THE HOUSE WITH THE TREE. BY J. STORER CLOUSTON. A VERY few years ago there stood upon the shores of a far northern island a certain dark old house of a larger size and evidently of greater pretensions than the farmhouses in those parts. Yet it had a dejected shabby aspect, and an air of expecting no genteel callers, singularly inconsistent with with manorial claims. A draggledlooking garden lay beside it, the withered remains of fruit trees still clinging desperately to the walls, and a fair array of vegetables in one end, the rest being run entirely to weeds, with enough grass among them to make it worth while tethering an old pony there. Elsewhere there was no pretence of "policies," and no evidence that any pride was felt or interest taken in the place. Yet an ample farm-steading near by showed no sign of dilapidation, and the fields round about were as evidently cultivated on the best principles as the house was cared for on none at all. The laird had departed and the farmer stepped into his house: this explanation was as plain as if it had been written up on a board. In this the poor old mansion was but in the same case as many more in these islands, showing the same cobwebbed windows in rooms now superfluous and undwelt in, the same smokeless chimney-cans, the same air of out-at-elbow gentility. It had, however, one most distinguishing featurethe feature that procures for it this present notice. The old house was built in the form of a hollow square, a wall with an arched gateway forming one side and the dwelling the other three, and in one corner of the courtyard stood nothing less remarkable than a large and flourishing planetree. To prevent subsequent disappointment to those who may be misled by the storybook-like beginning of this paper, it is as well to announce without further preamble that the fortunes of this elderly plane-tree are to be the theme, though the author will endeavour to affix as many and as weighty reflections to its branches as they can sustain. What prompts him particularly to this choice of hero is the rarity of such a phenomenon as an old tree in these Windy Islands. (A name that will serve for them excellently.) There are, indeed, a few other trees huddling here and there under the lee of dykes or close about guardian houses, but the island gods love them too well, and most die an early death. I often fancy, too, that they must feel such a relief when death approaches as an invalid for long suffering under an incurable disease is sometimes said to experience. From their earliest youth upwards, they are buffeted, bullied, and torn by the furious jealousy of the island winds until such time as fungus settles thick upon their bark, and they give up the struggle to the sighing of their last remaining leaves. Then perhaps for a year or two they stand as bare as gallows, and pointing as obvious a collection of morals, till at last the wind either lays them flat or they are cut down to light a fire. Yet though their brief life may seem little less pitiable than the existence of those other exiles in Siberia, you must not think that it is spent in vain. Their gnarled limbs and stunted stature alone in this treeless land recall the charm of woodlands, and bring with a rush of emotion a hundred half forgotten things to mind,-deep glades and hidden streams, the "sough" of the wind overhead, the piles of brown leaves underfoot, squirrels, pheasants, reveries, and romance, all that has ever happened or been imagined in a wood. And the conjurers who perform this feat are these same knotted, under-fed little trees; so after all it is no wonder that people keep on planting them and nursing them and showing them off with as much pride as if they were Yosemite giants. It was such an enthusiast who once, long ago, conceived the idea of rebuilding his mansion and surrounding it with some of the beauties of what is generically termed in that part of the world "the South." On the surface this term might be expected to include the Mediterranean and the Great Sahara, though as a rule it merely refers to that tract of verdure lying between the cities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh. The income this laird derived from his estate was rather less than the salary of a responsible clerk at the present day, but as he had previously existed upon considerably less he wisely resolved to make himself comfortable in the first place and economise, if necessary, afterwards. Accordingly he pulled down the steep-roofed little old house which had sheltered his unambitious ancestors, and on its site erected the present mansion. An adjoining paddock was dug up at the same time and entirely covered with a varied collection of saplings. Finding then that he had a few over, he set them up here and there in places where his eldest daughter's elegant taste (as it was described with much formality by each of her four admirers) considered most likely to embellish their home. One of these spots was that corner of the courtyard which faced the south, and here a slender little plane-tree was planted. Nothing could have looked more thriving than that young plantation during the first summer when they swung their heads about airily and rustled their big leaves, so ridiculously out of proportion to their little trunks. And no house could have had a more prosperous and permanent appearance than the new mansion beside them. With the gales of September came the first writing on the wall. The laird light-heartedly concluded a mortgage, and the big leaves were blackened and swept off after one night's buffeting by the gale and drenching with salt spray. Still, two more natural acts could not be imagined than for a landowner to execute a mortgage and a tree to lose its leaves. And so no Daniel was summoned to trans late the hieroglyphics. But when summer again came round one part of the ominous inscription had become a little clearer, for quite half of the trees were mere dry sticks with a few buds an inch or two above the ground, bravely endeavouring to start life afresh from the bottom of the ladder. The next year, and the next again, and many next years after, the process of beginning again went on. Some species -the birches, the oaks, and most of the pines-were long since dead as Queen Anne, and vanished altogether from sight; while others again, among whom were most of the planes and service trees and willows, grew stoutly skywards, adding a hard-won inch or two year by year. But a sore fight for it they had, the gales howling and raging, first bending them in one direction for a week, and then trying their elasticity by crushing them the opposite way; the rain striving to get between soil and stem and rot their roots as they swayed in the perpetual blast; the salt from the sea, the snow, and the Within the house all this time more papers were being signed, and the laird was growing older and less goodtempered, and fewer servants were kept, and the harled walls were more seldom whitewashed, till at last they went without it altogether. A Daniel was scarcely needed now; any candid friend would have done. But all this time there was one exception to the general rule of failure. The tree in the corner of the courtyard grew six stout inches where the others were putting on one starved inch, till his leaves threw a fine shade in summer, and in winter his boughs made a generous noise. The new mansion which had brought no luck to any one or anything else sheltered him completely from the winds, and radiated all the sun that came into the court, till at last strangers refused to believe that he was the same age as the struggling bushes outside. At first it was only when the gate was open that he could see through the archway his poor companions fighting or languishing in the open, but before long he could survey them all over the top of the wall and see the whole countryside as well. "You are the one thing that has thriven with me," the old laird used to say, tapping him with his stick. On his gouty days he used to add, "Damn you!" but it was not in a tone that implied any malice, rather as suggesting a touch of envy mingled with pride at having one such decided success to exhibit as some justification for all the money he had lavished. In fact, he even used to show the tree to his creditors when they pressed him in an ungentlemanly way, and frequently consoled his family in their straits by remeasuring his girth, and giving them the precise figures for the last thirty years. At last as he grew older and older he came to have a kind of superstition about his famous tree, and often when his health was failing and troubles fell ever thicker and he could only hobble about the courtyard for a little air on fine days, he would gaze at the branches and declare, with many repetitions and pauses to collect his thoughts, that there was no fear of his family or his house as long as that silent green guardian stood there. Not that he phrased it exactly so. "As long's that bit timber stands, we'll manage," he used to say, and then look round apprehensively as though he expected a contradiction, and smile contentedly when he heard none. But a day came when his own fate could not be staved off by any bit of timber, and when he was gone a change came over his house greater than any which time and ill fortune had gradually been working. He had lived to be very old, and had survived all his sons, and the fair daughter too of elegant tastes who had advised the planting of the tree; and a grandson now inherited the place. This was a very different kind of young man. He sold half the pro perty at once and paid off most of the encumbrances; he let the mansion to the farmer, went into an office, took off his coat and knitted his brow, and the more he became engrossed in work and the making of his fortune, the further did thoughts of that house in the Windy Islands recede from his memory. Once only he came to look at it with his south country wife, and a damp and dingy place they both agreed it was, surrounded by a most uninhabitable climate. Year after year, decade after decade passed, bringing slow changes and all for the worse. The plantation, untended, unprotected, and never reinforced by fresh planting, withered gradually up under the constant attacks of its foes. Looking over the wall of the courtyard, the famous plane watched the slow dissolution of the company that had made so confident a start, feeling himself more and more lonely as he saw the boughs of one after another turn white and leafless, and heard them clash in the wind with the hard sound of sapless wood. Then in a wild night would come a sharp "crack!" and next morning a bough would be cumbering the ground. At last the farmer, who at that time tenanted the old house, reported that the trees were dead, and proceeded to hew them down and drag their carcases away. The hardiest had still some years of fight left in their timber, but the grass would grow better once they were removed, and the farmer was a hard-headed man who did not believe in wasting land that might sustain an extra beast or two. And that was the end of the poor old laird's plantation. Now the plane was left to rustle in lonely state and meditate on the probable term of his own existence. Yet even this unpromising outlook did not in the least blight his leaves or soften his core; but with an undaunted air he stood straight upand faced the wildest weather. Even in winter, stripped bare to the bark, and only fed by a few hours of sunshine on the finest days and by none at all for gloomy weeks on end, he displayed a rooted firmness sustaining to behold. In the cold moonlight, when the sea sparkled with a deceptive appearance of geniality, there would come from high up in the frosty night strange sounds that grew gradually louder and then by degrees fainter as if something were passing overhead. They were only the wild geese, but they might have been uneasy spirits, the ghosts perhaps of the poor murdered trees. Yet he showed no perceptible change of colour, but merely creaked a bit himself, in a kind of ghostly way too. It was only when some determined gale blew straight into the courtyard that he showed visible signs of discomfort, or at least of restlessness, for he might then have been heard to tap sometimes gently and sometimes impatiently upon the kitchen window, at the same time making a multitude of sounds which doubtless could have been translated by one who had the key, into comments on passing events and reflections upon those which had gone. He declared, no doubt (since there is no evidence to the contrary), that he would never be beaten by bluster, let all the gales in heaven threaten him together, for they were but wind. Also, that so long as he had that good stone house to back him he would keep his roots down and his leaves up; and doubtless some of his most energetic gesticulations were to hearten his old companion and urge the necessity for keeping together and putting a brave face on it. Yet, brave or not, it was undeniably a dirty face that the old house showed nowadays, together with a very shabby outfit of doors and a cracked collection of windowpanes. Inside all traces of gentle ownership had long since disappeared, except in one or two locked bedrooms where a pile of old-time furniture be |