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Transcript
4.
Chapter 4 of the Trees of Pride.
This Librevox recording is in the public domain.
Recording by Maria Teresa.
The Trees of Pride by G.K. Chester 10.
Chapter 4.
The Chase After the Truth.
Sometime after the Inquest, which had ended in the inconclusive verdict which Mr. Andrew
Ash had himself predicted and achieved, Painter was again sitting on the bench outside
of the village in, having on the little table in front of it a tall glass of light ale,
which he enjoyed much more as local color than as liquor.
He had but one companion on the bench, and that a new one, who the little marketplace was
empty at that hour, and he had lately, for the rest, been much alone.
He was not unhappy, for he resembled his great countrymen, Walt Whitman, and carrying
a kind of universe with him like an open umbrella.
But he was not only alone, but lonely.
Walt Ash had gone abruptly up to London, and since his return had been occupied, obscurely,
with legal matters, that was bearing on the murder.
And Trees heard him long since taking up his position openly at the great house, as
the husband of the great lady, and he and she were occupied with sweeping reforms on
the estate.
The lady, especially, being of the sort, whose very dreams drive it practice, was landscape
gardening as with the gestures of a giant.
He was natural, therefore, that sociable spirit as painter, should fall into speech with
the one other stranger who happened to be staying at the end, evidently a bird of passage
like himself.
This man, who was smoking a pipe on the bench beside him, with his knapsack before him
on the table, was an artist come to a sketch on that romantic coast.
A tall man in a velvet jacket with a shock of toe-colored hair, a long fair beard, but eyes
of dark brown.
The effect of which contrast reminded painter vaguely, he hardly knew why, of a Russian.
The stranger carried his knapsack into many picturesque corners.
He obtained permission to set up his easel in that high garden, where the late squire
had held his alfresco banquets.
But painter had never had an opportunity of judging of the artist's work, nor did he
find it easy to get the artist even to the talk of his art.
Sipri and himself was always ready to talk of any art, and he talked of it excellently,
though with little response.
He gave his own reason for referring the cubist to the cult of Picasso, but his new friend
seemed to have but a faint interest in either.
He insinuated that perhaps the neo-Permitives were after all only thinning their line, while
the true permitives were rather tightening it.
But the stranger seemed to receive the insinuation without any more reaction of feeling.
When painter had even gone back as far into the past as the post-impressionists, to find
a common ground, and not found it, other memories began to creep back into his mind.
He was just reflecting, other darkly, that after all the tale of the peacock trees needed
a mysterious stranger to round it off, and this man had much the air of being one, when
the mysterious stranger himself said suddenly,
Well, I think I better show you the work I'm going down here.
He had his knapsack before him on the table, and he smiled rather grimly as to begin to
unstrap it.
The stranger looked on with polite expressions of interest, while it was considerably surprised
when the artist unpacked and placed on the table, not any recognizable works of art, even
of the most cubist description, but first, a choir full-scap, closely written with notes
in black and red ink, and second, to the American dick-stream amazement, the old woodsman's
axe with the linen wrapper, which he had himself found in the well long ago.
Sorry to give you a start, sir, said the Russian artist with a marked London accent, but
I'd better explain straight off that I'm a policeman.
You don't look at, said painter.
I'm not supposed to reply to the other, Mr. Ash brought me down here from the yard to
investigate, but he told me to report to you when I got anything to go on.
Would you like to go into the matter now?
When I took this matter up, explained the detective, I did it at Mr. Ash's request, and
largely, of course, on Mr. Ash's lines.
Mr. Ash is a great criminal lawyer, with a beautiful brain, sir, as full as a new
gate calendar.
I took, as a working notion, his view that only you five gentlemen round the table
in the squire's garden were acquainted with the squire's movements.
But you gentlemen, if I may say so, have a way of forgetting certain other things and
other people, which we are rather top to look for first.
And as I followed Mr. Ash's inquiries, through the stages you know already, those certain
suspicions I needed to discuss, because they've been dropped, I found the thing shaping
after all towards something in the end, which I think we should have considered at the
beginning.
Not to begin with, it is not true that there were five men around the table.
There were six.
The creepy conditions of that garden vigil, vaguely returned upon painter, and he thought of
a ghost, or something more nameless than a ghost, but the deliberate speech of the detective
soon enlightened him.
There were six men and five gentlemen, if you like to put it so, he proceeded.
That man, Miles, the butler, saw the squire vanish as plainly as you did, and I soon found
that Miles was a man worthy of a good deal of attention.
A light of understanding dawned on painter's face, so that was it, was it, he muttered.
Does all our mythological mystery end with a policeman collaring a butler?
Well, I agree with you, he is far from an ordinary butler, even to look at, and the fault
in imagination is mine, like many faults in imagination, it was simply snobbishness.
We don't go quite so fast as that observed the officer in an impassive manner.
I only said I found the inquiry pointing to Miles, and that he was well worthy of attention.
He was much more in the old squire's confidence than many people supposed, and when I cross
examined him he told me a good deal that was worth knowing.
I've got it all down in these notes here, but at the moment I'll only trouble you with
one detail of it.
One night this butler was just outside the squire's dining room door when he heard the noise
of a violent quarrel.
The squire was a violent gentleman from time to time, but the curious thing about this
scene was that the other gentleman was the more violent of the two.
Miles heard him say repeatedly that the squire was a public nuisance, and that of his death
would be a good riddance for everybody.
I only stop now to tell you that the other gentleman was Dr. Berkson Brown, the medical
man of this village.
The next examination I made was that of Martin, the wood-covered.
Upon one point at least his evidence is quite clear, and is, as you will see, largely
confirmed by other witnesses.
He says first that the doctor prevented him from recovering his axe, and this is corroborated
by Mr. and Mrs. Treeherne.
But he says further that the doctor admitted having the thing himself, and this again finds
support in other evidence by the gardener, who saw the doctor sometime afterward come
by himself and pick up the chopper.
Martin says that Dr. Brown repeatedly refused to give it up, alleging some fanciful excuse
every time.
And finally Mr. Painter, we will hear the evidence of the axe itself.
He laid the woodman's toe on the table in front of him, and began to rip up and unwrap
the curious, linen covering around the handle.
You will admit this is an odd bandage, he said, and that's just the odd thing about it,
that it really is a bandage.
This white stuff is the sort of lint they use in hospitals, cut into strips like this,
but most doctors keep some, and I'll have the evidence of Jake the fisherman, with whom
Dr. Brown lived for some time, but the doctor had this useful habit.
From last, he added, flattening out a corner of the rag on the table, isn't it odd that
it should be marked TBB?
The American gaze at the rudely inked initials, but hardly saw them.
What he saw, as in a mirror in his darkened memory, was the black figure with the black gloves
against the blood red sunset, as he had seen it when he came out of the wood, and which
it always haunted him, he knew not why.
Of course, I see what you mean, he said, and it's very painful to me, for I knew irrespective
the man.
But surely, also, it's very far from explaining everything.
If he is a murderer, is he a magician?
Why did the well water all evaporate in the night, and leave the dead man's bones dry as
dust?
That's not a common operation in the hospitals, is it?
As to the water, we do know the explanation, said the detective.
I didn't tumble to it, first myself, being a cockney, but a little talk with Jake and
the other fishermen about the old smuggling days put me straight about that.
But I admit, the dried remains still stomp us all.
All the same.
I shadow fell across the table, and his talk was sharply cut short.
Ashtray standing under the painted sign, buttoned up grimly in black, and with the face
of a hanging judge, of which the poet had spoken, playing this time in the broad sunlight.
Phantom stood to big man in plain clothes, very still, but painter knew instantly who
they were.
We must move at once, to the lawyer, Dr. Burton Brown is leaving the village.
The tall detective sprang to his feet, and painter instinctively imitated him.
He has gone up to the tree herds possibly to say goodbye, went on ash-trap at least.
I'm sorry, but we must arrest him in the garden there, if necessary.
I've kept the lady out of the way, I think.
But you, addressing the factitious landscape painter, must go up at once and rig up that
easel of yours near the table and be ready.
We will follow quietly and come up behind the tree.
We must be careful for it's clear he's got wind of us, or he wouldn't be doing a bolt.
I don't like this job remark painter as they mounted toward the park in the garden, the
detective darting on ahead.
Do you suppose I do ask Ash, and indeed his strong, heavy face looks so lined and old
that the red hair seemed unnatural, like a red wig?
I've known him longer than you, though perhaps I've suspected him longer as well.
When they topped the slip of the garden, the detective had already erected his easel,
though a strong breeze blowing towards the sea rattled and flapped his apparatus and
blew about his fair and false beard in the wind.
Little clouds curled like feathers with scuttling seaward across the many colored landscape,
which the American art critic said once surveyed on a happier morning, but it is doubtful
if the landscape painter paid much attention to it.
Treeherm was dimly discernible in the doorway of what was now his house.
He would come no nearer before he hated such a public duty more bitterly than the rest.
The others posted themselves a little way behind the tree.
Between the lines of these maxed batteries, the black figure of the doctor could be seen
coming across the green lawn, traveling straight as a bullet as he had done when he brought
the bad news to the wig-cutter.
Today he was smiling, under the dark mustache that was cut short of the upper lip, though
they fancied him a little pale, and he seemed the posse moment in peer through his spectacles
at the artist.
The artist turned from his easel with a natural movement, and then in a flash to capture
the doctor by the coat collar.
I arrest you, he began, but Dr. Brown plucked himself free with a startling promptitude,
look a fine leap at the other, tore off his sham beard, tossed it into the air like
one of the wild wrists of the cloud, then with one wild kick sent the easel flying topsy
turvy and flood like a hair for the shore.
Even at that dazzling instant, painter felt that this wild reception was a novelty and
almost an anticlimax.
But he had no time for the analysis when he and the whole pack had to follow in the hunt.
Even Treeherm bringing up the rear with a renewed curiosity and energy.
The fugitive collided with one of the policemen who ran to head him off, sending him sprawling
down the slope.
Indeed, the fugitive seemed inspired with the strength of a wild ape.
He cleared it abound the rampart of flowers, over which Barbara had once leaned to look
at her future lover, and tumble with blinding speed down the steep path of which the true
door had climbed.
Racing with the rushing wind, they all streamed across the garden after him, down the path
and finally onto the seashore by the Fisher's cot, in the pierce crags and caverns, the
American admiring when he first landed.
The runaway did not, however, make for the house he had long inhabited, but rather for
the pier, as if with a mind to seize the boat or to swim.
Only when he reached the other end of the small stone jetty to de-turn, and showed them
the pale face with the spectacles, and they saw that it was still smiling.
I'm rather glad of this, set true herein with a great sigh, the man is mad.
Never will I ask the naturalness of the doctor's voice when he spoke, startled them as much
as a shriek.
Gentleman, he said, I won't protract your painful duties by asking you what you want,
but I will ask at once for a small favor, which will not prejudice those duties in any
way.
I came down here rather in a hurry, perhaps, but the truth is I thought I was late for
an appointment.
If you look dispassionately at his watch, I find that there is still some fifteen minutes.
Will you wait with me here for that short time, after which I am quite at your service?
There was a bewildered silence, and then painter said, for my part I feel as if it would
really be better to humour him.
Ash, so the doctor with a new note of seriousness, for old friendship, grant me this last little
indulgence.
It will make no difference.
I have no arms or means of escape.
You can search me if you like.
I know you think you were doing right, and I also know you will do it as fairly as you
can.
Well, after all, you get friends to help you.
Look at our famed with the beard, or the remains of the beard.
Why shouldn't I have a friend to help me?
A man will be here in a few minutes, and whom I can put some confidence, a great authority
on these things.
Why not, if only out of curiosity, wait and hear his view of the case?
This seems all moon shines, said Ash, but on the chance of any light on things.
Well, from the moon, I don't mind waiting a quarter of an hour.
Who is this friend, I wonder?
Some amateur detective, I suppose.
I thank you, said the doctor, with some dignity.
I think you will trust him when you have talked to him a little.
And now, he added with an air of amably, relaxing into lighter matters, let us talk about
the murder.
In this case, he said, in an attached manner, we found, I suspect, to be rather unique.
There is a very clear and conclusive combination of evidence against Thomas Birch and Brown,
otherwise myself.
But there is one peculiarity about that evidence, which you may perhaps have noticed.
It all comes ultimately from one source, and that a rather unusual one.
Thus the woodcudder says I had his axe, but what makes him think so.
I told him I had his axe, that I told him so again and again.
Once more, Mr. Painter here pulled up the axe out of the well, but how?
I think Mr. Painter will testify that I brought him the tackle for fishing it up.
Tackle he might never have gotten any other way.
Curious, is it not?
Again the axe is found to be wrapped in lint that was in my possession, according to the
fisherman, but who showed the lint to the fisherman?
I did.
Who marked it with large letters, his mind?
I did.
Who wrapped it round the handle at all?
I did.
Rather a singular thing to do, has anyone ever explained it?
His words, which have been heard at first with painful coldness, are beginning to hold
more and more of their attention.
Then there is the well itself, proceeded the doctor with the same air of insane calm.
I suppose some of you by this time know at least the secret of that.
A secret of the well is simply that it is not a well.
It is purposely shapes the top so as to look like one, but it is really a sort of chimney
opening from the floor of one of those caves over there, a cave that runs inland just
under the wood, and indeed is connected by tunnels and secret passages with other openings
miles and miles away.
It is a sort of labyrinth, used by smugglers and such people for ages past.
This doubtless explains many of those disappearances we have heard of, but to return to the well,
that is not a well, in case some of you still don't know about it.
When the sea rises very high at certain seasons, it fills the low cave and even rises a little
way in the final above, making it look more like a well than ever.
The noise Mr. Painter heard was the natural eddy of a breaker from outside, and the whole
experience depended on something so elementary as the tide.
The American was startled into ordinary speech.
The tide, he said, and I never thought of it.
I guess that comes of living by the Mediterranean.
The next step will be obvious enough, continued the speaker, to a logical mind like that of
Mr. Asht, for instance.
If it be asked why, even so, the tide did not wash away the squires' remains that had
lain their senses with disappearance, there is only one possible answer.
The remains had not lain their senses with disappearance.
The remains have been deliberately put there in the cavern under the wood, and put there
after Mr. Painter had made his first investigation.
He were put there, in short, after the sea had retreated, and the cave was again dry.
That was why they were dry, of course, much drier than the cave.
Who put them there, I wonder.
He was gazing gravely through his spectacles over their heads into vacancy, and suddenly
he smiled.
Ah, he cried, jumping up from the rock with a laquercy.
Here's the amateur detective at last.
Asht turned his head over his shoulder, and for a few seconds did not move it again, but
stood as with a stiff neck.
In the cliff, just behind him was one of the clefts, or cracks, into which it was everywhere
cloven.
Advancing from this into the sunshine, Asa from a nearer door was square of enne, with
a broad smile on his face.
The wind was tearing from the top of the high cliff, out to sea, passing over their heads,
and they had the sensation that everything was passing over their heads, and out of their
control.
Painter felt, as if his head had been blown off like a hat, but none of the scale of
unreason seemed to stir here on the white head of the squire.
His bearing, though self-important and bordering on a swagger, seemed of anything more comfortable
than in the old days.
His red face was, however, burnt like a sailor's, and his light clothes had a foreign look.
Well, gentlemen, he said genuinely, so this is the end of the legend of the peacock trees.
Sorry to spoil that delightful traveler's tale, Mr. Painter, the joke couldn't be kept
up forever.
Sorry to put a stop in your best poem, Mr. Treehern, but I thought all this poetry had
been going a little too far.
So Dr. Brown and I fixed up a little surprise for you, and I must say, without vanity,
that you look a little surprised.
What on earth asked Ash at last is the meaning of all this.
The squire laughed pleasantly and even a little apologetically.
I'm afraid I'm fond of practical jokes, he said, and this, I suppose, is my last
grand practical joke.
But I want you to understand that the joke is really practical.
I flatter myself, it will be a very practical use to the cause of progress in common sense,
and the killing of such superstitions everywhere.
The best part of it, I admit, was a doctor's idea and not mine.
All I meant to do was to pass the night in the trees and then turn up his freshest paint
to tell you what fools you were.
But Dr. Brown here followed me into the wood, and we had a little talk which rather changed
my plans.
He told me that a disappearance for a few hours like that would never knock the
noth since on the head.
Most people would never even hear of it, and those who did would say that one night proved
nothing.
He showed me a much better way, which had been tried in several cases where bogus miracles
had been shown up.
The thing to do was to get the thing really believed everywhere as a miracle, and then
show up everywhere as a sham miracle.
I can't put all the arguments as well as he did, but that was the notion I think.
The doctor nodded gazing silently at the sand, and the squire did resumed with undiminished
relish.
We agreed that I should drop through the hole into the cave and make my way through the
tunnels where I often used to play as a boy, to the robo station a few miles from here,
and there take a train for London.
It was necessary for the joke, of course, that I should disappear without being traced,
so I made my way to a port and put in a very pleasant month or two around my old haunted
cypress and the Mediterranean.
There's no more to say of that part of the business, except that I arranged to be back
by a particular time, and here I am.
But I've heard enough of what's going on around here to be satisfied that I've done
the trick.
Everybody in Cornwall and most people in South England have heard of the vanishing squire,
and thousands of noodles have been nodding their heads over crystals and tarot cards at
this marvelous proof of an unseen world.
I reckon the reappearing squire will scatter their cards and smash their crystals, so that
such rubbish won't appear again in the 20th century.
I'll make the peacock trees the laughing stock of all Europe and America.
Well, said the lawyer, who was the first to rearrange his wits.
I'm sure we're all only too delighted to see you again, squire, and I quite understand
your explanation and your own very natural motives in the matter, but I'm afraid I haven't
got the hang of everything yet.
Grinit that you wanted to vanish wasn't necessary to put bogus bones in the cave, so it was
nearly to put a halter around the neck of Dr. Brown, and he would put it there.
Those davant would appear perfectly maniacal, but so far as I can make head or tail of anything,
Dr. Brown seems to put it there himself.
The doctor lifted his head for the first time.
Yes, I put the bones there, he said, I believe I am the first son of Adam, whoever manufactured
all the evidence of a murder charge against him.
He was the squire's turn to look astonished.
The old gentleman looked rather wildly from one to the other.
Bones, murder charge, he ejaculated it, what the devil was all this, whose bones?
Your bones, in a manner of speaking, delicately can see that the doctor, I had to make sure
you had really died and not disappeared by magic.
The squire in his turn seemed more hopelessly puzzled than the whole crowd of his friends
had been over his own excapade.
Why not, he demanded, I thought it was the whole point to make it look like magic.
How did you want me to die so much?
Dr. Brown had lifted his head and now very slowly lifted his hand.
He pointed it with outstretched arm at the headland over hanging in the foreshore, just
above the entrance to the cave.
It was the exact part of the beach where a painter had first landed on that spring morning
when he had looked up in his first fresh wonder at the peacock trees, but the trees were gone.
The fact itself was no surprise to them, but clearance had naturally been one of the first
of the sweeping changes of the tree her in regime.
But though they knew it well, they had wholly forgotten it, and its significance returned
on them suddenly like a Stein in heaven.
That is the reason for the doctor, I've worked for that for 14 years.
They no longer looked the bear promontory on which the feathery trees had once been so
familiar or a sight, for they had something else to look at.
Anyone seeing the squire now would have shifted his opinion about where to find the lunatic
in that crowd.
It was plain in a flash so that it changed it falling on him like a thunderbolt, that
he, at least, had never had the wildest notion that the tale of the vanishing squire had
been but a prelude to that of the vanishing trees.
The next half hour was full of his ravings and his postulations, which gradually died
away into the demands for explanation and incoherent requestions repeated again and again.
He had practically to be overruled at last in spite of the respect in which he was held,
before anything like a space and silence were made in which the doctor could tell his
own story.
It was perhaps a singular story of which he alone had ever had the knowledge, and though
a narration was not uninterrupted, it may be set forth consecutively in his end words.
First, I wish it clearly understood that I believe in nothing, I do not even give the
nothing, I believe a name, or I should be an atheist.
I have never had inside my head so much as a hint of heaven and hell.
I think it most likely we are worms in the mud, but I happen to be sorry for the other
worms under the wheel, and I happen myself to be a sort of worm that turns when he can.
If I care nothing for piety, I care less for poetry.
I'm not like Ash here who's crammed with criminology, but has all sorts of other culture
as well.
I know nothing about culture except bacteria culture.
I sometimes fancy Amester Ash is as much an art critic as Mr. Painter.
And he looks for his heroes or villains in real life.
But I am a very practical man, and in my stepping stones have been simply scientific facts.
In this village I found a fact, a fever.
I could not classify it, it seemed peculiar to this corner of the coast.
It had singular reactions of delirium and mental breakdown.
I studied it exactly as I showed a queer case in the hospital, and corresponded in
hearing impaired notes with other men of science.
But nobody had even a working hypothesis about it except of course the ignorant peasantry,
who said the peacock trees were in some wild way poisonous.
Well, the peacock trees were poisonous, the peacock trees did produce the fever.
I verified the fact in the plain plotting way required, comparing all the degrees and
details of a vast number of cases, and there were a shocking number to compare.
At the end of it I had discovered the thing as Harvey discovered the circulation of the
bud.
Everybody lived was the worst for being near the things.
Those who came off best were exactly the exceptions that proved the world.
Abnormally healthy and energetic people like the squire and his daughter.
In other words, the peasants were right, but if I put it that way somebody will cry.
But do you believe it was supernatural then?
In fact that's what you're all say, and that's exactly what I complain of.
I fancy hundreds of men have been left dead and diseases left undiscovered by the suspicion
of superstition, the fear, fear.
Unless you see daylight through the forest of facts from the first, you won't venture
into the woods at all.
Unless we can promise you beforehand that there shall be what you call a natural explanation,
to save your precious dignity from miracles.
You won't even hear the beginning of the plain tale.
Suppose there isn't a natural explanation.
Suppose there is, and we never find it.
Suppose I haven't a notion whether there is or not.
Well the devil has that to do with you, or with me, in dealing with the facts I do know.
My own instinct is to think there is.
That if my researches could be followed far enough, it would be found that some horrible
parody of hay fever, some effect analogous to that of pollen would explain all the facts.
I've never found the explanation.
What I have found are the facts, and the fact is that those trees on the top there dealt
death right and left, as certainly as if they had been giants, standing on a hill, and
knocking men down in crowds with a club.
It will be said that now I had only produced my proofs and have the nuisance removed.
Perhaps I might have convinced the scientific world finally, where, when more and more
processions of dead men had passed to the village to the cemetery, but had not got to convince
the scientific world but the Lord of the Manor.
The square will pardon me by saying that it was a very different thing.
I've tried it once, I lost my temper, and said things I do not defend, and I left
the square as prejudice is rooted and new like the trees.
I was confronted with one colossal coincidence that was an obstacle to all my aims.
One thing made all my science sound like nonsense, it was the popular legend.
Squire if there were a legend of hay fever, you would not believe in hay fever.
If there were a popular story about pollen, you would say that pollen was only a popular
story.
I had something against me heavier and more hopeless than the hostility of the learned.
I had the support of the ignorant.
My truth was hopelessly tangled up with the tale that the educated were resolved to regard
as entirely a lie.
I never tried to explain again.
On the contrary, I apologized, affected a conversation to the common sense view, and
watched events.
And all the time was the lines of a larger, if more career plan began to get clearer
in my mind.
I knew that Miss Vane, whether or not she were married to Mr. Treeherne as the afterward
found she was, was so much under his influence that the first day of her inheritance would
be the last day of the poisonous trees.
But she could not inherit or even interfere to the square I died.
It became simply self-evident to rational mind that the square I must die.
But wishing to be humane as well as rational, I desired his death to be temporary.
Doubtless my scheme was completed by a chapter of accidents, but I was watching for such
accidents.
Thus I had a foreshadowing of how the acts would figure in the tale when it was first
slung at the trees.
It would have surprised the woodmen to know how near our minds were, and how I was but
laying a more elaborate siege to the towers of pestilence.
But when the squirers withaneously rushed on one half of the countryside would call
certain death, I jumped at my chance.
I followed him and told him all that he has told you.
I don't suppose he'll ever forgive me now, but that shant preventing me saying that I
admire him mutually for being what people would call a lunatic and what is really a
sportsman.
It takes where their grand old man to make a joke in the grand style.
He came down so quick from the tree he acclaimed that he had no time to pull his hat off about
it had cotton.
At first I found I had made a missed calculation.
I thought his disappearance would be taken as his death, at least after a little time.
But Ash told me there could be no formalities without a corpse.
I fear I was a little annoyed, but I soon set myself to the duty of manufacturing a corpse.
It's not hard for a doctor to get a skeleton.
Indeed, I had one, but Mr. Painter's energy was a day too early for me, and I only got
the bones into the well when he had already found it.
His story gave me another chance, however, I noted where the hole was in the hat and made
a precisely corresponding hole in the skull.
The reason for creating the other clues may not be so obvious.
It may not yet be altogether apparent to you that I am not a fiend in human form.
I could not substantiate a murder without at least suggesting a murderer, and I was resolved
that if the crime happened to be traced to anybody, it should be to me.
So I'm not surprised you repuzzled about the purpose of the rag around the axe, because
it had no purpose except to incriminate the man who put it there.
The chase had to end with me, and when it was closing in at last, the joke of it was too
much for me, and I fear I took liberties with the gentleman's easel and beard.
I was the only person who could risk it, being the only person who could at the last moment
produce the squire, and prove there had been no crime at all.
That gentleman is a true story of the peacock trees, and that bear crack up there where
the wind is whistling as it would ever wilderness is a waste plan I have liberty to make as many
men have liberty to make a cathedral.
I don't think there is any more to say, and yet something moves in my blood, and I will
try to say it.
Could you not have trusted little these peasants whom you already trust so much?
These men are men, and they meant something, even their fathers were not holy fools.
If your gardener told you of the trees, you caught him a madman.
But he did not plan and plant your garden like a madman.
You would not trust your woodman about these trees, yet you trusted him with all the others.
Have you thought what all the work of the world would be like if the poor were so senseless
as you think them?
But no, you stuck to your rational principle, and your rational principle was that a thing
must be false because thousands of men had found it true, that because many human eyes
had seen something it could not be there.
He looked across at ash with a sort of challenge, but though the sea went rough with the old
Lawyer's red mane, his mandipolionic mask was unruffled, and even had a sort of beauty
from its nibbling dignity.
I am too happy just now, and thinking how wrong I have been, he answered, to quarrel
with you, Doctor, about our theories.
And yet, injustice to the Squire, as well as myself, I should demure our two year-sleeping
inference.
I respect these peasants.
I respect you regard for them, but their stories are a different matter.
I think I would do anything for them, but believe them.
Truth and fancy, after all, are mixed in them.
Within the more instructed, they are separate.
And I doubt, if youth considered, what would be involved in taking their word for anything.
Half the ghosts of those who died of fever may be walking by now.
And kind as these people are, I believe they might still burn a witch.
No, Doctor, I admit these people have been badly used.
I admit they are in many ways are better, but I still could not accept anything in their
evidence.
A Doctor bowed gravely and respectfully enough, and then for the last time that day, they
saw his brother send us to smile.
Right so, he said, but you would have hanged me on their evidence.
And turning his back on them, as if automatically, he said his face toward the village, where
for so many years he had gone his rounds.
The trees are pried, but Geek and Chester Ten.
