome è in latino “ascia”.

“Oh, se si arriva a questo punto,” osservò il poeta Treherne, “si potrebbe altrettanto bene dire che il signorotto Vane non esiste e che è solo un’allegoria per una girandola.” Qualcosa di troppo freddo in questa battuta fece corrugare le sopracciglia rosse dell’avvocato. Egli guardò attraverso il tavolo e incontrò il sorriso alquanto ambiguo del poeta.

“Capisco bene, signor Treherne”, chiese Ashe, “che lei sostenga le pretese miracolose di San Securis in questo caso? Lei crede forse nei boschi ambulanti?”

«Vedo gli uomini come alberi che camminano», rispose il poeta «come l’uomo guarito dalla cecità nel Vangelo. A proposito, capisco bene che lei sostenga le pretese miracolose di quel… taumaturgo?»

Paynter intervenne con prontezza e cortesia: «Ora, questo sembra un affascinante pezzo di psicologia. Voi vedete gli uomini come alberi?»

«Poiché non riesco a immaginare perché gli uomini dovrebbero camminare, non riesco a immaginare perché gli alberi non dovrebbero farlo» rispose Treherne.

«Ovviamente è la natura dell’organismo», intervenne l’ospite medico, il dottor Burton Brown, «è necessaria nel tipo stesso di struttura vegetale.»

“In altre parole, un albero resta fermo nel fango dalla fine di un anno alla fine dell’altro”, rispose Treherne. “Così come voi rimanete nella vostra stanza di consultazione dalle dieci alle undici ogni giorno. E non credete che una fata, sbirciando per un attimo dalla finestra dopo essere appena saltata sulla luna e aver giocato a siepe di more con le Pleiadi, penserebbe che voi siate una struttura vegetale, e che stare fermi sia la natura dell’organismo?”

«Non credo negli spiritelli», disse il dottore con un certo rigido distacco, perché l’argumentum ad hominem stava diventando troppo frequente. Una sorda ira subconscia sembrava emanare dal poeta scuro.

«Beh, spero di no, dottore», cominciò il Squire nel suo tono forte e amichevole, poi si fermò vedendo che l’attenzione dell’altro era catturata. Il silenzioso maggiordomo che serviva gli ospiti era apparso alle spalle della sedia del dottore e stava dicendo qualcosa nei toni bassi e uniformi del bene-educato domestico. Era un esemplare così impeccabile di quel tipo da non far notare agli altri, almeno all’inizio, che anche lui ripeteva il ritratto scuro, per quanto verniciato, tanto comune in questa particolare famiglia di Celti Cornish. Il suo volto era giallastro e addirittura giallo, i capelli neri indaco. Si chiamava Miles. Alcuni si sentivano oppressi dal tipo tribale in questo piccolo angolo d’Inghilterra. Sentivano come se tutti quei volti scuri fossero le maschere di una società segreta.

Il dottore si alzò con un mezzo scusa. “Devo chiedere perdono per aver disturbato questa piacevole compagnia; sono chiamato via dal dovere. Per favore, non fate muovere nessuno. Dobbiamo essere pronti a queste cose, sapete. Forse il signor Treherne ammetterà che le mie abitudini non sono così vegetali, dopotutto.” Con questa frecciata partiana, alla quale ci fu qualche risatina, si allontanò molto rapidamente attraverso il prato soleggiato fino a dove la strada scendeva verso il villaggio.

«È molto buono tra i poveri», disse la ragazza con onorevole serietà.

“Un brav’uomo”, convenne il Squire. “Dov’è Miles? Vuole un sigaro, signor Treherne?” E si alzò da tavola; gli altri lo seguirono e il gruppo si disperse sul prato.

«Uomo straordinario, Treherne», disse l’americano al legale in tono colloquiale.

«“Rilevante è la parola”», acconsentì Ashe piuttosto severamente. «Ma non credo che farò alcuna osservazione su di lui».

Il Squire, troppo impaziente per aspettare il Miles dal viso giallo, si era ritirato in casa per i sigari e Barbara si trovò ancora una volta accoppiata con il poeta mentre fluttuava lungo la terrazza del giardino; ma questa volta, abbastanza simbolicamente, sullo stesso livello di prato. Il signor Treherne sembrava meno eccentrico dopo essersi tolto il suo curioso mantello e appariva una figura più tranquilla e casuale.

«Non intendevo essere scortese con te poco fa», disse bruscamente.

“E questo è il peggio,” rispose l’uomo di lettere, “perché ho una gran paura che io abbia voluto essere scortese con voi. Quando alzai lo sguardo e vi vidi lassù qualcosa mi salì dentro che era in tutte le rivoluzioni della storia. Oh, c’era anche ammirazione! Forse c’era idolatria in tutti gli iconoclasti.”

Sembrava avere il potere di arrivare a una conversazione piuttosto intima in un solo balzo silenzioso e felino, come aveva scalato la ripida strada, e questo le faceva sentire che era pericoloso, forse senza scrupoli. Cambiò bruscamente argomento, non senza un movimento verso il soddisfacimento della propria curiosità.

“Cosa intendevi con tutto quel discorso sugli alberi che camminano?”, chiese lei. “Non dirmi che credi davvero in un albero magico che mangia uccelli!”.

«Probabilmente vi sorprenderei», disse Treherne con serietà, «più per ciò in cui non credo che per ciò in cui credo».

Then, after a pause, he made a general gesture toward the house and garden. “I’m afraid I don’t believe in all this; for instance, in Elizabethan houses and Elizabethan families and the way estates have been improved, and the rest of it. Look at our friend the woodcutter now.” And he pointed to the man with the quaint black beard, who was still plying his ax upon the timber below.

“That man’s family goes back for ages, and it was far richer and freer in what you call the Dark Ages than it is now. Wait till the Cornish peasant writes a history of Cornwall.”

“But what in the world,” she demanded, “has this to do with whether you believe in a tree eating birds?”

“Why should I confess what I believe in?” he said, a muffled drum of mutiny in his voice. “The gentry came here and took our land and took our labor and took our customs. And now, after exploitation, a viler thing, education! They must take our dreams!”

“Well, this dream was rather a nightmare, wasn’t it?” asked Barbara, smiling; and the next moment grew quite grave, saying almost anxiously: “But here’s Doctor Brown back again. Why, he looks quite upset.”

The doctor, a black figure on the green lawn, was, indeed, coming toward them at a very vigorous walk. His body and gait very much younger than his face, which seemed prematurely lined as with worry; his brow was bald, and projected from the straight, dark hair behind it. He was visibly paler than when he left the lunch table.

“I am sorry to say, Miss Vane,” he said, “that I am the bearer of bad news to poor Martin, the woodman here. His daughter died half an hour ago.”

“Oh,” cried Barbara warmly, “I am SO sorry!”

“So am I,” said the doctor, and passed on rather abruptly; he ran down the stone steps between the stone urns; and they saw him in talk with the woodcutter. They could not see the woodcutter’s face. He stood with his back to them, but they saw something that seemed more moving than any change of countenance. The man’s hand holding the ax rose high above his head, and for a flash it seemed as if he would have cut down the doctor. But in fact he was not looking at the doctor. His face was set toward the cliff, where, sheer out of the dwarf forest, rose, gigantic and gilded by the sun, the trees of pride.

The strong brown hand made a movement and was empty. The ax went circling swiftly through the air, its head showing like a silver crescent against the gray twilight of the trees. It did not reach its tall objective, but fell among the undergrowth, shaking up a flying litter of birds. But in the poet’s memory, full of primal things, something seemed to say that he had seen the birds of some pagan augury, the ax of some pagan sacrifice.

A moment after the man made a heavy movement forward, as if to recover his tool; but the doctor put a hand on his arm.

“Never mind that now,” they heard him say sadly and kindly. “The Squire will excuse you any more work, I know.”

Something made the girl look at Treherne. He stood gazing, his head a little bent, and one of his black elf-locks had fallen forward over his forehead. And again she had the sense of a shadow over the grass; she almost felt as if the grass were a host of fairies, and that the fairies were not her friends.

Poi, dopo una pausa, fece un gesto ampio verso la casa e il giardino. “Temo di non credere a tutto questo; per esempio, alle case elisabettiane e alle famiglie elisabettiane e al modo in cui le tenute sono state migliorate, e a tutto il resto. Guardi ora il nostro amico il taglialegna.” E indicò l’uomo dalla curiosa barba nera, che ancora menava la sua ascia sul legname là sotto.

“La famiglia di quell’uomo risale a epoche remote, ed era assai più ricca e più libera in quelli che voi chiamate i Secoli Bui di quanto lo sia ora. Aspetti che il contadino della Cornovaglia scriva una storia della Cornovaglia.”

“Ma che cosa mai,” domandò lei, “ha tutto questo a che vedere con il fatto che lei creda o no a un albero che mangia gli uccelli?”

“Perché dovrei confessare a che cosa credo?” disse, con un cupo rullo di tamburo di ammutinamento nella voce. “I signori sono venuti qui e ci hanno preso la terra e ci hanno preso il lavoro e ci hanno preso le usanze. E ora, dopo lo sfruttamento, una cosa più vile ancora, l’istruzione! Devono prenderci i sogni!”

“Be’, questo sogno era piuttosto un incubo, non è vero?” chiese Barbara, sorridendo; e un attimo dopo si fece del tutto grave, dicendo quasi con ansia: “Ma ecco che torna il dottor Brown. Ma guarda, sembra proprio sconvolto.”

Il dottore, figura nera sul verde prato, veniva difatti verso di loro con passo assai vigoroso. Il suo corpo e la sua andatura ben più giovani del volto, che pareva prematuramente segnato come dall’affanno; la fronte era calva, e sporgeva dai capelli lisci e scuri dietro di essa. Era visibilmente più pallido di quando aveva lasciato la tavola del pranzo.

“Mi rincresce dirlo, signorina Vane,” disse, “ma sono latore di cattive notizie per il povero Martin, il boscaiolo. Sua figlia è morta mezz’ora fa.”

“Oh,” gridò Barbara con calore, “mi dispiace TANTO!”

“Anche a me,” disse il dottore, e passò oltre piuttosto bruscamente; scese di corsa i gradini di pietra tra le urne di pietra; e lo videro parlare con il taglialegna. Non potevano vedere il volto del taglialegna. Stava con le spalle rivolte a loro, ma videro qualcosa che parve più commovente di qualunque mutamento di espressione. La mano dell’uomo che teneva l’ascia si levò alta sopra il suo capo, e per un lampo parve che stesse per abbattere il dottore. Ma in realtà non guardava il dottore. Il suo volto era rivolto verso la scogliera, dove, erti fuori dalla nana foresta, si levarono, giganteschi e dorati dal sole, gli alberi dell’orgoglio.

La forte mano bruna fece un movimento e restò vuota. L’ascia volò roteando veloce nell’aria, la sua lama balenando come una falce d’argento contro il grigio crepuscolo degli alberi. Non raggiunse l’alto bersaglio, ma cadde tra il sottobosco, sollevando un volo scomposto di uccelli. Ma nella memoria del poeta, colma di cose primordiali, qualcosa parve dire che egli aveva visto gli uccelli di un qualche augurio pagano, l’ascia di un qualche sacrificio pagano.

Un attimo dopo l’uomo fece un pesante movimento in avanti, come per recuperare il suo attrezzo; ma il dottore gli posò una mano sul braccio.

“Non ci pensi ora,” lo udirono dire con tristezza e dolcezza. “Lo Squire la dispenserà da ogni altro lavoro, lo so.”

Qualcosa spinse la ragazza a guardare Treherne. Egli stava fissando, il capo un poco chino, e uno dei suoi neri riccioli d’elfo gli era caduto in avanti sulla fronte. E di nuovo ebbe la sensazione di un’ombra sull’erba; quasi sentì come se l’erba fosse una schiera di fate, e che le fate non fossero sue amiche.

II. THE WAGER OF SQUIRE VANE

It was more than a month before the legend of the peacock trees was again discussed in the Squire’s circle. It fell out one evening, when his eccentric taste for meals in the garden that gathered the company round the same table, now lit with a lamp and laid out for dinner in a glowing spring twilight. It was even the same company, for in the few weeks intervening they had insensibly grown more and more into each other’s lives, forming a little group like a club. The American aesthete was of course the most active agent, his resolution to pluck out the heart of the Cornish poet’s mystery leading him again and again to influence his flighty host for such reunions. Even Mr. Ashe, the lawyer, seemed to have swallowed his half-humorous prejudices; and the doctor, though a rather sad and silent, was a companionable and considerate man. Paynter had even read Treherne’s poetry aloud, and he read admirably; he had also read other things, not aloud, grubbing up everything in the neighborhood, from guidebooks to epitaphs, that could throw a light on local antiquities. And it was that evening when the lamplight and the last daylight had kindled the colors of the wine and silver on the table under the tree, that he announced a new discovery.

“Say, Squire,” he remarked, with one of his rare Americanisms, “about those bogey trees of yours; I don’t believe you know half the tales told round here about them. It seems they have a way of eating things. Not that I have any ethical objection to eating things,” he continued, helping himself elegantly to green cheese. “But I have more or less, broadly speaking, an objection to eating people.”

“Eating people!” repeated Barbara Vane.

“I know a globe-trotter mustn’t be fastidious,” replied Mr. Paynter. “But I repeat firmly, an objection to eating people. The peacock trees seem to have progressed since the happy days of innocence when they only ate peacocks. If you ask the people here— the fisherman who lives on that beach, or the man that mows this very lawn in front of us—they’ll tell you tales taller than any tropical one I brought you from the Barbary Coast. If you ask them what happened to the fisherman Peters, who got drunk on All Hallows Eve, they’ll tell you he lost his way in that little wood, tumbled down asleep under the wicked trees, and then—evaporated, vanished, was licked up like dew by the sun. If you ask them where Harry Hawke is, the widow’s little son, they’ll just tell you he’s swallowed; that he was dared to climb the trees and sit there all night, and did it. What the trees did God knows; the habits of a vegetable ogre leave one a little vague. But they even add the agreeable detail that a new branch appears on the tree when somebody has petered out in this style.”

“What new nonsense is this?” cried Vane. “I know there’s some crazy yarn about the trees spreading fever, though every educated man knows why these epidemics return occasionally. And I know they say you can tell the noise of them among other trees in a gale, and I dare say you can. But even Cornwall isn’t a lunatic asylum, and a tree that dines on a passing tourist—”

“Well, the two tales are reconcilable enough,” put in the poet quietly. “If there were a magic that killed men when they came close, it’s likely to strike them with sickness when they stand far off. In the old romance the dragon, that devours people, often blasts others with a sort of poisonous breath.”

Ashe looked across at the speaker steadily, not to say stonily.

“Do I understand,” he inquired, “that you swallow the swallowing trees too?”

Treherne’s dark smile was still on the defensive; his fencing always annoyed the other, and he seemed not without malice in the matter.

“Swallowing is a metaphor,” he said, “about me, if not about the trees. And metaphors take us at once into dreamland—no bad place, either. This garden, I think, gets more and more like a dream at this corner of the day and night, that might lead us anywhere.”

The yellow horn of the moon had appeared silently and as if suddenly over the black horns of the seaweed, seeming to announce as night something which till then had been evening. A night breeze came in between the trees and raced stealthily across the turf, and as they ceased speaking they heard, not only the seething grass, but the sea itself move and sound in all the cracks and caves round them and below them and on every side. They all felt the note that had been struck—the American as an art critic and the poet as a poet; and the Squire, who believed himself boiling with an impatience purely rational, did not really understand his own impatience. In him, more perhaps than the others—more certainly than he knew himself— the sea wind went to the head like wine.

“Credulity is a curious thing,” went on Treherne in a low voice. “It is more negative than positive, and yet it is infinite. Hundreds of men will avoid walking under a ladder; they don’t know where the door of the ladder will lead. They don’t really think God would throw a thunderbolt at them for such a thing. They don’t know what would happen, that is just the point; but yet they step aside as from a precipice. So the poor people here may or may not believe anything; they don’t go into those trees at night.”

“I walk under a ladder whenever I can,” cried Vane, in quite unnecessary excitement.

“You belong to a Thirteen Club,” said the poet. “You walk under a ladder on Friday to dine thirteen at a table, everybody spilling the salt. But even you don’t go into those trees at night.”

Squire Vane stood up, his silver hair flaming in the wind.

“I’ll stop all night in your tomfool wood and up your tomfool trees,” he said. “I’ll do it for twopence or two thousand pounds, if anyone will take the bet.”

II. LA SCOMMESSA DELLO SQUIRE VANE

Passò più di un mese prima che la leggenda degli alberi di pavone tornasse a discutersi nella cerchia dello Squire. Accadde una sera, quando il suo estroso gusto per i pasti nel giardino raccolse la compagnia intorno allo stesso tavolo, ora rischiarato da una lampada e apparecchiato per la cena in un rilucente crepuscolo di primavera. Era perfino la stessa compagnia, poiché nelle poche settimane trascorse si erano insensibilmente sempre più addentrati nelle vite l’uno dell’altro, formando un piccolo gruppo simile a un circolo. L’esteta americano era naturalmente l’agente più attivo, e la sua risolutezza nello strappare il cuore al mistero del poeta cornico lo spingeva più volte a influenzare il suo volubile ospite verso simili ritrovi. Persino il signor Ashe, l’avvocato, sembrava aver inghiottito i suoi pregiudizi mezzo scherzosi; e il dottore, benché uomo piuttosto triste e silenzioso, era socievole e premuroso. Paynter aveva perfino letto ad alta voce la poesia di Treherne, e leggeva mirabilmente; aveva anche letto altre cose, non ad alta voce, rovistando in tutto ciò che era nei dintorni, dalle guide agli epitaffi, che potesse gettare luce sulle antichità locali. E fu quella sera, quando la luce della lampada e l’ultimo chiarore del giorno avevano acceso i colori del vino e dell’argento sul tavolo sotto l’albero, che egli annunciò una nuova scoperta.

«Ehi, Squire», osservò, con uno dei suoi rari americanismi, «a proposito di quei suoi alberi da spauracchio; non credo che lei conosca la metà delle storie che si raccontano qui su di essi. Pare che abbiano l’abitudine di divorare le cose. Non che io abbia obiezioni etiche a divorare le cose», proseguì, servendosi con eleganza di formaggio verde. «Ma ho, più o meno, in linea di massima, un’obiezione a divorare le persone.»

«Divorare le persone!» ripeté Barbara Vane.

«So che un giramondo non deve fare lo schizzinoso», replicò il signor Paynter. «Ma ripeto con fermezza: un’obiezione a divorare le persone. Gli alberi di pavone paiono aver fatto progressi dai bei giorni dell’innocenza in cui divoravano solo pavoni. Se domanda alla gente di qui—al pescatore che vive su quella spiaggia, o all’uomo che falcia proprio questo prato davanti a noi—le racconteranno storie più grosse di qualsiasi storia tropicale io le abbia portato dalla Costa di Barberia. Se domanda loro che ne fu del pescatore Peters, che si ubriacò la vigilia d’Ognissanti, le diranno che smarrì la via in quel piccolo bosco, cadde addormentato sotto gli alberi malvagi, e poi… evaporò, svanì, fu leccato via come rugiada dal sole. Se domanda loro dov’è Harry Hawke, il figlioletto della vedova, le diranno solo che è stato inghiottito; che fu sfidato ad arrampicarsi sugli alberi e a starci tutta la notte, e lo fece. Che cosa fecero gli alberi Dio solo lo sa; le abitudini di un orco vegetale lasciano un po’ nel vago. Ma aggiungono perfino il gradevole dettaglio che un nuovo ramo appare sull’albero quando qualcuno se n’è andato in questo modo.»

«Che nuova sciocchezza è questa?» esclamò Vane. «So che c’è qualche fola balorda sugli alberi che diffondono la febbre, benché ogni uomo istruito sappia perché queste epidemie ritornino di tanto in tanto. E so che dicono che si può riconoscere il loro fruscio tra gli altri alberi durante una burrasca, e oso dire che è vero. Ma nemmeno la Cornovaglia è un manicomio, e un albero che pranza con un turista di passaggio…»

«Beh, i due racconti si conciliano abbastanza», intervenne il poeta con calma. «Se ci fosse una magia che uccidesse gli uomini quando si avvicinano, è probabile che li colpisca con la malattia quando stanno lontani. Nell’antico romanzo il drago, che divora le persone, spesso ne fulmina altre con una sorta di alito velenoso.»

Ashe fissò l’oratore con costanza, per non dire con durezza.

«Devo intendere», domandò, «che lei manda giù anche gli alberi che mandano giù la gente?»

Il cupo sorriso di Treherne era ancora sulla difensiva; la sua scherma irritava sempre l’altro, e non pareva privo di malizia nella faccenda.

«Mandar giù è una metafora», disse, «riferita a me, se non agli alberi. E le metafore ci trasportano subito nel paese dei sogni: neppure un brutto posto. Questo giardino, credo, somiglia sempre più a un sogno in questo cantuccio tra il giorno e la notte, che potrebbe condurci ovunque.»

Il corno giallo della luna era apparso in silenzio e come all’improvviso sopra i neri corni delle alghe, sembrando annunciare come notte qualcosa che fino allora era stato sera. Una brezza notturna entrò tra gli alberi e corse furtiva sul prato, e mentre essi cessavano di parlare udirono, non solo il sibilo dell’erba, ma il mare stesso muoversi e risuonare in tutte le fessure e caverne intorno a loro e sotto di loro e da ogni lato. Tutti avvertirono la nota che era stata suonata—l’americano come critico d’arte e il poeta come poeta; e lo Squire, che si credeva ribollente di un’impazienza puramente razionale, non comprendeva davvero la propria impazienza. In lui, forse più che negli altri—più certamente di quanto egli stesso sapesse—il vento del mare saliva alla testa come vino.

«La credulità è una cosa curiosa», proseguì Treherne a bassa voce. «È più negativa che positiva, eppure è infinita. Centinaia di uomini eviteranno di passare sotto una scala; non sanno dove condurrà la porta della scala. Non credono davvero che Dio scaglierebbe loro un fulmine per una cosa simile. Non sanno che cosa accadrebbe, questo è appunto il punto; eppure si scansano come da un precipizio. Così la povera gente di qui può credere o non credere a qualcosa; ma tra quegli alberi di notte non ci va.»

«Io passo sotto una scala ogni volta che posso», esclamò Vane, con un’agitazione del tutto superflua.

«Lei appartiene a un Club dei Tredici», disse il poeta. «Passa sotto una scala di venerdì per cenare in tredici a tavola, mentre tutti rovesciano il sale. Ma nemmeno lei va tra quegli alberi di notte.»

Lo Squire Vane si alzò in piedi, i capelli d’argento fiammeggianti nel vento.

«Passerò tutta la notte nel suo bosco da stolti e in cima ai suoi alberi da stolti», disse. «Lo farò per due soldi o per duemila sterline, se qualcuno accetta la scommessa.»

Without waiting for reply, he snatched up his wide white hat and settled it on with a fierce gesture, and had gone off in great leonine strides across the lawn before anyone at the table could move.

The stillness was broken by Miles, the butler, who dropped and broke one of the plates he carried. He stood looking after his master with his long, angular chin thrust out, looking yellower where it caught the yellow light of the lamp below. His face was thus sharply in shadow, but Paynter fancied for a moment it was convulsed by some passion passing surprise. But the face was quite as usual when it turned, and Paynter realized that a night of fancies had begun, like the cross purposes of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The wood of the strange trees, toward which the Squire was walking, lay so far forward on the headland, which ultimately almost overhung the sea, that it could be approached by only one path, which shone clearly like a silver ribbon in the twilight. The ribbon ran along the edge of the cliff, where the single row of deformed trees ran beside it all the way, and eventually plunged into the closer mass of trees by one natural gateway, a mere gap in the wood, looking dark, like a lion’s mouth. What became of the path inside could not be seen, but it doubtless led round the hidden roots of the great central trees. The Squire was already within a yard or two of this dark entry when his daughter rose from the table and took a step or two after him as if to call him back.

Treherne had also risen, and stood as if dazed at the effect of his idle defiance. When Barbara moved he seemed to recover himself, and stepping after her, said something which Paynter did not hear. He said it casually and even distantly enough, but it clearly suggested something to her mind; for, after a moment’s thought, she nodded and walked back, not toward the table, but apparently toward the house. Paynter looked after her with a momentary curiosity, and when he turned again the Squire had vanished into the hole in the wood.

“He’s gone,” said Treherne, with a clang of finality in his tones, like the slamming of a door.

“Well, suppose he has?” cried the lawyer, roused at the voice. “The Squire can go into his own wood, I suppose! What the devil’s all the fuss about, Mr. Paynter? Don’t tell me you think there’s any harm in that plantation of sticks.”

“No, I don’t,” said Paynter, throwing one leg over another and lighting a cigar. “But I shall stop here till he comes out.”

“Very well,” said Ashe shortly, “I’ll stop with you, if only to see the end of this farce.”

The doctor said nothing, but he also kept his seat and accepted one of the American’s cigars. If Treherne had been attending to the matter he might have noted, with his sardonic superstition, a curious fact—that, while all three men were tacitly condemning themselves to stay out all night if necessary, all, by one blank omission or oblivion, assumed that it was impossible to follow their host into the wood just in front of them. But Treherne, though still in the garden, had wandered away from the garden table, and was pacing along the single line of trees against the dark sea. They had in their regular interstices, showing the sea as through a series of windows, something of the look of the ghost or skeleton of a cloister, and he, having thrown his coat once more over his neck, like a cape, passed to and fro like the ghost of some not very sane monk.

All these men, whether skeptics or mystics, looked back for the rest of their lives on that night as on something unnatural. They sat still or started up abruptly, and paced the great garden in long detours, so that it seemed that no three of them were together at a time, and none knew who would be his companion; yet their rambling remained within the same dim and mazy space. They fell into snatches of uneasy slumber; these were very brief, and yet they felt as if the whole sitting, strolling, or occasional speaking had been parts of a single dream.

Paynter woke once, and found Ashe sitting opposite him at a table otherwise empty; his face dark in shadow and his cigar-end like the red eye of a Cyclops. Until the lawyer spoke, in his steady voice, Paynter was positively afraid of him. He answered at random and nodded again; when he again woke the lawyer was gone, and what was opposite him was the bald, pale brow of the doctor; there seemed suddenly something ominous in the familiar fact that he wore spectacles. And yet the vanishing Ashe had only vanished a few yards away, for he turned at that instant and strolled back to the table. With a jerk Paynter realized that his nightmare was but a trick of sleep or sleeplessness, and spoke in his natural voice, but rather loud.

“So you’ve joined us again; where’s Treherne?”

“Oh, still revolving, I suppose, like a polar bear under those trees on the cliff,” replied Ashe, motioning with his cigar, “looking at what an older (and you will forgive me for thinking a somewhat better) poet called the wine-dark sea. It really has a sort of purple shade; look at it.”

Paynter looked; he saw the wine-dark sea and the fantastic trees that fringed it, but he did not see the poet; the cloister was already empty of its restless monk.

“Gone somewhere else,” he said, with futility far from characteristic. “He’ll be back here presently. This is an interesting vigil, but a vigil loses some of its intensity when you can’t keep awake. Ah! Here’s Treherne; so we’re all mustered, as the politician said when Mr. Colman came late for dinner. No, the doctor’s off again. How restless we all are!” The poet had drawn near, his feet were falling soft on the grass, and was gazing at them with a singular attentiveness.

“It will soon be over,” he said.

“What?” snapped Ashe very abruptly.

“The night, of course,” replied Treherne in a motionless manner. “The darkest hour has passed.”

Senza attendere risposta, afferrò l’ampio cappello bianco e se lo calcò in testa con un gesto feroce, e se n’era andato a grandi falcate leonine attraverso il prato prima che chiunque al tavolo potesse muoversi.

L’immobilità fu rotta da Miles, il maggiordomo, che lasciò cadere e ruppe uno dei piatti che portava. Rimase a guardare il suo padrone con il lungo mento angoloso proteso in avanti, più giallo dove coglieva la gialla luce della lampada sottostante. Il suo volto era così nettamente in ombra, ma Paynter immaginò per un istante che fosse sconvolto da una passione oltre ogni sorpresa. Ma il volto era del tutto come al solito quando si girò, e Paynter comprese che era cominciata una notte di fantasie, come gli equivoci del «Sogno di una notte di mezza estate».

Il bosco degli strani alberi, verso cui lo Squire camminava, si stendeva così avanti sul promontorio, che alla fine quasi sovrastava il mare, da poter essere raggiunto per un solo sentiero, il quale splendeva chiaro come un nastro d’argento nel crepuscolo. Il nastro correva lungo l’orlo della scogliera, dove l’unica fila di alberi deformi gli scorreva accanto per tutto il tragitto, e infine si tuffava nella massa più fitta di alberi per un solo varco naturale, una semplice apertura nel bosco, che appariva oscura, come la bocca di un leone. Che ne fosse del sentiero all’interno non si poteva vedere, ma senza dubbio conduceva intorno alle radici nascoste dei grandi alberi centrali. Lo Squire era già a un metro o due da questo oscuro ingresso quando sua figlia si alzò dal tavolo e mosse un passo o due dietro di lui come per richiamarlo.

Anche Treherne si era alzato, e stava come stordito dall’effetto della sua oziosa sfida. Quando Barbara si mosse egli parve riprendersi, e facendo un passo dietro di lei, disse qualcosa che Paynter non udì. Lo disse con noncuranza e perfino con sufficiente distacco, ma chiaramente le suggerì qualcosa alla mente; poiché, dopo un momento di riflessione, ella annuì e tornò indietro, non verso il tavolo, ma apparentemente verso la casa. Paynter la seguì con lo sguardo con momentanea curiosità, e quando si volse di nuovo lo Squire era svanito nel buco del bosco.

«Se n’è andato», disse Treherne, con un tono di clangore definitivo, come lo sbattere di una porta.

«Ebbene, supponiamo che l’abbia fatto?» esclamò l’avvocato, ridestato dalla voce. «Lo Squire può entrare nel proprio bosco, suppongo! Che diavolo è tutto questo scalpore, signor Paynter? Non mi dica che crede ci sia qualche pericolo in quella piantagione di stecchi.»

«No, non lo credo», disse Paynter, accavallando una gamba sull’altra e accendendo un sigaro. «Ma resterò qui finché non esce.»

«Benissimo», disse Ashe secco, «resterò con lei, non fosse che per vedere la fine di questa farsa.»

Il dottore non disse nulla, ma anch’egli mantenne il suo posto e accettò uno dei sigari dell’americano. Se Treherne fosse stato attento alla faccenda avrebbe potuto notare, con la sua sardonica superstizione, un fatto curioso: che, mentre tutti e tre gli uomini si condannavano tacitamente a restare fuori tutta la notte se necessario, tutti, per una medesima vuota omissione o dimenticanza, davano per scontato che fosse impossibile seguire il loro ospite nel bosco proprio davanti a loro. Ma Treherne, benché ancora nel giardino, si era allontanato dal tavolo del giardino, e passeggiava lungo l’unica fila di alberi contro il mare scuro. Essi avevano, nei loro regolari intervalli, mostrando il mare come attraverso una serie di finestre, qualcosa dell’aspetto del fantasma o dello scheletro di un chiostro, ed egli, gettatosi di nuovo il cappotto sul collo, come una mantella, andava avanti e indietro come il fantasma di un monaco non troppo sano di mente.

Tutti questi uomini, scettici o mistici che fossero, per il resto della loro vita ripensarono a quella notte come a qualcosa di innaturale. Sedevano immobili o balzavano su di scatto, e percorrevano il grande giardino con lunghi giri, così che pareva che non ve ne fossero mai tre insieme nel medesimo momento, e nessuno sapeva chi sarebbe stato il suo compagno; eppure il loro vagabondare restava entro lo stesso spazio fioco e labirintico. Cadevano in brandelli di sonno inquieto; questi erano assai brevi, eppure sentivano come se l’intera seduta, il passeggiare, o l’occasionale parlare fossero stati parte di un unico sogno.

Paynter si svegliò una volta, e trovò Ashe seduto di fronte a lui a un tavolo per il resto vuoto; il volto scuro nell’ombra e il mozzicone del sigaro come il rosso occhio di un Ciclope. Finché l’avvocato non parlò, con la sua voce ferma, Paynter ne ebbe positivamente paura. Rispose a caso e annuì di nuovo; quando si svegliò di nuovo l’avvocato se n’era andato, e ciò che aveva di fronte era la fronte calva e pallida del dottore; parve d’un tratto esserci qualcosa di sinistro nel fatto familiare che portasse gli occhiali. Eppure lo svanito Ashe era svanito solo di pochi metri, poiché si volse in quell’istante e tornò passeggiando al tavolo. Con un sussulto Paynter comprese che il suo incubo non era che un tiro del sonno o dell’insonnia, e parlò con la sua voce naturale, ma piuttosto forte.

«Così ti sei riunito a noi; dov’è Treherne?»

«Oh, ancora a rotear qua e là, suppongo, come un orso polare sotto quegli alberi sulla scogliera», replicò Ashe, accennando col sigaro, «a guardare ciò che un poeta più antico (e mi perdonerà se lo giudico un po’ migliore) chiamava il mare colore del vino. Ha davvero una sorta di tinta purpurea; la guardi.»

Paynter guardò; vide il mare colore del vino e i fantastici alberi che lo frangiavano, ma non vide il poeta; il chiostro era già vuoto del suo monaco irrequieto.

«Andato da qualche altra parte», disse, con un’inconcludenza affatto insolita per lui. «Tornerà qui tra poco. È una veglia interessante, ma una veglia perde parte della sua intensità quando non si riesce a restare svegli. Ah! Ecco Treherne; così siamo tutti riuniti, come disse il politico quando il signor Colman arrivò tardi a cena. No, il dottore se n’è andato di nuovo. Come siamo tutti irrequieti!» Il poeta si era avvicinato, i suoi passi cadevano lievi sull’erba, e li fissava con una singolare attenzione.

«Sarà presto finita», disse.

«Che cosa?» scattò Ashe in modo assai brusco.

«La notte, naturalmente», replicò Treherne in modo immobile. «L’ora più buia è passata.»

“Didn’t some other minor poet remark,” inquired Paynter flippantly, “that the darkest hour before the dawn—? My God, what was that? It was like a scream.”

“It was a scream,” replied the poet. “The scream of a peacock.”

Ashe stood up, his strong pale face against his red hair, and said furiously: “What the devil do you mean?”

“Oh, perfectly natural causes, as Dr. Brown would say,” replied Treherne. “Didn’t the Squire tell us the trees had a shrill note of their own when the wind blew? The wind’s beating up again from the sea; I shouldn’t wonder if there was a storm before dawn.”

Dawn indeed came gradually with a growing noise of wind, and the purple sea began to boil about the dark volcanic cliffs. The first change in the sky showed itself only in the shapes of the wood and the single stems growing darker but clearer; and above the gray clump, against a glimpse of growing light, they saw aloft the evil trinity of the trees. In their long lines there seemed to Paynter something faintly serpentine and even spiral. He could almost fancy he saw them slowly revolving as in some cyclic dance, but this, again, was but a last delusion of dreamland, for a few seconds later he was again asleep. In dreams he toiled through a tangle of inconclusive tales, each filled with the same stress and noise of sea and sea wind; and above and outside all other voices the wailing of the Trees of Pride.

When he woke it was broad day, and a bloom of early light lay on wood and garden and on fields and farms for miles away. The comparative common sense that daylight brings even to the sleepless drew him alertly to his feet, and showed him all his companions standing about the lawn in similar attitudes of expectancy. There was no need to ask what they were expecting. They were waiting to hear the nocturnal experiences, comic or commonplace or whatever they might prove to be, of that eccentric friend, whose experiment (whether from some subconscious fear or some fancy of honor) they had not ventured to interrupt. Hour followed hour, and still nothing stirred in the wood save an occasional bird. The Squire, like most men of his type, was an early riser, and it was not likely that he would in this case sleep late; it was much more likely, in the excitement in which he had left them, that he would not sleep at all. Yet it was clear that he must be sleeping, perhaps by some reaction from a strain. By the time the sun was high in heaven Ashe the lawyer, turning to the others, spoke abruptly and to the point.

“Shall we go into the wood now?” asked Paynter, and almost seemed to hesitate.

“I will go in,” said Treherne simply. Then, drawing up his dark head in answer to their glances, he added:

“No, do not trouble yourselves. It is never the believer who is afraid.”

For the second time they saw a man mount the white curling path and disappear into the gray tangled wood, but this time they did not have to wait long to see him again.

A few minutes later he reappeared in the woodland gateway, and came slowly toward them across the grass. He stopped before the doctor, who stood nearest, and said something. It was repeated to the others, and went round the ring with low cries of incredulity. The others plunged into the wood and returned wildly, and were seen speaking to others again who gathered from the house; the wild wireless telegraphy which is the education of countryside communities spread it farther and farther before the fact itself was fully realized; and before nightfall a quarter of the county knew that Squire Vane had vanished like a burst bubble.

Widely as the wild story was repeated, and patiently as it was pondered, it was long before there was even the beginning of a sequel to it. In the interval Paynter had politely removed himself from the house of mourning, or rather of questioning, but only so far as the village inn; for Barbara Vane was glad of the traveler’s experience and sympathy, in addition to that afforded her by the lawyer and doctor as old friends of the family. Even Treherne was not discouraged from his occasional visits with a view to helping the hunt for the lost man. The five held many counsels round the old garden table, at which the unhappy master of the house had dined for the last time; and Barbara wore her old mask of stone, if it was now a more tragic mask. She had shown no passion after the first morning of discovery, when she had broken forth once, speaking strangely enough in the view of some of her hearers.

She had come slowly out of the house, to which her own or some one else’s wisdom had relegated her during the night of the wager; and it was clear from her face that somebody had told her the truth; Miles, the butler, stood on the steps behind her; and it was probably he.

“Do not be much distressed, Miss Vane,” said Doctor Brown, in a low and rather uncertain voice. “The search in the wood has hardly begun. I am convinced we shall find—something quite simple.”

“The doctor is right,” said Ashe, in his firm tones; “I myself—”

“The doctor is not right,” said the girl, turning a white face on the speaker, “I know better. The poet is right. The poet is always right. Oh, he has been here from the beginning of the world, and seen wonders and terrors that are all round our path, and only hiding behind a bush or a stone. You and your doctoring and your science— why, you have only been here for a few fumbling generations; and you can’t conquer even your own enemies of the flesh. Oh, forgive me, Doctor, I know you do splendidly; but the fever comes in the village, and the people die and die for all that. And now it’s my poor father. God help us all! The only thing left is to believe in God; for we can’t help believing in devils.” And she left them, still walking quite slowly, but in such a fashion that no one could go after her.

«Non osservò forse qualche altro poeta minore», domandò Paynter con leggerezza, «che l’ora più buia prima dell’alba…? Dio mio, che cos’era? Somigliava a un urlo.»

«Era un urlo», replicò il poeta. «L’urlo di un pavone.»

Ashe si alzò in piedi, il forte volto pallido contro i capelli rossi, e disse furioso: «Che diavolo vuol dire?»

«Oh, cause perfettamente naturali, come direbbe il dottor Brown», replicò Treherne. «Non ci ha detto lo Squire che gli alberi avevano una loro nota stridula quando il vento soffiava? Il vento torna a montare dal mare; non mi stupirei se ci fosse una tempesta prima dell’alba.»

L’alba venne infatti a poco a poco con un crescente rumore di vento, e il mare purpureo cominciò a ribollire attorno alle scure rupi vulcaniche. Il primo mutamento nel cielo si manifestò soltanto nelle forme del bosco e dei fusti isolati che si facevano più scure ma più nitide; e sopra il grigio ammasso, contro un barlume di luce crescente, videro in alto la malvagia trinità degli alberi. Nelle loro lunghe linee c’era per Paynter qualcosa di vagamente serpentino e perfino spiraliforme. Poteva quasi immaginare di vederli ruotare lentamente come in una qualche danza ciclica, ma anche questa, di nuovo, non era che un’ultima illusione del paese dei sogni, poiché pochi secondi dopo era di nuovo addormentato. Nei sogni arrancava attraverso un groviglio di storie inconcludenti, ciascuna colma dello stesso affanno e rumore di mare e di vento marino; e sopra e al di fuori di ogni altra voce il gemito degli Alberi dell’Orgoglio.

Quando si svegliò era pieno giorno, e un fiore di luce mattutina posava su bosco e giardino e su campi e fattorie per miglia intorno. Il relativo buon senso che la luce del giorno reca perfino agli insonni lo trasse pronto in piedi, e gli mostrò tutti i suoi compagni ritti attorno al prato in analoghi atteggiamenti d’attesa. Non c’era bisogno di chiedere che cosa aspettassero. Aspettavano di udire le esperienze notturne, comiche o banali o quali che si rivelassero, di quell’eccentrico amico, il cui esperimento (fosse per qualche subconscia paura o per qualche estro d’onore) non avevano osato interrompere. Ora seguiva ora, e ancora nulla si muoveva nel bosco tranne qualche uccello occasionale. Lo Squire, come la maggior parte degli uomini del suo tipo, era mattiniero, e non era probabile che in questo caso dormisse fino a tardi; era assai più probabile, nell’eccitazione in cui li aveva lasciati, che non dormisse affatto. Eppure era chiaro che doveva star dormendo, forse per qualche reazione a uno sforzo. Quando ormai il sole era alto in cielo, Ashe l’avvocato, volgendosi agli altri, parlò bruscamente e senza mezzi termini.

«Andiamo nel bosco adesso?» chiese Paynter, e quasi parve esitare.

«Andrò io», disse Treherne semplicemente. Poi, drizzando il capo scuro in risposta ai loro sguardi, aggiunse:

«No, non disturbatevi. Non è mai il credente ad aver paura.»

Per la seconda volta videro un uomo salire il bianco sentiero serpeggiante e sparire nel grigio bosco intricato, ma questa volta non dovettero attendere a lungo per rivederlo.

Pochi minuti dopo riapparve nella soglia boschiva, e venne lentamente verso di loro attraverso l’erba. Si fermò davanti al dottore, che stava più vicino, e disse qualcosa. Fu ripetuto agli altri, e girò intorno al cerchio con sommessi gridi d’incredulità. Gli altri si tuffarono nel bosco e ne tornarono freneticamente, e furono visti parlare ad altri ancora che si radunavano dalla casa; la selvaggia telegrafia senza fili che è l’educazione delle comunità di campagna la diffuse sempre più lontano prima ancora che il fatto stesso fosse pienamente compreso; e prima del calar della notte un quarto della contea sapeva che lo Squire Vane era svanito come una bolla scoppiata.

Per quanto la storia strampalata fosse ripetuta ovunque, e pazientemente rimuginata, passò molto tempo prima che vi fosse anche solo l’inizio di un seguito. Nell’intervallo Paynter si era cortesemente allontanato dalla casa del lutto, o piuttosto degli interrogativi, ma solo fino alla locanda del villaggio; poiché Barbara Vane era lieta dell’esperienza e della comprensione del viaggiatore, oltre a quella offertale dall’avvocato e dal dottore come vecchi amici di famiglia. Persino Treherne non era scoraggiato dalle sue visite occasionali intese ad aiutare la ricerca dell’uomo scomparso. I cinque tennero molti consigli attorno al vecchio tavolo del giardino, al quale l’infelice padrone di casa aveva cenato per l’ultima volta; e Barbara portava la sua vecchia maschera di pietra, se ora era una maschera più tragica. Non aveva mostrato alcuna passione dopo il primo mattino della scoperta, quando era proruppe una volta, parlando in modo assai strano agli occhi di alcuni dei suoi ascoltatori.

Era uscita lentamente dalla casa, nella quale la sua propria o l’altrui saggezza l’aveva relegata durante la notte della scommessa; ed era chiaro dal suo volto che qualcuno le aveva detto la verità; Miles, il maggiordomo, stava sui gradini dietro di lei; ed era probabilmente lui.

«Non si affligga troppo, Miss Vane», disse il dottor Brown, con voce bassa e piuttosto incerta. «La ricerca nel bosco è appena cominciata. Sono convinto che troveremo… qualcosa di assai semplice.»

«Il dottore ha ragione», disse Ashe, col suo tono fermo; «io stesso…»

«Il dottore non ha ragione», disse la ragazza, volgendo un volto bianco sull’oratore, «io ne so di più. Il poeta ha ragione. Il poeta ha sempre ragione. Oh, lui è qui dal principio del mondo, e ha visto prodigi e terrori che ci circondano lungo il cammino, e si nascondono solo dietro un cespuglio o una pietra. Voi con la vostra medicina e la vostra scienza… ebbene, siete qui solo da poche brancolanti generazioni; e non riuscite a vincere nemmeno i vostri nemici della carne. Oh, mi perdoni, dottore, so che fa cose splendide; ma la febbre arriva nel villaggio, e la gente muore e muore malgrado tutto. E ora tocca al mio povero padre. Dio ci aiuti tutti! L’unica cosa che resta è credere in Dio; perché non possiamo fare a meno di credere nei diavoli.» E li lasciò, camminando ancora assai lentamente, ma in modo tale che nessuno poté andarle dietro.

The spring had already begun to ripen into summer, and spread a green tent from the tree over the garden table, when the American visitor, sitting there with his two professional companions, broke the silence by saying what had long been in his mind.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose whatever we may think it wise to say, we have all begun to think of a possible conclusion. It can’t be put very delicately anyhow; but, after all, there’s a very necessary business side to it. What are we going to do about poor Vane’s affairs, apart from himself? I suppose you know,” he added, in a low voice to the lawyer, “whether he made a will?”

“He left everything to his daughter unconditionally,” replied Ashe. “But nothing can be done with it. There’s no proof whatever that he’s dead.” “No legal proof?” remarked Paynter dryly. A wrinkle of irritation had appeared in the big bald brow of Doctor Brown; and he made an impatient movement.

“Of course he’s dead,” he said. “What’s the sense of all this legal fuss? We were watching this side of the wood, weren’t we? A man couldn’t have flown off those high cliffs over the sea; he could only have fallen off. What else can he be but dead?”

“I speak as a lawyer,” returned Ashe, raising his eyebrows. “We can’t presume his death, or have an inquest or anything till we find the poor fellow’s body, or some remains that may reasonably be presumed to be his body.”

“I see,” observed Paynter quietly. “You speak as a lawyer; but I don’t think it’s very hard to guess what you think as a man.”

“I own I’d rather be a man than a lawyer,” said the doctor, rather roughly. “I’d no notion the law was such an ass. What’s the good of keeping the poor girl out of her property, and the estate all going to pieces? Well, I must be off, or my patients will be going to pieces too.”

And with a curt salutation he pursued his path down to the village.

“That man does his duty, if anybody does,” remarked Paynter. “We must pardon his—shall I say manners or manner?”

“Oh, I bear him no malice,” replied Ashe good-humoredly, “But I’m glad he’s gone, because—well, because I don’t want him to know how jolly right he is.” And he leaned back in his chair and stared up at the roof of green leaves.

“You are sure,” said Paynter, looking at the table, “that Squire Vane is dead?”

“More than that,” said Ashe, still staring at the leaves. “I’m sure of how he died.”

“Ah!” said the American, with an intake of breath, and they remained for a moment, one gazing at the tree and the other at the table.

“Sure is perhaps too strong a word,” continued Ashe. “But my conviction will want some shaking. I don’t envy the counsel for the defense.”

“The counsel for the defense,” repeated Paynter, and looked up quickly at his companion. He was struck again by the man’s Napoleonic chin and jaw, as he had been when they first talked of the legend of St. Securis.

“Then,” he began, “you don’t think the trees—”

“The trees be damned!” snorted the lawyer. “The tree had two legs on that evening. What our friend the poet,” he added, with a sneer, “would call a walking tree. Apropos of our friend the poet, you seemed surprised that night to find he was not walking poetically by the sea all the time, and I fear I affected to share your ignorance. I was not so sure then as I am now.”

“Sure of what?” demanded the other.

“To begin with,” said Ashe, “I’m sure our friend the poet followed Vane into the wood that night, for I saw him coming out again.”

Paynter leaned forward, suddenly pale with excitement, and struck the wooden table so that it rattled.

“Mr. Ashe, you’re wrong,” he cried. “You’re a wonderful man and you’re wrong. You’ve probably got tons of true convincing evidence, and you’re wrong. I know this poet; I know him as a poet; and that’s just what you don’t. I know you think he gave you crooked answers, and seemed to be all smiles and black looks at once; but you don’t understand the type. I know now why you don’t understand the Irish. Sometimes you think it’s soft, and sometimes sly, and sometimes murderous, and sometimes uncivilized; and all the time it’s only civilized; quivering with the sensitive irony of understanding all that you don’t understand.”

“Well,” said Ashe shortly, “we’ll see who’s right.”

“We will,” cried Cyprian, and rose suddenly from the table. All the drooping of the aesthete had dropped from him; his Yankee accent rose high, like a horn of defiance, and there was nothing about him but the New World.

“I guess I will look into this myself,” he said, stretching his long limbs like an athlete. “I search that little wood of yours to-morrow. It’s a bit late, or I’d do it now.”

“The wood has been searched,” said the lawyer, rising also.

“Yes,” drawled the American. “It’s been searched by servants, policemen, local policeman, and quite a lot of people; and do you know I have a notion that nobody round here is likely to have searched it at all.”

“And what are you going to do with it?” asked Ashe.

“What I bet they haven’t done,” replied Cyprian. “I’m going to climb a tree.”

And with a quaint air of renewed cheerfulness he took himself away at a rapid walk to his inn.

He appeared at daybreak next morning outside the Vane Arms with all the air of one setting out on his travels in distant lands. He had a field glass slung over his shoulder, and a very large sheath knife buckled by a belt round his waist, and carried with the cool bravado of the bowie knife of a cowboy. But in spite of this backwoodsman’s simplicity, or perhaps rather because of it, he eyed with rising relish the picturesque plan and sky line of the antiquated village, and especially the wooden square of the old inn sign that hung over his head; a shield, of which the charges seemed to him a mere medley of blue dolphins, gold crosses, and scarlet birds. The colors and cubic corners of that painted board pleased him like a play or a puppet show. He stood staring and straddling for some moments on the cobbles of the little market place; then he gave a short laugh and began to mount the steep streets toward the high park and garden beyond. From the high lawn, above the tree and table, he could see on one side the land stretch away past the house into a great rolling plain, which under the clear edges of the dawn seemed dotted with picturesque details. The woods here and there on the plain looked like green hedgehogs, as grotesque as the incongruous beasts found unaccountably walking in the blank spaces of mediaeval maps. The land, cut up into colored fields, recalled the heraldry of the signboard; this also was at once ancient and gay. On the other side the ground to seaward swept down and then up again to the famous or infamous wood; the square of strange trees lay silently tilted on the slope, also suggesting, if not a map, or least a bird’s-eye view. Only the triple centerpiece of the peacock trees rose clear of the sky line; and these stood up in tranquil sunlight as things almost classical, a triangular temple of the winds. They seemed pagan in a newer and more placid sense; and he felt a newer and more boyish curiosity and courage for the consulting of the oracle. In all his wanderings he had never walked so lightly, for the connoisseur of sensations had found something to do at last; he was fighting for a friend.

La primavera aveva già cominciato a maturare in estate, e stendeva una verde tenda dall’albero sul tavolo del giardino, quando il visitatore americano, sedutovi con i suoi due compagni di professione, ruppe il silenzio dicendo ciò che da tempo aveva in mente.

«Ebbene», disse, «suppongo che, qualunque cosa riteniamo saggio dire, tutti abbiamo cominciato a pensare a una possibile conclusione. Comunque non la si può esprimere con molta delicatezza; ma, dopotutto, c’è un lato pratico assai necessario nella faccenda. Che ne faremo degli affari del povero Vane, a prescindere da lui stesso? Suppongo che lei sappia», aggiunse, a bassa voce all’avvocato, «se abbia fatto testamento?»

«Ha lasciato tutto alla figlia senza condizioni», rispose Ashe. «Ma non se ne può far nulla. Non c’è prova alcuna che sia morto.» «Nessuna prova legale?» osservò Paynter seccamente. Una ruga d’irritazione era apparsa sull’ampia fronte calva del dottor Brown; e questi fece un movimento impaziente.

«Ma certo che è morto», disse. «Che senso ha tutta questa manfrina legale? Stavamo sorvegliando questo lato del bosco, non è vero? Un uomo non avrebbe potuto volar via da quelle alte rupi sul mare; poteva solo caderne. Che altro può essere se non morto?»

«Parlo da avvocato», ribatté Ashe, inarcando le sopracciglia. «Non possiamo presumerne la morte, né tenere un’inchiesta o alcunché finché non troviamo il corpo del pover’uomo, o qualche resto che ragionevolmente si possa presumere essere il suo corpo.»

«Capisco», osservò Paynter con calma. «Lei parla da avvocato; ma non credo sia molto difficile indovinare che cosa pensa da uomo.»

«Ammetto che preferirei essere un uomo anziché un avvocato», disse il dottore, piuttosto rudemente. «Non avevo idea che la legge fosse un tale asino. A che serve tenere la povera ragazza lontana dalla sua proprietà, mentre la tenuta va tutta in rovina? Beh, devo andare, o anche i miei pazienti andranno in rovina.»

E con un saluto brusco proseguì per la sua via giù verso il villaggio.

«Quell’uomo fa il suo dovere, se qualcuno lo fa», osservò Paynter. «Dobbiamo perdonargli i… dirò i modi o il modo?»

«Oh, non gli serbo rancore», replicò Ashe di buon umore. «Ma sono contento che se ne sia andato, perché… beh, perché non voglio che sappia quanto diavolo ha ragione.» E si appoggiò allo schienale della sedia e fissò in alto il tetto di verdi foglie.

«Lei è sicuro», disse Paynter, guardando il tavolo, «che lo Squire Vane sia morto?»

«Più di questo», disse Ashe, fissando ancora le foglie. «Sono sicuro di come sia morto.»

«Ah!» disse l’americano, con un trarre di fiato, ed essi rimasero per un momento, l’uno a contemplare l’albero e l’altro il tavolo.

«Sicuro è forse una parola troppo forte», proseguì Ashe. «Ma ci vorrà qualcosa a scuotere la mia convinzione. Non invidio l’avvocato della difesa.»

«L’avvocato della difesa», ripeté Paynter, e alzò rapido lo sguardo sul suo compagno. Fu di nuovo colpito dal mento e dalla mascella napoleonici dell’uomo, come lo era stato quando avevano parlato per la prima volta della leggenda di San Securis.

«Allora», cominciò, «lei non crede che gli alberi…»

«Al diavolo gli alberi!» sbuffò l’avvocato. «Quella sera l’albero aveva due gambe. Ciò che il nostro amico poeta», aggiunse, con un ghigno, «chiamerebbe un albero che cammina. A proposito del nostro amico poeta, quella notte lei parve sorpreso di scoprire che non stava passeggiando poeticamente in riva al mare per tutto il tempo, e temo di aver finto di condividere la sua ignoranza. Allora non ne ero sicuro quanto lo sono ora.»

«Sicuro di che cosa?» domandò l’altro.

«Tanto per cominciare», disse Ashe, «sono sicuro che il nostro amico poeta seguì Vane nel bosco quella notte, perché lo vidi uscirne di nuovo.»

Paynter si sporse in avanti, improvvisamente pallido d’eccitazione, e batté sul tavolo di legno tanto da farlo tremare.

«Signor Ashe, lei si sbaglia», esclamò. «Lei è un uomo straordinario e si sbaglia. Ha probabilmente tonnellate di prove vere e convincenti, e si sbaglia. Io conosco questo poeta; lo conosco come poeta; ed è proprio ciò che lei non conosce. So che lei pensa che le abbia dato risposte oblique, e che paresse tutto sorrisi e sguardi torvi a un tempo; ma lei non comprende il tipo. So ora perché lei non comprende gli irlandesi. A volte lei lo crede molle, a volte subdolo, a volte assassino, a volte incivile; e per tutto il tempo è solo civile; fremente della sensibile ironia di chi comprende tutto ciò che lei non comprende.»

«Ebbene», disse Ashe secco, «vedremo chi ha ragione.»

«Lo vedremo», esclamò Cyprian, e si alzò all’improvviso dal tavolo. Ogni languore dell’esteta era caduto da lui; il suo accento yankee si levò alto, come un corno di sfida, e in lui non c’era altro che il Nuovo Mondo.

«Credo che indagherò io stesso su questa faccenda», disse, stirando le lunghe membra come un atleta. «Domani perlustrerò quel suo boschetto. È un po’ tardi, altrimenti lo farei subito.»

«Il bosco è già stato perlustrato», disse l’avvocato, alzandosi anch’egli.

«Sì», biascicò l’americano. «È stato perlustrato da domestici, poliziotti, il poliziotto locale, e parecchia gente; e sa, ho l’idea che qui intorno probabilmente nessuno l’abbia perlustrato affatto.»

«E lei che cosa intende farne?» chiese Ashe.

«Ciò che scommetto non abbiano fatto», replicò Cyprian. «Ho intenzione di arrampicarmi su un albero.»

E con una bizzarra aria di rinnovata allegria se ne andò a passo svelto verso la sua locanda.

Comparve all’alba del mattino seguente davanti al Vane Arms con tutta l’aria di chi si mette in viaggio verso terre lontane. Aveva un cannocchiale a tracolla, e un grandissimo coltello da caccia allacciato con una cinghia intorno alla vita, e portato con la fredda spavalderia del coltello bowie di un cowboy. Ma a dispetto di questa semplicità da uomo dei boschi, o forse anzi proprio per essa, osservava con crescente gusto la pittoresca pianta e il profilo del villaggio antiquato, e specialmente il quadrato di legno della vecchia insegna della locanda che pendeva sopra il suo capo; uno scudo, le cui figure gli parevano un mero guazzabuglio di delfini azzurri, croci d’oro e uccelli scarlatti. I colori e gli angoli cubici di quell’asse dipinta lo dilettavano come una commedia o uno spettacolo di burattini. Rimase a fissare, a gambe divaricate, per qualche istante sui ciottoli della piccola piazza del mercato; poi diede una breve risata e cominciò a salire per le ripide vie verso l’alto parco e il giardino al di là. Dall’alto prato, sopra l’albero e il tavolo, poteva scorgere da un lato la terra distendersi oltre la casa in una grande pianura ondulata, che sotto i limpidi contorni dell’alba pareva punteggiata di pittoreschi particolari. I boschi qua e là sulla pianura sembravano verdi ricci, grotteschi quanto le incongrue bestie che si trovano inspiegabilmente a camminare negli spazi vuoti delle mappe medievali. La terra, spartita in campi colorati, richiamava l’araldica dell’insegna; anche questa era a un tempo antica e gaia. Dall’altro lato il terreno digradava verso il mare e poi risaliva fino al famoso o famigerato bosco; il quadrato di strani alberi giaceva silenziosamente inclinato sul pendio, suggerendo anch’esso, se non una mappa, almeno una veduta a volo d’uccello. Solo la triplice figura centrale degli alberi di pavone si levava netta contro il profilo del cielo; e questi si ergevano nella tranquilla luce del sole come cose quasi classiche, un tempio triangolare dei venti. Sembravano pagani in un senso più nuovo e più placido; ed egli provò una più nuova e più fanciullesca curiosità e coraggio nel consultare l’oracolo. In tutti i suoi vagabondaggi non aveva mai camminato con tanta leggerezza, perché l’intenditore di sensazioni aveva trovato finalmente qualcosa da fare; combatteva per un amico.

He was brought to a standstill once, however, and that at the very gateway of the garden of the trees of knowledge. Just outside the black entry of the wood, now curtained with greener and larger leafage, he came on a solitary figure.

It was Martin, the woodcutter, wading in the bracken and looking about him in rather a lost fashion. The man seemed to be talking to himself.

“I dropped it here,” he was saying. “But I’ll never work with it again I reckon. Doctor wouldn’t let me pick it up, when I wanted to pick it up; and now they’ve got it, like they’ve got the Squire. Wood and iron, wood and iron, but eating it’s nothing to them.”

“Come!” said Paynter kindly, remembering the man’s domestic trouble. “Miss Vane will see you have anything you want, I know. And look here, don’t brood on all those stories about the Squire. Is there the slightest trace of the trees having anything to do with it? Is there even this extra branch the idiots talked about?”

There had been growing on Paynter the suspicion that the man before him was not perfectly sane; yet he was much more startled by the sudden and cold sanity that looked for an instant out of the woodman’s eyes, as he answered in his ordinary manner.

“Well, sir, did you count the branches before?”

Then he seemed to relapse; and Paynter left him wandering and wavering in the undergrowth; and entered the wood like one across whose sunny path a shadow has fallen for an instant.

Diving under the wood, he was soon threading a leafy path which, even under that summer sun, shone only with an emerald twilight, as if it were on the floor of the sea. It wound about more shakily than he had supposed, as if resolved to approach the central trees as if they were the heart of the maze at Hampton Court. They were the heart of the maze for him, anyhow; he sought them as straight as a crooked road would carry him; and, turning a final corner, he beheld, for the first time, the foundations of those towers of vegetation he had as yet only seen from above, as they stood waist-high in the woodland. He found the suspicion correct which supposed the tree branched from one great root, like a candelabrum; the fork, though stained and slimy with green fungoids, was quite near the ground, and offered a first foothold. He put his foot in it, and without a flash of hesitation went aloft, like Jack climbing the Bean stalk.

Above him the green roof of leaves and boughs seemed sealed like a firmament of foliage; but, by bending and breaking the branches to right and left he slowly forced a passage upward; and had at last, and suddenly, the sensation coming out on the top of the world. He felt as if he had never been in the open air before. Sea and land lay in a circle below and about him, as he sat astride a branch of the tall tree; he was almost surprised to see the sun still comparatively low in the sky; as if he were looking over a land of eternal sunrise.

“Silent upon a peak in Darien,” he remarked, in a needlessly loud and cheerful voice; and though the claim, thus expressed, was illogical, it was not inappropriate. He did feel as if he were a primitive adventurer just come to the New World, instead of a modern traveler just come from it.

“I wonder,” he proceeded, “whether I am really the first that ever burst into this silent tree. It looks like it. Those—”

He stopped and sat on his branch quite motionless, but his eyes were turned on a branch a little below it, and they were brilliant with a vigilance, like those of a man watching a snake.

What he was looking at might, at first sight, have been a large white fungus spreading on the smooth and monstrous trunk; but it was not.

Leaning down dangerously from his perch, he detached it from the twig on which it had caught, and then sat holding it in his hand and gazing at it. It was Squire Vane’s white Panama hat, but there was no Squire Vane under it. Paynter felt a nameless relief in the very fact that there was not.

There in the clear sunlight and sea air, for an instant, all the tropical terrors of his own idle tale surrounded and suffocated him. It seemed indeed some demon tree of the swamps; a vegetable serpent that fed on men. Even the hideous farce in the fancy of digesting a whole man with the exception of his hat, seemed only to simplify the nightmare. And he found himself gazing dully at one leaf of the tree, which happened to be turned toward him, so that the odd markings, which had partly made the legend, really looked a little like the eye in a peacock’s feather. It was as if the sleeping tree had opened one eye upon him.

With a sharp effort he steadied himself in mind and posture on the bough; his reason returned, and he began to descend with the hat in his teeth. When he was back in the underworld of the wood, he studied the hat again and with closer attention. In one place in the crown there was a hole or rent, which certainly had not been there when it had last lain on the table under the garden tree. He sat down, lit a cigarette, and reflected for a long time.

A wood, even a small wood, is not an easy thing to search minutely; but he provided himself with some practical tests in the matter. In one sense the very density of the thicket was a help; he could at least see where anyone had strayed from the path, by broken and trampled growths of every kind. After many hours’ industry, he had made a sort of new map of the place; and had decided beyond doubt that some person or persons had so strayed, for some purpose, in several defined directions. There was a way burst through the bushes, making a short cut across a loop of the wandering path; there was another forking out from it as an alternative way into the central space. But there was one especially which was unique, and which seemed to him, the more he studied it, to point to some essential of the mystery.

Una volta, tuttavia, fu costretto a fermarsi, e proprio alla soglia del giardino degli alberi della conoscenza. Appena fuori dall’oscuro ingresso del bosco, ora velato da un fogliame più verde e più fitto, s’imbatté in una figura solitaria.

Era Martin, il taglialegna, che guadava nella felce e si guardava attorno in un modo piuttosto smarrito. L’uomo pareva parlare tra sé.

«L’ho lasciata cadere qui», stava dicendo. «Ma non ci lavorerò mai più, credo. Il dottore non mi ha lasciato raccoglierla, quando volevo raccoglierla; e ora ce l’hanno loro, come hanno preso lo Squire. Legno e ferro, legno e ferro, ma per loro divorarli è nulla.»

«Suvvia!» disse Paynter con gentilezza, ricordando la sciagura domestica dell’uomo. «Miss Vane baderà che lei abbia tutto ciò di cui ha bisogno, ne sono certo. E senta, non si arrovelli su tutte quelle storie sullo Squire. C’è la benché minima traccia che gli alberi abbiano avuto a che fare con la cosa? C’è forse questo ramo in più di cui blateravano gli idioti?»

In Paynter era andato crescendo il sospetto che l’uomo davanti a lui non fosse perfettamente sano di mente; eppure fu assai più sconcertato dalla lucidità improvvisa e gelida che per un istante affiorò dagli occhi del boscaiolo, mentre rispondeva nel suo modo consueto.

«Beh, signore, prima li aveva contati i rami?»

Poi parve ricadere nel suo stato; e Paynter lo lasciò vagare ed esitare nel sottobosco; ed entrò nel bosco come uno sul cui sentiero soleggiato sia calata per un istante un’ombra.

Immergendosi sotto il bosco, presto s’inoltrava per un sentiero frondoso che, persino sotto quel sole d’estate, brillava solo di un crepuscolo di smeraldo, come se fosse sul fondo del mare. Si snodava in modo più incerto di quanto avesse supposto, quasi risoluto ad avvicinarsi agli alberi centrali come fossero il cuore del labirinto di Hampton Court. Per lui, comunque, erano il cuore del labirinto; li cercava così diritto come una strada tortuosa poteva portarlo; e, svoltato un ultimo angolo, contemplò, per la prima volta, le fondamenta di quelle torri di vegetazione che finora aveva visto solo dall’alto, mentre si ergevano all’altezza della cintola nel bosco. Trovò esatto il sospetto che l’albero si diramasse da un’unica grande radice, come un candelabro; la biforcazione, per quanto macchiata e viscida di funghi verdi, era assai vicina al suolo, e offriva un primo appiglio per il piede. Vi posò il piede, e senza un lampo di esitazione salì in alto, come Gianni che s’arrampica sul fagiolo magico.

Sopra di lui il verde tetto di foglie e rami pareva sigillato come un firmamento di fogliame; ma, piegando e spezzando i rami a destra e a sinistra, si aprì lentamente un varco verso l’alto; e ebbe infine, e all’improvviso, la sensazione di emergere sulla cima del mondo. Si sentiva come se non fosse mai stato all’aria aperta prima. Mare e terra giacevano in cerchio sotto e attorno a lui, mentre sedeva a cavalcioni di un ramo dell’alto albero; fu quasi sorpreso di vedere il sole ancora relativamente basso nel cielo; come se guardasse su una terra di eterna aurora.

«Silenzioso su una vetta di Darién», osservò, con voce inutilmente alta e allegra; e per quanto la pretesa, così espressa, fosse illogica, non era fuori luogo. Si sentiva davvero come un avventuriero primitivo appena giunto al Nuovo Mondo, anziché un moderno viaggiatore appena giunto da esso.

«Mi domando», proseguì, «se sono davvero il primo che abbia mai fatto irruzione in questo albero silenzioso. Pare di sì. Quelle…»

Si arrestò e sedette sul ramo del tutto immobile, ma gli occhi erano rivolti a un ramo poco più in basso, e brillavano di una vigilanza, come quelli di un uomo che sorveglia un serpente.

Ciò che stava guardando avrebbe potuto, a prima vista, essere un grande fungo bianco steso sul liscio e mostruoso tronco; ma non lo era.

Chinandosi pericolosamente dal suo posatoio, lo staccò dal ramoscello a cui si era impigliato, e poi sedette tenendolo in mano e fissandolo. Era il bianco cappello Panama dello Squire Vane, ma sotto non c’era nessuno Squire Vane. Paynter provò un sollievo senza nome proprio nel fatto che non ci fosse.

Là, nella limpida luce del sole e nell’aria del mare, per un istante tutti i terrori tropicali del suo stesso ozioso racconto lo circondarono e lo soffocarono. Pareva davvero un qualche albero demoniaco delle paludi; un serpente vegetale che si nutriva di uomini. Persino l’orrenda farsa nell’idea di digerire un uomo intero fatta eccezione per il suo cappello sembrava solo semplificare l’incubo. E si ritrovò a fissare ottusamente una foglia dell’albero, che si dava il caso fosse rivolta verso di lui, così che le strane venature, che in parte avevano dato origine alla leggenda, somigliavano davvero un poco all’occhio nella penna di un pavone. Era come se l’albero addormentato avesse aperto un occhio su di lui.

Con uno sforzo brusco si stabilizzò nella mente e nella posizione sul ramo; la ragione gli tornò, e cominciò a scendere col cappello tra i denti. Quando fu di nuovo nel mondo sotterraneo del bosco, esaminò di nuovo il cappello e con più attenzione. In un punto della cupola c’era un foro o uno strappo, che di certo non c’era quando era rimasto per l’ultima volta sul tavolo sotto l’albero del giardino. Si sedette, accese una sigaretta, e rifletté a lungo, per molto tempo.

Un bosco, anche un piccolo bosco, non è cosa facile da perquisire minuziosamente; ma egli si munì di alcuni criteri pratici in materia. In un certo senso la densità stessa del boschetto era d’aiuto; poteva almeno vedere dove qualcuno aveva deviato dal sentiero, dalle piante spezzate e calpestate di ogni sorta. Dopo molte ore d’industriosa fatica, aveva composto una sorta di nuova mappa del luogo; e aveva stabilito oltre ogni dubbio che qualche persona o più persone avevano così deviato, per qualche scopo, in diverse direzioni ben definite. C’era una via aperta a forza tra i cespugli, che tagliava corto attraverso un’ansa del sentiero serpeggiante; ce n’era un’altra che se ne diramava come via alternativa verso lo spazio centrale. Ma ce n’era una in particolare che era unica, e che gli sembrava, più la studiava, indicare qualcosa di essenziale nel mistero.

One of these beaten and broken tracks went from the space under the peacock trees outward into the wood for about twenty yards and then stopped. Beyond that point not a twig was broken nor a leaf disturbed. It had no exit, but he could not believe that it had no goal. After some further reflection, he knelt down and began to cut away grass and clay with his knife, and was surprised at the ease with which they detached themselves. In a few moments a whole section of the soil lifted like a lid; it was a round lid and presented a quaint appearance, like a flat cap with green feathers. For though the disc itself was made of wood, there was a layer of earth on it with the live grass still growing there. And the removal of the round lid revealed a round hole, black as night and seemingly bottomless. Paynter understood it instantly. It was rather near the sea for a well to be sunk, but the traveler had known wells sunk even nearer. He rose to his feet with the great knife in his hand, a frown on his face, and his doubts resolved. He no longer shrank from naming what he knew. This was not the first corpse that had been thrown down a well; here, without stone or epitaph, was the grave of Squire Vane. In a flash all the mythological follies about saints and peacocks were forgotten; he was knocked on the head, as with a stone club, by the human common sense of crime.

Cyprian Paynter stood long by the well in the wood, walked round it in meditation, examined its rim and the ring of grass about it, searched the surrounding soil thoroughly, came back and stood beside the well once more. His researches and reflections had been so long that he had not realized that the day had passed and that the wood and the world round it were beginning already to be steeped in the enrichment of evening. The day had been radiantly calm; the sea seemed to be as still as the well, and the well was as still as a mirror. And then, quite without warning, the mirror moved of itself like a living thing.

In the well, in the wood, the water leapt and gurgled, with a grotesque noise like something swallowing, and then settled again with a second sound. Cyprian could not see into the well clearly, for the opening, from where he stood, was an ellipse, a mere slit, and half masked by thistles and rank grass like a green beard. For where he stood now was three yards away from the well, and he had not yet himself realized that he had sprung back all that distance from the brink when the water spoke.

Una di queste piste battute e interrotte andava dallo spazio sotto gli alberi dei pavoni verso l’esterno, dentro il bosco, per una ventina di iarde, e poi si arrestava. Oltre quel punto non un ramoscello era spezzato né una foglia smossa. Non aveva uscita, ma egli non poteva credere che non avesse meta. Dopo qualche ulteriore riflessione, si inginocchiò e prese a tagliar via erba e argilla col coltello, e si stupì della facilità con cui si staccavano. In pochi istanti un’intera sezione del terreno si sollevò come un coperchio; era un coperchio rotondo e offriva un aspetto bizzarro, come un berretto piatto con piume verdi. Poiché, benché il disco stesso fosse di legno, vi era sopra uno strato di terra con l’erba viva che ancora vi cresceva. E la rimozione del coperchio rotondo rivelò un foro rotondo, nero come la notte e in apparenza senza fondo. Paynter comprese all’istante. Era piuttosto vicino al mare perché vi si scavasse un pozzo, ma il viaggiatore aveva conosciuto pozzi scavati anche più vicino. Si levò in piedi con il gran coltello in pugno, un cipiglio sul volto, e i suoi dubbi risolti. Non rifuggiva più dal nominare ciò che sapeva. Non era il primo cadavere che fosse stato gettato in un pozzo; qui, senza pietra né epitaffio, era la tomba dello squire Vane. In un lampo tutte le follie mitologiche su santi e pavoni furono dimenticate; fu colpito alla testa, come da una clava di pietra, dal comune buon senso umano del delitto.

Cyprian Paynter sostò a lungo presso il pozzo nel bosco, vi girò intorno meditando, ne esaminò l’orlo e l’anello d’erba che lo cingeva, frugò a fondo il terreno circostante, tornò indietro e si fermò accanto al pozzo ancora una volta. Le sue ricerche e riflessioni erano state tanto lunghe che non si era avveduto che il giorno era trascorso e che il bosco e il mondo all’intorno cominciavano già a impregnarsi della ricchezza della sera. La giornata era stata radiosamente calma; il mare pareva immobile come il pozzo, e il pozzo era immobile come uno specchio. E poi, del tutto senza preavviso, lo specchio si mosse da sé come una cosa viva.

Nel pozzo, nel bosco, l’acqua balzò e gorgogliò, con un rumore grottesco come di qualcosa che inghiotte, e poi si riassestò con un secondo suono. Cyprian non riusciva a vedere dentro il pozzo con chiarezza, poiché l’apertura, da dove stava, era un’ellisse, una mera fessura, mezzo mascherata da cardi ed erba rigogliosa come una barba verde. Poiché dove ora si trovava era a tre iarde dal pozzo, ed egli stesso non si era ancora reso conto d’essere balzato all’indietro per tutta quella distanza dall’orlo quando l’acqua parlò.

III. THE MYSTERY OF THE WELL

Cyprian Paynter did not know what he expected to see rise out of the well—the corpse of the murdered man or merely the spirit of the fountain. Anyhow, neither of them rose out of it, and he recognized after an instant that this was, after all, perhaps the more natural course of things. Once more he pulled himself together, walked to the edge of the well and looked down. He saw, as before, a dim glimmer of water, at that depth no brighter than ink; he fancied he still heard a faint convulsion and murmur, but it gradually subsided to an utter stillness. Short of suicidally diving in, there was nothing to be done. He realized that, with all his equipment, he had not even brought anything like a rope or basket, and at length decided to return for them. As he retraced his steps to the entrance, he recurred to, and took stock of, his more solid discoveries. Somebody had gone into the wood, killed the Squire and thrown him down the well, but he did not admit for a moment that it was his friend the poet; but if the latter had actually been seen coming out of the wood the matter was serious. As he walked the rapidly darkening twilight was cloven with red gleams, that made him almost fancy for a moment that some fantastic criminal had set fire to the tiny forest as he fled. A second glance showed him nothing but one of those red sunsets in which such serene days sometimes close.

As he came out of the gloomy gate of trees into the full glow he saw a dark figure standing quite still in the dim bracken, on the spot where he had left the woodcutter. It was not the woodcutter.

It was topped by a tall black hat of a funeral type, and the whole figure stood so black against the field of crimson fire that edged the sky line that he could not for an instant understand or recall it. When he did, it was with an odd change in the whole channel of his thoughts.

“Doctor Brown!” he cried. “Why, what are you doing up here?”

“I have been talking to poor Martin,” answered the doctor, and made a rather awkward movement with his hand toward the road down to the village. Following the gesture, Paynter dimly saw another dark figure walking down in the blood-red distance. He also saw that the hand motioning was really black, and not merely in shadow; and, coming nearer, found the doctor’s dress was really funereal, down to the detail of the dark gloves. It gave the American a small but queer shock, as if this were actually an undertaker come up to bury the corpse that could not be found.

“Poor Martin’s been looking for his chopper,” observed Doctor Brown, “but I told him I’d picked it up and kept it for him. Between ourselves, I hardly think he’s fit to be trusted with it.” Then, seeing the glance at his black garb, he added: “I’ve just been to a funeral. Did you know there’s been another loss? Poor Jake the fisherman’s wife, down in the cottage on the shore, you know. This infernal fever, of course.”

As they both turned, facing the red evening light, Paynter instinctively made a closer study, not merely of the doctor’s clothes, but of the doctor. Dr. Burton Brown was a tall, alert man, neatly dressed, who would otherwise have had an almost military air but for his spectacles and an almost painful intellectualism in his lean brown face and bald brow. The contrast was clinched by the fact that, while his face was of the ascetic type generally conceived as clean-shaven, he had a strip of dark mustache cut too short for him to bite, and yet a mouth that often moved as if trying to bite it. He might have been a very intelligent army surgeon, but he had more the look of an engineer or one of those services that combine a military silence with a more than military science. Paynter had always respected something ruggedly reliable about the man, and after a little hesitation he told him all the discoveries.

The doctor took the hat of the dead Squire in his hand, and examined it with frowning care. He put one finger through the hole in the crown and moved it meditatively. And Paynter realized how fanciful his own fatigue must have made him; for so silly a thing as the black finger waggling through the rent in that frayed white relic unreasonably displeased him. The doctor soon made the same discovery with professional acuteness, and applied it much further. For when Paynter began to tell him of the moving water in the well he looked at him a moment through his spectacles, and then said:

“Did you have any lunch?”

Paynter for the first time realized that he had, as a fact, worked and thought furiously all day without food.

“Please don’t fancy I mean you had too much lunch,” said the medical man, with mournful humor. “On the contrary, I mean you had too little. I think you are a bit knocked out, and your nerves exaggerate things. Anyhow, let me advise you not to do any more to-night. There’s nothing to be done without ropes or some sort of fishing tackle, if with that; but I think I can get you some of the sort of grappling irons the fishermen use for dragging. Poor Jake’s got some, I know; I’ll bring them round to you tomorrow morning. The fact is, I’m staying there for a bit as he’s rather in a state, and I think is better for me to ask for the things and not a stranger. I am sure you’ll understand.”

Paynter understood sufficiently to assent, and hardly knew why he stood vacantly watching the doctor make his way down the steep road to the shore and the fisher’s cottage. Then he threw off thoughts he had not examined, or even consciously entertained, and walked slowly and rather heavily back to the Vane Arms.

The doctor, still funereal in manner, though no longer so in costume, appeared punctually under the wooden sign next morning, laden with what he had promised; an apparatus of hooks and a hanging net for hoisting up anything sunk to a reasonable depth. He was about to proceed on his professional round, and said nothing further to deter the American from proceeding on his own very unprofessional experiment as a detective. That buoyant amateur had indeed recovered most, if not all, of yesterday’s buoyancy, was now well fitted to pass any medical examination, and returned with all his own energy to the scene of yesterday’s labors.

III. IL MISTERO DEL POZZO

Cyprian Paynter non sapeva che cosa si aspettasse di veder salire dal pozzo—il cadavere dell’uomo assassinato o soltanto lo spirito della fonte. Comunque, nessuno dei due sorse da esso, e dopo un istante riconobbe che questo era, in fondo, forse il corso più naturale delle cose. Ancora una volta si riprese, camminò fino all’orlo del pozzo e guardò giù. Vide, come prima, un fioco luccichio d’acqua, a quella profondità non più chiaro dell’inchiostro; gli parve di udire ancora una debole convulsione e un mormorio, ma a poco a poco si spense in una immobilità assoluta. A meno di tuffarsi dentro suicidandosi, non c’era nulla da fare. Si rese conto che, con tutta la sua attrezzatura, non aveva nemmeno portato qualcosa come una corda o un cesto, e alla fine decise di tornare a prenderli. Mentre rifaceva i suoi passi verso l’ingresso, tornò a rimuginare, e fece il bilancio, delle sue scoperte più solide. Qualcuno era entrato nel bosco, aveva ucciso lo Squire e l’aveva gettato nel pozzo, ma non ammetteva neppure per un momento che fosse il suo amico poeta; eppure, se quest’ultimo era stato realmente visto uscire dal bosco, la faccenda era grave. Mentre camminava, il crepuscolo rapidamente calante era squarciato da bagliori rossi, che per un momento quasi gli fecero immaginare che qualche fantastico criminale avesse appiccato il fuoco alla minuscola foresta nella fuga. Una seconda occhiata non gli mostrò altro che uno di quei tramonti rossi in cui giornate così serene talvolta si chiudono.

Uscendo dal cupo cancello di alberi nel pieno bagliore, vide una figura scura ferma immobile tra la felce oscura, nel punto in cui aveva lasciato il taglialegna. Non era il taglialegna.

Era sormontata da un alto cappello nero di foggia funebre, e l’intera figura si stagliava così nera contro il campo di fuoco cremisi che bordava la linea del cielo che per un istante non riuscì a comprenderla né a riconoscerla. Quando vi riuscì, fu con uno strano mutamento in tutto il corso dei suoi pensieri.

“Dottor Brown!” gridò. “Ma come, che cosa fa quassù?”

“Ho parlato con il povero Martin,” rispose il dottore, e fece un gesto piuttosto impacciato con la mano verso la strada che scendeva al villaggio. Seguendo il gesto, Paynter vide vagamente un’altra figura scura scendere a valle nella distanza rosso sangue. Vide anche che la mano che indicava era davvero nera, e non soltanto in ombra; e, avvicinandosi, trovò che l’abito del dottore era davvero funereo, fin nel dettaglio dei guanti scuri. Ciò diede all’americano un piccolo ma strano brivido, come se costui fosse davvero un becchino salito a seppellire il cadavere che non si riusciva a trovare.

“Il povero Martin cercava la sua accetta,” osservò il dottor Brown, “ma gli ho detto che l’avevo raccolta e gliela tenevo da parte. Detto tra noi, non credo proprio che gli si possa affidare con fiducia.” Poi, notando l’occhiata al suo abito nero, aggiunse: “Sono appena stato a un funerale. Sapeva che c’è stata un’altra perdita? La povera moglie di Jake il pescatore, giù nel casolare sulla riva, lei sa. Questa febbre infernale, naturalmente.”

Mentre entrambi si voltavano, di fronte alla luce rossa della sera, Paynter istintivamente fece uno studio più attento, non soltanto degli abiti del dottore, ma del dottore. Il dottor Burton Brown era un uomo alto, sveglio, vestito con cura, che altrimenti avrebbe avuto un’aria quasi militare, se non fosse stato per gli occhiali e per un intellettualismo quasi doloroso nel magro volto bruno e nella fronte calva. Il contrasto era rimarcato dal fatto che, mentre il suo volto era del tipo ascetic generalmente concepito come sbarbato, egli aveva una striscia di baffi scuri tagliata troppo corta perché la potesse mordere, eppure una bocca che spesso si muoveva come se cercasse di morderla. Avrebbe potuto essere un chirurgo militare molto intelligente, ma aveva più l’aria di un ingegnere o di uno di quei corpi che uniscono un silenzio militare a una scienza più che militare. Paynter aveva sempre rispettato nell’uomo qualcosa di rudemente affidabile, e dopo una breve esitazione gli raccontò tutte le scoperte.

Il dottore prese in mano il cappello del defunto Squire, e lo esaminò con attenzione aggrottata. Infilò un dito nel foro della calotta e lo mosse meditabondo. E Paynter comprese quanto fantasiosa dovesse averlo reso la sua stessa stanchezza; poiché una cosa così sciocca come quel dito nero che si agitava attraverso lo squarcio in quella logora reliquia bianca lo infastidiva senza ragione. Il dottore fece presto la stessa scoperta con acume professionale, e la applicò molto più a fondo. Poiché quando Paynter cominciò a raccontargli dell’acqua in movimento nel pozzo, lo guardò un momento attraverso gli occhiali, e poi disse:

“Ha pranzato?”

Per la prima volta Paynter si rese conto che, di fatto, aveva lavorato e pensato furiosamente tutto il giorno senza cibo.

“La prego, non creda che intenda che ha pranzato troppo,” disse l’uomo di medicina, con umorismo lugubre. “Al contrario, intendo che ha pranzato troppo poco. Credo che lei sia un po’ sfinito, e i suoi nervi ingigantiscono le cose. Comunque, mi permetta di consigliarle di non fare altro stanotte. Non c’è nulla da fare senza corde o qualche sorta di attrezzatura da pesca, ammesso che basti; ma credo di poterle procurare qualcuno di quegli uncini da traino che usano i pescatori per dragare. Il povero Jake ne ha, lo so; glieli porto domattina. Il fatto è che sto lì da lui per un po’, dato che è piuttosto sconvolto, e credo sia meglio che sia io a chiedere le cose e non un estraneo. Sono certo che capirà.”

Paynter capì abbastanza da acconsentire, e a stento seppe perché rimase a guardare vacuo il dottore farsi strada giù per la ripida strada verso la riva e il casolare del pescatore. Poi scacciò pensieri che non aveva esaminato, né mai coscientemente accolto, e tornò lentamente e piuttosto pesantemente verso il Vane Arms.

Il dottore, ancora funereo nei modi, benché non più nel vestito, comparve puntualmente sotto l’insegna di legno il mattino seguente, carico di ciò che aveva promesso; un apparato di ganci e una rete pendente per issare qualsiasi cosa affondata a una profondità ragionevole. Stava per proseguire nel suo giro professionale, e non disse altro per dissuadere l’americano dal procedere nel proprio esperimento del tutto non professionale come detective. Quel brioso dilettante aveva in effetti recuperato gran parte, se non tutta, della brio del giorno prima, era ora ben in grado di superare qualsiasi visita medica, e tornò con tutta la propria energia alla scena delle fatiche del giorno prima.

It may well have brightened and made breezier his second day’s toil that he had not only the sunlight and the bird’s singing in the little wood, to say nothing of a more scientific apparatus to work with, but also human companionship, and that of the most intelligent type. After leaving the doctor and before leaving the village he had bethought himself of seeking the little court or square where stood the quiet brown house of Andrew Ashe, solicitor, and the operations of dragging were worked in double harness. Two heads were peering over the well in the wood: one yellow-haired, lean and eager; the other redhaired, heavy and pondering; and if it be true that two heads are better than one, it is truer that four hands are better than two. In any case, their united and repeated efforts bore fruit at last, if anything so hard and meager and forlorn can be called a fruit. It weighed loosely in the net as it was lifted, and rolled out on the grassy edge of the well; it was a bone.

Ashe picked it up and stood with it in his hand, frowning.

“We want Doctor Brown here,” he said. “This may be the bone of some animal. Any dog or sheep might fall into a hidden well.” Then he broke off, for his companion was already detaching a second bone from the net.

After another half hour’s effort Paynter had occasion to remark, “It must have been rather a large dog.” There were already a heap of such white fragments at his feet.

“I have seen nothing yet,” said Ashe, speaking more plainly. “That is certainly a human bone.” “I fancy this must be a human bone,” said the American.

And he turned away a little as he handed the other a skull.

There was no doubt of what sort of skull; there was the one unique curve that holds the mystery of reason, and underneath it the two black holes that had held human eyes. But just above that on the left was another and smaller black hole, which was not an eye.

Then the lawyer said, with something like an effort: “We may admit it is a man without admitting it is—any particular man. There may be something, after all, in that yarn about the drunkard; he may have tumbled into the well. Under certain conditions, after certain natural processes, I fancy, the bones might be stripped in this way, even without the skill of any assassin. We want the doctor again.”

Then he added suddenly, and the very sound of his voice suggested that he hardly believed his own words.

“Haven’t you got poor Vane’s hat there?”

He took it from the silent American’s hand, and with a sort of hurry fitted it on the bony head.

“Don’t!” said the other involuntarily.

The lawyer had put his finger, as the doctor had done, through the hole in the hat, and it lay exactly over the hole in the skull.

“I have the better right to shrink,” he said steadily, but in a vibrant voice. “I think I am the older friend.”

Paynter nodded without speech, accepting the final identification. The last doubt, or hope, had departed, and he turned to the dragging apparatus, and did not speak till he had made his last find.

The singing of the birds seemed to grow louder about them, and the dance of the green summer leaves was repeated beyond in the dance of the green summer sea. Only the great roots of the mysterious trees could be seen, the rest being far aloft, and all round it was a wood of little, lively and happy things. They might have been two innocent naturalists, or even two children fishing for eels or tittlebats on that summer holiday when Paynter pulled up something that weighed in the net more heavily than any bone. It nearly broke the meshes, and fell against a mossy stone with a clang.

“Truth lies at the bottom of a well,” cried the American, with lift in his voice. “The woodman’s ax.”

It lay, indeed, flat and gleaming in the grasses by the well in the wood, just as it had lain in the thicket where the woodman threw it in the beginning of all these things. But on one corner of the bright blade was a dull brown stain.

“I see,” said Ashe, “the woodman’s ax, and therefore the Woodman. Your deductions are rapid.”

“My deductions are reasonable,” said Paynter, “Look here, Mr. Ashe; I know what you’re thinking. I know you distrust Treherne; but I’m sure you will be just for all that. To begin with, surely the first assumption is that the woodman’s ax is used by the Woodman. What have you to say to it?”

“I say ‘No’ to it,” replied the lawyer. “The last weapon a woodman would use would be a woodman’s ax; that is if he is a sane man.”

“He isn’t,” said Paynter quietly; “you said you wanted the doctor’s opinion just now. The doctor’s opinion on this point is the same as my own. We both found him meandering about outside there; it’s obvious this business has gone to his head, at any rate. If the murderer were a man of business like yourself, what you say might be sound. But this murderer is a mystic. He was driven by some fanatical fad about the trees. It’s quite likely he thought there was something solemn and sacrificial about the ax, and would have liked to cut off Vane’s head before a crowd, like Charles I’s. He’s looking for the ax still, and probably thinks it a holy relic.”

“For which reason,” said Ashe, smiling, “he instantly chucked it down a well.”

Paynter laughed.

“You have me there certainly,” he said. “But I think you have something else in your mind. You’ll say, I suppose, that we were all watching the wood; but were we? Frankly, I could almost fancy the peacock trees did strike me with a sort of sickness— a sleeping sickness.”

“Well,” admitted Ashe, “you have me there too. I’m afraid I couldn’t swear I was awake all the time; but I don’t put it down to magic trees—only to a private hobby of going to bed at night. But look here, Mr. Paynter; there’s another and better argument against any outsider from the village or countryside having committed the crime. Granted he might have slipped past us somehow, and gone for the Squire. But why should he go for him in the wood? How did he know he was in the wood? You remember how suddenly the poor old boy bolted into it, on what a momentary impulse. It’s the last place where one would normally look for such a man, in the middle of the night. No, it’s an ugly thing to say, but we, the group round that garden table, were the only people who knew. Which brings me back to the one point in your remarks which I happen to think perfectly true.”

Può ben darsi che ad allietare e a rendere più briosa la sua seconda giornata di fatica concorresse il fatto che egli avesse non solo la luce del sole e il canto degli uccelli nel boschetto, per non dire di un apparato più scientifico con cui lavorare, ma anche compagnia umana, e di quella del tipo più intelligente. Dopo aver lasciato il dottore e prima di lasciare il villaggio si era rammentato di cercare la piccola corte o piazza dove sorgeva la tranquilla casa bruna di Andrew Ashe, avvocato, e le operazioni di dragaggio furono condotte a doppio tiro. Due teste erano chine sul pozzo nel bosco: una dai capelli gialli, magra e ansiosa; l’altra dai capelli rossi, greve e riflessiva; e se è vero che due teste sono meglio di una, è ancor più vero che quattro mani sono meglio di due. In ogni caso, i loro sforzi uniti e ripetuti diedero infine frutto, se qualcosa di così duro e misero e desolato può essere chiamato frutto. Pesava mollemente nella rete mentre veniva sollevato, e rotolò fuori sul bordo erboso del pozzo; era un osso.

Ashe lo raccolse e rimase con esso in mano, aggrottando la fronte.

“Abbiamo bisogno del dottor Brown qui,” disse. “Questo potrebbe essere l’osso di qualche animale. Un cane o una pecora potrebbero cadere in un pozzo nascosto.” Poi si interruppe, poiché il suo compagno stava già staccando un secondo osso dalla rete.

Dopo un’altra mezz’ora di sforzi Paynter ebbe occasione di osservare: “Doveva essere un cane piuttosto grosso.” C’era già un mucchio di simili frammenti bianchi ai suoi piedi.

“Non ho ancora visto niente,” disse Ashe, parlando più chiaramente. “Questo è certamente un osso umano.” “Temo che questo debba essere un osso umano,” disse l’americano.

E si voltò un poco mentre porgeva all’altro un teschio.

Non c’era dubbio su quale sorta di teschio; c’era l’unica curva singolare che racchiude il mistero della ragione, e sotto di essa i due neri fori che avevano contenuto occhi umani. Ma proprio sopra di essi, a sinistra, c’era un altro foro nero, più piccolo, che non era un occhio.

Allora l’avvocato disse, con qualcosa come uno sforzo: “Possiamo ammettere che sia un uomo senza ammettere che sia—un uomo in particolare. Potrebbe esserci qualcosa, dopo tutto, in quella diceria sull’ubriacone; può darsi che sia caduto nel pozzo. In certe condizioni, dopo certi processi naturali, immagino, le ossa potrebbero essere scarnificate in questo modo, anche senza l’abilità di alcun assassino. Abbiamo di nuovo bisogno del dottore.”

Poi aggiunse d’improvviso, e il suono stesso della sua voce suggeriva che egli stentava a credere alle proprie parole.

“Non ha lì il cappello del povero Vane?”

Lo prese dalla mano del silenzioso americano, e con una sorta di fretta lo calzò sulla testa ossuta.

“Non lo faccia!” disse l’altro suo malgrado.

L’avvocato aveva infilato il dito, come aveva fatto il dottore, nel foro del cappello, ed esso si posava esattamente sul foro nel teschio.

“Io ho più diritto di ritrarmi,” disse fermamente, ma con voce vibrante. “Credo di essere l’amico più antico.”

Paynter annuì senza parlare, accettando l’identificazione definitiva. L’ultimo dubbio, o speranza, era svanito, ed egli si volse all’apparato di dragaggio, e non parlò finché non ebbe fatto l’ultima scoperta.

Il canto degli uccelli sembrava crescere intorno a loro, e la danza delle verdi foglie d’estate si ripeteva più oltre nella danza del verde mare d’estate. Solo le grandi radici dei misteriosi alberi si potevano vedere, il resto essendo assai in alto, e tutt’intorno era un bosco di piccole cose vivaci e felici. Avrebbero potuto essere due naturalisti innocenti, o persino due bambini a pescare anguille o spinarelli in quella vacanza d’estate quando Paynter tirò su qualcosa che pesava nella rete più di qualsiasi osso. Per poco non spezzò le maglie, e ricadde contro una pietra muscosa con un clangore.

“La verità giace in fondo a un pozzo,” gridò l’americano, con slancio nella voce. “L’ascia del taglialegna.”

Giaceva, infatti, piatta e luccicante nell’erba presso il pozzo nel bosco, proprio come era giaciuta nella boscaglia dove il taglialegna l’aveva gettata all’inizio di tutte queste cose. Ma su un angolo della lama lucente c’era una opaca macchia bruna.

“Capisco,” disse Ashe, “l’ascia del taglialegna, e dunque il Taglialegna. Le sue deduzioni sono rapide.”

“Le mie deduzioni sono ragionevoli,” disse Paynter, “Guardi qui, signor Ashe; so che cosa sta pensando. So che diffida di Treherne; ma sono certo che sarà comunque giusto. Tanto per cominciare, di sicuro la prima ipotesi è che l’ascia del taglialegna sia usata dal Taglialegna. Che cosa ha da obiettare?”

“Dico ‘No’,” rispose l’avvocato. “L’ultima arma che un taglialegna userebbe sarebbe l’ascia di un taglialegna; ammesso che sia un uomo sano di mente.”

“Non lo è,” disse Paynter con calma; “lei ha detto poco fa che voleva il parere del dottore. Il parere del dottore su questo punto è il medesimo del mio. Lo abbiamo trovato entrambi a vagare là fuori; è evidente che questa faccenda gli ha dato alla testa, in ogni caso. Se l’assassino fosse un uomo d’affari come lei, ciò che dice potrebbe reggere. Ma questo assassino è un mistico. Era spinto da qualche fanatica fissazione riguardo agli alberi. È del tutto probabile che pensasse ci fosse qualcosa di solenne e sacrificale nell’ ascia, e che avrebbe voluto mozzare la testa a Vane davanti a una folla, come a Carlo I. Sta ancora cercando l’ascia, e probabilmente la crede una sacra reliquia.”

“Ragion per cui,” disse Ashe, sorridendo, “l’ha immediatamente scaraventata in un pozzo.”

Paynter rise.

“Qui mi ha di certo colto in fallo,” disse. “Ma credo che lei abbia qualcos’altro in mente. Dirà, suppongo, che noi stavamo tutti sorvegliando il bosco; ma era così? Francamente, potrei quasi immaginare che gli alberi-pavone mi colpissero con una sorta di malattia— una malattia del sonno.”

“Ebbene,” ammise Ashe, “anche qui mi ha colto in fallo. Temo di non poter giurare di essere stato sveglio tutto il tempo; ma non lo attribuisco ad alberi magici—soltanto a un privato passatempo di andare a letto la notte. Ma guardi qui, signor Paynter; c’è un altro e migliore argomento contro l’ipotesi che qualche estraneo del villaggio o della campagna abbia commesso il delitto. Ammesso che sia riuscito in qualche modo a passarci accanto, e sia andato a cercare lo Squire. Ma perché avrebbe dovuto cercarlo nel bosco? Come sapeva che era nel bosco? Ricorda con quanta improvvisità il povero vecchio vi si precipitò, su quale impulso momentaneo. È l’ultimo luogo in cui normalmente si cercherebbe un uomo simile, nel cuore della notte. No, è brutto a dirsi, ma noi, il gruppo intorno a quel tavolo da giardino, eravamo le uniche persone che lo sapevano. Il che mi riporta all’unico punto delle sue osservazioni che mi accade di ritenere perfettamente vero.”

“What was that?” inquired the other.

“That the murderer was a mystic,” said Ashe. “But a cleverer mystic than poor old Martin.”

Paynter made a murmur of protest, and then fell silent.

“Let us talk plainly,” resumed the lawyer. “Treherne had all those mad motives you yourself admit against the woodcutter. He had the knowledge of Vane’s whereabouts, which nobody can possibly attribute to the woodcutter. But he had much more. Who taunted and goaded the Squire to go into the wood at all? Treherne. Who practically prophesied, like an infernal quack astrologer, that something would happen to him if he did go into the wood? Treherne. Who was, for some reason, no matter what, obviously burning with rage and restlessness all that night, kicking his legs impatiently to and fro on the cliff, and breaking out with wild words about it being all over soon? Treherne. And on top of all this, when I walked closer to the wood, whom did I see slip out of it swiftly and silently like a shadow, but turning his face once to the moon? On my oath and on my honor—Treherne.”

“It is awful,” said Paynter, like a man stunned. “What you say is simply awful.”

“Yes,” said Ashe seriously, “very awful, but very simple. Treherne knew where the ax was originally thrown. I saw him, on that day he lunched here first, watching it like a wolf, while Miss Vane was talking to him. On that dreadful night he could easily have picked it up as he went into the wood. He knew about the well, no doubt; who was so likely to know any old traditions about the peacock trees? He hid the hat in the trees, where perhaps he hoped (though the point is unimportant) that nobody would dare to look. Anyhow, he hid it, simply because it was the one thing that would not sink in the well. Mr. Paynter, do you think I would say this of any man in mere mean dislike? Could any man say it of any man unless the case was complete, as this is complete?”

“It is complete,” said Paynter, very pale. “I have nothing left against it but a faint, irrational feeling; a feeling that, somehow or other, if poor Vane could stand alive before us at this moment he might tell some other and even more incredible tale.”

Ashe made a mournful gesture.

“Can these dry bones live?” he said.

“Lord Thou knowest,” answered the other mechanically. “Even these dry bones—”

And he stopped suddenly with his mouth open, a blinding light of wonder in his pale eyes.

“See here,” he said hoarsely and hastily. “You have said the word. What does it mean? What can it mean? Dry? Why are these bones dry?”

The lawyer started and stared down at the heap.

“Your case complete!” cried Paynter, in mounting excitement. “Where is the water in the well? The water I saw leap like a flame? Why did it leap? Where is it gone to? Complete! We are buried under riddles.”

Ashe stooped, picked up a bone and looked at it.

“You are right,” he said, in a low and shaken voice: “this bone is as dry—as a bone.”

“Yes, I am right,” replied Cyprian. “And your mystic is still as mysterious as a mystic.”

There was a long silence. Ashe laid down the bone, picked up the ax and studied it more closely. Beyond the dull stain at the corner of the steel there was nothing unusual about it save a broad white rag wrapped round the handle, perhaps to give a better grip. The lawyer thought it worth noting, however, that the rag was certainly newer and cleaner than the chopper. But both were quite dry.

“Mr. Paynter,” he said at last, “I admit you have scored, in the spirit if not in the letter. In strict logic, this greater puzzle is not a reply to my case. If this ax has not been dipped in water, it has been dipped in blood; and the water jumping out of the well is not an explanation of the poet jumping out of the wood. But I admit that morally and practically it does make a vital difference. We are not faced with a colossal contradiction, and we don’t know how far it extends. The body might have been broken up or boiled down to its bones by the murderer, though it may be hard to connect it with the conditions of the murder. It might conceivably have been so reduced by some property in the water and soil, for decomposition varies vastly with these things. I should not dismiss my strong prima facie case against the likely person because of these difficulties. But here we have something entirely different. That the bones themselves should remain dry in a well full of water, or a well that yesterday was full of water— that brings us to the edge of something beyond which we can make no guess. There is a new factor, enormous and quite unknown. While we can’t fit together such prodigious facts, we can’t fit together a case against Treherne or against anybody. No; there is only one thing to be done now. Since we can’t accuse Treherne, we must appeal to him. We must put the case against him frankly before him, and trust he has an explanation—and will give it. I suggest we go back and do it now.”

Paynter, beginning to follow, hesitated a moment, and then said: “Forgive me for a kind of liberty; as you say, you are an older friend of the family. I entirely agree with your suggestion, but before you act on your present suspicions, do you know, I think Miss Vane ought to be warned a little? I rather fear all this will be a new shock to her.”

“Very well,” said Ashe, after looking at him steadily for an instant. “Let us go across to her first.”

From the opening of the wood they could see Barbara Vane writing at the garden table, which was littered with correspondence, and the butler with his yellow face waiting behind her chair. As the lengths of grass lessened between them, and the little group at the table grew larger and clearer in the sunlight, Paynter had a painful sense of being part of an embassy of doom. It sharpened when the girl looked up from the table and smiled on seeing them.

“E quale sarebbe?” chiese l’altro.

“Che l’assassino era un mistico,” disse Ashe. “Ma un mistico più astuto del povero vecchio Martin.”

Paynter emise un mormorio di protesta, e poi tacque.

“Parliamo chiaro,” riprese l’avvocato. “Treherne aveva tutti quei folli moventi che lei stesso ammette contro il taglialegna. Aveva conoscenza di dove si trovasse Vane, cosa che nessuno può in alcun modo attribuire al taglialegna. Ma aveva molto di più. Chi punzecchiò e istigò lo Squire a entrare nel bosco, prima di tutto? Treherne. Chi praticamente profetizzò, come un infernale astrologo ciarlatano, che gli sarebbe accaduto qualcosa se fosse davvero entrato nel bosco? Treherne. Chi era, per qualche ragione, non importa quale, palesemente ardente di rabbia e irrequietezza per tutta quella notte, scalciando impaziente avanti e indietro sulla scogliera, e prorompendo in parole selvagge sul fatto che presto sarebbe tutto finito? Treherne. E oltre a tutto questo, quando mi avvicinai al bosco, chi vidi sgusciarne fuori rapido e silenzioso come un’ombra, voltando però una volta il viso verso la luna? Sul mio onore e sul mio giuramento—Treherne.”

“È terribile,” disse Paynter, come un uomo stordito. “Ciò che dice è semplicemente terribile.”

“Sì,” disse Ashe gravemente, “molto terribile, ma molto semplice. Treherne sapeva dove l’ascia era stata originariamente gettata. Lo vidi, quel giorno in cui pranzò qui la prima volta, fissarla come un lupo, mentre la signorina Vane gli parlava. In quella terribile notte avrebbe potuto facilmente raccoglierla mentre entrava nel bosco. Conosceva l’esistenza del pozzo, senza dubbio; chi mai era più probabile conoscesse le vecchie tradizioni sugli alberi-pavone? Nascose il cappello tra gli alberi, dove forse sperava (benché il punto sia irrilevante) che nessuno osasse guardare. Comunque lo nascose, semplicemente perché era l’unica cosa che non sarebbe affondata nel pozzo. Signor Paynter, crede che io direi questo di un uomo per mera meschina antipatia? Potrebbe un uomo dirlo di un altro uomo a meno che il caso non fosse completo, come questo è completo?”

“È completo,” disse Paynter, pallidissimo. “Non mi resta nulla contro di esso se non un debole, irrazionale sentimento; il sentimento che, in un modo o nell’altro, se il povero Vane potesse stare vivo davanti a noi in questo momento, potrebbe raccontare un’altra e ancor più incredibile storia.”

Ashe fece un gesto luttuoso.

“Possono queste aride ossa rivivere?” disse.

“Signore, Tu lo sai,” rispose l’altro meccanicamente. “Persino queste aride ossa—”

E si fermò di colpo con la bocca aperta, una luce accecante di stupore nei suoi occhi pallidi.

“Guardi qui,” disse rauco e in fretta. “Lei ha pronunciato la parola. Che cosa significa? Che cosa può significare? Aride? Perché queste ossa sono aride?”

L’avvocato trasalì e fissò il mucchio dall’alto.

“Il suo caso completo!” gridò Paynter, in crescente eccitazione. “Dov’è l’acqua nel pozzo? L’acqua che vidi guizzare come una fiamma? Perché guizzò? Dove se n’è andata? Completo! Siamo sepolti sotto gli enigmi.”

Ashe si chinò, raccolse un osso e lo guardò.

“Ha ragione,” disse, con voce bassa e scossa: “quest’osso è arido—quanto un osso.”

“Sì, ho ragione,” rispose Cyprian. “E il suo mistico è ancora misterioso quanto un mistico.”

Ci fu un lungo silenzio. Ashe depose l’osso, raccolse l’ascia e la studiò più da vicino. Oltre l’opaca macchia all’angolo dell’acciaio non c’era nulla di insolito in essa, salvo un largo cencio bianco avvolto intorno al manico, forse per dare una presa migliore. L’avvocato ritenne comunque degno di nota che il cencio fosse certamente più nuovo e pulito dell’accetta. Ma entrambi erano del tutto asciutti.

“Signor Paynter,” disse infine, “ammetto che lei ha segnato un punto, nello spirito se non nella lettera. In stretta logica, questo più grande enigma non è una risposta al mio caso. Se quest’ascia non è stata immersa nell’acqua, è stata immersa nel sangue; e l’acqua che schizza fuori dal pozzo non è una spiegazione del poeta che schizza fuori dal bosco. Ma ammetto che moralmente e praticamente fa una differenza vitale. Non ci troviamo di fronte a una colossale contraddizione, e non sappiamo fin dove si estenda. Il corpo potrebbe essere stato smembrato o bollito fino alle ossa dall’assassino, benché possa essere difficile collegarlo alle condizioni del delitto. Potrebbe concepibilmente essere stato così ridotto da qualche proprietà dell’acqua e del suolo, poiché la decomposizione varia enormemente con queste cose. Non liquiderei il mio forte caso prima facie contro la persona più probabile a causa di queste difficoltà. Ma qui abbiamo qualcosa di interamente diverso. Che le ossa stesse rimangano asciutte in un pozzo pieno d’acqua, o in un pozzo che ieri era pieno d’acqua— questo ci porta all’orlo di qualcosa oltre il quale non possiamo fare alcuna congettura. C’è un fattore nuovo, enorme e del tutto ignoto. Finché non riusciamo a mettere insieme fatti così prodigiosi, non possiamo mettere insieme un caso contro Treherne o contro chiunque altro. No; c’è una sola cosa da fare adesso. Poiché non possiamo accusare Treherne, dobbiamo appellarci a lui. Dobbiamo esporgli il caso a suo carico francamente, davanti a lui, e confidare che egli abbia una spiegazione—e che la dia. Suggerisco di tornare indietro e di farlo ora.”

Paynter, cominciando a seguirlo, esitò un momento, e poi disse: “Mi perdoni per una specie di licenza; come lei dice, è un più antico amico della famiglia. Sono pienamente d’accordo col suo suggerimento, ma prima che lei agisca sui suoi presenti sospetti, sa, credo che la signorina Vane andrebbe un po’ avvertita? Ho piuttosto paura che tutto questo sarà per lei un nuovo colpo.”

“Va benissimo,” disse Ashe, dopo averlo guardato fermamente per un istante. “Andiamo prima da lei.”

Dall’imboccatura del bosco potevano vedere Barbara Vane che scriveva al tavolo da giardino, ingombro di corrispondenza, e il maggiordomo dal viso giallo che attendeva dietro la sua sedia. Man mano che i tratti d’erba si accorciavano tra loro, e il piccolo gruppo al tavolo si faceva più grande e più nitido nella luce del sole, Paynter ebbe la penosa sensazione di far parte di un’ambasceria di sventura. Essa si acuì quando la ragazza alzò lo sguardo dal tavolo e sorrise vedendoli.

“I should like to speak to you rather particularly if I may,” said the lawyer, with a touch of authority in his respect; and when the butler was dismissed he laid open the whole matter before her, speaking sympathetically, but leaving out nothing, from the strange escape of the poet from the wood to the last detail of the dry bones out of the well. No fault could be found with any one of his tones or phrases, and yet Cyprian, tingling in every nerve with the fine delicacy of his nation about the other sex, felt as if she were faced with an inquisitor. He stood about uneasily, watched the few colored clouds in the clear sky and the bright birds darting about the wood, and he heartily wished himself up the tree again.

Soon, however, the way the girl took it began to move him to perplexity rather than pity. It was like nothing he had expected, and yet he could not name the shade of difference. The final identification of her father’s skull, by the hole in the hat, turned her a little pale, but left her composed; this was, perhaps, explicable, since she had from the first taken the pessimistic view. But during the rest of the tale there rested on her broad brows under her copper coils of hair, a brooding spirit that was itself a mystery. He could only tell himself that she was less merely receptive, either firmly or weakly, than he would have expected. It was as if she revolved, not their problem, but her own. She was silent a long time, and said at last:

“Thank you, Mr. Ashe, I am really very grateful for this. After all, it brings things to the point where they must have come sooner or later.” She looked dreamily at the wood and sea, and went on: “I’ve not only had myself to consider, you see; but if you’re really thinking THAT, it’s time I spoke out, without asking anybody. You say, as if it were something very dreadful, ‘Mr. Treherne was in the wood that night.’ Well, it’s not quite so dreadful to me, you see, because I know he was. In fact, we were there together.”

“Together!” repeated the lawyer.

“We were together,” she said quietly, “because we had a right to be together.”

“Do you mean,” stammered Ashe, surprised out of himself, “that you were engaged?”

“No, no,” she said. “We were married.”

Then, amid a startled silence, she added, as a kind of afterthought:

“In fact, we are still.”

Strong as was his composure, the lawyer sat back in his chair with a sort of solid stupefaction at which Paynter could not help smiling.

“You will ask me, of course,” went on Barbara in the same measured manner, “why we should be married secretly, so that even my poor father did not know. Well, I answer you quite frankly to begin with; because, if he had known, he would certainly have cut me off with a shilling. He did not like my husband, and I rather fancy you do not like him either. And when I tell you this, I know perfectly well what you will say— the usual adventurer getting hold of the usual heiress. It is quite reasonable, and, as it happens, it is quite wrong. If I had deceived my father for the sake of the money, or even for the sake of a man, I should be a little ashamed to talk to you about it. And I think you can see that I am not ashamed.”

“Yes,” said the American, with a grave inclination, “yes, I can see that.”

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, as if seeking words for an obscure matter, and then said:

“Do you remember, Mr. Paynter, that day you first lunched here and told us about the African trees? Well, it was my birthday; I mean my first birthday. I was born then, or woke up or something. I had walked in this garden like a somnambulist in the sun. I think there are many such somnambulists in our set and our society; stunned with health, drugged with good manners, fitting their surroundings too well to be alive. Well, I came alive somehow; and you know how deep in us are the things we first realize when we were babies and began to take notice. I began to take notice. One of the first things I noticed was your own story, Mr. Paynter. I feel as if I heard of St. Securis as children hear of Santa Claus, and as if that big tree were a bogey I still believed in. For I do still believe in such things, or rather I believe in them more and more; I feel certain my poor father drove on the rocks by disbelieving, and you are all racing to ruin after him. That is why I do honestly want the estate, and that is why I am not ashamed of wanting it. I am perfectly certain, Mr. Paynter, that nobody can save this perishing land and this perishing people but those who understand. I mean who understand a thousand little signs and guides in the very soil and lie of the land, and traces that are almost trampled out. My husband understands, and I have begun to understand; my father would never have understood. There are powers, there is the spirit of a place, there are presences that are not to be put by. Oh, don’t fancy I am sentimental and hanker after the good old days. The old days were not all good; that is just the point, and we must understand enough to know the good from the evil. We must understand enough to save the traces of a saint or a sacred tradition, or, where a wicked god has been worshiped, to destroy his altar and to cut down his grove.”

“His grove,” said Paynter automatically, and looked toward the little wood, where the sunbright birds were flying.

“Mrs. Treherne,” said Ashe, with a formidable quietness, “I am not so unsympathetic with all this as you may perhaps suppose. I will not even say it is all moonshine, for it is something better. It is, if I may say so, honeymoonshine. I will never deny the saying that it makes the world go round, if it makes people’s heads go round too. But there are other sentiments, madam, and other duties. I need not tell you your father was a good man, and that what has befallen him would be pitiable, even as the fate of the wicked. This is a horrible thing, and it is chiefly among horrors that we must keep our common sense. There are reasons for everything, and when my old friend lies butchered do not come to me with even the most beautiful fairy tales about a saint and his enchanted grove.”

“Vorrei parlarle in modo piuttosto particolare, se posso,” disse l’avvocato, con un tocco di autorità nel suo rispetto; e quando il maggiordomo fu congedato le espose l’intera faccenda, parlando con partecipazione, ma senza tralasciare nulla, dalla strana fuga del poeta dal bosco fino all’ultimo dettaglio delle ossa asciutte tratte dal pozzo. Non si poteva trovare alcun difetto in nessuno dei suoi toni o delle sue frasi, eppure Cyprian, fremente in ogni nervo per la squisita delicatezza della sua nazione verso l’altro sesso, sentiva come se lei fosse posta di fronte a un inquisitore. Se ne stava a disagio, osservava le poche nubi colorate nel cielo limpido e i luminosi uccelli che saettavano intorno al bosco, e desiderava ardentemente di essere di nuovo sull’albero.

Presto, tuttavia, il modo in cui la ragazza accolse la cosa cominciò a muoverlo a perplessità più che a pietà. Non somigliava a nulla di ciò che si era aspettato, eppure non sapeva dar nome alla sfumatura di differenza. L’identificazione definitiva del teschio del padre, per il foro nel cappello, la fece impallidire un poco, ma la lasciò composta; ciò era, forse, spiegabile, dato che ella aveva fin dall’inizio assunto il punto di vista pessimistico. Ma per tutto il resto del racconto si posò sulle sue larghe sopracciglia, sotto le spire ramate dei suoi capelli, uno spirito assorto che era esso stesso un mistero. Egli poté solo dirsi che ella era meno semplicemente ricettiva, sia fermamente sia debolmente, di quanto si sarebbe aspettato. Era come se ella rimuginasse, non il loro problema, ma il proprio. Rimase in silenzio a lungo, e disse infine:

“Grazie, signor Ashe, le sono davvero molto grata per questo. Dopo tutto, porta le cose al punto a cui dovevano prima o poi arrivare.” Guardò sognante il bosco e il mare, e proseguì: “Non avevo solo me stessa da considerare, vede; ma se lei sta davvero pensando QUELLO, è ora che io parli, senza chiedere il permesso a nessuno. Lei dice, come se fosse qualcosa di terribile, ‘Il signor Treherne era nel bosco quella notte.’ Ebbene, non è poi così terribile per me, vede, perché io so che c’era. Anzi, eravamo lì insieme.”

“Insieme!” ripeté l’avvocato.

“Eravamo insieme,” disse ella con calma, “perché avevamo il diritto di essere insieme.”

“Vuol dire,” balbettò Ashe, tratto fuori di sé dalla sorpresa, “che eravate fidanzati?”

“No, no,” disse ella. “Eravamo sposati.”

Poi, in mezzo a un silenzio sbigottito, aggiunse, come una sorta di ripensamento:

“Anzi, lo siamo ancora.”

Per quanto salda fosse la sua compostezza, l’avvocato si abbandonò sulla sedia con una sorta di solida stupefazione di cui Paynter non poté fare a meno di sorridere.

“Lei mi chiederà, naturalmente,” proseguì Barbara con lo stesso tono misurato, “perché ci dovessimo sposare in segreto, così che nemmeno il mio povero padre lo sapesse. Ebbene, le rispondo con tutta franchezza per cominciare; perché, se lui lo avesse saputo, mi avrebbe certamente diseredata con uno scellino. Non gli piaceva mio marito, e immagino che non piaccia neppure a lei. E quando le dico questo, so perfettamente bene che cosa dirà— il solito avventuriero che mette le mani sulla solita ereditiera. È del tutto ragionevole e, come càpita, del tutto sbagliato. Se avessi ingannato mio padre per amore del denaro, o persino per amore di un uomo, mi vergognerei un poco a parlargliene. E credo che possa vedere che non me ne vergogno.”

“Sì,” disse l’americano, con un grave cenno, “sì, lo vedo.”

Ella lo guardò pensosa per un momento, come cercando le parole per una faccenda oscura, e poi disse:

“Si ricorda, signor Paynter, di quel giorno in cui pranzò qui la prima volta e ci parlò degli alberi africani? Ebbene, era il mio compleanno; intendo il mio primo compleanno. Nacqui allora, o mi svegliai, o qualcosa del genere. Avevo camminato in questo giardino come una sonnambula al sole. Credo che ci siano molti simili sonnambuli nel nostro ambiente e nella nostra società; storditi di salute, drogati di buone maniere, tanto ben calati nel loro ambiente da non essere vivi. Ebbene, in qualche modo mi risvegliai; e lei sa quanto profonde siano in noi le cose che percepiamo per la prima volta quando eravamo bambini e cominciammo a osservare. Cominciai a osservare. Una delle prime cose che notai fu la sua stessa storia, signor Paynter. Mi sembra di aver udito di San Securis come i bambini odono di Babbo Natale, e come se quel grande albero fosse uno spauracchio in cui ancora credevo. Perché io credo ancora in cose simili, o meglio ci credo sempre di più; sono certa che il mio povero padre si sia arenato sugli scogli per la sua incredulità, e voi tutti gli correte dietro verso la rovina. Ecco perché desidero onestamente la tenuta, ed ecco perché non mi vergogno di desiderarla. Sono perfettamente certa, signor Paynter, che nessuno può salvare questa terra morente e questa gente morente se non chi comprende. Intendo chi comprende un migliaio di piccoli segni e guide nel suolo stesso e nella conformazione del terreno, e tracce che sono quasi calpestate via. Mio marito comprende, e io ho cominciato a comprendere; mio padre non avrebbe mai compreso. Ci sono potenze, c’è lo spirito di un luogo, ci sono presenze che non si possono scacciare. Oh, non creda che io sia sentimentale e rimpianga i bei vecchi tempi. I vecchi tempi non erano tutti buoni; è proprio questo il punto, e dobbiamo comprendere abbastanza da saper distinguere il bene dal male. Dobbiamo comprendere abbastanza da salvare le tracce di un santo o di una sacra tradizione, oppure, là dove è stato adorato un dio malvagio, per distruggere il suo altare e abbattere il suo bosco sacro.”

“Il suo bosco sacro,” disse Paynter automaticamente, e guardò verso il boschetto, dove volavano gli uccelli radiosi di sole.

“Signora Treherne,” disse Ashe, con una formidabile quiete, “non sono così poco partecipe di tutto questo come forse lei suppone. Non dirò nemmeno che sia tutta luna di miele, perché è qualcosa di meglio. È, se posso dir così, luna-di-miele lunata. Non negherò mai il detto che essa fa girare il mondo, se fa girare anche la testa alla gente. Ma ci sono altri sentimenti, signora, e altri doveri. Non ho bisogno di dirle che suo padre era un buon uomo, e che ciò che gli è capitato sarebbe pietoso, persino come sorte di un malvagio. Questa è una cosa orribile, ed è soprattutto in mezzo agli orrori che dobbiamo conservare il nostro buon senso. Ci sono ragioni per ogni cosa, e quando il mio vecchio amico giace macellato non venga da me nemmeno con le più belle favole su un santo e il suo bosco incantato.”

“Well, and you!” she cried, and rose radiantly and swiftly. “With what kind of fairy tales do you come to me? In what enchanted groves are YOU walking? You come and tell me that Mr. Paynter found a well where the water danced and then disappeared; but of course miracles are all moonshine! You tell me you yourself fished bones from under the same water, and every bone was as dry as a biscuit; but for Heaven’s sake let us say nothing that makes anybody’s head go round! Really, Mr. Ashe, you must try to preserve your common sense!”

She was smiling, but with blazing eyes; and Ashe got to his feet with an involuntary laugh of surrender.

“Well, we must be going,” he said. “May I say that a tribute is really due to your new transcendental training? If I may say so, I always knew you had brains; and you’ve been learning to use them.”

The two amateur detectives went back to the wood for the moment, that Ashe might consider the removal of the unhappy Squire’s remains. As he pointed out, it was now legally possible to have an inquest, and, even at that early stage of investigations, he was in favor of having it at once.

“I shall be the coroner,” he said, “and I think it will be a case of ‘some person or persons unknown.’ Don’t be surprised; it is often done to give the guilty a false security. This is not the first time the police have found it convenient to have the inquest first and the inquiry afterward.”

But Paynter had paid little attention to the point; for his great gift of enthusiasm, long wasted on arts and affectations, was lifted to inspiration by the romance of real life into which he had just walked. He was really a great critic; he had a genius for admiration, and his admiration varied fittingly with everything he admired.

“A splendid girl and a splendid story,” he cried. “I feel as if I were in love again myself, not so much with her as with Eve or Helen of Troy, or some such tower of beauty in the morning of the world. Don’t you love all heroic things, that gravity and great candor, and the way she took one step from a sort of throne to stand in a wilderness with a vagabond? Oh, believe me, it is she who is the poet; she has the higher reason, and honor and valor are at rest in her soul.”

“In short, she is uncommonly pretty,” replied Ashe, with some cynicism. “I knew a murderess rather well who was very much like her, and had just that colored hair.”

“You talk as if a murderer could be caught red-haired instead of red-handed,” retorted Paynter. “Why, at this very minute, you could be caught red-haired yourself. Are you a murderer, by any chance?”

Ashe looked up quickly, and then smiled.

“I’m afraid I’m a connoisseur in murderers, as you are in poets,” he answered, “and I assure you they are of all colors in hair as well as temperament. I suppose it’s inhumane, but mine is a monstrously interesting trade, even in a little place like this. As for that girl, of course I’ve known her all her life, and—but—but that is just the question. Have I known her all her life? Have I known her at all? Was she even there to be known? You admire her for telling the truth; and so she did, by God, when she said that some people wake up late, who have never lived before. Do we know what they might do—we, who have only seen them asleep?”

“Great heavens!” cried Paynter. “You don’t dare suggest that she—”

“No, I don’t,” said the lawyer, with composure, “but there are other reasons… I don’t suggest anything fully, till we’ve had our interview with this poet of yours. I think I know where to find him.”

They found him, in fact, before they expected him, sitting on the bench outside the Vane Arms, drinking a mug of cider and waiting for the return of his American friend; so it was not difficult to open conversation with him. Nor did he in any way avoid the subject of the tragedy; and the lawyer, seating himself also on the long bench that fronted the little market place, was soon putting the last developments as lucidly as he had put them to Barbara.

“Well,” said Treherne at last, leaning back and frowning at the signboard, with the colored birds and dolphins, just about his head; “suppose somebody did kill the Squire. He’d killed a good many people with his hygiene and his enlightened landlordism.”

Paynter was considerably uneasy at this alarming opening; but the poet went on quite coolly, with his hands in his pockets and his feet thrust out into the street.

“When a man has the power of a Sultan in Turkey, and uses it with the ideas of a spinster in Tooting, I often wonder that nobody puts a knife in him. I wish there were more sympathy for murderers, somehow. I’m very sorry the poor old fellow’s gone myself; but you gentlemen always seem to forget there are any other people in the world. He’s all right; he was a good fellow, and his soul, I fancy, has gone to the happiest paradise of all.”

The anxious American could read nothing of the effect of this in the dark Napoleonic face of the lawyer, who merely said: “What do you mean?”

“The fool’s paradise,” said Treherne, and drained his pot of cider.

The lawyer rose. He did not look at Treherne, or speak to him; but looked and spoke straight across him to the American, who found the utterance not a little unexpected.

“Mr. Paynter,” said Ashe, “you thought it rather morbid of me to collect murderers; but it’s fortunate for your own view of the case that I do. It may surprise you to know that Mr. Treherne has now, in my eyes, entirely cleared himself of suspicion. I have been intimate with several assassins, as I remarked; but there’s one thing none of them ever did. I never knew a murderer to talk about the murder, and then at once deny it and defend it. No, if a man is concealing his crime, why should he go out of his way to apologize for it?”

“Ebbene, e lei!” gridò ella, e si levò radiosa e rapida. “Con che sorta di favole viene lei da me? In quali boschi incantati sta passeggiando LEI? Viene a dirmi che il signor Paynter ha trovato un pozzo dove l’acqua danzava e poi è scomparsa; ma naturalmente i miracoli sono tutti luna di miele! Mi dice che lei stesso ha pescato ossa da sotto quella stessa acqua, e ogni osso era asciutto come un biscotto; ma per amor del cielo non diciamo nulla che faccia girare la testa a qualcuno! Davvero, signor Ashe, deve sforzarsi di conservare il suo buon senso!”

Ella sorrideva, ma con occhi fiammeggianti; e Ashe si alzò in piedi con un involontario riso di resa.

“Ebbene, dobbiamo andare,” disse. “Posso dire che un tributo è davvero dovuto al suo nuovo addestramento trascendentale? Se posso dir così, ho sempre saputo che lei aveva cervello; e ha imparato a usarlo.”

I due detective dilettanti tornarono per il momento al bosco, affinché Ashe potesse considerare la rimozione delle spoglie dell’infelice Squire. Come egli fece notare, era ormai legalmente possibile tenere un’inchiesta e, persino a quello stadio iniziale delle indagini, era favorevole a tenerla subito.

“Sarò io il coroner,” disse, “e credo che sarà un caso di ‘una o più persone ignote.’ Non si sorprenda; lo si fa spesso per dare ai colpevoli una falsa sicurezza. Non è la prima volta che la polizia trova conveniente fare prima l’inchiesta e l’indagine dopo.”

Ma Paynter aveva prestato poca attenzione al punto; poiché il suo grande dono d’entusiasmo, a lungo sprecato in arti e affettazioni, era sollevato a ispirazione dal romanzesco della vita reale in cui era appena entrato. Era davvero un grande critico; aveva un genio per l’ammirazione, e la sua ammirazione variava a proposito con tutto ciò che ammirava.

“Una splendida ragazza e una splendida storia,” gridò. “Mi sento come se fossi di nuovo innamorato io stesso, non tanto di lei quanto di Eva o di Elena di Troia, o di qualche simile torre di bellezza nel mattino del mondo. Non ama tutte le cose eroiche, quella gravità e quella grande sincerità, e il modo in cui ella ha fatto un passo da una sorta di trono per stare in un deserto accanto a un vagabondo? Oh, mi creda, è lei la poetessa; è lei ad avere la ragione superiore, e l’onore e il valore riposano nella sua anima.”

“In breve, è straordinariamente carina,” rispose Ashe, con un po’ di cinismo. “Ho conosciuto piuttosto bene una assassina che le somigliava moltissimo, e aveva proprio quei capelli di quel colore.”

“Parla come se un assassino potesse essere colto con i capelli rossi invece che con le mani rosse,” ribatté Paynter. “Ma come, in questo preciso istante, lei stesso potrebbe essere colto con i capelli rossi. È forse un assassino, per caso?”

Ashe alzò lo sguardo di scatto, e poi sorrise.

“Temo di essere un intenditore di assassini, come lei lo è di poeti,” rispose, “e le assicuro che sono di ogni colore nei capelli come anche nel temperamento. Suppongo sia disumano, ma il mio è un mestiere mostruosamente interessante, anche in un posticino come questo. Quanto a quella ragazza, naturalmente la conosco da tutta la vita, e—ma—ma è proprio questa la questione. L’ho conosciuta per tutta la vita? L’ho conosciuta affatto? Era anche lì, da conoscere? Lei la ammira per aver detto la verità; e così ha fatto, per Dio, quando ha detto che certe persone si svegliano tardi, dopo non aver mai vissuto prima. Sappiamo che cosa potrebbero fare—noi, che le abbiamo viste solo addormentate?”

“Santo cielo!” gridò Paynter. “Non oserà suggerire che ella—”

“No, non lo faccio,” disse l’avvocato, con compostezza, “ma ci sono altre ragioni… Non suggerisco nulla di definitivo, finché non avremo avuto il nostro colloquio con questo suo poeta. Credo di sapere dove trovarlo.”

Lo trovarono, di fatto, prima di quanto se lo aspettassero, seduto sulla panca fuori dal Vane Arms, a bere un boccale di sidro e ad attendere il ritorno del suo amico americano; sicché non fu difficile avviare la conversazione con lui. Né egli evitò in alcun modo l’argomento della tragedia; e l’avvocato, sedendosi anch’egli sulla lunga panca che fronteggiava la piccola piazza del mercato, prese presto a esporre gli ultimi sviluppi con la stessa lucidità con cui li aveva esposti a Barbara.

“Ebbene,” disse Treherne infine, appoggiandosi all’indietro e aggrottando la fronte verso l’insegna, con gli uccelli colorati e i delfini, proprio sopra la sua testa; “supponiamo che qualcuno abbia ucciso lo Squire. Aveva ucciso parecchia gente con la sua igiene e il suo illuminato spirito di proprietario terriero.”

Paynter era assai a disagio per questo esordio allarmante; ma il poeta proseguì con la massima freddezza, con le mani in tasca e i piedi allungati fuori nella strada.

“Quando un uomo ha il potere di un Sultano di Turchia, e lo usa con le idee di una zitella di Tooting, mi domando spesso come mai nessuno gli pianti un coltello addosso. Vorrei che ci fosse più comprensione per gli assassini, in qualche modo. Sono molto dispiaciuto io stesso che il povero vecchio se ne sia andato; ma voi signori sembrate sempre dimenticare che al mondo c’è anche altra gente. Lui sta bene; era un brav’uomo, e la sua anima, immagino, è andata nel più felice paradiso di tutti.”

L’ansioso americano non riuscì a leggere nulla dell’effetto di questo nel volto scuro e napoleonico dell’avvocato, che si limitò a dire: “Che cosa intende?”

“Il paradiso degli sciocchi,” disse Treherne, e vuotò il suo boccale di sidro.

L’avvocato si levò. Non guardò Treherne, né gli parlò; ma guardò e parlò dritto oltre lui all’americano, che trovò quella dichiarazione non poco inaspettata.

“Signor Paynter,” disse Ashe, “lei ha pensato che fosse piuttosto morboso da parte mia collezionare assassini; ma è una fortuna per la sua stessa visione del caso che io lo faccia. Potrebbe sorprenderla sapere che il signor Treherne si è ormai, ai miei occhi, del tutto scagionato dal sospetto. Ho avuto rapporti intimi con parecchi assassini, come ho osservato; ma c’è una cosa che nessuno di loro ha mai fatto. Non ho mai conosciuto un assassino che parlasse del delitto, e poi subito lo negasse e lo difendesse. No, se un uomo sta nascondendo il proprio delitto, perché dovrebbe darsi la pena di scusarlo?”

“Well,” said Paynter, with his ready appreciation, “I always said you were a remarkable man; and that’s certainly a remarkable idea.”

“Do I understand,” asked the poet, kicking his heels on the cobbles, “that both you gentlemen have been kindly directing me toward the gallows?”

“No,” said Paynter thoughtfully. “I never thought you guilty; and even supposing I had, if you understand me, I should never have thought it quite so guilty to be guilty. It would not have been for money or any mean thing, but for something a little wilder and worthier of a man of genius. After all, I suppose, the poet has passions like great unearthly appetites; and the world has always judged more gently of his sins. But now that Mr. Ashe admits your innocence, I can honestly say I have always affirmed it.”

The poet rose also. “Well, I am innocent, oddly enough,” he said. “I think I can make a guess about your vanishing well, but of the death and dry bones I know no more than the dead; if so much. And, by the way, my dear Paynter”—and he turned two bright eyes on the art critic—“I will excuse you from excusing me for all the things I haven’t done; and you, I hope, will excuse me if I differ from you altogether about the morality of poets. As you suggest, it is a fashionable view, but I think it is a fallacy. No man has less right to be lawless than a man of imagination. For he has spiritual adventures, and can take his holidays when he likes. I could picture the poor Squire carried off to elfland whenever I wanted him carried off, and that wood needed no crime to make it wicked for me. That red sunset the other night was all that a murder would have been to many men. No, Mr. Ashe; show, when next you sit in judgment, a little mercy to some wretched man who drinks and robs because he must drink beer to taste it, and take it to drink it. Have compassion on the next batch of poor thieves, who have to hold things in order to have them. But if ever you find ME stealing one small farthing, when I can shut my eyes and see the city of El Dorado, then”—and he lifted his head like a falcon—“show me no mercy, for I shall deserve none.”

“Well,” remarked Ashe, after a pause, “I must go and fix things up for the inquest. Mr. Treherne, your attitude is singularly interesting; I really almost wish I could add you to my collection of murderers. They are a varied and extraordinary set.”

“Has it ever occurred to you,” asked Paynter, “that perhaps the men who have never committed murder are a varied and very extraordinary set? Perhaps every plain man’s life holds the real mystery, the secret of sins avoided.”

“Possibly,” replied Ashe. “It would be a long business to stop the next man in the street and ask him what crimes he never committed and why not. And I happen to be busy, so you’ll excuse me.”

“What,” asked the American, when he and the poet were alone, “is this guess of yours about the vanishing water?”

“Well, I’m not sure I’ll tell you yet,” answered Treherne, something of the old mischief coming back into his dark eyes. “But I’ll tell you something else, which may be connected with it; something I couldn’t tell until my wife had told you about our meeting in the wood.” His face had grown grave again, and he resumed after a pause:

“When my wife started to follow her father I advised her to go back first to the house, to leave it by another door and to meet me in the wood in half an hour. We often made these assignations, of course, and generally thought them great fun, but this time the question was serious, and I didn’t want the wrong thing done in a hurry. It was a question whether anything could be done to undo an experiment we both vaguely felt to be dangerous, and she especially thought, after reflection, that interference would make things worse. She thought the old sportsman, having been dared to do something, would certainly not be dissuaded by the very man who had dared him or by a woman whom he regarded as a child. She left me at last in a sort of despair, but I lingered with a last hope of doing something, and drew doubtfully near to the heart of the wood; and there, instead of the silence I expected, I heard a voice. It seemed as if the Squire must be talking to himself, and I had the unpleasant fancy that he had already lost his reason in that wood of witchcraft. But I soon found that if he was talking he was talking with two voices. Other fancies attacked me, as that the other was the voice of the tree or the voices of the three trees talking together, and with no man near. But it was not the voice of the tree. The next moment I knew the voice, for I had heard it twenty times across the table. It was the voice of that doctor of yours; I heard it as certainly as you hear my voice now.”

After a moment’s silence, he resumed: “I left the wood, I hardly knew why, and with wild and bewildered feelings; and as I came out into the faint moonshine I saw that old lawyer standing quietly, but staring at me like an owl. At least, the light touched his red hair with fire, but his square old face was in shadow. But I knew, if I could have read it, that it was the face of a hanging judge.”

He threw himself on the bench again, smiled a little, and added: “Only, like a good many hanging judges, I fancy, he was waiting patiently to hang the wrong man.”

“And the right man—” said Paynter mechanically. Treherne shrugged his shoulders, sprawling on the ale bench, and played with his empty pot.

“Ebbene,” disse Paynter, con la sua pronta capacità di apprezzamento, “ho sempre detto che lei era un uomo notevole; e questa è certamente un’idea notevole.”

“Devo capire,” chiese il poeta, battendo i tacchi sui ciottoli, “che entrambi voi signori mi avete gentilmente indirizzato verso la forca?”

“No,” disse Paynter pensieroso. “Non l’ho mai creduta colpevole; e anche ammettendo che lo avessi fatto, se mi capisce, non avrei mai pensato che fosse così colpevole essere colpevoli. Non sarebbe stato per denaro o per qualche cosa meschina, ma per qualcosa di un po’ più selvaggio e più degno di un uomo di genio. Dopo tutto, suppongo, il poeta ha passioni come grandi appetiti ultraterreni; e il mondo ha sempre giudicato più benevolmente i suoi peccati. Ma ora che il signor Ashe ammette la sua innocenza, posso onestamente dire di averla sempre affermata.”

Anche il poeta si levò. “Ebbene, sono innocente, per quanto strano,” disse. “Credo di poter azzardare un’ipotesi sul vostro pozzo scomparso, ma della morte e delle ossa asciutte non ne so più di quanto ne sappia il morto; se pure altrettanto. E, a proposito, mio caro Paynter”—e volse due occhi brillanti sul critico d’arte—“la dispenserò dal dispensarmi per tutte le cose che non ho fatto; e lei, spero, mi dispenserà se dissento del tutto da lei circa la moralità dei poeti. Come lei suggerisce, è una visione alla moda, ma credo che sia un’illusione. Nessun uomo ha meno diritto di essere fuorilegge di un uomo di immaginazione. Poiché egli ha avventure spirituali, e può prendersi le sue vacanze quando vuole. Potrei immaginare il povero Squire portato via nel regno degli elfi ogni volta che volevo che venisse portato via, e a quel bosco non serviva alcun delitto per rendermelo malvagio. Quel rosso tramonto l’altra sera fu tutto ciò che un delitto sarebbe stato per molti uomini. No, signor Ashe; mostri, la prossima volta che siederà a giudizio, un po’ di misericordia a qualche disgraziato che beve e ruba perché deve bere birra per assaporarla, e prenderla per berla. Abbia compassione della prossima infornata di poveri ladri, che devono impossessarsi delle cose per averle. Ma se mai mi troverà a rubare un solo minimo soldo, quando posso chiudere gli occhi e vedere la città di El Dorado, allora”—e sollevò il capo come un falco—“non mi mostri alcuna misericordia, poiché non ne meriterò alcuna.”

“Ebbene,” osservò Ashe, dopo una pausa, “devo andare a organizzare le cose per l’inchiesta. Signor Treherne, il suo atteggiamento è singolarmente interessante; davvero quasi vorrei poterla aggiungere alla mia collezione di assassini. Sono un insieme vario e straordinario.”

“Le è mai venuto in mente,” chiese Paynter, “che forse gli uomini che non hanno mai commesso un delitto siano un insieme vario e assai straordinario? Forse la vita di ogni uomo comune racchiude il vero mistero, il segreto dei peccati evitati.”

“Possibile,” rispose Ashe. “Sarebbe una lunga faccenda fermare il prossimo uomo per strada e chiedergli quali delitti non ha mai commesso e perché no. E il caso vuole che io sia occupato, quindi mi scuserà.”

“Qual è,” chiese l’americano, quando lui e il poeta furono soli, “questa sua ipotesi sull’acqua scomparsa?”

“Ebbene, non sono sicuro di volerglielo ancora dire,” rispose Treherne, con qualcosa della vecchia malizia che gli tornava negli occhi scuri. “Ma le dirò qualcos’altro, che forse è collegato a questo; qualcosa che non potevo dire finché mia moglie non le avesse parlato del nostro incontro nel bosco.” Il suo viso si era fatto di nuovo grave, ed egli riprese dopo una pausa:

“Quando mia moglie si mise a seguire suo padre le consigliai di tornare prima alla casa, di uscirne da un’altra porta e di incontrarmi nel bosco dopo mezz’ora. Ci davamo spesso questi appuntamenti, naturalmente, e in genere li trovavamo grande spasso, ma questa volta la questione era seria, e non volevo che si facesse la cosa sbagliata in fretta. Era una questione di sapere se si potesse fare qualcosa per disfare un esperimento che entrambi vagamente sentivamo pericoloso, e lei in particolare pensava, dopo riflessione, che intervenire avrebbe peggiorato le cose. Ella pensava che il vecchio sportivo, essendo stato sfidato a fare qualcosa, non si sarebbe di certo lasciato dissuadere proprio dall’uomo che l’aveva sfidato o da una donna che egli considerava una bambina. Mi lasciò infine in una sorta di disperazione, ma io indugiai con un’ultima speranza di fare qualcosa, e mi avvicinai incerto al cuore del bosco; e là, invece del silenzio che mi aspettavo, udii una voce. Sembrava come se lo Squire dovesse parlare da solo, e ebbi la spiacevole impressione che avesse già perso la ragione in quel bosco di stregoneria. Ma presto scoprii che, se parlava, parlava con due voci. Altre fantasie mi assalirono, come che l’altra fosse la voce dell’albero o le voci dei tre alberi che parlavano insieme, senza alcun uomo vicino. Ma non era la voce dell’albero. Un istante dopo riconobbi la voce, poiché l’avevo udita venti volte attraverso il tavolo. Era la voce di quel suo dottore; la udii con la stessa certezza con cui lei ode la mia voce ora.”

Dopo un momento di silenzio, riprese: “Uscii dal bosco, a stento sapevo perché, e con sentimenti selvaggi e sconvolti; e mentre uscivo nella fioca luce lunare vidi quel vecchio avvocato in piedi in silenzio, ma che mi fissava come un gufo. Almeno, la luce sfiorava i suoi capelli rossi di fuoco, ma il suo quadrato vecchio viso era in ombra. Ma sapevo, se solo avessi potuto leggerlo, che era il viso di un giudice che manda alla forca.”

Si gettò di nuovo sulla panca, sorrise un poco, e aggiunse: “Soltanto che, come parecchi giudici da forca, immagino, egli aspettava pazientemente di impiccare l’uomo sbagliato.”

“E l’uomo giusto—” disse Paynter meccanicamente. Treherne scrollò le spalle, sdraiandosi sulla panca da osteria, e giocherellò con il suo boccale vuoto.

IV. THE CHASE AFTER THE TRUTH

Some time after the inquest, which had ended in the inconclusive verdict which Mr. Andrew Ashe had himself predicted and achieved, Paynter was again sitting on the bench outside the village inn, having on the little table in front of it a tall glass of light ale, which he enjoyed much more as local color than as liquor. He had but one companion on the bench, and that a new one, for the little market place was empty at that hour, and he had lately, for the rest, been much alone. He was not unhappy, for he resembled his great countryman, Walt Whitman, in carrying a kind of universe with him like an open umbrella; but he was not only alone, but lonely. For Ashe had gone abruptly up to London, and since his return had been occupied obscurely with legal matters, doubtless bearing on the murder. And Treherne had long since taken up his position openly, at the great house, as the husband of the great lady, and he and she were occupied with sweeping reforms on the estate. The lady especially, being of the sort whose very dreams “drive at practice,” was landscape gardening as with the gestures of a giantess. It was natural, therefore, that so sociable a spirit as Paynter should fall into speech with the one other stranger who happened to be staying at the inn, evidently a bird of passage like himself. This man, who was smoking a pipe on the bench beside him, with his knapsack before him on the table, was an artist come to sketch on that romantic coast; a tall man in a velvet jacket, with a shock of tow-colored hair, a long fair beard, but eyes of dark brown, the effect of which contrast reminded Paynter vaguely, he hardly knew why, of a Russian. The stranger carried his knapsack into many picturesque corners; he obtained permission to set up his easel in that high garden where the late Squire had held his al fresco banquets. But Paynter had never had an opportunity of judging of the artist’s work, nor did he find it easy to get the artist even to talk of his art. Cyprian himself was always ready to talk of any art, and he talked of it excellently, but with little response. He gave his own reasons for preferring the Cubists to the cult of Picasso, but his new friend seemed to have but a faint interest in either. He insinuated that perhaps the Neo-Primitives were after all only thinning their line, while the true Primitives were rather tightening it; but the stranger seemed to receive the insinuation without any marked reaction of feeling. When Paynter had even gone back as far into the past as the Post-Impressionists to find a common ground, and not found it, other memories began to creep back into his mind. He was just reflecting, rather darkly, that after all the tale of the peacock trees needed a mysterious stranger to round it off, and this man had much the air of being one, when the mysterious stranger himself said suddenly:

“Well, I think I’d better show you the work I’m doing down here.”

He had his knapsack before him on the table, and he smiled rather grimly as he began to unstrap it. Paynter looked on with polite expressions of interest, but was considerably surprised when the artist unpacked and placed on the table, not any recognizable works of art, even of the most Cubist description, but (first) a quire of foolscap closely written with notes in black and red ink, and (second), to the American’s extreme amazement, the old woodman’s ax with the linen wrapper, which he had himself found in the well long ago.

“Sorry to give you a start, sir,” said the Russian artist, with a marked London accent. “But I’d better explain straight off that I’m a policeman.”

“You don’t look it,” said Paynter.

“I’m not supposed to,” replied the other. “Mr. Ashe brought me down here from the Yard to investigate; but he told me to report to you when I’d got anything to go on. Would you like to go into the matter now?

“When I took this matter up,” explained the detective, “I did it at Mr. Ashe’s request, and largely, of course, on Mr. Ashe’s lines. Mr. Ashe is a great criminal lawyer; with a beautiful brain, sir, as full as the Newgate Calendar. I took, as a working notion, his view that only you five gentlemen round the table in the Squire’s garden were acquainted with the Squire’s movements. But you gentlemen, if I may say so, have a way of forgetting certain other things and other people which we are rather taught to look for first. And as I followed Mr. Ashe’s inquiries through the stages you know already, through certain suspicions I needn’t discuss because they’ve been dropped, I found the thing shaping after all toward something, in the end, which I think we should have considered at the beginning. Now, to begin with, it is not true that there were five men round the table. There were six.”

The creepy conditions of that garden vigil vaguely returned upon Paynter; and he thought of a ghost, or something more nameless than a ghost. But the deliberate speech of the detective soon enlightened him.

“There were six men and five gentlemen, if you like to put it so,” he proceeded. “That man Miles, the butler, saw the Squire vanish as plainly as you did; and I soon found that Miles was a man worthy of a good deal of attention.”

A light of understanding dawned on Paynter’s face. “So that was it, was it!” he muttered.

“Does all our mythological mystery end with a policeman collaring a butler? Well, I agree with you he is far from an ordinary butler, even to look at; and the fault in imagination is mine. Like many faults in imagination, it was simply snobbishness.”

“We don’t go quite so fast as that,” observed the officer, in an impassive manner. “I only said I found the inquiry pointing to Miles; and that he was well worthy of attention. He was much more in the old Squire’s confidence than many people supposed; and when I cross-examined him he told me a good deal that was worth knowing. I’ve got it all down in these notes here; but at the moment I’ll only trouble you with one detail of it. One night this butler was just outside the Squire’s dining-room door, when he heard the noise of a violent quarrel. The Squire was a violent gentleman, from time to time; but the curious thing about this scene was that the other gentleman was the more violent of the two. Miles heard him say repeatedly that the Squire was a public nuisance, and that his death would be a good riddance for everybody. I only stop now to tell you that the other gentleman was Dr. Burton Brown, the medical man of this village.

IV. LA CACCIA ALLA VERITÀ

Qualche tempo dopo l’inchiesta, che si era conclusa con il verdetto inconcludente che il signor Andrew Ashe aveva egli stesso predetto e ottenuto, Paynter sedeva di nuovo sulla panca fuori dalla locanda del villaggio, avendo sul piccolo tavolo davanti a sé un alto bicchiere di birra chiara, che gustava assai più come colore locale che come bevanda. Aveva un solo compagno sulla panca, e per giunta nuovo, poiché la piccola piazza del mercato era vuota a quell’ora, ed egli era stato di recente, per il resto, molto solo. Non era infelice, poiché somigliava al suo grande connazionale, Walt Whitman, nel portarsi appresso una sorta di universo come un ombrello aperto; ma non era soltanto solo, era solitario. Poiché Ashe era partito bruscamente per Londra, e dopo il suo ritorno era stato occupato oscuramente in faccende legali, che senza dubbio riguardavano il delitto. E Treherne aveva da tempo assunto apertamente la sua posizione, alla grande casa, come marito della gran signora, e lui e lei erano occupati in radicali riforme sulla tenuta. La signora specialmente, essendo di quella specie i cui stessi sogni “puntano alla pratica,” faceva del giardinaggio paesaggistico con i gesti di una gigantessa. Era naturale, dunque, che uno spirito così socievole come Paynter attaccasse discorso con l’unico altro forestiero che si trovava per caso ad alloggiare alla locanda, evidentemente un uccello di passo come lui. Quest’uomo, che fumava una pipa sulla panca accanto a lui, con lo zaino davanti a sé sul tavolo, era un artista venuto a disegnare su quella costa romantica; un uomo alto in giacca di velluto, con una zazzera di capelli color stoppa, una lunga barba bionda, ma occhi di un bruno scuro, il cui effetto di contrasto ricordava vagamente a Paynter, non sapeva bene perché, un russo. Il forestiero portava il suo zaino in molti angoli pittoreschi; ottenne il permesso di piantare il cavalletto in quell’alto giardino dove il defunto Squire aveva tenuto i suoi banchetti all’aperto. Ma Paynter non aveva mai avuto occasione di giudicare l’opera dell’artista, né trovava facile indurre l’artista anche solo a parlare della sua arte. Cyprian stesso era sempre pronto a parlare di qualsiasi arte, e ne parlava in modo eccellente, ma con poco riscontro. Diede le proprie ragioni per preferire i Cubisti al culto di Picasso, ma il suo nuovo amico sembrava avere solo un debole interesse per l’uno o per l’altro. Insinuò che forse i Neo-Primitivi stavano dopo tutto solo assottigliando la loro linea, mentre i veri Primitivi la stavano piuttosto irrigidendo; ma il forestiero sembrò accogliere l’insinuazione senza alcuna marcata reazione di sentimento. Quando Paynter fu persino risalito così indietro nel passato fino ai Post-Impressionisti per trovare un terreno comune, e non l’ebbe trovato, altri ricordi cominciarono a insinuarsi di nuovo nella sua mente. Stava giusto riflettendo, piuttosto cupamente, che dopo tutto la storia degli alberi-pavone aveva bisogno di un misterioso forestiero per completarsi, e quest’uomo aveva molto l’aria di esserne uno, quando il misterioso forestiero stesso disse d’improvviso:

“Ebbene, credo sia meglio che le mostri il lavoro che sto facendo quaggiù.”

Aveva lo zaino davanti a sé sul tavolo, e sorrise in modo piuttosto torvo mentre cominciava a slacciarlo. Paynter osservava con cortesi espressioni d’interesse, ma rimase assai sorpreso quando l’artista disimballò e depose sul tavolo, non un’opera d’arte riconoscibile, neppure della più cubista fattura, ma (primo) un fascicolo di carta protocollo fittamente vergato di note in inchiostro nero e rosso, e (secondo), con estremo stupore dell’americano, la vecchia ascia del taglialegna con l’involucro di lino, che egli stesso aveva trovato nel pozzo tanto tempo prima.

“Mi scusi se le ho fatto prendere un colpo, signore,” disse il artista russo, con un marcato accento di Londra. “Ma è meglio che le spieghi subito che sono un poliziotto.”

“Non ne ha l’aria,” disse Paynter.

“Non devo averla,” rispose l’altro. “Il signor Ashe mi ha portato quaggiù da Scotland Yard per indagare; ma mi ha detto di riferire a lei quando avessi qualcosa su cui basarmi. Vuole entrare nel merito della questione adesso?

“Quando ho assunto questa faccenda,” spiegò il detective, “l’ho fatto su richiesta del signor Ashe, e in gran parte, naturalmente, sulle linee del signor Ashe. Il signor Ashe è un grande penalista; con un cervello magnifico, signore, pieno come il Calendario di Newgate. Ho preso, come ipotesi di lavoro, la sua tesi che soltanto voi cinque signori intorno al tavolo nel giardino dello Squire foste al corrente dei movimenti dello Squire. Ma voi signori, se posso dir così, avete l’abitudine di dimenticare certe altre cose e certe altre persone che a noi è piuttosto insegnato a cercare per prime. E mentre seguivo le indagini del signor Ashe attraverso le fasi che lei già conosce, attraverso certi sospetti che non ho bisogno di discutere perché sono stati lasciati cadere, ho trovato che la cosa prendeva forma dopo tutto verso qualcosa, alla fine, che credo avremmo dovuto considerare fin dal principio. Ora, tanto per cominciare, non è vero che intorno al tavolo ci fossero cinque uomini. Erano sei.”

Le raccapriccianti condizioni di quella veglia nel giardino tornarono vagamente su Paynter; ed egli pensò a un fantasma, o a qualcosa di più innominabile di un fantasma. Ma il posato discorso del detective presto lo illuminò.

“C’erano sei uomini e cinque signori, se vuole metterla così,” proseguì. “Quel Miles, il maggiordomo, vide lo Squire svanire altrettanto chiaramente di lei; e presto scoprii che Miles era un uomo degno di parecchia attenzione.”

Una luce di comprensione albeggiò sul viso di Paynter. “Così era questo, dunque!” mormorò.

“Tutto il nostro mistero mitologico finisce con un poliziotto che acciuffa un maggiordomo? Ebbene, concordo con lei che è ben lungi dall’essere un maggiordomo ordinario, persino a vederlo; e la colpa nell’immaginazione è mia. Come molte colpe dell’immaginazione, era semplicemente snobismo.”

“Non andiamo così in fretta,” osservò l’ufficiale, in modo impassibile. “Ho solo detto che ho trovato l’indagine indirizzarsi verso Miles; e che era ben degno di attenzione. Egli era assai più nella confidenza del vecchio Squire di quanto molte persone supponessero; e quando lo interrogai a fondo mi disse parecchie cose che valeva la pena di sapere. Ho messo tutto per iscritto in queste note qui; ma per il momento la disturberò con un solo dettaglio. Una notte questo maggiordomo si trovava proprio fuori dalla porta della sala da pranzo dello Squire, quando udì il rumore di un violento litigio. Lo Squire era un signore violento, di tanto in tanto; ma la cosa curiosa di questa scena era che l’altro signore era il più violento dei due. Miles lo udì dire ripetutamente che lo Squire era una pubblica calamità, e che la sua morte sarebbe stata una liberazione per tutti. Mi fermo solo ora a dirle che l’altro signore era il dottor Burton Brown, l’uomo di medicina di questo villaggio.

“The next examination I made was that of Martin, the woodcutter. Upon one point at least his evidence is quite clear, and is, as you will see, largely confirmed by other witnesses. He says first that the doctor prevented him from recovering his ax, and this is corroborated by Mr. and Mrs. Treherne. But he says further that the doctor admitted having the thing himself; and this again finds support in other evidence by the gardener, who saw the doctor, some time afterward, come by himself and pick up the chopper. Martin says that Doctor Brown repeatedly refused to give it up, alleging some fanciful excuse every time. And, finally, Mr. Paynter, we will hear the evidence of the ax itself.”

He laid the woodman’s tool on the table in front of him, and began to rip up and unwrap the curious linen covering round the handle.

“You will admit this is an odd bandage,” he said. “And that’s just the odd thing about it, that it really is a bandage. This white stuff is the sort of lint they use in hospitals, cut into strips like this. But most doctors keep some; and I have the evidence of Jake the fisherman, with whom Doctor Brown lived for some time, that the doctor had this useful habit. And, last,” he added, flattening out a corner of the rag on the table, “isn’t it odd that it should be marked T.B.B.?”

The American gazed at the rudely inked initials, but hardly saw them. What he saw, as in a mirror in his darkened memory, was the black figure with the black gloves against the blood-red sunset, as he had seen it when he came out of the wood, and which had always haunted him, he knew not why.

“Of course, I see what you mean,” he said, “and it’s very painful for me, for I knew and respected the man. But surely, also, it’s very far from explaining everything. If he is a murderer, is he a magician? Why did the well water all evaporate in a night, and leave the dead man’s bones dry as dust? That’s not a common operation in the hospitals, is it?”

“As to the water, we do know the explanation,” said the detective. “I didn’t tumble to it at first myself, being a Cockney; but a little talk with Jake and the other fisherman about the old smuggling days put me straight about that. But I admit the dried remains still stump us all. All the same—”

A shadow fell across the table, and his talk was sharply cut short. Ashe was standing under the painted sign, buttoned up grimly in black, and with the face of the hanging judge, of which the poet had spoken, plain this time in the broad sunlight. Behind him stood two big men in plain clothes, very still; but Paynter knew instantly who they were.

“We must move at once,” said the lawyer. “Dr. Burton Brown is leaving the village.”

The tall detective sprang to his feet, and Paynter instinctively imitated him.

“He has gone up to the Trehernes possibly to say good-by,” went on Ashe rapidly. “I’m sorry, but we must arrest him in the garden there, if necessary. I’ve kept the lady out of the way, I think. But you”—addressing the factitious landscape painter—“must go up at once and rig up that easel of yours near the table and be ready. We will follow quietly, and come up behind the tree. We must be careful, for it’s clear he’s got wind of us, or he wouldn’t be doing a bolt.”

“I don’t like this job,” remarked Paynter, as they mounted toward the park and garden, the detective darting on ahead.

“Do you suppose I do?” asked Ashe; and, indeed, his strong, heavy face looked so lined and old that the red hair seemed unnatural, like a red wig. “I’ve known him longer than you, though perhaps I’ve suspected him longer as well.”

When they topped the slope of the garden the detective had already erected his easel, though a strong breeze blowing toward the sea rattled and flapped his apparatus and blew about his fair (and false) beard in the wind. Little clouds curled like feathers, were scudding seaward across the many-colored landscape, which the American art critic had once surveyed on a happier morning; but it is doubtful if the landscape painter paid much attention to it. Treherne was dimly discernible in the doorway of what was now his house; he would come no nearer, for he hated such a public duty more bitterly than the rest. The others posted themselves a little way behind the tree. Between the lines of these masked batteries the black figure of the doctor could be seen coming across the green lawn, traveling straight, as a bullet, as he had done when he brought the bad news to the woodcutter. To-day he was smiling, under the dark mustache that was cut short of the upper lip, though they fancied him a little pale, and he seemed to pause a moment and peer through his spectacles at the artist.

The artist turned from his easel with a natural movement, and then in a flash had captured the doctor by the coat collar.

“I arrest you—” he began; but Doctor Brown plucked himself free with startling promptitude, took a flying leap at the other, tore off his sham beard, tossing it into the air like one of the wild wisps of the cloud; then, with one wild kick, sent the easel flying topsy-turvy, and fled like a hare for the shore. Even at that dazzling instant Paynter felt that this wild reception was a novelty and almost an anticlimax; but he had no time for analysis when he and the whole pack had to follow in the hunt; even Treherne bringing up the rear with a renewed curiosity and energy.

The fugitive collided with one of the policemen who ran to head him off, sending him sprawling down the slope; indeed, the fugitive seemed inspired with the strength of a wild ape. He cleared at a bound the rampart of flowers, over which Barbara had once leaned to look at her future lover, and tumbled with blinding speed down the steep path up which that troubadour had climbed. Racing with the rushing wind they all streamed across the garden after him, down the path, and finally on to the seashore by the fisher’s cot, and the pierced crags and caverns the American had admired when he first landed. The runaway did not, however, make for the house he had long inhabited, but rather for the pier, as if with a mind to seize the boat or to swim. Only when he reached the other end of the small stone jetty did he turn, and show them the pale face with the spectacles; and they saw that it was still smiling.

«Il successivo esame che feci fu quello di Martin, il boscaiolo. Su un punto almeno la sua testimonianza è molto chiara, ed è, come vedrete, largamente confermata da altri testimoni. Egli dice anzitutto che il dottore gli impedì di recuperare la sua ascia, e ciò è corroborato dal signor e dalla signora Treherne. Ma dice inoltre che il dottore ammise di avere lui stesso l’attrezzo; e anche questo trova appoggio in un’altra testimonianza, quella del giardiniere, che vide il dottore, qualche tempo dopo, venire da solo e raccogliere la scure. Martin dice che il dottor Brown ripetutamente rifiutò di restituirla, adducendo ogni volta qualche fantasiosa scusa. E, infine, signor Paynter, ascolteremo la testimonianza dell’ascia stessa.»

Posò l’attrezzo del boscaiolo sul tavolo davanti a sé, e cominciò a strappare e svolgere il curioso involucro di lino attorno al manico.

«Ammetterete che questa è una benda ben strana», disse. «Ed è proprio questa la cosa strana, che è davvero una benda. Questa roba bianca è il tipo di filacce che usano negli ospedali, tagliate a strisce così. Ma la maggior parte dei medici ne tiene un po’; e ho la testimonianza di Jake il pescatore, presso cui il dottor Brown visse per qualche tempo, che il dottore aveva questa utile abitudine. E, per finire», aggiunse, spianando un angolo dello straccio sul tavolo, «non è strano che sia contrassegnato T.B.B.?»

L’americano fissò le iniziali rozzamente vergate a inchiostro, ma quasi non le vide. Ciò che vide, come in uno specchio nella sua oscurata memoria, fu la figura nera con i guanti neri contro il tramonto rosso sangue, come l’aveva vista quando era uscito dal bosco, e che lo aveva sempre perseguitato, non sapeva perché.

«Certo, capisco cosa intendete», disse, «ed è molto penoso per me, perché conoscevo e rispettavo quell’uomo. Ma di sicuro, per giunta, ciò è ben lungi dallo spiegare ogni cosa. Se è un assassino, è forse un mago? Perché l’acqua del pozzo evaporò tutta in una notte, lasciando le ossa del morto asciutte come polvere? Non è un’operazione comune negli ospedali, vero?»

«Quanto all’acqua, la spiegazione la conosciamo», disse il detective. «Non ci arrivai subito nemmeno io, essendo un cockney; ma una breve chiacchierata con Jake e l’altro pescatore sui vecchi tempi del contrabbando mi mise le cose in chiaro. Ma ammetto che i resti disseccati lasciano ancora tutti noi perplessi. Ciononostante…»

Un’ombra cadde sul tavolo, e il suo discorso fu bruscamente troncato. Ashe stava sotto l’insegna dipinta, abbottonato severamente di nero, e col volto del giudice della forca, di cui il poeta aveva parlato, ben visibile questa volta alla piena luce del sole. Dietro di lui stavano due omoni in abiti borghesi, immobilissimi; ma Paynter capì all’istante chi fossero.

«Dobbiamo agire subito», disse l’avvocato. «Il dottor Burton Brown sta lasciando il villaggio.»

L’alto detective balzò in piedi, e Paynter istintivamente lo imitò.

«È salito dai Treherne forse per dire addio», proseguì Ashe rapidamente. «Mi dispiace, ma dobbiamo arrestarlo là in giardino, se necessario. Ho tenuto la signora fuori dai piedi, credo. Ma voi»—rivolgendosi al fittizio pittore di paesaggi—«dovete salire subito e piantare quel vostro cavalletto vicino al tavolo e tenervi pronto. Noi seguiremo in silenzio, e ci porteremo dietro l’albero. Dobbiamo essere prudenti, perché è chiaro che ha fiutato la nostra presenza, altrimenti non se la darebbe a gambe.»

«Non mi piace questo compito», osservò Paynter, mentre salivano verso il parco e il giardino, il detective guizzando avanti.

«Credete che piaccia a me?» chiese Ashe; e, in effetti, il suo volto forte e pesante appariva così solcato e vecchio che i capelli rossi sembravano innaturali, come una parrucca rossa. «Lo conosco da più tempo di voi, benché forse lo sospetti anche da più tempo pure.»

Quando raggiunsero la sommità del pendio del giardino il detective aveva già eretto il suo cavalletto, benché una forte brezza che soffiava verso il mare facesse tremare e sbattere il suo apparato e agitasse nel vento la sua barba bionda (e falsa). Piccole nuvole arricciate come piume filavano verso il mare attraverso il paesaggio dai molti colori, che il critico d’arte americano aveva un tempo contemplato in una mattina più lieta; ma è dubbio che il pittore di paesaggi vi prestasse molta attenzione. Treherne era vagamente distinguibile sulla soglia di quella che era ora la sua casa; non si sarebbe avvicinato di più, perché odiava un simile dovere pubblico più amaramente di tutti gli altri. Gli altri si appostarono un poco dietro l’albero. Tra le linee di queste batterie mascherate si poteva vedere la figura nera del dottore avanzare sul verde prato, procedendo dritta come una pallottola, come aveva fatto quando portò la cattiva notizia al boscaiolo. Oggi sorrideva, sotto i baffi scuri tagliati corti sul labbro superiore, benché lo immaginassero un po’ pallido, e parve fermarsi un istante e scrutare attraverso gli occhiali l’artista.

L’artista si voltò dal cavalletto con un movimento naturale, e poi in un lampo aveva afferrato il dottore per il bavero della giacca.

«Vi arresto…» cominciò; ma il dottor Brown si liberò con sorprendente prontezza, spiccò un balzo verso l’altro, gli strappò via la barba finta, gettandola in aria come uno di quei selvaggi fiocchi di nuvola; poi, con un selvaggio calcio, mandò il cavalletto a gambe all’aria, e fuggì come una lepre verso la riva. Persino in quell’istante abbagliante Paynter sentì che quell’accoglienza selvaggia era una novità e quasi un anticlimax; ma non ebbe tempo di analizzare quando lui e l’intera muta dovettero unirsi alla caccia; perfino Treherne chiudeva la fila con rinnovata curiosità ed energia.

Il fuggitivo si scontrò con uno dei poliziotti accorso a tagliargli la strada, mandandolo a ruzzolare giù per il pendio; in verità, il fuggitivo pareva animato dalla forza di una scimmia selvaggia. Superò con un balzo il bastione di fiori su cui Barbara si era una volta chinata a guardare il suo futuro innamorato, e precipitò con velocità accecante giù per il ripido sentiero su cui quel trovatore si era arrampicato. Correndo a gara col vento impetuoso, tutti si riversarono attraverso il giardino dietro di lui, giù per il sentiero, e infine sulla riva del mare presso la capanna del pescatore, e le rupi e caverne traforate che l’americano aveva ammirato quando era sbarcato per la prima volta. Il fuggiasco però non puntò verso la casa che aveva a lungo abitato, ma piuttosto verso il molo, come con l’intenzione di afferrare la barca o di gettarsi a nuoto. Solo quando raggiunse l’altra estremità del piccolo molo di pietra si voltò, e mostrò loro il volto pallido con gli occhiali; e videro che stava ancora sorridendo.

“I’m rather glad of this,” said Treherne, with a great sigh. “The man is mad.”

Nevertheless, the naturalness of the doctor’s voice, when he spoke, startled them as much as a shriek.

“Gentleman,” he said, “I won’t protract your painful duties by asking you what you want; but I will ask at once for a small favor, which will not prejudice those duties in any way. I came down here rather in a hurry perhaps; but the truth is I thought I was late for an appointment.” He looked dispassionately at his watch. “I find there is still some fifteen minutes. Will you wait with me here for that short time; after which I am quite at your service.”

There was a bewildered silence, and then Paynter said: “For my part, I feel as if it would really be better to humor him.”

“Ashe,” said the doctor, with a new note of seriousness, “for old friendship, grant me this last little indulgence. It will make no difference; I have no arms or means of escape; you can search me if you like. I know you think you are doing right, and I also know you will do it as fairly as you can. Well, after all, you get friends to help you; look at our friend with the beard, or the remains of the beard. Why shouldn’t I have a friend to help me? A man will be here in a few minutes in whom I put some confidence; a great authority on these things. Why not, if only out of curiosity, wait and hear his view of the case?”

“This seems all moonshine,” said Ashe, “but on the chance of any light on things—well, from the moon—I don’t mind waiting a quarter of an hour. Who is this friend, I wonder; some amateur detective, I suppose.”

“I thank you,” said the doctor, with some dignity. “I think you will trust him when you have talked to him a little. And now,” he added with an air of amiably relaxing into lighter matters, “let us talk about the murder.

“This case,” he said in a detached manner, “will be found, I suspect, to be rather unique. There is a very clear and conclusive combination of evidence against Thomas Burton Brown, otherwise myself. But there is one peculiarity about that evidence, which you may perhaps have noticed. It all comes ultimately from one source, and that a rather unusual one. Thus, the woodcutter says I had his ax, but what makes him think so? He says I told him I had his ax; that I told him so again and again. Once more, Mr. Paynter here pulled up the ax out of the well; but how? I think Mr. Paynter will testify that I brought him the tackle for fishing it up, tackle he might never have got in any other way. Curious, is it not? Again, the ax is found to be wrapped in lint that was in my possession, according to the fisherman. But who showed the lint to the fisherman? I did. Who marked it with large letters as mine? I did. Who wrapped it round the handle at all? I did. Rather a singular thing to do; has anyone ever explained it?”

His words, which had been heard at first with painful coldness were beginning to hold more and more of their attention.

“Then there is the well itself,” proceeded the doctor, with the same air of insane calm. “I suppose some of you by this time know at least the secret of that. The secret of the well is simply that it is not a well. It is purposely shaped at the top so as to look like one, but it is really a sort of chimney opening from the roof of one of those caves over there; a cave that runs inland just under the wood, and indeed IS connected by tunnels and secret passages with other openings miles and miles away. It is a sort of labyrinth used by smugglers and such people for ages past. This doubtless explains many of those disappearances we have heard of. But to return to the well that is not a well, in case some of you still don’t know about it. When the sea rises very high at certain seasons it fills the low cave, and even rises a little way in the funnel above, making it look more like a well than ever. The noise Mr. Paynter heard was the natural eddy of a breaker from outside, and the whole experience depended on something so elementary as the tide.”

The American was startled into ordinary speech.

“The tide!” he said. “And I never even thought of it! I guess that comes of living by the Mediterranean.”

“The next step will be obvious enough,” continued the speaker, “to a logical mind like that of Mr. Ashe, for instance. If it be asked why, even so, the tide did not wash away the Squire’s remains that had lain there since his disappearance, there is only one possible answer. The remains had NOT lain there since his disappearance. The remains had been deliberately put there in the cavern under the wood, and put there AFTER Mr. Paynter had made his first investigation. They were put there, in short, after the sea had retreated and the cave was again dry. That is why they were dry; of course, much drier than the cave. Who put them there, I wonder?”

He was gazing gravely through his spectacles over their heads into vacancy, and suddenly he smiled.

“Ah,” he cried, jumping up from the rock with alacrity, “here is the amateur detective at last!”

Ashe turned his head over his shoulder, and for a few seconds did not move it again, but stood as if with a stiff neck. In the cliff just behind him was one of the clefts or cracks into which it was everywhere cloven. Advancing from this into the sunshine, as if from a narrow door, was Squire Vane, with a broad smile on his face.

The wind was tearing from the top of the high cliff out to sea, passing over their heads, and they had the sensation that everything was passing over their heads and out of their control. Paynter felt as if his head had been blown off like a hat. But none of this gale of unreason seemed to stir a hair on the white head of the Squire, whose bearing, though self-important and bordering on a swagger, seemed if anything more comfortable than in the old days. His red face was, however, burnt like a sailor’s, and his light clothes had a foreign look.

«Ne sono piuttosto lieto», disse Treherne, con un gran sospiro. «L’uomo è pazzo.»

Nondimeno, la naturalezza della voce del dottore, quando parlò, li fece trasalire quanto un grido.

«Signori», disse, «non prolungherò i vostri penosi doveri chiedendovi che cosa volete; ma vi chiederò subito un piccolo favore, che non pregiudicherà in alcun modo quei doveri. Sono sceso qui forse un po’ in fretta; ma la verità è che credevo di essere in ritardo per un appuntamento.» Guardò con distacco l’orologio. «Trovo che ci sono ancora una quindicina di minuti. Volete aspettare qui con me per quel breve tempo; dopodiché sarò del tutto al vostro servizio?»

Vi fu un silenzio sconcertato, e poi Paynter disse: «Da parte mia, ho la sensazione che sarebbe davvero meglio assecondarlo.»

«Ashe», disse il dottore, con una nuova nota di serietà, «in nome della vecchia amicizia, concedimi quest’ultima piccola indulgenza. Non farà alcuna differenza; non ho armi né mezzi di fuga; puoi perquisirmi se vuoi. So che credi di fare la cosa giusta, e so anche che la farai nel modo più leale che puoi. Ebbene, dopo tutto, tu ti procuri amici che ti aiutino; guarda il nostro amico con la barba, o con ciò che resta della barba. Perché non dovrei avere un amico che aiuti me? Un uomo sarà qui tra pochi minuti, uno in cui ripongo una certa fiducia; una grande autorità in queste cose. Perché no, non fosse che per curiosità, aspettare e sentire il suo parere sul caso?»

«Sembra tutto un chiaro di luna», disse Ashe, «ma sulla possibilità di un po’ di luce sulle cose… beh, dalla luna… non mi dispiace aspettare un quarto d’ora. Chi sarà mai questo amico, mi domando; qualche detective dilettante, suppongo.»

«Vi ringrazio», disse il dottore, con una certa dignità. «Credo che vi fiderete di lui dopo avergli parlato un poco. E ora», aggiunse con l’aria di distendersi amabilmente in argomenti più leggeri, «parliamo dell’omicidio.

«Questo caso», disse con fare distaccato, «si rivelerà, sospetto, piuttosto singolare. C’è una combinazione molto chiara e conclusiva di indizi contro Thomas Burton Brown, altrimenti detto io stesso. Ma c’è una peculiarità in quelle prove, che forse avrete notato. Provengono tutte in ultima analisi da un’unica fonte, e per giunta piuttosto insolita. Così, il boscaiolo dice che avevo la sua ascia, ma cosa glielo fa credere? Dice che gli dissi io di avere la sua ascia; che glielo dissi più e più volte. Ancora, il signor Paynter qui tirò su l’ascia dal pozzo; ma come? Credo che il signor Paynter testimonierà che gli portai io l’attrezzatura per ripescarla, un’attrezzatura che forse non avrebbe mai avuto in altro modo. Curioso, non è vero? Di nuovo, l’ascia si trova avvolta in filacce che erano in mio possesso, secondo il pescatore. Ma chi mostrò le filacce al pescatore? Io. Chi le contrassegnò a grandi lettere come mie? Io. Chi le avvolse attorno al manico, prima di tutto? Io. Cosa piuttosto singolare da fare; qualcuno l’ha mai spiegata?»

Le sue parole, dapprima ascoltate con penosa freddezza, cominciavano a trattenere sempre più la loro attenzione.

«Poi c’è il pozzo stesso», proseguì il dottore, con la stessa aria di folle calma. «Suppongo che alcuni di voi a quest’ora conoscano almeno il segreto di quello. Il segreto del pozzo è semplicemente che non è un pozzo. È sagomato apposta in cima per sembrarlo, ma è in realtà una specie di camino che si apre dalla volta di una di quelle grotte laggiù; una grotta che si spinge nell’entroterra proprio sotto il bosco, e che di fatto È collegata da cunicoli e passaggi segreti con altre aperture a miglia e miglia di distanza. È una sorta di labirinto usato da contrabbandieri e simile gente da epoche remote. Questo spiega senza dubbio molte di quelle sparizioni di cui abbiamo sentito parlare. Ma per tornare al pozzo che non è un pozzo, nel caso alcuni di voi ancora non lo sappiano. Quando il mare si alza molto in certe stagioni riempie la grotta bassa, e sale perfino un poco nell’imbuto sovrastante, facendolo somigliare a un pozzo più che mai. Il rumore che il signor Paynter udì era il naturale vortice di un frangente dal di fuori, e tutta l’esperienza dipendeva da qualcosa di così elementare come la marea.»

La sorpresa restituì all’americano il linguaggio ordinario.

«La marea!» disse. «E non ci ho nemmeno mai pensato! Immagino sia perché ho vissuto in riva al Mediterraneo.»

«Il passo successivo sarà abbastanza ovvio», continuò chi parlava, «per una mente logica come quella del signor Ashe, per esempio. Se si chiede perché, pur così, la marea non avesse portato via i resti dello Squire che giacevano là fin dalla sua scomparsa, c’è una sola risposta possibile. I resti NON giacevano là fin dalla sua scomparsa. I resti erano stati messi là deliberatamente nella caverna sotto il bosco, e messi là DOPO che il signor Paynter ebbe compiuto la sua prima indagine. Furono messi là, insomma, dopo che il mare si era ritirato e la grotta era di nuovo asciutta. Ecco perché erano asciutti; molto più asciutti, naturalmente, della grotta. Chi ce li mise, mi domando?»

Fissava con gravità attraverso gli occhiali, al di sopra delle loro teste, nel vuoto, e all’improvviso sorrise.

«Ah», gridò, balzando su dalla roccia con prontezza, «ecco finalmente il detective dilettante!»

Ashe girò la testa sopra la spalla, e per qualche secondo non la mosse più, ma restò come col collo irrigidito. Nella scogliera proprio dietro di lui c’era una di quelle fenditure o crepe in cui essa era ovunque spaccata. Avanzando da questa verso la luce del sole, come da una porta stretta, veniva lo Squire Vane, con un ampio sorriso in volto.

Il vento si scagliava dalla cima dell’alta scogliera verso il mare, passando sopra le loro teste, ed essi avevano la sensazione che tutto passasse sopra le loro teste e fuori dal loro controllo. Paynter si sentì come se la testa gli fosse stata soffiata via come un cappello. Ma nulla di questa raffica d’irragionevolezza sembrava scomporre un capello sul capo bianco dello Squire, il cui portamento, benché borioso e al limite della spavalderia, pareva semmai più a suo agio che ai vecchi tempi. Il suo volto rosso era però bruciato come quello di un marinaio, e i suoi abiti chiari avevano un’aria straniera.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said genially, “so this is the end of the legend of the peacock trees. Sorry to spoil that delightful traveller’s tale, Mr. Paynter, but the joke couldn’t be kept up forever. Sorry to put a stop to your best poem, Mr. Treherne, but I thought all this poetry had been going a little too far. So Doctor Brown and I fixed up a little surprise for you. And I must say, without vanity, that you look a little surprised.”

“What on earth,” asked Ashe at last, “is the meaning of all this?”

The Squire laughed pleasantly, and even a little apologetically,

“I’m afraid I’m fond of practical jokes,” he said, “and this I suppose is my last grand practical joke. But I want you to understand that the joke is really practical. I flatter myself it will be of very practical use to the cause of progress and common sense, and the killing of such superstitions everywhere. The best part of it, I admit, was the doctor’s idea and not mine. All I meant to do was to pass a night in the trees, and then turn up as fresh as paint to tell you what fools you were. But Doctor Brown here followed me into the wood, and we had a little talk which rather changed my plans. He told me that a disappearance for a few hours like that would never knock the nonsense on the head; most people would never even hear of it, and those who did would say that one night proved nothing. He showed me a much better way, which had been tried in several cases where bogus miracles had been shown up. The thing to do was to get the thing really believed everywhere as a miracle, and then shown up everywhere as a sham miracle. I can’t put all the arguments as well as he did, but that was the notion, I think.”

The doctor nodded, gazing silently at the sand; and the Squire resumed with undiminished relish.

“We agreed that I should drop through the hole into the cave, and make my way through the tunnels, where I often used to play as a boy, to the railway station a few miles from here, and there take a train for London. It was necessary for the joke, of course, that I should disappear without being traced; so I made my way to a port, and put in a very pleasant month or two round my old haunts in Cyprus and the Mediterranean. There’s no more to say of that part of the business, except that I arranged to be back by a particular time; and here I am. But I’ve heard enough of what’s gone on round here to be satisfied that I’ve done the trick. Everybody in Cornwall and most people in South England have heard of the Vanishing Squire; and thousands of noodles have been nodding their heads over crystals and tarot cards at this marvelous proof of an unseen world. I reckon the Reappearing Squire will scatter their cards and smash their crystals, so that such rubbish won’t appear again in the twentieth century. I’ll make the peacock trees the laughing stock of all Europe and America.”

“Well,” said the lawyer, who was the first to rearrange his wits, “I’m sure we’re all only too delighted to see you again, Squire; and I quite understand your explanation and your own very natural motives in the matter. But I’m afraid I haven’t got the hang of everything yet. Granted that you wanted to vanish, was it necessary to put bogus bones in the cave, so as nearly to put a halter round the neck of Doctor Brown? And who put it there? The statement would appear perfectly maniacal; but so far as I can make head or tail out of anything, Doctor Brown seems to have put it there himself.”

The doctor lifted his head for the first time.

“Yes; I put the bones there,” he said. “I believe I am the first son of Adam who ever manufactured all the evidence of a murder charge against himself.”

It was the Squire’s turn to look astonished. The old gentleman looked rather wildly from one to the other.

“Bones! Murder charge!” he ejaculated. “What the devil is all this? Whose bones?”

“Your bones, in a manner of speaking,” delicately conceded the doctor. “I had to make sure you had really died, and not disappeared by magic.”

The Squire in his turn seemed more hopelessly puzzled than the whole crowd of his friends had been over his own escapade. “Why not?” he demanded. “I thought it was the whole point to make it look like magic. Why did you want me to die so much?”

Doctor Brown had lifted his head; and he now very slowly lifted his hand. He pointed with outstretched arm at the headland overhanging the foreshore, just above the entrance to the cave. It was the exact part of the beach where Paynter had first landed, on that spring morning when he had looked up in his first fresh wonder at the peacock trees. But the trees were gone.

The fact itself was no surprise to them; the clearance had naturally been one of the first of the sweeping changes of the Treherne regime. But though they knew it well, they had wholly forgotten it; and its significance returned on them suddenly like a sign in heaven.

“That is the reason,” said the doctor. “I have worked for that for fourteen years.”

They no longer looked at the bare promontory on which the feathery trees had once been so familiar a sight; for they had something else to look at. Anyone seeing the Squire now would have shifted his opinion about where to find the lunatic in that crowd. It was plain in a flash that the change had fallen on him like a thunderbolt; that he, at least, had never had the wildest notion that the tale of the Vanishing Squire had been but a prelude to that of the vanishing trees. The next half hour was full of his ravings and expostulations, which gradually died away into demands for explanation and incoherent questions repeated again and again. He had practically to be overruled at last, in spite of the respect in which he was held, before anything like a space and silence were made in which the doctor could tell his own story. It was perhaps a singular story, of which he alone had ever had the knowledge; and though its narration was not uninterrupted, it may be set forth consecutively in his own words.

«Ebbene, signori», disse affabile, «così questa è la fine della leggenda degli alberi del pavone. Mi spiace rovinare quel delizioso racconto da viaggiatore, signor Paynter, ma lo scherzo non poteva durare in eterno. Mi spiace mettere fine alla vostra miglior poesia, signor Treherne, ma ho pensato che tutta questa poesia stesse andando un po’ troppo oltre. Così il dottor Brown e io abbiamo preparato una piccola sorpresa per voi. E devo dire, senza vanità, che avete un’aria un po’ sorpresa.»

«Che diavolo», chiese infine Ashe, «significa tutto questo?»

Lo Squire rise piacevolmente, e persino con un po’ di aria di scusa,

«Temo di essere amante degli scherzi», disse, «e questo suppongo sia il mio ultimo grande scherzo. Ma voglio che capiate che lo scherzo è davvero pratico. Mi lusingo che sarà di utilità assai pratica alla causa del progresso e del buon senso, e all’uccisione di simili superstizioni ovunque. La parte migliore, lo ammetto, fu un’idea del dottore, non mia. Tutto ciò che intendevo fare era passare una notte tra gli alberi, e poi ricomparire fresco come una rosa per dirvi che sciocchi eravate. Ma il dottor Brown qui mi seguì nel bosco, e facemmo una piccola chiacchierata che cambiò alquanto i miei piani. Mi disse che una scomparsa di poche ore come quella non avrebbe mai fatto piazza pulita di quelle sciocchezze; la maggior parte della gente non ne avrebbe mai nemmeno sentito parlare, e chi ne avesse sentito avrebbe detto che una notte non provava nulla. Mi mostrò un modo assai migliore, che era stato provato in vari casi in cui erano stati smascherati falsi miracoli. La cosa da fare era far credere ovunque che la cosa fosse davvero un miracolo, e poi smascherarla ovunque come un falso miracolo. Non so esporre tutti gli argomenti bene quanto lui, ma l’idea era questa, mi pare.»

Il dottore annuì, fissando in silenzio la sabbia; e lo Squire riprese con immutato gusto.

«Convenimmo che io mi sarei calato attraverso il foro nella grotta, e mi sarei fatto strada per i cunicoli, dove da ragazzo giocavo spesso, fino alla stazione ferroviaria a poche miglia da qui, e là avrei preso un treno per Londra. Era necessario per lo scherzo, naturalmente, che io scomparissi senza lasciare tracce; così raggiunsi un porto, e trascorsi un mese o due assai piacevoli tra i miei vecchi luoghi prediletti a Cipro e nel Mediterraneo. Non c’è altro da dire di quella parte della faccenda, se non che disposi di essere di ritorno entro un certo tempo; ed eccomi qui. Ma ho sentito abbastanza di ciò che è accaduto qui intorno per essere certo di aver riuscito nel gioco. Tutti in Cornovaglia e la maggior parte della gente dell’Inghilterra meridionale hanno sentito parlare dello Squire Scomparso; e migliaia di sciocchi hanno annuito con la testa su cristalli e carte dei tarocchi davanti a questa meravigliosa prova di un mondo invisibile. Scommetto che lo Squire Riapparso disperderà le loro carte e frantumerà i loro cristalli, cosicché tali sciocchezze non ricompaiano nel ventesimo secolo. Farò degli alberi del pavone lo zimbello di tutta l’Europa e l’America.»

«Ebbene», disse l’avvocato, che fu il primo a rimettere in ordine le idee, «sono certo che siamo tutti fin troppo lieti di rivedervi, Squire; e capisco bene la vostra spiegazione e i vostri motivi assai naturali in questa faccenda. Ma temo di non aver ancora afferrato tutto. Ammesso che voleste sparire, era necessario mettere ossa false nella grotta, così da mettere quasi un cappio al collo del dottor Brown? E chi le mise là? La cosa parrebbe assolutamente da folli; ma per quanto riesca a raccapezzarmi di qualsiasi cosa, sembra che il dottor Brown le abbia messe là lui stesso.»

Il dottore alzò la testa per la prima volta.

«Sì; ho messo io le ossa là», disse. «Credo di essere il primo figlio di Adamo ad aver mai fabbricato tutte le prove di un’accusa d’omicidio contro se stesso.»

Fu la volta dello Squire di apparire sbalordito. Il vecchio gentiluomo guardò con una certa aria stralunata dall’uno all’altro.

«Ossa! Accusa d’omicidio!» esclamò. «Che diavolo è tutto questo? Ossa di chi?»

«Le vostre ossa, per così dire», concesse delicatamente il dottore. «Dovevo assicurarmi che foste davvero morto, e non scomparso per magia.»

Lo Squire a sua volta parve più disperatamente perplesso di quanto lo fosse stata tutta la schiera dei suoi amici davanti alla sua stessa bravata. «Perché no?» domandò. «Pensavo che tutto il punto fosse farla sembrare magia. Perché volevate tanto che io morissi?»

Il dottor Brown aveva alzato la testa; e ora, assai lentamente, alzò la mano. Indicò col braccio teso il promontorio che sovrastava la battigia, proprio sopra l’ingresso della grotta. Era esattamente quel tratto di spiaggia dove Paynter era sbarcato per la prima volta, in quella mattina di primavera in cui aveva levato lo sguardo con il suo primo fresco stupore verso gli alberi del pavone. Ma gli alberi non c’erano più.

Il fatto in sé non fu una sorpresa per loro; l’abbattimento era stato naturalmente uno dei primi dei radicali mutamenti del regime dei Treherne. Ma benché lo sapessero bene, l’avevano del tutto dimenticato; e il suo significato tornò su di loro all’improvviso come un segno nel cielo.

«Questa è la ragione», disse il dottore. «Ho lavorato per questo per quattordici anni.»

Non guardavano più lo spoglio promontorio su cui gli alberi piumati erano un tempo una vista tanto familiare; poiché avevano qualcos’altro da guardare. Chiunque avesse visto lo Squire ora avrebbe cambiato opinione su dove trovare il pazzo in quella folla. Fu chiaro in un lampo che il cambiamento era caduto su di lui come un fulmine; che egli, almeno, non aveva mai avuto la più remota idea che il racconto dello Squire Scomparso fosse stato solo un preludio a quello degli alberi scomparsi. La mezz’ora successiva fu piena dei suoi deliri e delle sue rimostranze, che gradualmente si spensero in richieste di spiegazioni e domande incoerenti ripetute più e più volte. Praticamente dovette essere messo a tacere alla fine, malgrado il rispetto di cui godeva, prima che si facesse qualcosa come uno spazio e un silenzio in cui il dottore potesse raccontare la propria storia. Era forse una storia singolare, di cui egli solo aveva mai avuto conoscenza; e benché la sua narrazione non fosse ininterrotta, la si può esporre di seguito con le sue stesse parole.

“First, I wish it clearly understood that I believe in nothing. I do not even give the nothing I believe a name; or I should be an atheist. I have never had inside my head so much as a hint of heaven and hell. I think it most likely we are worms in the mud; but I happen to be sorry for the other worms under the wheel. And I happen myself to be a sort of worm that turns when he can. If I care nothing for piety, I care less for poetry. I’m not like Ashe here, who is crammed with criminology, but has all sorts of other culture as well. I know nothing about culture, except bacteria culture. I sometimes fancy Mr. Ashe is as much an art critic as Mr. Paynter; only he looks for his heroes, or villains, in real life. But I am a very practical man; and my stepping stones have been simply scientific facts. In this village I found a fact—a fever. I could not classify it; it seemed peculiar to this corner of the coast; it had singular reactions of delirium and mental breakdown. I studied it exactly as I should a queer case in the hospital, and corresponded and compared notes with other men of science. But nobody had even a working hypothesis about it, except of course the ignorant peasantry, who said the peacock trees were in some wild way poisonous.

“Well, the peacock trees were poisonous. The peacock trees did produce the fever. I verified the fact in the plain plodding way required, comparing all the degrees and details of a vast number of cases; and there were a shocking number to compare. At the end of it I had discovered the thing as Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood. Everybody was the worse for being near the things; those who came off best were exactly the exceptions that proved the rule, abnormally healthy and energetic people like the Squire and his daughter. In other words, the peasants were right. But if I put it that way, somebody will cry: ‘But do you believe it was supernatural then?’ In fact, that’s what you’ll all say; and that’s exactly what I complain of. I fancy hundreds of men have been left dead and diseases left undiscovered, by this suspicion of superstition, this stupid fear of fear. Unless you see daylight through the forest of facts from the first, you won’t venture into the wood at all. Unless we can promise you beforehand that there shall be what you call a natural explanation, to save your precious dignity from miracles, you won’t even hear the beginning of the plain tale. Suppose there isn’t a natural explanation! Suppose there is, and we never find it! Suppose I haven’t a notion whether there is or not! What the devil has that to do with you, or with me in dealing with the facts I do know? My own instinct is to think there is; that if my researches could be followed far enough it would be found that some horrible parody of hay fever, some effect analogous to that of pollen, would explain all the facts. I have never found the explanation. What I have found are the facts. And the fact is that those trees on the top there dealt death right and left, as certainly as if they had been giants, standing on a hill and knocking men down in crowds with a club. It will be said that now I had only to produce my proofs and have the nuisance removed. Perhaps I might have convinced the scientific world finally, when more and more processions of dead men had passed through the village to the cemetery. But I had not got to convince the scientific world, but the Lord of the Manor. The Squire will pardon my saying that it was a very different thing. I tried it once; I lost my temper, and said things I do not defend; and I left the Squire’s prejudices rooted anew, like the trees. I was confronted with one colossal coincidence that was an obstacle to all my aims. One thing made all my science sound like nonsense. It was the popular legend.

“Squire, if there were a legend of hay fever, you would not believe in hay fever. If there were a popular story about pollen, you would say that pollen was only a popular story. I had something against me heavier and more hopeless than the hostility of the learned; I had the support of the ignorant. My truth was hopelessly tangled up with a tale that the educated were resolved to regard as entirely a lie. I never tried to explain again; on the contrary, I apologized, affected a conversion to the common-sense view, and watched events. And all the time the lines of a larger, if more crooked plan, began to get clearer in my mind. I knew that Miss Vane, whether or no she were married to Mr. Treherne, as I afterward found she was, was so much under his influence that the first day of her inheritance would be the last day of the poisonous trees. But she could not inherit, or even interfere, till the Squire died. It became simply self-evident, to a rational mind, that the Squire must die. But wishing to be humane as well as rational, I desired his death to be temporary.

“Doubtless my scheme was completed by a chapter of accidents, but I was watching for such accidents. Thus I had a foreshadowing of how the ax would figure in the tale when it was first flung at the trees; it would have surprised the woodman to know how near our minds were, and how I was but laying a more elaborate siege to the towers of pestilence. But when the Squire spontaneously rushed on what half the countryside would call certain death, I jumped at my chance. I followed him, and told him all that he has told you. I don’t suppose he’ll ever forgive me now, but that shan’t prevent me saying that I admire him hugely for being what people would call a lunatic and what is really a sportsman. It takes rather a grand old man to make a joke in the grand style. He came down so quick from the tree he had climbed that he had no time to pull his hat off the bough it had caught in.

“At first I found I had made a miscalculation. I thought his disappearance would be taken as his death, at least after a little time; but Ashe told me there could be no formalities without a corpse. I fear I was a little annoyed, but I soon set myself to the duty of manufacturing a corpse. It’s not hard for a doctor to get a skeleton; indeed, I had one, but Mr. Paynter’s energy was a day too early for me, and I only got the bones into the well when he had already found it. His story gave me another chance, however; I noted where the hole was in the hat, and made a precisely corresponding hole in the skull. The reason for creating the other clues may not be so obvious. It may not yet be altogether apparent to you that I am not a fiend in human form. I could not substantiate a murder without at least suggesting a murderer, and I was resolved that if the crime happened to be traced to anybody, it should be to me. So I’m not surprised you were puzzled about the purpose of the rag round the ax, because it had no purpose, except to incriminate the man who put it there. The chase had to end with me, and when it was closing in at last the joke of it was too much for me, and I fear I took liberties with the gentleman’s easel and beard. I was the only person who could risk it, being the only person who could at the last moment produce the Squire and prove there had been no crime at all. That, gentlemen, is the true story of the peacock trees; and that bare crag up there, where the wind is whistling as it would over a wilderness, is a waste place I have labored to make, as many men have labored to make a cathedral.

“I don’t think there is any more to say, and yet something moves in my blood and I will try to say it. Could you not have trusted a little these peasants whom you already trust so much? These men are men, and they meant something; even their fathers were not wholly fools. If your gardener told you of the trees you called him a madman, but he did not plan and plant your garden like a madman. You would not trust your woodman about these trees, yet you trusted him with all the others. Have you ever thought what all the work of the world would be like if the poor were so senseless as you think them? But no, you stuck to your rational principle. And your rational principle was that a thing must be false because thousands of men had found it true; that BECAUSE many human eyes had seen something it could not be there.”

He looked across at Ashe with a sort of challenge, but though the sea wind ruffled the old lawyer’s red mane, his Napoleonic mask was unruffled; it even had a sort of beauty from its new benignity.

“I am too happy just now in thinking how wrong I have been,” he answered, “to quarrel with you, doctor, about our theories. And yet, in justice to the Squire as well as myself, I should demur to your sweeping inference. I respect these peasants, I respect your regard for them; but their stories are a different matter. I think I would do anything for them but believe them. Truth and fancy, after all, are mixed in them, when in the more instructed they are separate; and I doubt if you have considered what would be involved in taking their word for anything. Half the ghosts of those who died of fever may be walking by now; and kind as these people are, I believe they might still burn a witch. No, doctor, I admit these people have been badly used, I admit they are in many ways our betters, but I still could not accept anything in their evidence.”

The doctor bowed gravely and respectfully enough, and then, for the last time that day, they saw his rather sinister smile.

“Quite so,” he said. “But you would have hanged me on their evidence.”

And, turning his back on them, as if automatically, he set his face toward the village, where for so many years he had gone his round.

End of The Trees of Pride, by G. K. Chesterton

«Primo, desidero che sia ben chiaro che non credo in nulla. Non do nemmeno un nome al nulla in cui credo; altrimenti sarei ateo. Non ho mai avuto in testa nemmeno un accenno di paradiso e inferno. Credo assai probabile che siamo vermi nel fango; ma per caso mi dispiace per gli altri vermi sotto la ruota. E per caso io stesso sono una specie di verme che si rivolta quando può. Se non m’importa nulla della pietà, m’importa ancor meno della poesia. Non sono come Ashe qui, che è imbottito di criminologia, ma possiede pure ogni sorta di altra cultura. Io non so nulla di cultura, tranne le colture batteriche. A volte immagino che il signor Ashe sia un critico d’arte tanto quanto il signor Paynter; solo che lui cerca i suoi eroi, o i suoi cattivi, nella vita reale. Ma io sono un uomo assai pratico; e i miei punti d’appoggio sono stati semplicemente fatti scientifici. In questo villaggio ho trovato un fatto: una febbre. Non riuscivo a classificarla; sembrava peculiare a questo angolo di costa; aveva singolari reazioni di delirio e crollo mentale. La studiai esattamente come avrei studiato uno strano caso in ospedale, e mi misi in corrispondenza e confrontai i miei appunti con altri uomini di scienza. Ma nessuno aveva nemmeno un’ipotesi di lavoro al riguardo, tranne naturalmente gli ignoranti contadini, che dicevano che gli alberi del pavone erano in qualche modo selvaggio velenosi.

«Ebbene, gli alberi del pavone erano velenosi. Gli alberi del pavone producevano davvero la febbre. Verificai il fatto nel modo pedante e paziente che si richiede, confrontando tutti i gradi e i dettagli di un vastissimo numero di casi; e ce n’era un numero spaventoso da confrontare. Alla fine avevo scoperto la cosa come Harvey scoprì la circolazione del sangue. Chiunque stesse vicino a quelle cose ne usciva peggiorato; coloro che se la cavavano meglio erano proprio le eccezioni che confermavano la regola, persone anormalmente sane ed energiche come lo Squire e sua figlia. In altre parole, i contadini avevano ragione. Ma se metto la cosa in questi termini, qualcuno griderà: “Ma allora credete che fosse soprannaturale?” Di fatto, è ciò che direte tutti; ed è esattamente ciò di cui mi lamento. Immagino che centinaia di uomini siano stati lasciati morti e malattie lasciate non scoperte, per questo sospetto di superstizione, questa stupida paura della paura. Se non vedete la luce del giorno attraverso la foresta dei fatti fin dal principio, non vi avventurerete affatto nel bosco. Se non possiamo promettervi in anticipo che ci sarà quella che chiamate una spiegazione naturale, per salvare la vostra preziosa dignità dai miracoli, non ascolterete nemmeno l’inizio del semplice racconto. Supponiamo che non ci sia una spiegazione naturale! Supponiamo che ci sia, e che non la troviamo mai! Supponiamo che io non abbia la minima idea se ci sia o no! Che diavolo c’entra questo con voi, o con me, nel trattare i fatti che conosco? Il mio istinto è di pensare che ci sia; che se le mie ricerche potessero essere spinte abbastanza in là si scoprirebbe che qualche orribile parodia della febbre da fieno, qualche effetto analogo a quello del polline, spiegherebbe tutti i fatti. Non ho mai trovato la spiegazione. Ciò che ho trovato sono i fatti. E il fatto è che quegli alberi lassù in cima seminavano morte a destra e a manca, con la stessa certezza che se fossero stati giganti, ritti su una collina ad abbattere uomini a frotte con una clava. Si dirà che ora non mi restava che produrre le mie prove e far rimuovere il flagello. Forse avrei potuto convincere infine il mondo scientifico, quando sempre più processioni di morti fossero passate per il villaggio verso il cimitero. Ma non dovevo convincere il mondo scientifico, bensì il Signore del Maniero. Lo Squire mi perdonerà se dico che era una cosa ben diversa. Ci provai una volta; persi la pazienza, e dissi cose che non difendo; e lasciai i pregiudizi dello Squire radicati di nuovo, come gli alberi. Mi trovai di fronte a una colossale coincidenza che era un ostacolo a tutti i miei scopi. Una cosa faceva suonare tutta la mia scienza come un’assurdità. Era la leggenda popolare.

«Squire, se ci fosse una leggenda sulla febbre da fieno, voi non credereste nella febbre da fieno. Se ci fosse una storia popolare sul polline, direste che il polline è soltanto una storia popolare. Avevo contro di me qualcosa di più pesante e più disperato dell’ostilità dei dotti; avevo l’appoggio degli ignoranti. La mia verità era irrimediabilmente aggrovigliata con un racconto che gli istruiti erano decisi a considerare interamente una menzogna. Non tentai mai di spiegare di nuovo; al contrario, mi scusai, finsi una conversione alla visione del buon senso, e osservai gli eventi. E per tutto quel tempo le linee di un piano più ampio, benché più tortuoso, cominciarono a farsi più chiare nella mia mente. Sapevo che Miss Vane, sposata o no al signor Treherne, come poi scoprii che era, era talmente sotto la sua influenza che il primo giorno della sua eredità sarebbe stato l’ultimo giorno degli alberi velenosi. Ma non poteva ereditare, né intervenire, finché lo Squire non fosse morto. Divenne semplicemente auto-evidente, per una mente razionale, che lo Squire doveva morire. Ma desiderando essere umano oltre che razionale, volevo che la sua morte fosse temporanea.

«Senza dubbio il mio piano fu completato da una serie di casi fortuiti, ma io ero in agguato di simili casi. Così ebbi un presentimento di come l’ascia avrebbe figurato nella vicenda quando fu scagliata per la prima volta contro gli alberi; avrebbe sorpreso il boscaiolo sapere quanto vicine fossero le nostre menti, e come io non stessi facendo altro che porre un assedio più elaborato alle torri della pestilenza. Ma quando lo Squire si precipitò spontaneamente verso ciò che metà della contrada avrebbe chiamato morte certa, colsi l’occasione al volo. Lo seguii, e gli raccontai tutto ciò che lui ha raccontato a voi. Non credo che mi perdonerà mai ora, ma ciò non m’impedirà di dire che lo ammiro immensamente per essere ciò che la gente chiamerebbe un pazzo e ciò che è in realtà uno spirito sportivo. Ci vuole un vecchio gentiluomo davvero grande per fare uno scherzo in grande stile. Scese così in fretta dall’albero su cui si era arrampicato che non ebbe tempo di togliere il cappello dal ramo in cui si era impigliato.

«Dapprima m’accorsi di aver fatto un errore di calcolo. Pensavo che la sua scomparsa sarebbe stata presa per la sua morte, almeno dopo un po’ di tempo; ma Ashe mi disse che non poteva esserci alcuna formalità senza un cadavere. Temo di essermi un po’ seccato, ma mi accinsi presto al compito di fabbricare un cadavere. Non è difficile per un medico procurarsi uno scheletro; ne avevo uno, di fatto, ma l’energia del signor Paynter fu di un giorno troppo precoce per me, e riuscii a mettere le ossa nel pozzo solo dopo che lui l’aveva già scoperto. La sua storia però mi diede un’altra occasione; notai dov’era il foro nel cappello, e feci un foro esattamente corrispondente nel cranio. La ragione per cui creai gli altri indizi potrebbe non essere così ovvia. Potrebbe non esservi ancora del tutto chiaro che non sono un demonio in forma umana. Non potevo comprovare un omicidio senza almeno suggerire un assassino, ed ero deciso che, se il delitto fosse stato ricondotto a qualcuno, dovesse esserlo a me. Perciò non mi sorprende che foste perplessi sullo scopo dello straccio attorno all’ascia, perché non aveva alcuno scopo, se non incriminare l’uomo che ce l’aveva messo. La caccia doveva finire con me, e quando si stava finalmente stringendo, lo scherzo fu troppo per me, e temo di essermi preso qualche libertà con il cavalletto e la barba del gentiluomo. Ero l’unica persona che potesse rischiarlo, essendo l’unica persona che potesse all’ultimo momento produrre lo Squire e provare che non c’era stato affatto delitto. Questa, signori, è la vera storia degli alberi del pavone; e quello spoglio picco lassù, dove il vento fischia come farebbe su un deserto, è un luogo desolato che ho faticato a creare, come molti uomini hanno faticato a costruire una cattedrale.

«Non credo che ci sia altro da dire, eppure qualcosa si muove nel mio sangue e cercherò di dirlo. Non avreste potuto fidarvi un poco di questi contadini di cui già tanto vi fidate? Questi uomini sono uomini, e qualcosa volevano dire; perfino i loro padri non erano del tutto sciocchi. Se il vostro giardiniere vi parlava degli alberi lo chiamavate pazzo, ma non progettò né piantò il vostro giardino da pazzo. Non volevate fidarvi del vostro boscaiolo riguardo a questi alberi, eppure gli affidavate tutti gli altri. Avete mai pensato a come sarebbe tutto il lavoro del mondo se i poveri fossero insensati quanto voi li credete? Ma no, restaste attaccati al vostro principio razionale. E il vostro principio razionale era che una cosa dev’essere falsa perché migliaia di uomini l’hanno trovata vera; che PERCHÉ molti occhi umani avevano visto qualcosa, quella cosa non poteva esserci.»

Guardò Ashe dall’altra parte con una sorta di sfida, ma benché il vento del mare scompigliasse la rossa criniera del vecchio avvocato, la sua maschera napoleonica restava imperturbata; aveva perfino una sorta di bellezza per la sua nuova benignità.

«Sono troppo felice in questo momento nel pensare a quanto mi sia sbagliato», rispose, «per litigare con voi, dottore, sulle nostre teorie. Eppure, per rendere giustizia allo Squire non meno che a me stesso, dovrei obiettare alla vostra conclusione tanto avventata. Rispetto questi contadini, rispetto la vostra stima per loro; ma le loro storie sono un’altra faccenda. Credo che farei qualsiasi cosa per loro, tranne credere loro. Verità e fantasia, dopo tutto, sono mescolate in loro, mentre nei più istruiti sono separate; e dubito che abbiate considerato che cosa comporterebbe prendere per buona la loro parola su qualunque cosa. Metà dei fantasmi di coloro che morirono di febbre potrebbe camminare ormai; e per quanto buona sia questa gente, credo che potrebbe ancora bruciare una strega. No, dottore, ammetto che questa gente sia stata trattata male, ammetto che in molti modi ci sia superiore, ma non potrei ancora accettare nulla della loro testimonianza.»

Il dottore s’inchinò con sufficiente gravità e rispetto, e poi, per l’ultima volta quel giorno, videro il suo sorriso piuttosto sinistro.

«Proprio così», disse. «Eppure mi avreste impiccato sulla loro testimonianza.»

E, voltando loro le spalle, come per automatismo, rivolse il volto verso il villaggio, dove per tanti anni aveva compiuto il suo giro.

Fine de Gli alberi dell’orgoglio, di G. K. Chesterton