II. The Wager of Squire Vane (1)

    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.