The Baron d'Azan was old--older even than his seventy years. His
age showed by contrast as he walked among his trees. They were
fresh and flourishing, full of sap and vigor, though many of them
had been born long before him.
The tracts of forest which still belonged to his diminished estate
were crowded with the growths native to the foot-hills of the
Ardennes. In the park around the small chateau, built in a Belgian
version of the First Empire style, trees from many lands had been
assembled by his father and grandfather: drooping spruces from
Norway, dark-pillared cypresses from Italy, spreading cedars from
Lebanon, trees of heaven from China, fern-leaved gingkos from Japan,
lofty tulip-trees and liquidambars from America, and fantastic
sylvan forms from islands of the Southern Ocean. But the royal
avenue of beeches! Well, I must tell you more about that, else you
can never feel the meaning of this story.
The love of trees was hereditary in the family and antedated their
other nobility. The founder of the house had begun life as the son
of a forester in Luxemburg. His name was Pol Staar. His fortune and
title were the fruit of contracts for horses and provisions which
he made with the commissariat of Napoleon I. in the days when the
Netherlands were a French province. But though Pol Staar's hands
were callous and his manners plain, his tastes were aristocratic.
They had been formed young in the company of great trees.
Therefore when he bought his estate of Azan (and took his title
from it) he built his chateau in a style which he considered
complimentary to his imperial patron, but he was careful also to
include within his domain large woodlands in which he could renew
the allegiance of his youth. These woodlands he cherished and
improved, cutting with discretion, planting with liberality, and
rejoicing in the thought that trees like those which had befriended
his boyhood would give their friendly protection to his heirs.
These are traits of an aristocrat--attachment to the past, and
careful provision for posterity. It was in this spirit that Pol
Staar, first Baron d'Azan, planted in 1809 the broad avenue of
beeches, leading from the chateau straight across the park to the
highroad. But he never saw their glory, for he died when they were
only twenty years old.
His son and successor was of a different timber and grain; less
aristocratic, more bourgeois--a rover, a gambler, a man of fashion.
He migrated from the gaming-tables at Spa to the Bourse at Paris,
perching at many clubs between and beyond, and making seasonal
nests in several places. This left him little time for the Chdteau
d'Azan. But he came there every spring and autumn, and showed the
family fondness for trees in his own fashion. He loved the forests
so much that he ate them. He cut with liberality and planted without
discretion. But for the great avenue of beeches he had a saving
admiration. Not even to support the gaming-table would he have
allowed them to be felled.
When he turned the corner of his thirty-first year he had a sharp
illness, a temporary reformation, and brought home as his wife a
very young lovely actress from the ducal theatre at Saxe-Meiningen.
She was a good girl, deeply in love with her handsome husband, to
whom she bore a son and heir in the first year of their marriage.
Not many moons thereafter the pleased but restless father slid back
into his old rounds again. The forest waned and the debts waxed.
Rumors of wild doings came from Spa and Aix, from Homburg and
Baden, from Trouville and Ostend. After four years of this the young
mother died, of no namable disease, unless you call it heart-failure,
and the boy was left to his grandmother's care and company among
the trees.
Every day when it was fair the old lady and the little lad took
their afternoon walk together in the beech-tree avenue, where the
tips of the branches now reached the road. At other times he roamed
the outlying woods and learned to know the birds and the little
wild animals. When he was twelve his grandmother died. After that
he was left mainly to the housekeeper, his tutors, and the few
friends he could make among the children of the neighborhood.
When he had finished his third year at the University of Louvain
and attained his majority, his father returned express-haste from
somewhere in Bohemia, to attend the coronation of Leopold II,
that remarkable King of Belgium and the Bourse. But by this time
the gay Baron d'Azan had become stout, the pillar of his neck seemed
shorter because it was thicker, and the rose in his bold cheek had
the purplish tint of a crimson rambler. So he died of an apoplexy
during the festivities, and his son brought him back to the Chateau
d'Azan, and buried him there with due honor, and mourned for him
as was fitting. Thus Albert, third Baron d'Azan, entered upon his
inheritance.
It seemed, at first, to consist mainly of debts. These were paid by
the sale of the deforested lands and of certain detached woodlands.
By the same method, much as he disliked it, he made a modest
provision of money for continuing his education and beginning his
travels. He knew that he had much to learn of the world, and he
was especially desirous of pursuing his favorite study of botany,
which a wise old priest at Louvain had taught him to love. So he
engaged an intelligent and faithful forester to care for the trees
and the estate, closed the house, and set forth on his journeys.
They led him far and wide. In the course of them no doubt he
studied other things than botany. It may be that he sowed some of
the wild oats with which youth is endowed; but not in the gardens
of others; nor with that cold self-indulgence which transforms
passionate impulse into sensual habit. He had a permanent and
regulative devotion to botanical research; and that is a study which
seems to promote modesty, tranquillity, and steadiness of mind in
its devotees, of whom the great Linnaeus is the shining exemplar.
Young Albert d'Azan sat at the feet of the best masters in Europe
and America. He crossed the western continent to observe the oldest
of living things, the giant Sequoias of California. He went to
Australasia and the Dutch East Indies and South America in search
of new ferns and orchids. He investigated the effect of ocean
currents and of tribal migrations in the distribution of trees.
His botanical monographs brought him renown among those who know,
and he was elected a corresponding member of many scientific
societies. After twenty years of voyaging he returned to port at
Azan, richly laden with observation and learning, and settled down
among his trees to pursue his studies and write his books.
The estate, under the forester's care, had improved a little and
promised a modest income. The house, though somewhat dilapidated,
was easily made livable. But the one thing that was full of glory
and splendor, triumphantly prosperous, was the great avenue of
beeches. Their long, low aisle of broad arches was complete. They
shimmered with a pearly mist of buds in early spring and later
with luminous green of tender leafage. In mid-summer they formed a
wide, still stream of dark, unruffled verdure; in autumn they were
transmuted through glowing yellow into russet gold; in winter
their massy trunks were pillars of gray marble and the fan-tracery
of their rounded branches was delicately etched against the sky.
“Look at them,” the baron would say to the guests whom the fame of
his learning and the charm of his wide-ranging conversation often
brought to his house. “Those beeches were planted by my grandfather
after the battle of Wagram, when Napoleon whipped the Austrians.
After that came the Beresina and Leipsic and Waterloo and how many
battles and wars of furious, perishable men. Yet the trees live
on peaceably, they unfold their strength in beauty, they have not
yet reached the summit of their grandeur. We are all _parvenus_
beside them.”
“If you had to choose,” asked the great sculptor Constantin Meunier
one day, “would you have your house or one of these trees struck
by lightning?”
“The house,” answered the botanist promptly, “for I could rebuild
it in a year; but to restore the tree would take three-quarters of
a century.”
“Also,” said the sculptor, with a smile, “you might change the
style of your house with advantage, but the style of these trees
you could never improve.”
“But tell me,” he continued, “is it true, as they say, that lightning
never strikes a beech?”
“It is not entirely true,” replied the botanist, smiling in his
turn, “yet, like many ancient beliefs, it has some truth in it.
There is something in the texture of the beech that seems to resist
electricity better than other trees. It may be the fatness of the
wood. Whatever it is, I am glad of it, for it gives my trees a
better chance.”
“Don't be too secure,” said the sculptor, shaking his head. “There
are other tempests besides those in the clouds. When the next war
comes in western Europe Belgium will be the battle-field. Beech-wood
is very good to burn.”
“God forbid,” said the baron devoutly. “We have had peace for a
quarter of a century. Why should it not last?”
“Ask the wise men of the East,” replied the sculptor grimly.
When he was a little past fifty the baron married, with steadfast
choice and deep affection, the orphan daughter of a noble family
of Hainault. She was about half his age; of a tranquil, cheerful
temper and a charm that depended less on feature than on expression;
a lover of music, books, and a quiet life. She brought him a small
dowry by which the chateau was restored to comfort, and bore him
two children, a boy and a girl, by whom it was enlivened with
natural gayety. The next twenty years were the happiest that Albert
d'Azan and his wife ever saw. The grand avenue of beeches became
to them the unconscious symbol of something settled and serene,
august, protective, sacred.
On a brilliant morning of early April, 1914, they had stepped out
together to drink the air. The beeches were in misty, silver bloom
above them. All around was peace and gladness.
“I want to tell you a dream I had last night,” he said, “a strange
dream about our beeches.”
“If it was sad,” she answered, “do not let the shadow of it fall
on the morning.”
“But it was not sad. It seemed rather to bring light and comfort.
I dreamed that I was dead and you had buried me at the foot of
the largest of the trees.”
“Do you call that not sad?” she interrupted reproachfully.
“It did not seem so. Wait a moment and you shall hear the way of
it. At first I felt only a deep quietness and repose, like one who
has been in pain and is very tired and lies down in the shade to
sleep. Then I was waking again and something was drawing me gently
upward. I cannot exactly explain it, but it was as if I were passing
through the roots and the trunk and the boughs of the beech-tree
toward the upper air. There I saw the light again and heard the
birds singing and the wind rustling among the leaves. How I saw
and heard I cannot tell you, for there was no remembrance of a body
in my dream. Then suddenly my soul--I suppose it was that--stood
before God and He was asking me: 'How did you come hither?'
I answered, 'By Christ's way, by the way of a tree.' And He said
it was well, and that my work in heaven should be the care of the
trees growing by the river of life, and that sometimes I could go
back to visit my trees on earth, if I wished. That made me very
glad, for I knew that so I should see you and our children under
the beeches. And while I was wondering whether you would ever
know that I was there, the dream dissolved, and I saw the morning
light on the tree-tops. What do you think of my dream? Childish,
wasn't it?”
She thought a little before she answered.
“It was natural enough, though vague. Of course we could not be
buried at the foot of the beech-tree unless Cardinal Mercier would
permit a plot of ground to be consecrated there. But come, it is
time to go in to breakfast.”
She seemed to dismiss the matter from her mind. Yet, as women so
often do, she kept all these sayings and pondered them in her heart.
The promise of spring passed into the sultry heat of summer. The
storm-cloud of the twentieth century blackened over Europe. The
wise men of Berlin made mad by pride, devoted the world not to
the Prince of Peace but to the lords of war. In the first week of
August the fury of the German invasion broke on Belgium. No one had
dared to dream the terrors of that tempest. It was like a return
of the Dark Ages. Every home trembled. The pillars of the tranquil
house of Azan were shaken.
The daughter was away at school in England, and that was an unmixed
blessing. The son was a lieutenant in the Belgian army; and that
was right and glorious, but it was also a dreadful anxiety. The
father and mother were divided in mind, Whether to stay or take
flight with their friends. At last the father decided the hard
question.
“It is our duty to stay. We cannot fight for our country, but we
can suffer with her. Our daughter is in safety; our son's danger we
cannot and would not prevent. How could we really live away from
here, our home, our trees? I went to consult the cardinal. He stays,
and he advises us to do so. He says that will be the best way to
show our devotion. As Christians we must endure the evil that we
cannot prevent; but as Belgians our hearts will never consent to
it.”
That was their attitude as the tide of blood and tears drew nearer
to them, surrounded them, swept beyond them, engulfed the whole
land. The brutal massacres at Andenne and Dinant were so near that
the news arrived before the spilt blood was dry. The exceeding great
and bitter cry of anguish came to them from a score of neighboring
villages, from a hundred lonely farmhouses. The old botanist
withered and faded daily; his wife grew pale and gray. Yet they
walked their _via crucis_ together, and kept their chosen
course.
They fed the hungry and clothed the naked, helped the fugitives and
consoled the broken-hearted. They counselled their poor neighbors
to good order, and dissuaded the ignorant from the folly and peril
of violence. Toward the invading soldiery their conduct was beyond
reproach. With no false professions of friendship, they fulfilled
the hard services which were required of them. Their servants had
been helped away at the beginning of the trouble--all except the
old forester and his wife, who refused to leave. With their aid
the house was kept open and many of the conquerors lodged there
and in the outbuildings. So good were the quarters that a departing
Saxon chalked on the gate-post the dubious inscription: _“Gute
Leute-nicht auspliin-dern.”_ Thus the captives at the Chateau
d'Azan had a good name even among their enemies. The baron received
a military pass which enabled him to move quite freely about the
district on his errands of necessity and mercy, and the chateau
became a favorite billet for high-born officers.
In the second year of the war an evil chance brought two uninvited
guests of very high standing indeed--that is to say in the social
ring of Potsdam. Their names are well known. Let us call them
Prince Barenberg and Count Ludra. The first was a major, the second
a captain. Their value as warriors in the field had not proved
equal to their prominence as noblemen, so they were given duty in
the rear.
They were vicious coxcombs of the first order. Their uniforms
incased them tightly. Like wasps they bent only at the waist. Their
flat-topped caps were worn with an aggressive slant, their swords
jingled menacingly, their hay-colored mustaches spoke arrogance in
every upturned hair. When they bowed it was a mockery; when they
smiled it was a sneer. For the comfortable quarters of the Chateau
d'Azan they had a gross appreciation, for the enforced hospitality
of its owners an insolent condescension. They took it as their due,
and resented the silent protest underneath it.
“Excellent wine, Herr Baron,” said the prince, who, like his comrade,
drank profusely of the best in the cellar. “Your Rudesheimer Berg
'94 is _kolossal._ Very friendly of you to save it for us.
We Germans know good wine. What?”
“You have that reputation,” answered the baron.
“And say,” added the count, “let us have a couple of bottles more,
dear landlord. You can put it in the bill.”
“I shall do so,” said the baron gravely. “It shall be put in the
bill with other things.”
“But why,” drawled the prince, “does _la Baronne_ never favor
us with her company? Still very attractive--musical probably--here
is a piano--want good German music--console homesickness.”
“Madame is indisposed,” answered the baron quietly, “but you may
be sure she regrets your absence from home.”
The officers looked at each other with half-tipsy, half-angry eyes.
They suspected a jest at their expense, but could not quite catch
it.
“Impudence,” muttered the count, who was the sharper of the two
when sober.
“No,” said the prince, “it is only stupidity. These Walloons have
no wit.”
“Come,” he added, turning to the baron, “we sing you a good song of
fatherland--show how _gemuthlich_ we Germans are. You Belgians
have no word for that. What?”
He sat down to the piano and pounded out _“Deutschland ueber
Alles,”_ singing the air in a raucous voice, while Ludra added
a rumbling bass.
“What do you think of that? All Germans can sing. _Gemuthlich._
What?”
“You are right,” said the baron, with downcast eyes. “We Belgians
have no word for that. It is inexpressible--except in German. I
bid you good night.”
For nearly a fortnight this condition of affairs continued. The
baron endured it as best he could, obeying scrupulously the military
regulations which necessity laid upon him, and taking his revenge
only in long thoughts and words of polite sarcasm which he knew would
not be understood. The baroness worked hard at the housekeeping,
often cooking and cleaning with her own hands, and rejoicing secretly
with her husband over the rare news that came from their daughter
in England, from their boy at the front in West Flanders. Sometimes,
when the coast was clear, husband and wife walked together under the
beech-trees and talked in low tones of the time when the ravenous
beast should no more go up on the land.
The two noble officers performed their routine duties, found such
amusement as they could in neighboring villages and towns, drank
deep at night, and taxed their ingenuity to invent small ways of
annoying their hosts, for whom they felt the contemptuous dislike
of the injurer for the injured. They were careful, however, to
keep their malice within certain bounds, for they knew that the
baron was in favor with the commandant of the district.
One morning the baron and his wife, looking from their window in
a wing of the house, saw with surprise and horror a score or more
of German soldiers assembled beside the beech-avenue, with axes
and saws, preparing to begin work.
“What are they going to do there?” cried he in dismay, and hurried
down to the dining-room, where the officers sat at breakfast, giving
orders to an attentive corporal.
“A thousand pardons, Highness,” interrupted the baron; “forgive
my haste. But surely you are not going to cut down my avenue of
beeches?”
“Why not?” said the prince, swinging around in his chair. “They
are good wood.”
“But, sir,” stammered the baron, trembling with excitement, “those
trees--they are an ancient heritage of the house--planted by my
grandfather a century ago--an old possession--spare them for their
age.”
“You exaggerate,” sneered the prince. “They are not old. I have on
my hunting estate in Thuringia oaks five hundred years old. These
trees of yours are mere upstarts. Why shouldn't they be cut? What?”
“But they are very dear to us,” pleaded the baron earnestly. “We
all love them, my wife and children and I. To us they are sacred.
It would be harsh to take them from us.”
“Baron,” said the prince, with suave malice, “you miss the point.
We Germans are never harsh. But we are practical. My soldiers need
exercise. The camps need wood. Do you see? What?”
“Certainly,” answered the poor baron, humbling himself in his
devotion to his trees. “Your Highness makes the point perfectly
clear--the need of exercise and wood. But there is plenty of good
timber in the forest and the park--much easier to cut. Cannot your
men get their wood and their exercise there, and spare my dearest
trees?”
Ludra laughed unpleasantly.
“You do not yet understand us, dear landlord. We Germans are
a hard-working people, not like the lazy Belgians. The harder the
work the better we like it. The soldiers will have a fine time
chopping down your tough beeches.”
The slender old man drew himself up, his eyes flashed, he was driven
to bay.
“You shall not do this,” he cried. “It is an outrage, a sacrilege.
I shall appeal to the commandant. He will protect my rights.”
The officers looked at each other. Deaf to pity, they had keen ears
for danger. A reproof, perhaps a punishment from their superior
would be most unpleasant. They hesitated to face it. But they were
too obstinate to give up their malicious design altogether with a
good grace.
“Military necessity,” growled the prince, “knows no private rights.
I advise you, baron, not to appeal to the commandant. It will be
useless, perhaps harmful.”
“Here, you,” he said gruffly, turning to the corporal, “carry out
my orders. Cut the two marked beeches by the gate. Then take your
men into the park and cut the biggest trees there. Report for
further orders to-morrow morning.”
The wooden-faced giant saluted, swung on his heels, and marched
stiffly out. The baron followed him quickly.
He knew that entreaties would be wasted on the corporal. How to get
to the commandant, that was the question? He would not be allowed
to use the telephone which was in the dining-room, nor the automobile
which belonged to the officers; nor one of their horses which were
in his stable. The only other beast left there was a small and very
antique donkey which the children used to drive. In a dilapidated
go-cart, drawn by this pattering nag, the baron made such haste
as he could along twelve miles of stony road to the district
headquarters. There he told his story simply to the commandant and
begged protection for his beloved trees.
The old general was of a different type from the fire-eating dandies
who played the master at Azan. He listened courteously and gravely.
There was a picture in his mind of the old timbered house in the
Hohe Venn, where he had spent four years in retirement before the
war called him back to the colors. He thought of the tall lindens
and the spreading chestnuts around it and imagined how he should
feel if he saw them falling under the axe.
Then he said to his petitioner:
“You have acted quite correctly, _Monsieur le Baron,_ in
bringing this matter quietly to my attention. There is no military
necessity for the destruction of your fine trees. I shall put a
stop to it at once.”
He called his aide-de-camp and gave some instructions in a low tone
of voice. When the aide came back from the telephone and reported,
the general frowned.
“It is unheard of,” he muttered, half to himself, “the way those
titled young fools go beyond their orders.”
Then he turned to his visitor.
“I am very sorry, _Monsieur le Baron,_ but two of your beeches
have already fallen. It cannot be helped now. But there shall be no
more of it, I promise you. Those young officers are--they are--let
us call them overzealous. I will transfer them to another post
to-morrow. The German command appreciates the correct conduct of
you and _Madame la Baronne._ Is there anything more that I
can do for you?”
“I thank your Excellency sincerely,” replied the baron. Then he
hesitated a moment, as if to weigh his words. “No, _Herr General,_
I believe there is nothing more--in which you can help me.”
The old soldier's eyelids flickered for an instant. “Then I bid
you a very good day,” he said, bowing.
The baron hurried home, to share the big good news with his wife.
The little bad news she knew already. Together they grieved over
the two fallen trees and rejoiced under the golden shadow of their
untouched companions. The officers had called for wine, and more
wine, and yet more wine, and were drinking deep and singing loud
in the dining-room.
In the morning came an orderly with a despatch from headquarters,
ordering the prince and the count to duty in a dirty village of
the coal region. Their baggage was packed into the automobile,
and they mounted their horses and went away in a rage.
“You will be sorry for this, dumbhead,” growled the prince, scowling
fiercely. “Yes,” added Ludra, with a hateful grin, “we shall meet
again, dear landlord, and you will be sorry.”
Their host bowed and said nothing.
Some weeks later the princely automobile came to the door of the
chateau. The forester brought up word that the Prince Barenberg
and the Count Ludra were below with a message from headquarters;
the commandant wished the baron to come there immediately; the
automobile was sent to bring him. He made ready to go. His wife
and his servant tried hard to dissuade him: it was late, almost
dark, and very cold--not likely the commandant had sent for him--it
might be all a trick of those officers--they were hateful men--they
would play some cruel prank for revenge. But the old man was
obstinate in his resolve; he must do what was required of him, he
must not even run the risk of slighting the commandant's wishes;
after all, no great harm could come to him.
When he reached the steps he saw the count in the front seat, beside
the chauffeur, grinning; and the prince's harsh voice, made soft
as possible, called from the shadowy interior of the car:
“Come in, baron. The general has sent for you in a hurry. We will
take you like lightning. How fine your beeches look against the
sky. What?”
The old man stepped into the dusky car. It rolled down the long
aisle, between the smooth gray columns, beneath the fan-tracery of
the low arches, out on to the stony highway. Thus the tree-lover
was taken from his sanctuary.
He did not return the next day, nor the day after. His wife, tortured
by anxiety, went to the district headquarters. The commandant was
away. The aide could not enlighten her. There had been no message
sent to the baron--that was certain. Major Barenberg and Captain
Ludra had been transferred to another command. Unfortunately,
nothing could be done except to report the case.
The brave woman was not broken by her anguish, but raised to the
height of heroic devotion. She dedicated herself to the search for
her husband. The faithful forester, convinced that his master had
been killed, was like a slow, sure bloodhound on the track of the
murderers. He got a trace of them in a neighboring village, where
their car had been seen to pass at dusk on the fatal day. The
officers were in it, but not the baron. The forester got a stronger
scent of them in a wine-house, where their chauffeur had babbled
mysteriously on the following day. The old woodsman followed the
trail with inexhaustible patience.
“I shall bring the master's body home,” he said to his mistress,
“and God will use me to avenge his murder.”
A few weeks later he found his master's corpse hidden in a hollow
on the edge of the forest, half-covered with broken branches,
rotting leaves, and melting snow. There were three bullets in the
body. They had been fired at close range.
The widow's heart, passing from the torture of uncertainty to the
calm of settled grief, had still a sacred duty to live for. She had
not forgotten her husband's dream. She went to the cardinal-archbishop
to beg the consecration of a little burial-plot at the foot of the
greatest of the beeches of Azan. That wise and brave prince of
the church consented with words of tender consolation, and promised
his aid in the pursuit of the criminals.
“Eminence,” she said, weeping, “you are very good to me. God will
reward you. He is just. He will repay. But my heart's desire is
to follow my husband's dream.”
So the body of the old botanist was brought back to the shadow of
the great beech-trees, and was buried there, like the bones of a
martyr, within the sanctuary.
Is this the end of the story?
Who can say?
It is written also, among the records of Belgium, that the faithful
forester disappeared mysteriously a few weeks later. His body was
found in the forest and laid near his master.
Another record tells of the trial of Prince Barenberg and Count
Ludra before a court martial, The count was sentenced to ten years
of labor _on his own estate._ The death-sentence of the prince
was commuted to imprisonment _in some unnamed place._ So far
the story of German justice.
But of the other kind of justice--the poetic, the Divine--the record
is not yet complete.
I know only that there is a fatherless girl working and praying in
a hospital in England, and a fatherless boy fighting and praying
in the muddy trenches near Ypres, and a lonely woman walking and
praying under certain great beech-trees at the Chateau d'Azan. The
burden of their prayer is the same. Night and day it rises to Him
who will judge the world in righteousness and before whose eyes
the wicked shall not stand.
September, 1918.