Mrs. Bittacy had never liked their present home. She preferred a flat,
more open country that left approaches clear. She liked to see things
coming. This cottage on the very edge of the old hunting grounds of
William the Conqueror had never satisfied her ideal of a safe and
pleasant place to settle down in. The sea-coast, with treeless downs
behind and a clear horizon in front, as at Eastbourne, say, was her
ideal of a proper home.
It was curious, this instinctive aversion she felt to being shut in--by
trees especially; a kind of claustrophobia almost; probably due, as has
been said, to the days in India when the trees took her husband off and
surrounded him with dangers. In those weeks of solitude the feeling
had matured. She had fought it in her fashion, but never conquered it.
Apparently routed, it had a way of creeping back in other forms. In
this particular case, yielding to his strong desire, she thought the
battle won, but the terror of the trees came back before the first
month had passed. They laughed in her face.
She never lost knowledge of the fact that the leagues of forest lay
about their cottage like a mighty wall, a crowding, watching, listening
presence that shut them in from freedom and escape. Far from morbid
naturally, she did her best to deny the thought, and so simple and
unartificial was her type of mind that for weeks together she would
wholly lose it. Then, suddenly it would return upon her with a rush of
bleak reality. It was not only in her mind; it existed apart from any
mere mood; a separate fear that walked alone; it came and went, yet
when it went--went only to watch her from another point of view. It was
in abeyance--hidden round the corner.
The Forest never let her go completely. It was ever ready to encroach.
All the branches, she sometimes fancied, stretched one way--towards
their tiny cottage and garden, as though it sought to draw them in
and merge them in itself. Its great, deep-breathing soul resented the
mockery, the insolence, the irritation of the prim garden at its very
gates. It would absorb and smother them if it could. And every wind
that blew its thundering message over the huge sounding-board of the
million, shaking trees conveyed the purpose that it had. They had
angered its great soul. At its heart was this deep, incessant roaring.
All this she never framed in words; the subtleties of language lay far
beyond her reach. But instinctively she felt it; and more besides. It
troubled her profoundly. Chiefly, moreover, for her husband. Merely
for herself, the nightmare might have left her cold. It was David’s
peculiar interest in the trees that gave the special invitation.
Jealousy, then, in its most subtle aspect came to strengthen this
aversion and dislike, for it came in a form that no reasonable wife
could possibly object to. Her husband’s passion, she reflected, was
natural and inborn. It had decided his vocation, fed his ambition,
nourished his dreams, desires, hopes. All his best years of active
life had been spent in the care and guardianship of trees. He knew
them, understood their secret life and nature, ‘managed’ them
intuitively as other men ‘managed’ dogs and horses. He could not live
for long away from them without a strange, acute nostalgia that stole
his peace of mind and consequently his strength of body. A forest made
him happy and at peace; it nursed and fed and soothed his deepest
moods. Trees influenced the sources of his life, lowered or raised the
very heart-beat in him. Cut off from them he languished as a lover
of the sea can droop inland, or a mountaineer may pine in the flat
monotony of the plains.
This she could understand, in a fashion at least, and make allowances
for. She had yielded gently, even sweetly, to his choice of their
English home; for in the little island there is nothing that suggests
the woods of wilder countries so nearly as the New Forest. It has the
genuine air and mystery, the depth and splendour, the loneliness, and
here and there the strong, untamable quality of old-time forests as
Bittacy of the Department knew them.
In a single detail only had he yielded to her wishes. He consented to
a cottage on the edge, instead of in the heart of it. And for a dozen
years now they had dwelt in peace and happiness at the lips of this
great spreading thing that covered so many leagues with its tangle of
swamps and moors and splendid ancient trees.
Only with the last two years or so--with his own increasing age, and
physical decline perhaps--had come this marked growth of passionate
interest in the welfare of the Forest. She had watched it grow,
at first had laughed at it, then talked sympathetically so far as
sincerity permitted, then had argued mildly, and finally come to
realise that its treatment lay altogether beyond her powers, and so had
come to fear it with all her heart.
* * * * *
The six weeks they annually spent away from their English home, each
regarded very differently of course. For her husband it meant a painful
exile that did his health no good; he yearned for his trees--the sight
and sound and smell of them; but for herself it meant release from a
haunting dread--escape. To renounce those six weeks by the sea on the
sunny, shining coast of France, was almost more than this little woman,
even with her unselfishness, could face.
After the first shock of the announcement, she reflected as deeply as
her nature permitted, prayed, wept in secret--and made up her mind.
Duty, she felt clearly, pointed to renouncement. The discipline would
certainly be severe--she did not dream at the moment how severe!--but
this fine, consistent little Christian saw it plain; she accepted it,
too, without any sighing of the martyr, though the courage she showed
was of the martyr order. Her husband should never know the cost. In all
but this one passion his unselfishness was ever as great as her own.
The love she had borne him all these years, like the love she bore her
anthropomorphic deity, was deep and real. She loved to suffer for them
both. Besides, the way her husband had put it to her was singular.
It did not take the form of a mere selfish predilection. Something
higher than two wills in conflict seeking compromise was in it from the
beginning.
‘I feel, Sophia, it would be really more than I could manage,’ he said
slowly, gazing into the fire over the tops of his stretched-out muddy
boots. ‘My duty and my happiness lie here with the Forest and with
you. My life is deeply rooted in this place. Something I can’t define
connects my inner being with these trees, and separation would make
me ill--might even kill me. My hold on life would weaken; here is my
source of supply. I cannot explain it better than that.’ He looked up
steadily into her face across the table so that she saw the gravity of
his expression and the shining of his steady eyes.
‘David, you feel it as strongly as that!’ she said, forgetting the tea
things altogether.
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I do. And it’s not of the body only; I feel it in
my soul.’
The reality of what he hinted at crept into that shadow-covered room
like an actual Presence and stood beside them. It came not by the
windows or the door, but it filled the entire space between the walls
and ceiling. It took the heat from the fire before her face. She felt
suddenly cold, confused a little, frightened. She almost felt the rush
of foliage in the wind. It stood between them.
‘There are things--some things,’ she faltered, ‘we are not intended to
know, I think.’ The words expressed her general attitude to life, not
alone to this particular incident.
And after a pause of several minutes, disregarding the criticism as
though he had not heard it--‘I cannot explain it better than that,
you see,’ his grave voice answered. ‘There _is_ this deep, tremendous
link,--some secret power they emanate that keeps me well and happy
and--alive. If you cannot understand, I feel at least you may be able
to--forgive.’ His tone grew tender, gentle, soft. ‘My selfishness, I
know, must seem quite unforgivable. I cannot help it somehow; these
trees, this ancient Forest, both seem knitted into all that makes me
live, and if I go----’
There was a little sound of collapse in his voice. He stopped abruptly,
and sank back in his chair. And, at that, a distinct lump came up into
her throat which she had great difficulty in managing while she went
over and put her arms about him.
‘My dear,’ she murmured, ‘God will direct. We will accept His guidance.
He has always shown the way before.’
‘My selfishness afflicts me----’ he began, but she would not let him
finish.
‘David, He will direct. Nothing shall harm you. You’ve never once been
selfish, and I cannot bear to hear you say such things. The way will
open that is best for you--for both of us.’ She kissed him; she would
not let him speak; her heart was in her throat, and she felt for him
far more than for herself.
And then he had suggested that she should go alone perhaps for a
shorter time, and stay in her brother’s villa with the children, Alice
and Stephen. It was always open to her as she well knew.
‘You need the change,’ he said, when the lamps had been lit and the
servant had gone out again; ‘you need it as much as I dread it. I could
manage somehow till you returned, and should feel happier that way if
you went. I cannot leave this Forest that I love so well. I even feel,
Sophie dear’--he sat up straight and faced her as he half whispered
it--‘that I can _never_ leave it again. My life and happiness lie here
together.’
And even while scorning the idea that she could leave him alone with
the Influence of the Forest all about him to have its unimpeded way,
she felt the pangs of that subtle jealousy bite keen and close. He
loved the Forest better than herself, for he placed it first. Behind
the words, moreover, hid the unuttered thought that made her so uneasy.
The terror Sanderson had brought revived and shook its wings before her
very eyes. For the whole conversation, of which this was a fragment,
conveyed the unutterable implication that while he could not spare the
trees, they equally could not spare him. The vividness with which he
managed to conceal and yet betray the fact brought a profound distress
that crossed the border between presentiment and warning into positive
alarm.
He clearly felt that the trees would miss him--the trees he tended,
guarded, watched over, loved.
‘David, I shall stay here with you. I think you need me really,--don’t
you?’ Eagerly, with a touch of heart-felt passion, the words poured out.
‘Now more than ever, dear. God bless you for your sweet unselfishness.
And your sacrifice,’ he added, ‘is all the greater because you cannot
understand the thing that makes it necessary for me to stay.’
‘Perhaps in the spring instead----’ she said, with a tremor in the
voice.
‘In the spring--perhaps,’ he answered gently, almost beneath his
breath. ‘For they will not need me then. All the world can love them
in the spring. It’s in the winter that they’re lonely and neglected. I
wish to stay with them particularly then. I even feel I ought to--and I
must.’
And in this way, without further speech, the decision was made. Mrs.
Bittacy, at least, asked no more questions. Yet she could not bring
herself to show more sympathy than was necessary. She felt, for one
thing, that if she did, it might lead him to speak freely, and to tell
her things she could not possibly bear to know. And she dared not take
the risk of that.