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The Tree by Walter de la Maire. Encased in his dingy and faded first

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class railway carriage, the prosperous fruit
merchant sat alone. From the collar of

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his thick frieze greatcoat, stuck out
a triangular nose on each side of it.

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A small, bleak black eye gazed
absently at one of the buttons on

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the empty blue upholstered seat opposite him. His breath spread a fading vapor in

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the air. He sat bolt upright, congealed in body, heated in mind,

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his unseeing eye fixed on that cloth
button, that stud There was nothing

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else to look at, for the
simple reason that his six narrow windows were

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whitely sheeted with hoar frost. Only
his thoughts were his company, while the

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coach, the superannuated coach, bumped
dully on over the metals, and his

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thoughts were neither a satisfaction nor a
pleasure. His square hard head under his

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square hard hat was nothing but a
pot seething with vexation, scorn, and

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discontent. What had invited him out
so far in weather so dismal, on

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a line so feebly patronized? Anger
all but sparkled in his mind as he

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considered the intention of his journey and
what was likely to be the end of

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it. Twelve solid, yet fleeting
years divided him from his last meeting with

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his half brother, shipload on shipload
of exotic oranges and lemons, pineapples,

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boxed figs, and blushing pomegranates.
At this very moment, three more or

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less seaworthy ocean tramps were steaming across
the watery channels of the world, laden

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with cargoes of which he was the
principal consignee. He stretched out his legs,

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crossed his feet. He was a
substantial man. There was nothing tastic

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about him to put on airs when
you couldn't afford them, to meet a

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friendly offer, with ranking gratitude,
to quarrel with the only relative on earth

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who had kept you out of the
workhouse. He had sworn never to set

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foot in the place again. Yet
here he was, and nothing but a

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fool for his pains. Having washed
his hands of the whole silly business,

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he should have kept them washed,
instead of which he thrust them deeper into

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his capacious pockets, and wondered to
God when his journey was to come to

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an end. No, it was
with no charitable, no friendly no sentimental

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motive that he was being glided joltingly
on a half brother, and particularly if

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he owes you a hundred pounds and
more, need not be even fractionally your

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being one smiles to think of for
the sake of old lang Syne. There

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was nothing in common between the two
except a father now twenty five years in

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his grave and alone that would never
be repaid. That was one galling feature

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of the situation. There was another, in plain print in his own morning

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newspaper. The fruit Merchant had chanced
only a week or two ago on the

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preposterous fact that a mere woodcut of
a mere bird and flower initialed p P

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had brought at Christie's ninety seven guineas
ninety seven guineas sixty eight crates of excellent

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Denia oranges at thirty shillings a crate. What the devil his small eyes seemed

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to congest, and yet at the
same time to protrude from their sockets p

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P perfect pest, poultry, poser, plague, parasite, and yet hardly

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a parasite you could dish a half
brother who hadn't sent you a single word

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of greeting for twelve solid fleeting,
prosperous years with a term like that,

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even if he did oher you one
hundred pounds, even if he hadn't the

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faintest wish to remind you of the
fact, not the fruit merchant wanted his

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hundred pounds. He was not a
debt collector. It was the principle of

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the thing. If half an hour's
silly scratching over a little lump of wood

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could bring you ninety seven guineas,
about twenty nine and a half minutes would

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bring in a round hundred. And
there were more birds and more flowers in

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that infernal tree than Noah could have
found room for in his arc. The

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tree, the very thought of it
swept a pulsating cloud of rage over his

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eyes. Cool quiet insolence he could
have forgiven and almost forgotten. But the

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merest reminder of that talk about the
tree never failed to infuriate him. It

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infuriated him now almost beyond endurance,
simply because he knew, even if he

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wouldn't confess it openly to himself,
that this was the decoy which was dragging

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him on these fifty three interminable miles
on a freezing, hideous country afternoon.

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The tree never in all his life
had he met with such an exhibition of

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sheer, stark midsummer madness. And
yet with every inch of his journey the

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recollection grew on him. He couldn't
get it out of his head. Curiosity,

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resentment, vindictiveness, a cold,
creeping cunning, A score of conflicting

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emotions zigzagged to and fro in his
mind. He glared through them at the

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walls of his cage. But worst
outrage of all was the creeping realization,

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and his body stiffened at the thought
that he was, even now, and

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perhaps a little more than ever,
afraid of the tree. When you finally

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deal with a relative who has been
a pest to you all your life,

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the one thing you do not look
for is an interference of that kind.

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He could not deny it. The
tree had impressed him the moment he thought

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of his brother, of the country, even of his boyhood. There it

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was. It had impressed him so
much that the upholstered button had now completely

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disappeared, and he seemed to be
actually in the presence of the tree again.

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He saw it as vividly as if
its image hung there before his very

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eyes. In the slightly self warmed
air of his solitary compartment. The experience

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filled him with so sudden a flood
of aversion and resentment that the voice of

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the guard, chanting the name of
his destination reached him only just in time

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to set him frantically pulling down on
his frozen window and dejecting himself out of

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the train. One hasty glance around
him showed that he was the sole traveler

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to alight on the frosted tim of
the obscure little station. A faint rosiness

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in the west foretold the decline of
the still wintry day. The furs that

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flanked the dreary passenger shed of the
platform stood burdened already with the blackness of

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coming night. He was elderly,
he was obese. His heart was none

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too sound, at least as compared
with his head. Yet, if he

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intended to catch the last train home, he had scarcely two hours in which

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to reach his half brother's wretched little
house, to congratulate him on his guineas,

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to refuse to accept repayment of his
loan, to sneer at his tree,

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and to return to the station A
bark at a weedy young porter in

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mittens, with mouth a jar over
his long teeth, sent him ambling off

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for a conveyance. The fruit merchant
stood under the shed in his frieze coat

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and square hard hat, and watched
the train glide out of the station.

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The screech of its engine hauling up
into the windless air had exactly expressed his

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own peculiar sentiments. There was not
a living being in sight whereon to breathe

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a curse, only himself, a
self he had been vaguely cursing throughout his

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tedious journey. The frozen landscape lay
white in the dying day. The sun

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hung like the yolk of an egg
above the still horizon. Some menace in

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the very look of this sullen object
hinted that pp might long since have crossed

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the bourne from which no belated draft
on any earthly bank had ever been known

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to come. Thought diverted into more
rugged channels. The current of talk which

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he had intended to engage with his
half brother. In other words, he

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would give the silly fool a bit
of his mind. The fact was their

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last quarrel, if anything so one
side it could be called a quarrel,

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had tinctured the fruit merchant's outlook on
the world a deal more densely than he

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would until now have confessed. No
living creature, no sound stirred the air.

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The fair country lay cold, as
if in a swoon, like a

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shallow inverted saucer. A bicarned sky
curved itself over the unbroken quiet of the

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fields, his broad, cleft chin
thrust into his muffler, his hands into

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his pockets. The stranger to these
parts stood waiting, just stood there,

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with his small black eyes, staring
desolately out of his clothes. Why you

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might as well be marooned in a
foreign land or on a stage, sterile,

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cold, vacant, with not a
single soul in the audience. At

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the sound of wheels and hoofs,
he coughed, as if in uncontrollable indignation,

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and turned smartly on his heel with
a gesture of disdain. The fruit

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merchant sourly thrust a shilling into the
weedy poor to his immense knuckled hand,

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and mounted into the ancient cap that
had somehow been excavated from the countryside.

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Stagnating all about them. The man
on the box was like some cautious and

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obscure little animal that had been dug
up out of the earth. When given

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his direction, his face had fallen
into an indescribable expression beneath its whiskers,

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an expression, it appeared, which
was its nearest approach to a smile and

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don't spare or horse had barked his
fare, slamming the rickety door behind him.

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A railway carriage, even of the
most antique description, when its glasses

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opaque with rhyme, is a little
less like a prison cell than a four

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wheeled cab. For which reason,
perhaps, as the vehicle ground on beneath

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the misty, leafless elms, the
frigid air was allowed to beat softly in

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from the open window upon its occupants
slightly impurpled face, and still on and

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on, memory retrieved for him now
here now there every incident of his last

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experience on this self same road.
It had been summertime, June. He

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had been twelve years younger, a
good gross of years, less prosperous,

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and perhaps not quite so easily found
into a peculiar helpless state of rage.

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Indeed, his actual meeting with his
half brother at the little White garden Gate

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had been almost friendly, so friendly
that it would hardly have been supposed they

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were in any way unpleasingly related to
one another, or that the least responsibility

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of each to each could have caused
any kind of festering recrimination. Not that

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Pp was even then the kind of
person one hastens to introduce to one's friends.

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You not only never knew how he
would look or what he would say,

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you weren't even certain what he might
do. A rolling stone that merely

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he fails to gather moss is a
harmless object in comparison with one that appears

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to gather momentum. And even the
most trifling suggestion not so much of vaccentricity

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as of an alien and crooked gleam
in the eye, is apt to make

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the most respectable company a little uneasy. Not that the two half brothers had

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ever discussed together their aims and intentions
and ideas about life, their desires or

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motives or hopes or aversions, or
apprehensions or prejudices. The fruit merchant had

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his fair share of most of these
human incentives. But he also had principles,

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and one of them was to keep
his mouth shut. They had met,

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had shaken hands, had exchanged remarks
on the weather. Then PP in

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his frayed jacket and slippers, had
aimlessly led him off with an expressionless face

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into the garden, had aimlessly dropped
a few distant remarks out their common past,

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and then, surrounded as they were
by the scenery, scents, and

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noises of summer, had pushed his
knotted hands into his trousers pockets and fallen

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silent, his gray, vacant eyes
fixed on the tree. Apart from a

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clump of elms in the distance,
there was nothing in view even to challenge

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it for beauty, growth and station. From its station, all but at

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the foot of the broken, hedged, straggling garden it rose to heaven,

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a prodigious, spreading, ascendant cone
with its long, dark green, pointed

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leaves. It stood from first springing
branch to apex, a motionless, somnolent

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fountain of flowers. If his half
brother had taken the fruit merchant into a

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dingy little greenhouse and had shown him
an aving plant that, with care,

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water and guano, had been raised
from some far fetched seed, well,

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that might have been something to boast
about. He himself was in the trade.

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He knew a jaffer orange from a
mandarin. The stuff had to grow

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of course, and he was broad
minded enough to approve of rural enterprise.

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Giant mangolds and prize pumpkins did no
harm. He had stared broodingly about him.

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The garden was a waste, the
hedges untrimmed, A rank, lusty

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growth of weeds flaunted their flowers at
the sun. And this tree, it

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must have been flourishing here for centuries
past, a positive I saw to any

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practical gardener. P. P couldn't
even put a name to it. Yet

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by the fixed, idiotic, dreamy
look on his face, he might have

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supposed it was a gift from heaven, that, having waved his hands about

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like those colored humbugs with the mango, the thing had sprung up out of

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the ground by sheer magic. Nor
that the fruit merchant had denied that it

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was unique. He had never seen, nor would he ever want to see

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its double. The sun had beaten
down upon his head, A low,

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enormous drone filled the air. The
reflected light dazed his eyes. A momentary

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faintness had stolen over him as he
had turned once more and glanced again into

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his half brother's long, bony face, the absent eyes, the prominent cheek,

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the graying hair dappled with sunlight.
How do you know it's unique,

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he had asked. It may be
as common as blackberries in other parts of

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the country or abroad. One of
the officers on the catamaran was telling me,

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I don't know, his half brother
had interrupted him, but I have

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been looking at trees all my life. This resembles all reminds me of none.

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Besides, I'm not going abroad,
at least at the present. What

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had he meant by that? The
fruit merchant hadn't inquired, had merely stood

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there in the flowers and grasses,
staring up into the spreading branches, almost

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involuntarily shaking his head at the pungent
sweetness that hung dense and sickly in the

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air, and the old familiar symptoms
began to stir in him, symptoms which

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his intimates could have described in one
word. Fuming. He was not denying

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it, not he The tree was
remarkable as trees go. For one thing,

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it bore two distinct kinds and shapes
of blossom, the one circular and

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full and milky in a dark cuplike
calyx with clusters of scarlet tipped pistols.

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The other a pale yellow, oval
three petaled with a central splash of orange.

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He had surreptitiously squeezed a couple of
the fallen flower hours into his pocketbook,

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had taken them out at his office
the next morning to show them to

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the partner he had afterward brought out
of the business, only to find them

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black, slimy, and unrecognizable,
and to be laughed at for his pains.

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What's the use of the thing,
He had next inquired of his half

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brother, is it edible? At
which, with the faint smile on his

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face that had infuriated the fruit merchant
even as a boy, the other had

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merely shrugged his shoulders. Why not
try it on the pigs. I don't

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keep pigs, keep pigs. Indeed, there wasn't the faintest symptom that he

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would ever be able to keep himself. Well, aren't there any birds in

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these parts? It had been a
singularly false move. It has brought its

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own, had been his half brother's
muttered retort. There was no denying it,

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at least so far as the fruit
merchants small ornithological knowledge went. At

201
00:18:03,039 --> 00:18:08,319
that very moment. Birds of a
peculiarly vivid green sheeniness were hovering and dipping

202
00:18:08,359 --> 00:18:15,000
between the deep blue of the sky
under the mountainous blossoming little birds with unusually

203
00:18:15,039 --> 00:18:22,400
long and attenuated bills, playing fluttering, lisping, courting, and apparently sucking

204
00:18:22,440 --> 00:18:26,480
the heady nectar from the snowy and
ivory cups, while poised like animate gems

205
00:18:26,519 --> 00:18:32,319
on the wing. He had once
again opened his mouth, but his half

206
00:18:32,400 --> 00:18:37,240
brother had laid a lean, tingling
hand on his sleeve. Listen, he

207
00:18:37,359 --> 00:18:45,359
said, half stifled, jetting,
delirious bursts of song, twinkled, belled

208
00:18:45,720 --> 00:18:51,359
rose, tied overflowed from the tented
depths of the tree, like the yells

209
00:18:51,400 --> 00:18:56,640
and laughter of a playground of children
suddenly released from an unexpected half holiday.

210
00:18:56,880 --> 00:19:02,200
Listen. Indeed, the noise of
the creatures were still echoing in his ears

211
00:19:02,200 --> 00:19:07,359
as he sat there bulkily swaying,
his eyes fixed on the pallid, gliding

212
00:19:07,440 --> 00:19:14,440
hedgerow from his fusty cab. Pepe
had not positively claimed that every single chorister

213
00:19:14,559 --> 00:19:19,440
in the chorus was an exdigenous visitant. He had gone further. He had

214
00:19:19,480 --> 00:19:25,279
gently bent down a low lying fan
of leaves and bloom, and not content

215
00:19:25,359 --> 00:19:30,039
with exhibiting one by one living specimens
of a spotted blue, iridescent little beetle,

216
00:19:30,559 --> 00:19:36,920
a horned kind of cockchafer, and
a dappled black and yellow mottled ladybird,

217
00:19:37,359 --> 00:19:41,680
all of them following their lives in
these surroundings. He had also chased

218
00:19:41,799 --> 00:19:45,279
in vain a couple of exotic butterflies
down the slope of the garden, and

219
00:19:45,359 --> 00:19:51,160
had pointed out little clumps of saffron
and sky blue flowers, and a rank

220
00:19:51,440 --> 00:19:56,240
ungainly weed with a cluster of black
helmet shaped florets at its tips, asserting

221
00:19:56,279 --> 00:20:03,680
that these were as rare as unpressed
entered in those parts as the tree itself.

222
00:20:03,680 --> 00:20:07,200
You don't mean to say, because
the thing has brought its own vermin,

223
00:20:07,440 --> 00:20:11,759
that it's any better for that.
We can do that in the fruit

224
00:20:11,759 --> 00:20:17,519
trade it's brought me, said the
other, mooning Meanwhile, in the opposite

225
00:20:17,599 --> 00:20:23,119
direction, And where do you raise
your potatoes and artichokes and scarlet runners?

226
00:20:23,839 --> 00:20:30,720
It looks to me like a damned
waste of soil. The wandering greenish gray

227
00:20:30,799 --> 00:20:34,799
eyes had rested for a moment on
the puffy, contemptuous face a few inches

228
00:20:34,799 --> 00:20:41,319
beneath them, without the faintest symptom
of intelligence. Empty eyes, yet with

229
00:20:41,440 --> 00:20:45,359
a hint of danger in them,
like a bright green pool of water in

230
00:20:45,400 --> 00:20:51,680
an old quarry. You shall have
a basket of the fruit, if you'll

231
00:20:51,759 --> 00:20:59,400
risk it. It never really ripens
queer looking seeds. You eat it yourself.

232
00:20:59,440 --> 00:21:04,480
Then the eyes slid away, the
narrow shoulders lifted a little. I

233
00:21:04,640 --> 00:21:10,519
take things as they come. It
was precisely how he had afterward taken the

234
00:21:10,599 --> 00:21:15,720
check. Seated there on each side
of the deal table in the bare,

235
00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:22,319
uncarpeted, uncurtained living room of the
cottage, over a luncheon of bread and

236
00:21:22,519 --> 00:21:26,240
dry cheese and onions, with the
reflected light of the tree on his half

237
00:21:26,279 --> 00:21:32,839
brother's face, the talk between the
two of them had gradually degenerated into an

238
00:21:32,839 --> 00:21:37,519
altercation. At length, the fruit
merchant, with some little relief, had

239
00:21:37,559 --> 00:21:44,000
completely lost his temper. A half
empty jam pot buzzing with bees was no

240
00:21:44,160 --> 00:21:48,960
more appetizing an object because the insects
were not of the usual variety. He

241
00:21:48,039 --> 00:21:55,839
had literally been stung into repeating a
few semi fraternal truths to submit to being

242
00:21:55,960 --> 00:22:00,200
half starved, simply because nobody with
money to waste would so much as look

243
00:22:00,240 --> 00:22:03,279
at your bits of drawings. To
sit there dreamily grinning at a tree in

244
00:22:03,279 --> 00:22:07,920
your back garden twenty times more useless, because there wasn't its like for miles

245
00:22:07,920 --> 00:22:15,000
around. Even if there wasn't to
be content to hang like a bloodsucker on

246
00:22:15,079 --> 00:22:19,680
the generosity of a relative half blood
and half water. Well, he had

247
00:22:19,720 --> 00:22:26,759
given p P a bit of his
mind. The fruit Merchant instinctively drew a

248
00:22:26,759 --> 00:22:33,680
cold, fat hand down his face
as a more and more precise recollection of

249
00:22:33,720 --> 00:22:41,039
the subsequent scene recurred to him.
Mere silence can be insulting. And there

250
00:22:41,119 --> 00:22:44,880
was one thing about his half brother, worse than all the rest of his

251
00:22:44,960 --> 00:22:49,440
peculiarities put together, that had never
failed to reduce him to a helpless indignation.

252
00:22:51,559 --> 00:22:56,119
His eyes they didn't see you,
even when they were fixed on you

253
00:22:56,200 --> 00:23:02,359
across two feet of deal board.
They saw something else, and with no

254
00:23:02,559 --> 00:23:07,880
vestige of common courtesy. And those
hands, you could swear at a glance

255
00:23:07,880 --> 00:23:12,480
that they had never done a single
honest day's work in their owner's life.

256
00:23:12,519 --> 00:23:17,480
Every site of them had made it
easier for the fruit Merchant to work himself

257
00:23:17,599 --> 00:23:22,160
up into a blind, refreshing rage. The cottage had fairly shaken to his

258
00:23:22,200 --> 00:23:27,640
abuse. The raw onions had danced
under his fist on the table and twining

259
00:23:27,720 --> 00:23:33,559
in and out between his roarings and
shoutings, had meandered on that other,

260
00:23:33,920 --> 00:23:41,240
low, groping, dispassionate voice.
His brothers. He had found his own

261
00:23:41,319 --> 00:23:45,279
place, and there he intended to
remain. Rather than sit on a stall

262
00:23:45,319 --> 00:23:51,359
in accounting house writing invoices for crates
of oranges and pineapples, he would hang

263
00:23:51,440 --> 00:23:56,119
himself from the topmost branches of the
tree. You had your own life to

264
00:23:56,200 --> 00:23:59,640
lead, and it didn't matter if
you died of it. He was not

265
00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:03,720
making any claims. There was nothing
the same in this world for any two

266
00:24:03,759 --> 00:24:07,000
persons, and the more different everything
was, the more closely you should cling

267
00:24:07,079 --> 00:24:12,000
to the difference. Oh, yes, it was mere chance, or whatever

268
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:15,160
you like to call it, that
had brought him here, mere chance that

269
00:24:15,200 --> 00:24:19,400
the tree had not even been charged
for in the rent. There it was,

270
00:24:19,839 --> 00:24:25,119
and it would last him his lifetime, and when that was over he

271
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:30,119
wouldn't complain. He had wagged his
skimpy beard a pencil between his fingers.

272
00:24:30,960 --> 00:24:33,119
No, he wouldn't complain if they
just dug a hole in the garden and

273
00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:37,359
shoveled his body in under the grass
within reach of the rootlets. What's your

274
00:24:37,359 --> 00:24:42,440
body. They'll bury me all right
when I'm safely dead. Try it,

275
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:49,759
it's a fair speculation. Try what
the fruit. Merchant's countenance had suddenly set

276
00:24:49,839 --> 00:24:56,079
like a gargoyle and cast iron.
His half brother had nodded towards a dingy

277
00:24:56,200 --> 00:25:00,960
portfolio that stood leaning against a half
empty bookcase, and at that his guest

278
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:06,759
had laid about him with a will. So that's the kind of profit you're

279
00:25:06,759 --> 00:25:10,680
hoping to make out of your old
b bush. That's your profit. That's

280
00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:15,720
your fine airs, your miserable scribblings
and scragglings. He had once more slammed

281
00:25:15,759 --> 00:25:22,000
down his huge fist on the table
and delivered his ultimatum. See here,

282
00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:26,359
I give you a hundred pounds here
and now there's no claim on me,

283
00:25:26,799 --> 00:25:32,279
not a shred. We don't even
share the same mother, even if we

284
00:25:32,359 --> 00:25:37,480
share the same dad. You talk
this abject rubbish to me. You have

285
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:41,559
never earned a decent penny in your
life. You never will. You are

286
00:25:41,599 --> 00:25:47,440
a fool and a loafer. Go
to the parish and go for good.

287
00:25:48,039 --> 00:25:52,200
I'm sick of it. You're here, sick of it. You sit there

288
00:25:52,240 --> 00:25:55,559
whiffling that I haven't eyes in my
head, that I don't know black from

289
00:25:55,559 --> 00:26:00,039
white, that you'd rather hang your
miserable carcass in your wretched old tree and

290
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:04,039
take a respectable job. Well,
hang it there, it won't break the

291
00:26:04,079 --> 00:26:07,200
branches. If this is the only
kind of meal you can give a visitor,

292
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:14,160
I'm done with you. I wash
my hands of you. He had

293
00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:18,640
inaccurately pantomime to the operation sweeping over
the jam pot as he did so,

294
00:26:19,279 --> 00:26:25,000
and now drew in his breath,
a cold breath too, as with eyes

295
00:26:25,119 --> 00:26:30,119
fixed on the ever lightning hedgerows beyond
his oblong window, he remembered the renewed,

296
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:36,079
red hot stab of pain that transfixed
the ball of his thumb. It

297
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:41,519
recalled him instantaneously to his surroundings.
Scrambling up from his seat, he ejected

298
00:26:41,559 --> 00:26:45,880
his head out of the cab into
the open. Whoa there, Jahia,

299
00:26:47,400 --> 00:26:52,640
I'm getting out. The horse was
dragged up onto its haunches. The cab

300
00:26:52,759 --> 00:26:56,559
came to a standstill, and the
roaring suspirations of the animal. The fruit

301
00:26:56,680 --> 00:27:03,759
merchant alighted on the tinkling ice of
a frozen wayside puddle of water. He

302
00:27:03,839 --> 00:27:08,200
turned himself about time, and the
night had not tarried during his journey.

303
00:27:10,079 --> 00:27:14,960
The east was a blaze of moonlight. The moon glared in the gray heavens

304
00:27:15,039 --> 00:27:18,880
like a circular, flat, little
window of glass. Wait here, the

305
00:27:18,960 --> 00:27:23,960
fruit merchant bade his cabman at the
desolation, you've pretty near shaken the head

306
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:30,319
off my body. The cabman ducked
his own small head in reply, and

307
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:33,960
saluted his fare with a jerk of
his whip. You won't be long,

308
00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:40,839
he sang out between his whiskers.
What did he mean by that? Was

309
00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:45,039
the fruit Merchant's querulous question to himself
as he mounted the few remaining yards of

310
00:27:45,119 --> 00:27:51,279
by lane toward the crest of the
slope. He was tired and elderly and

311
00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:56,880
cold. A pathetic look, one
almost of sadness, came into his face.

312
00:27:56,839 --> 00:28:02,839
He pushed up his muffler and coughed. There replied the faintest echo from

313
00:28:02,880 --> 00:28:07,920
the low copse that bordered the lane. Grass crystalled with hoar frost muffled his

314
00:28:07,960 --> 00:28:14,880
footsteps. What had he meant by
that? Repeated self to self, but

315
00:28:15,119 --> 00:28:19,640
not as if expectant of an answer. When well out of sight of the

316
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:25,400
cabman and his vehicle beneath the slope
of the hill, the fruit merchant paused,

317
00:28:25,839 --> 00:28:30,680
lifting his eyes league beyond league,
beneath him, as if to the

318
00:28:30,759 --> 00:28:36,759
confines of the world. The countryside
spread on frostby clad meadow, wood and

319
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:42,640
winding lane, and one sole house
in sight. The small tumbled down,

320
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:49,079
lightless, huddling cottage, its ragged
thatch and walls checkered black with shadow and

321
00:28:49,279 --> 00:28:56,119
dazzling white with wash of moonshine.
And there, lifting itself into the empty

322
00:28:56,160 --> 00:29:02,279
skies, its twigs and branches sweeping
the stars, stood the single, naked,

323
00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:10,839
gigantic tree. The fruit merchant gazed
across at it like an obese minute

324
00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:15,759
belial on the ramparts of Eden.
He had been fooled, then tricked.

325
00:29:17,839 --> 00:29:21,680
He might have guessed the fatuity of
his enterprise. He had guessed it.

326
00:29:22,799 --> 00:29:27,200
The house was empty, the bird
had flown. Why for a single instant

327
00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:32,920
had he dreamed otherwise? Simply because
all these years he had been deceived into

328
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:37,559
believing there was a kind of honesty
in the fellow, just that something quixotic,

329
00:29:37,039 --> 00:29:45,000
stupid, stubborn, dense, dull, demented, which nothing but lies.

330
00:29:45,119 --> 00:29:52,599
Then that bee in his bonnet,
that snake in his grass, nothing

331
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:56,400
but lies. There was no principle
by which you could judge a man like

332
00:29:56,519 --> 00:30:03,960
that, And yet well, after
all he was like anybody else. Give

333
00:30:03,039 --> 00:30:07,240
him a taste of the sweets of
success, and his boasted solitude, his

334
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:12,960
contempt for the mere decencies of life, his pretended disgust at men more capable

335
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:18,759
and square headed than himself, had
vanished into thin air. There were fools

336
00:30:18,799 --> 00:30:22,680
in the world, he had discovered, who would pay ninety seven guineas for

337
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:27,079
a second or third hand scrabble of
a drawing. Right, you are hand

338
00:30:27,119 --> 00:30:34,720
over the DIBs, and I am
off. A scornful yet lugubrious smile stole

339
00:30:34,799 --> 00:30:41,000
over the fruit merchant's purplish features.
He would be honest about it. He

340
00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:47,160
positively enjoyed acknowledging when a rival had
bested him over a bargain. He would

341
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:52,240
even agree that he had always nursed
his own little superstitions. And now all

342
00:30:52,279 --> 00:30:59,599
that fine silly talk, sheer fudge. He had been childish, fool enough

343
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:03,799
to be pressed by it, Yes, and have been even a little frightened

344
00:31:03,799 --> 00:31:10,400
by a tree. He eyed it
there, that gaunt, prodigious weed,

345
00:31:11,279 --> 00:31:15,599
And then, with one furtive glance
over his round shoulder towards the crest of

346
00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:18,519
the slope behind which lay his way
of escape from this wintry landscape, and

347
00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:23,759
from every memory of the buffoon who
had cheated him. He slowly descended the

348
00:31:23,839 --> 00:31:30,920
hill, pushed open the broken gate, and entered the icy, untended garden

349
00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:37,680
once more. He came to a
standstill in his frieze coat, and from

350
00:31:37,759 --> 00:31:41,240
under the brim of his hard hat, stared up into the huge, frigid

351
00:31:41,319 --> 00:31:48,440
branches. There are a subtle lift
and ease in the twigs of a tree

352
00:31:48,440 --> 00:31:53,640
asleep in winter. Green living buds
are everywhere, huddling close in their drowsy

353
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:59,880
defenses. Even the fruit merchant could
distinguish between the dreaming and the dead,

354
00:32:00,519 --> 00:32:04,680
or at any rate, between the
unripe and the rotten. And as he

355
00:32:04,720 --> 00:32:07,759
looked, two thoughts scurried like rats
out of the wainscot of his mind,

356
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:15,279
those lean, shrunken twigs, those
massive vegetable bones. The tree was dead,

357
00:32:15,160 --> 00:32:20,359
and up there he shifted rapidly to
and fro in order to secure an

358
00:32:20,400 --> 00:32:24,279
unintructed view of a kind of huddling
shape. Up aloft there an object that

359
00:32:24,359 --> 00:32:29,519
appeared to be stooping crazily forward,
as if on a similar quest in respect

360
00:32:29,559 --> 00:32:36,480
to himself. But no, he
took a deep breath, the sudden knocking

361
00:32:36,519 --> 00:32:40,240
against the wall of his head ceased. He need not have alarmed himself an

362
00:32:40,279 --> 00:32:49,200
optical illusion. Nothing. The tree
was dead, that was clear, a

363
00:32:49,279 --> 00:32:54,880
gaunt, black, sapless nightmare.
But the ungainly clump and shape hoisted midway

364
00:32:54,920 --> 00:33:00,680
among its boughs was not a huddling
human body. It was only another kind

365
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:07,039
of derelict parasite, withered mistletoe.
And that gentle skeleton like rattling high overhead

366
00:33:07,279 --> 00:33:13,079
was only the fingering of a faint
breeze in the moonlight, clacking twig against

367
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:19,119
twig. Maybe it would have simplified
matters if but no need as well on

368
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:22,920
that one corpse at a time was
enough for any man on a night like

369
00:33:22,039 --> 00:33:27,519
this, and in a country as
cheerless as the plains of Gomorrah, A

370
00:33:27,599 --> 00:33:31,039
phrase or two out of his familiar
bills of lading recurred to the fruit merchant's

371
00:33:31,119 --> 00:33:37,279
mind, the act of God.
There was something so horrific in the contorted

372
00:33:37,319 --> 00:33:42,880
set of the branches outthrust in ungainly
menace above his head, that he was

373
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:47,920
reminded of no lesser depravity than the
devil himself. Thank the Lord, his

374
00:33:49,039 --> 00:33:53,039
half brother had not remembered to send
him a parcel of the fruit. If

375
00:33:53,039 --> 00:33:58,200
ever poison showed in a plant,
it haunted every knot a knuckle of this

376
00:33:58,359 --> 00:34:06,359
derelict judgment had overtaken it the act
of God. That's what came of boasting.

377
00:34:07,279 --> 00:34:10,480
That's what came of idling a useless
life away in a day dream at

378
00:34:10,559 --> 00:34:17,960
other people's expense. And now the
cunning bird was flown. The insult of

379
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:24,679
his half brother's triumph stabbed the fruit
merchant like a sword. A sudden giddiness,

380
00:34:25,239 --> 00:34:30,199
the roar as of water, caused
in part no doubt by the posture

381
00:34:30,239 --> 00:34:35,360
of his head, swept over him. Reverberated in his ears, he thrust

382
00:34:35,400 --> 00:34:39,440
a cautious hand into the breast of
his coat and lowered his eyes. They

383
00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:45,719
came to a stay on the rugged
moonlit bowl, and there, with hardly

384
00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:52,880
less intensity of gaze, they once
more fixed themselves. The natural living bark

385
00:34:52,920 --> 00:34:55,960
of the tree had been of a
russet gray, resembling that of the beach,

386
00:34:58,119 --> 00:35:01,599
apart from a peculiar shimmer ess due
to the frost that crystalled over it,

387
00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:06,800
and as the skin of a dead
thing, that bark now suggested the

388
00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:14,000
silveriness of leprosy. So far,
so good. But midway up the unbranched

389
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:16,760
bowl, at the height of from
five to six feet from the ground,

390
00:35:17,119 --> 00:35:24,920
appeared a wide, peculiar cicatris.
The iridescent grayness here abruptly ended. Above

391
00:35:24,960 --> 00:35:30,719
it stretched a clear, blank ring
of darker color, knobbed over in and

392
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:37,000
out with tiny, gaudy clusters of
fungi. The fruit merchant stole in a

393
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:44,000
pace or two no feet of the
inhuman This cleanly and precisely the thick rind

394
00:35:44,039 --> 00:35:49,119
of the tree must sometimes since have
been cut and pared away in a wide

395
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:52,960
equal ring, a ring too far
from the ground to have been the work

396
00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:57,239
of pigs or goats, too smooth
and sharp edged to have been caused by

397
00:35:57,239 --> 00:36:01,679
the gnawings of cattle. It was
perfectly plane. The sap protecting skin of

398
00:36:01,679 --> 00:36:07,239
the thing had been deliberately cut and
hacked away. The tree had been murdered.

399
00:36:08,679 --> 00:36:15,199
High in the moonlit heavens. It
gloated there a victim. Not until

400
00:36:15,239 --> 00:36:21,559
then did the fruit merchant stealthily turn
and once more survey his half brother's house.

401
00:36:22,039 --> 00:36:27,480
The slow and almost furtive movement of
his head and shoulders suggested that the

402
00:36:27,519 --> 00:36:32,159
action was involuntary. From this garden
side. The aspect of the hovel was

403
00:36:32,239 --> 00:36:38,480
even more abject and disconsolate. Its
one ivy clustered chimney stack was smokeless.

404
00:36:39,519 --> 00:36:45,920
The moonbeams rained softly and mercilessly on
the flint walls, the boarded windows,

405
00:36:45,519 --> 00:36:52,199
the rattened bird ravaged thatch. Only
a specter could be content with such a

406
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:58,679
dwelling, and a gilt stricken wretch
at that. Yet, without any doubt

407
00:36:58,679 --> 00:37:02,039
in the world, the house was
still inhabited, For a slender amber beam

408
00:37:02,079 --> 00:37:07,920
of light leaned out at an obtuse
angle from some crevice in the shuttering wood

409
00:37:07,199 --> 00:37:14,960
into the vast bath of moonshine.
For a moment, the fruit merchant hesitated.

410
00:37:15,199 --> 00:37:19,320
He could leave the garden and regain
his cab without nearing the house.

411
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:24,159
He could yet once more wash his
hands. Certainly, after sight of the

412
00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:29,559
maniac's treacherous work on this unique,
god given tree, he had not the

413
00:37:29,599 --> 00:37:34,199
faintest vestige of a desire to confront
his half brother. Quite the reverse,

414
00:37:35,079 --> 00:37:38,480
He would far rather fling a second
hundred pounds after the first than be once

415
00:37:38,519 --> 00:37:45,199
more contaminated by the creature. There
was something vile in his surroundings. In

416
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:51,800
shadows as black as pitch like these, any inconceivable evil creature might lie in

417
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:57,960
covert. If the tree alive could
decoy an alien fauna to its succulent nectar,

418
00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:05,400
the tree dead might well invite even
less pleasing ministrations come. What would

419
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:10,480
he was prepared. It might startle
him, but he was dead cold already.

420
00:38:10,519 --> 00:38:15,480
And when your whole mind is filled
with disgust and disquiet, there is

421
00:38:15,559 --> 00:38:20,079
no room for physical fear. You
merely want to shake yourself free, edge

422
00:38:20,079 --> 00:38:27,239
out and be off. Nevertheless,
the human intruder in this inhuman wilderness was

423
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:34,960
already and with great caution, making
his way toward the house on a pitch

424
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:39,519
black night. He might have hesitated, hadn't venomous serpents the habit of stealing

425
00:38:39,559 --> 00:38:44,960
for their winter slumber into the crannies
and hollows of fallen wood. Might not

426
00:38:45,079 --> 00:38:50,079
even the lightest northern Zepha bring down
upon his head another vast bulk of timber

427
00:38:50,119 --> 00:38:54,760
from the withered labyrinth above. But
so bright was the earth's lantern, so

428
00:38:54,920 --> 00:39:00,679
still the starry sky, that he
could hear and even see the seeds from

429
00:39:00,719 --> 00:39:05,800
the humbler winter weeds scattering out from
their yawning pods. As with exquisite care,

430
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:10,199
he brushed on through the tangling growths
around him, and, having at

431
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:15,920
length closely approached the walls, standing
actually within a jutting shadow, he paused

432
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:21,960
yet again and took a deep breath
into his body. Before gently lifting himself,

433
00:39:22,440 --> 00:39:25,320
he set his eye to the crevice, from which poured out that slender

434
00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:32,400
shaft of light. So artificially brilliant
was the room within by comparison with the

435
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:37,960
full moonlight of the fruit merchant's natural
world. Without that, for an instant

436
00:39:37,039 --> 00:39:43,119
or two he saw nothing, But
he persevered, and after a while his

437
00:39:43,320 --> 00:39:47,199
round, protruding eye found itself master
of at least half the space on the

438
00:39:47,199 --> 00:39:52,480
other side of the shutters. Stilled
through and through, his fingers clutching the

439
00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:57,760
frosted sill, he stood there,
half suspended on his toes, and,

440
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:02,079
as if hypnotized, for scarcely more
than a yard distant from his own,

441
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:07,159
there stooped a face, his half
brothers, a face to haunt you to

442
00:40:07,199 --> 00:40:13,559
your dying day. It was surmounted
by a kind of nightcap, and was

443
00:40:13,639 --> 00:40:22,000
almost unrecognizable. The unfolding of the
hours of twelve solitary years had played havoc

444
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:28,400
with the once familiar features. The
projecting brows above the angular cheek bones resembled

445
00:40:28,480 --> 00:40:32,400
polished stone. The ear stood out
like the vans of a bat on each

446
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:37,960
side above the corded neck. The
thin, unkempt beard on the narrow jaw

447
00:40:38,159 --> 00:40:45,280
brushed the long gnarled hand that was
moving with a great and tedious care on

448
00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:52,480
the bare table beneath it motionlessly.
The hanging paraffin lamp poured its radiance upon

449
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:59,440
this engrossed, cadaverous visage, revealing
every lion and bone, hollow and wrinkle.

450
00:41:00,119 --> 00:41:07,119
Nevertheless its possessor, this old man, shrunken and hideous in his frame

451
00:41:07,199 --> 00:41:12,000
of abject poverty, His arms drawn
close up to his fallen body, worked

452
00:41:12,079 --> 00:41:19,000
sedulously on and on and behind and
around him showed the fruit of his labors.

453
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:23,719
Pinned to the scaling walls propped on
the ramshackle shelf above his fireless hearthstone,

454
00:41:23,960 --> 00:41:28,559
and even against the stale remnant of
a loaf of bread on the cracked

455
00:41:28,599 --> 00:41:34,559
blue dish Beside him, was a
litter of pictures, and everywhere, lovely

456
00:41:34,679 --> 00:41:38,840
and marvelous in all its guises.
The tree, the tree in spring's delight,

457
00:41:39,079 --> 00:41:45,119
in summer's quiet wonder, in autumn's
garish decline, in naked, slumbering

458
00:41:45,400 --> 00:41:52,400
wintry grace. The colors glowed from
the old, fine, rough paper,

459
00:41:52,639 --> 00:41:59,000
like lamps and gems. There were
drawings of birds, too, birds of

460
00:41:59,159 --> 00:42:05,480
dazzling plumage of flowers and butterflies,
their crimson and emerald, rose and saffron,

461
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:10,880
seemingly shimmering and astir their every mealy
and feathery and pollend, boss and

462
00:42:12,039 --> 00:42:17,559
petal and plume, on fire with
hoarded life and beauty. And there a

463
00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:23,920
viper with its sinuous, molten scales, And there a face and shape looking

464
00:42:23,960 --> 00:42:30,079
out of its nothingness, such as
would awaken even a dreamer in a dream.

465
00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:38,920
Only three sounds in that night quiet, and these scarcely discernible, stirred

466
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:45,159
in the watcher's ear. The faint
shrill sing song of the flame in the

467
00:42:45,239 --> 00:42:52,280
lamp, the harsh wheezing breath of
the artist, and the noise of rats

468
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:59,599
or mice. This austere and dying
creature must have come in at last from

469
00:42:59,599 --> 00:43:06,199
the world of nature and mankind a
long time ago. The arm that had

470
00:43:06,239 --> 00:43:09,559
given the tree its quietus had now
not the strength to lift an axe.

471
00:43:10,559 --> 00:43:19,320
Yet the ungainly fingers toiled assiduously on
the fruit merchant, spying in on the

472
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:23,960
old half staffed creature that sat there, burning swiftly away among his insane huegaurs.

473
00:43:24,239 --> 00:43:30,400
As nearly broke out crying as laughing. He was frightened and elated,

474
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:37,000
mute and bursting with words. The
act of God rather than even remotely resemble

475
00:43:37,119 --> 00:43:43,199
that old scarecrow in his second childhood. Pushing that tiny bladed knife across the

476
00:43:43,239 --> 00:43:49,679
surface of a flat of wood,
he would an empty and resolute look stole

477
00:43:49,880 --> 00:43:55,199
into the gazing eye. Not that
he professed to understand. He knew nothing.

478
00:43:57,079 --> 00:44:01,880
His head was completely empty. The
last shred of rage and vindictiveness had

479
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:07,119
vanished away. He was glad he
had come, for now he was going

480
00:44:07,199 --> 00:44:13,559
back. What little of the present
and future remained would soon be the past.

481
00:44:15,159 --> 00:44:20,320
He too was aging. His life
also was coming to an end.

482
00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:25,159
He stared on. Oh yes,
and not even a nephew to inherit his

483
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:32,599
snug little fortune, worldly goods shipload
on shipload Well, since he could not

484
00:44:32,639 --> 00:44:37,400
take it away with him, he
would leave it behind. He would bequeath

485
00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:42,639
it to charity, to the WFMCA
perhaps, and he would make a note

486
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:46,719
of the hundred pounds, not in
malice, only to leave things business like,

487
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:52,239
and in order to do your duty
by a greedy and ungrateful world,

488
00:44:52,519 --> 00:44:57,000
even though you were soon to be
washing your hands of that too, or

489
00:44:57,159 --> 00:45:01,320
waste, nothing but waste. But
he thanked the Lord he had kept his

490
00:45:01,400 --> 00:45:07,400
sanity, that he was respected,
that he wasn't in the artificial fruit trade,

491
00:45:07,679 --> 00:45:12,039
the stuffed your grandmother belled under glass. He thanked the Lord. He

492
00:45:12,119 --> 00:45:15,280
was not foul to look at,
foul probably to smell, and a poison

493
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:22,719
even to think about. Yet still
he peeped on this old tom, though

494
00:45:22,719 --> 00:45:27,519
it no lady could either. They
would buy right enough. There's no doubt

495
00:45:27,559 --> 00:45:31,719
of that Christie's would some day be
humming with the things. He didn't deny,

496
00:45:31,760 --> 00:45:36,519
the old lunatic that he knew a
bird when he saw it, even

497
00:45:36,519 --> 00:45:40,519
on paper. Ninety seven guineas.
At that rate. There was more money

498
00:45:40,599 --> 00:45:45,760
swimming about in this pestilent hovel than
ever he himself could lay his practiced hands

499
00:45:45,800 --> 00:45:52,360
on. And there were fools in
plenty, rich dabbling affected silly fools,

500
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:59,519
dilettants, you called em, who
would never know that their lying preposterous p

501
00:45:59,519 --> 00:46:02,440
p. Had destroyed the very life
of the tree that had given it all

502
00:46:02,480 --> 00:46:09,480
for him, And why and why
the fruit Merchant was almost tempted to burn

503
00:46:09,559 --> 00:46:15,440
down the miserable cabin over his half
brother's head. Who could tell a gust

504
00:46:15,480 --> 00:46:21,960
of winds stirred in the bedraggled thatch, feebly wind in the keyhole, and

505
00:46:22,079 --> 00:46:25,960
at that moment, as if an
angry and helpless thought could make itself audible

506
00:46:27,119 --> 00:46:31,159
even above the hungry racketing of mice
and the melancholic whistling of a paraffin lamp.

507
00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:37,400
At that moment, the corpse like
countenance, almost within finger touch on

508
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:42,039
the other side of the table,
slowly raised itself from the labor of its

509
00:46:42,079 --> 00:46:45,519
regard and appeared to be searching through
the shutter's cranny, as if into the

510
00:46:45,559 --> 00:46:52,679
fruit Merchant's brain. The glance swept
through him like an avalanche. No,

511
00:46:52,679 --> 00:46:59,360
no, but one instantaneous confrontation,
and he had pushed himself back from the

512
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:05,039
impious walls as softly as an immense
sack of hay. These were not eyes

513
00:47:05,199 --> 00:47:13,440
in that abominable countenance, spec pupiled
greenish gray, unfocused under the protuberant matter

514
00:47:13,440 --> 00:47:20,320
of eyebrow. They remained as still
as a salt and stagnant sea, and

515
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:25,920
in their uplifted depths stretching out into
endless distances, the fruit merchant had seen

516
00:47:27,159 --> 00:47:31,440
regions of a country. Whence,
for neither love nor money, he could

517
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:40,199
ever harvest one fruit, one pip, one cankered bud, and blossoming there

518
00:47:40,360 --> 00:47:47,239
beside a glassy stream in the mid
distance of far mountain sword a tree.

519
00:47:50,199 --> 00:47:54,719
In after years, an old,
fat, vulgar, and ronchitic figure,

520
00:47:55,360 --> 00:48:00,159
muffled up in a pathetic shawl,
would sometimes be seen seated in a place

521
00:48:00,159 --> 00:48:07,639
of honor, its hard square hat
upon its thick bald skull, within positive

522
00:48:07,679 --> 00:48:14,760
reach of the jovial auctioneer's ivory hammer. To purchase every ppe that came into

523
00:48:14,760 --> 00:48:21,320
the market was a dream beyond even
a multi millionaire's avarice. But small beetles

524
00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:25,119
or grubs, or single feathers drawn
from the life were within the scope of

525
00:48:25,119 --> 00:48:30,559
the fruit merchant's purse. The eye
that showed not the faintest vestige of a

526
00:48:30,599 --> 00:48:35,559
reflected glory from the orange of the
orange, the gamboge of the lemon,

527
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:39,480
or the russet bronze of the pomegranate, in their created myriads, would fitfully

528
00:48:39,559 --> 00:48:45,599
light up a while as one by
one, and with reiterated grunts of satisfaction.

529
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:52,039
He afterward, in the secrecy of
his home, consigned these indifferent and

530
00:48:52,239 --> 00:48:58,599
early works of art to the flames. But since his medical man had warned

531
00:48:58,639 --> 00:49:04,119
him that any manifestation of passion would
almost unquestionably prove his ultimate manifestation of anything,

532
00:49:04,679 --> 00:49:10,840
he steadily avoided thinking of the tree. Yet there it remained unexercisable,

533
00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:21,199
ineradicable in his fading imagination. Indeed, he finally expired in the small hours

534
00:49:21,480 --> 00:49:25,719
one black winter's morning, and as
peacefully as a child, having dreamed that

535
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:30,000
he was looking through a crevice into
what could not be hell, but might

536
00:49:30,119 --> 00:49:37,079
be limbo or purgatory, the place
of departed spirits. For there sat his

537
00:49:37,159 --> 00:49:45,159
half brother, quite quite still,
and all about him to be seen gay

538
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:52,039
and painted birds, and crystal flowers
and damasked butterflies, and as it were,

539
00:49:52,639 --> 00:50:00,280
sylphs and salamandous shapes of an unearthly
beauty, but all of them strange,

540
00:50:00,840 --> 00:50:06,639
preternaturally still, as if in a
peep show, as if stuffed.

541
00:50:09,239 --> 00:50:12,760
End of the tree,