Squire1 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 perfectly2 and permanently3 at the stage of boyhood. But his Irish extraction subconsciously5 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 impatience6 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 impartiality7 among the religions of India; but Vane’s attempt to meet the Moslem8 halfway9 by kicking off one boot at the gates of the mosque10, was felt not so much to indicate true impartiality as something that could only be called an aggressive indifference11. Again, it is true that an English aristocrat12 can hardly enter fully13 into the feelings of either party in a quarrel between a Russian Jew and an Orthodox procession carrying relics15; but Vane’s idea that the procession might carry the Jew as well, himself a venerable and historic relic14, 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 standing16 on his head merely to prove that he was hard-headed.
He had just finished a hearty18 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 extremity19 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 backwards20 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 ornamental21 urns22 to a more woodland path fringed with little trees, and so down a zigzag23 road which descended24 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 pier25.
And yet in that short walk between the green turf and the yellow sands he was destined26 to find, his hard-headedness provoked into a not unfamiliar27 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, alas28! 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 rustics29 always returned. It was a point that always pricked30 the Squire to exasperation31, and even in this short walk he seemed to strike it everywhere. He paused before descending32 the steps from the lawn to speak to the gardener about potting some foreign shrubs33, 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 doggedly34. “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 tares35 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 robust36 rationalist, but he went to church to set his tenants37 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 explicit38, having more of a grievance39. 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 raven40 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 quaint41 patterns. For this patch of population was as much a corner of Cornwall as Cornwall is a corner of England; a tragic42 and unique race, small and interrelated like a Celtic clan43. 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 aristocrats44 who are the latest arrivals. It was the sort of racial type that is supposed to be passing, and perhaps has already passed.
The obnoxious45 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 indigo46 of the sea in graven horns and crescents that might be the cast or mold of some such crested47 serpents; and, beneath, was pierced and fretted48 by caves and crevices49, as if by the boring of some such titanic50 worms. Over and above this draconian51 architecture of the earth a veil of gray woods hung thinner like a vapor52; woods which the witchcraft53 of the sea had, as usual, both blighted54 and blown out of shape. To the right the trees trailed along the sea front in a single line, each drawn56 out in thin wild lines like a caricature. At the other end of their extent they multiplied into a huddle57 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 spire58 out of the village roofs. They formed a clump59 of three columns close together, which might well be the mere17 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 sprouted60 in advance of the faint mist of yellow-green around them, and it was of another and less natural green, tinged61 with blue, like the colors of a kingfisher. But one might fancy it the scales of some three-headed dragon towering over a herd62 of huddled63 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 plunging64 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 territorial66 lord with the sullen67 formality of the family. The Squire acknowledged it casually68 and had soon forgotten all such things in shaking hands with the visitor who had just come ashore69. 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 exquisite70 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 minor71 poets. He was a judicious72 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 incurred73 the deadly suspicion of classicism by differing from his young friends, the Punctuist Poets, when they produced versification consisting exclusively of commas and colons74. He had a more humane75 sympathy with the modern flame kindled76 from the embers of Celtic mythology77, 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 diplomacy78; 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 bard79 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 admiration80 at the hollowed crags, topped by the gray, grotesque81 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 blights82 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 apparently83 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 languor84 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 intervals85; 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 actively86 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 antiquated87; clothes common enough in texture88, yet carried in an uncommon89 fashion. He wore what was presumably a light waterproof90, 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 sneer91.
Whether this apparition92 was a tramp or a trespasser93, 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 sinister94 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 salute65 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, capers95. 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 steadily96. During a rather odd silence their eyes rested on each other. What she saw has been already noted97, 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 copper98.
“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 prospect99 is certainly beautiful,” he assented100, 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 pointed101 it at the peacock trees above the wood. And a queer feeling of disquiet102 fell on the girl, as if he were, by that mere gesture, doing a destructive act and could send a blight55 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 astonishment103, “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 genial104 confusion. “So pleased you were able to come. This is Mr. Paynter—-my daughter,” and, turning with a certain boisterous105 embarrassment106, he led the way to the table under the tree.
Cyprian Paynter followed, inwardly revolving107 a puzzle which had taken even his experience by surprise. The American, if intellectually an aristocrat, was still socially and subconsciously a democrat108. 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 patronage109 in Vane’s hospitality was something which made Paynter feel he was, after all, an exile in England.
The Squire, anticipating the trial of luncheon110 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, worthy111 middle-class people who fitted into the picture, he had kept it as a family party. He was a widower112, 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 shrill113 noise in a high wind that’s supposed to be like the shriek114 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 patriots115 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 steering116 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 meditatively117 on the table with his thin, taper118 fingers, like a man trying to recall a tune119. He had, indeed, made a hobby of such fables120, and he was not without vanity about his artistic121 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 twilight122 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 solitude123 beyond. They say that the hermit124 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 devour125 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 grove126, 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 guise127 of a great bird, and it was that which once spoke128 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 starry129 pageant130 of the peacocks. And the spirit of the brute131 overcame the spirit of the tree, and it rent and consumed the blue-green birds till not a plume132 was left, and returned to the quiet tribe of trees. But they say that when spring came all the other trees put forth133 leaves, but this put forth feathers of a strange hue134 and pattern. And by that monstrous135 assimilation the saint knew of the sin, and he rooted that one tree to the earth with a judgment136, 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 bent137 all his powers with a curious contentment upon the petty lawsuits138 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 insignificant139, 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 miraculous140 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 suavely141. “Now that sounds a fascinating piece of psychology142. 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 subconscious4 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 specimen143 of the type that others never noticed, at first, that he also repeated the dark portrait, however varnished144, 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 tribal145 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 shaft146, 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 conversationally147.
“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, symbolically148 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.
“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 iconoclasts150.”
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 plying151 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 muffled152 drum of mutiny in his voice. “The gentry153 came here and took our land and took our labor154 and took our customs. And now, after exploitation, a viler155 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 prematurely156 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 countenance157. 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 dwarf158 forest, rose, gigantic and gilded159 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 primal160 things, something seemed to say that he had seen the birds of some pagan augury161, 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 kindly162. “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.
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squire
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| n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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subconscious
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| n./adj.潜意识(的)，下意识(的) | |
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subconsciously
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| ad.下意识地，潜意识地 | |
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6
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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7
impartiality
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| n. 公平, 无私, 不偏 | |
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8
Moslem
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| n.回教徒，穆罕默德信徒；adj.回教徒的，回教的 | |
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9
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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10
mosque
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| n.清真寺 | |
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11
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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12
aristocrat
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| n.贵族，有贵族气派的人，上层人物 | |
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13
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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14
relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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15
relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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16
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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17
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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18
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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19
extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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20
backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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21
ornamental
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| adj.装饰的；作装饰用的；n.装饰品；观赏植物 | |
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22
urns
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| n.壶( urn的名词复数 )；瓮；缸；骨灰瓮 | |
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23
zigzag
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| n.曲折，之字形；adj.曲折的，锯齿形的；adv.曲折地，成锯齿形地；vt.使曲折；vi.曲折前行 | |
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24
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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25
pier
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| n.码头；桥墩，桥柱；[建]窗间壁，支柱 | |
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26
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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27
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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28
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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29
rustics
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| n.有农村或村民特色的( rustic的名词复数 )；粗野的；不雅的；用粗糙的木材或树枝制作的 | |
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30
pricked
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| 刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛 | |
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31
exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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32
descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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33
shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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34
doggedly
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| adv.顽强地，固执地 | |
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35
tares
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| 荑；稂莠；稗 | |
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36
robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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37
tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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38
explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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39
grievance
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| n.怨愤，气恼，委屈 | |
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40
raven
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| n.渡鸟，乌鸦；adj.乌亮的 | |
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41
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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42
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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43
clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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44
aristocrats
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| n.贵族( aristocrat的名词复数 ) | |
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45
obnoxious
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| adj.极恼人的，讨人厌的，可憎的 | |
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46
indigo
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| n.靛青，靛蓝 | |
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47
crested
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| adj.有顶饰的，有纹章的，有冠毛的v.到达山顶（或浪峰）( crest的过去式和过去分词 )；到达洪峰，达到顶点 | |
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48
fretted
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| 焦躁的，附有弦马的，腐蚀的 | |
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49
crevices
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| n.（尤指岩石的）裂缝，缺口( crevice的名词复数 ) | |
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50
titanic
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| adj.巨人的，庞大的，强大的 | |
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51
draconian
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| adj.严苛的；苛刻的；严酷的；龙一样的 | |
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52
vapor
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| n.蒸汽，雾气 | |
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53
witchcraft
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| n.魔法，巫术 | |
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54
blighted
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| adj.枯萎的，摧毁的 | |
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55
blight
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| n.枯萎病；造成破坏的因素；vt.破坏，摧残 | |
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56
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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57
huddle
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| vi.挤作一团；蜷缩；vt.聚集；n.挤在一起的人 | |
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58
spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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59
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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60
sprouted
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| v.发芽( sprout的过去式和过去分词 )；抽芽；出现；（使）涌现出 | |
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61
tinged
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| v.（使）发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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62
herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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63
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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64
plunging
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| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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65
salute
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| vi.行礼，致意，问候，放礼炮；vt.向…致意，迎接，赞扬；n.招呼，敬礼，礼炮 | |
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66
territorial
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| adj.领土的，领地的 | |
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67
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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68
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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69
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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70
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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71
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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72
judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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73
incurred
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| [医]招致的，遭受的； incur的过去式 | |
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74
colons
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| n.冒号( colon的名词复数 )；结肠 | |
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75
humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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76
kindled
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| （使某物）燃烧，着火( kindle的过去式和过去分词 )； 激起（感情等）； 发亮，放光 | |
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77
mythology
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| n.神话，神话学，神话集 | |
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78
diplomacy
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| n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕 | |
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79
bard
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| n.吟游诗人 | |
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80
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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81
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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82
blights
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| 使凋萎( blight的第三人称单数 )； 使颓丧； 损害； 妨害 | |
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83
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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84
languor
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| n.无精力，倦怠 | |
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85
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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86
actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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87
antiquated
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| adj.陈旧的，过时的 | |
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88
texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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89
uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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90
waterproof
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| n.防水材料；adj.防水的；v.使...能防水 | |
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91
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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92
apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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93
trespasser
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| n.侵犯者；违反者 | |
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94
sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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95
capers
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| n.开玩笑( caper的名词复数 )；刺山柑v.跳跃，雀跃( caper的第三人称单数 ) | |
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96
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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97
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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98
copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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99
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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100
assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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101
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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102
disquiet
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| n.担心，焦虑 | |
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103
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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104
genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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105
boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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106
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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107
revolving
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| adj.旋转的，轮转式的；循环的v.（使）旋转( revolve的现在分词 )；细想 | |
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108
democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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109
patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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110
luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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111
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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112
widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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113
shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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114
shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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115
patriots
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| 爱国者，爱国主义者( patriot的名词复数 ) | |
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116
steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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117
meditatively
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| adv.冥想地 | |
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118
taper
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| n.小蜡烛，尖细，渐弱；adj.尖细的；v.逐渐变小 | |
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119
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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120
fables
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| n.寓言( fable的名词复数 )；神话，传说 | |
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121
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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122
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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123
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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124
hermit
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| n.隐士，修道者；隐居 | |
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125
devour
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| v.吞没；贪婪地注视或谛听，贪读；使着迷 | |
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126
grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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127
guise
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| n.外表，伪装的姿态 | |
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128
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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129
starry
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| adj.星光照耀的, 闪亮的 | |
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130
pageant
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| n.壮观的游行；露天历史剧 | |
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131
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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132
plume
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| n.羽毛；v.整理羽毛，骚首弄姿，用羽毛装饰 | |
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133
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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134
hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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137
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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138
lawsuits
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| n.诉讼( lawsuit的名词复数 ) | |
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139
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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141
suavely
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142
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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143
specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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144
varnished
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| 浸渍过的，涂漆的 | |
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145
tribal
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| adj.部族的，种族的 | |
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146
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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conversationally
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| adv.会话地 | |
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symbolically
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| ad.象征地，象征性地 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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150
iconoclasts
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| n.攻击传统观念的人( iconoclast的名词复数 )；反对崇拜圣像者 | |
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151
plying
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| v.使用（工具）( ply的现在分词 )；经常供应（食物、饮料）；固定往来；经营生意 | |
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muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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153
gentry
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| n.绅士阶级，上层阶级 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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viler
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| adj.卑鄙的( vile的比较级 )；可耻的；极坏的；非常讨厌的 | |
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prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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157
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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dwarf
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| n.矮子，侏儒，矮小的动植物；vt.使…矮小 | |
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gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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primal
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| adj.原始的；最重要的 | |
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161
augury
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| n.预言，征兆，占卦 | |
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162
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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