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Speaker 1: The Tree by Walter de la Maire. Encased in his

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dingy and faded first class railway carriage, the prosperous fruit

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merchant sat alone. From the collar of his thick frieze greatcoat,

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stuck out a triangular nose on each side of it.

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A small, bleak black eye gazed absently at one of

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the buttons on the empty blue upholstered seat opposite him.

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His breath spread a fading vapor in the air. He

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sat bolt upright, congealed in body, heated in mind, his

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unseeing eye fixed on that cloth button, that stud There

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was nothing else to look at, for the simple reason

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that his six narrow windows were whitely sheeted with hoar frost.

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Only his thoughts were his company, while the coach, the

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

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thoughts were neither a satisfaction nor a pleasure. His square

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hard head under his square hard hat was nothing but

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a pot seething with vexation, scorn, and discontent. What had

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invited him out so far in weather so dismal, on

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a line so feebly patronized? Anger all but sparkled in

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his mind as he considered the intention of his journey,

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and what was likely to be the end of it.

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Twelve solid, yet fleeting years divided him from his last

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meeting with his half brother, shipload on shipload of exotic

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oranges and lemons, pineapples, boxed figs, and blushing pomegranates. At

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this very moment, three more or less seaworthy ocean tramps

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were steaming across the watery channels of the world, laden

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with cargoes of which he was the principal consignee. He

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stretched out his legs, crossed his feet. He was a

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substantial man. There was nothing fantastastic about him. To put

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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

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relative on earth who had kept you out of the workhouse.

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He had sworn never to set foot in the place again.

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Yet here he was, and nothing but a fool for

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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

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thrust them deeper into his capacious pockets, and wondered to

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God when his journey was to come to an end. No,

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it was with no charitable no friendly, no sentimental motive.

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That he was being glided joltingly on a half brother,

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and particularly if he owes you a hundred pounds and

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more need not be even fractionally a being one smiles

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to think of for the sake of old lang Syne.

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There was nothing in common between the two except a

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father now twenty five years in his grave and alone

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that would never be repaid. That was one galling feature

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of the situation. There was another, in plain print in

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his own morning newspaper. The fruit Merchant had chanced only

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a week or two ago on the preposterous fact that

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a mere woodcut of a mere bird and flower initialed

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Pep had brought at Christie's ninety seven guineas ninety seven

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guineas sixty eight crates of excellent Denia oranges at thirty

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shillings a crate. What the devil his small eyes seemed

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to congest, and yet at the same time to protrude

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from their sockets pep, perfect pest, poultry posa plaguy parasite,

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and yet hardly a parasite You couldn't dish a half

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brother who hadn't sent you a single word of greeting

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

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even if he did owe you a hundred pounds, even

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if he hadn't the faintest wish to remind you of

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the fact, not that the fruit merchant wanted his hundred pounds.

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He was not a debt collector. It was the principle

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of the thing. If half an hour's silly scratching over

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a little lump of wood could bring you ninety seven guineas,

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about twenty nine and a half minutes would bring in

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a round hundred. And there were more birds and more

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flowers in that infernal tree than Noah could have found

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room for in his ark. The tree, the very thought

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of it swept a pulsating cloud of rage over his eyes.

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Cool quiet insolence he could have forgiven and almost forgotten.

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But the merest reminder of that talk about the tree

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never failed to infuriate him. It infuriated him now almost

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beyond endurance, simply because he knew, even if he wouldn't

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confess it openly to himself. But this was the decoy

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which was dragging him on these fifty three interminable miles

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on a freezing, hideous country. Afternoon the tree. Never in

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all his life had he met with such an exhibition

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

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of his journey the recollection grew on him. He couldn't

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get it out of his head. Curiosity, resentment, vindictiveness, a cold,

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creeping cunning, A score of conflicting emotions zigzagged to and

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fro in his mind. He glared through them at the

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walls of his cage. But worst outrage of all was

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the creeping realization, and his body stiffened at the thought

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that he was, even now, and perhaps a little more

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than ever, afraid of the tree. When you finally deal

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with a relative who has been a pest to you

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all your life, the one thing you do not look

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for is an interference of that kind. He could not

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deny it. The tree had impressed him the moment he

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thought of his brother, of the country, even of his boyhood.

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There it was. It had impressed him so much that

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the upholstered button had now completely disappeared, and he seemed

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to be actually in the presence of the tree again.

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He saw it as vividly as if its image hung

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there before his very eyes. In the slightly self warmed

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air of his solitary compartment. The experience filled him with

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so sudden a flood of aversion and resentment that the

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voice of the God, chanting the name of his destination

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reached him only just in time to set him frantically

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pulling down on his frozen window and ejecting himself out

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of the train. One hasty glance around him showed that

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he was the sole traveler to alight on the frosted

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tim of the obscure little station. A faint rosiness in

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the west foretold the decline of the still wintry day.

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The furs that flanked the dreary passenger shed of the

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platform stood burdened already with the blackness of coming night.

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

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

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if he intended to catch the last train home, he

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had scarcely two hours in which to reach his half

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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

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at his tree, and to return to the station a

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bark at a weedy young porter in Mitten's with mouth

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ajar over his long teeth, sent him ambling off for

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a conveyance. The fruit merchant stood under the shed in

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his frieze coat and square hard hat, and watched the

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train glide out of the station. The screech of its

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engine hauling up into the windless air had exactly expressed

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his own peculiar sentiments. There was not a living being

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in sight whereon to breathe a curse. Only himself, a selfie,

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had been vaguely cursing throughout his tedious journey. The frozen

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landscape lay white in the dying day. The sun hung

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like the yolk of an egg above the still horizon.

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Some menace in the very look of this sullen object

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hinted that peep might long since have crossed the bourne

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from which no belated draft on any earthly bank had

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ever been known to come. Thought diverted into more rugged channels.

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The current of talk which he had intended to engage

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with his half brother. In other words, he would give

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the silly fool a bit of his mind. The fact

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was their last quarrel, if anything so one side it

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could be called a quarrel, had tinctured the fruit Merchant's

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outlook on the world deal more densely than he would

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

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the air. The fair country lay cold, as if in

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a swoon, like a shallow inverted saucer. A peclmed sky

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curved itself over the unbroken quiet of the fields, his broad,

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cleft chin thrust into his muffler, his hands into his pockets.

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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.

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Why you might as well be marooned in a foreign

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land or on a stage, sterile, cold, vacant, with not

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a single soul in the audience. At the sound of

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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.

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The fruit merchant sourly thrust a shilling into the weedy

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por immense knuckled hand, and mounted into the ancient cab

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that had somehow been excavated from the countryside. Stagnating all

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about them. The man on the box was like some

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cautious and obscure little animal that had been dug up

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out of the earth. When given his direction, his face

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had fallen into an indescribable expression beneath its whiskers, an expression,

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it appeared, which was its nearest approach to a smile,

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and don't spare your horse had barked his fare, slamming

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the rickety door behind him. A railway carriage, even of

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the most antique description, when its glasses opaque with rime,

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is a little less like a prison cell than a

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four wheeled cab, for which reason, perhaps, as the vehicle

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ground on beneath the misty, leafless elms, the frigid air

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was allowed to beat softly in from the open window

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upon its occupant's slightly immpurpled face, and still on and on,

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memory retrieved for him now here now there every incident

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of his last experience on this self same road. It

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had been summer time, June. He had been twelve years younger,

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a good gross of years, less prosperous, and perhaps not

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quite so easily found into a peculiar helpless state of rage. Indeed,

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his actual meeting with his half brother at the little

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White garden Gate had been almost friendly, so friendly that

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it would hardly have been supposed they were in any

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way unpleasingly related to one another, or that the least

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responsibility of each to each could have caused any kind

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of festering recrimination. Not that pp was even then the

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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

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what he would say, you weren't even certain what he

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might do. A rolling stone that merely fails to gather

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moss is a harmless object in comparison with one that

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appears to gather momentum. And even the most trifling suggestion

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not so much of eccentricity as of an alien and

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crooked gleam in the eye, is apt to make the

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most respectable company a little uneasy. Not that the two

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half brothers had ever discussed together their aims and intentions

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and ideas about life, their desires or motives or hopes

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

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his fair share of most of these human incentives. But

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he also had principles, and one of them was to

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keep his mouth shut. They had met, had shaken hands,

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had exchanged remarks on the weather. Then pp in his

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frayed jacket and slippers, had aimlessly led him off with

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an expressionless face into the garden, had aimlessly dropped a

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few distant remarks of their common past, and then, surrounded

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as they were by the scenery, scents, and noises of summer,

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had pushed his knotted hands into his trousers pockets and

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fallen silent, his gray, vacant eyes fixed on the tree.

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Apart from a clump of elms in the distance, there

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was nothing in view even to challenge it for beauty,

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growth and station. From its station, all but at the

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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,

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pointed leaves. It stood from first springing branch to apex,

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a motionless, somnolent fountain of flowers. If his half brother

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had taken the fruit merchant into a dingy little greenhouse

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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

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was in the trade. He knew a jaffer orange from

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a mandarin. The stuff had to grow of course, and

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he was broad minded enough to approve of rural enterprise.

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Giant mangolds and prize pumpkins did no harm. He had

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stared broodingly about him. The garden was a wast the

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hedges untrimmed, A rank, lusty growth of weeds flaunted their

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flowers at the sun. And this tree, it must have

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been flourishing here for centuries past, a positive eyesaw to

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any practical gardener. P P couldn't even put a name

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to it. Yet by the fixed, idiotic, dreamy look on

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his face, he might have supposed it was a gift

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from heaven, that, having waved his hands about like those

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colored humbugs with the mango, the thing had sprung up

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out of the ground by sheer magic. Nor that the

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fruit merchant had denied that it was unique. He had

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never seen, nor would he ever want to see it's double.

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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.

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A momentary faintness had stolen over him as he had

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turned once more and glanced again into his half brother's long,

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bony face. The absent eyes, the prominent cheek, the graying

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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

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in other parts of the country or abroad. One of

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the officers on the catamaran was telling me, I don't know,

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his half brother had interrupted him, but I have been

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looking at trees all my life. This resembles all reminds

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me of none. Besides, I'm not going abroad at least present.

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00:16:02,080 --> 00:16:05,960
What had he meant by that? The fruit merchant hadn't inquired,

236
00:16:06,480 --> 00:16:09,679
had merely stood there in the flowers and grasses, staring

237
00:16:09,759 --> 00:16:14,320
up into the spreading branches, almost involuntarily shaking his head

238
00:16:14,320 --> 00:16:18,120
at the pungent sweetness that hung dense and sickly in

239
00:16:18,159 --> 00:16:22,519
the air, and the old familiar symptoms began to stir

240
00:16:22,600 --> 00:16:26,120
in him, symptoms which his intimates could have described in

241
00:16:26,240 --> 00:16:31,519
one word. Fuming. He was not denying it, not he

242
00:16:32,360 --> 00:16:36,600
The tree was remarkable as trees go. For one thing,

243
00:16:36,840 --> 00:16:41,120
it bore two distinct kinds and shapes of blossom, the

244
00:16:41,159 --> 00:16:45,480
one circular and full and milky in a dark cuplike

245
00:16:45,720 --> 00:16:50,720
calyx with clusters of scarlet tipped pistols, the other a

246
00:16:50,840 --> 00:16:56,519
pale yellow oval, three petaled with a central splash of orange.

247
00:16:56,600 --> 00:17:00,279
He had surreptitiously squeezed a couple of the fallen flowers

248
00:17:00,279 --> 00:17:02,799
into his pocket book, had taken them out at his

249
00:17:02,919 --> 00:17:05,559
office the next morning to show them to the partner

250
00:17:05,759 --> 00:17:08,559
he had afterward brought out of the business, only to

251
00:17:08,640 --> 00:17:13,240
find them black, slimy, and unrecognizable, and to be laughed

252
00:17:13,240 --> 00:17:17,079
at for his pains. What's the use of the thing?

253
00:17:17,599 --> 00:17:20,720
He heard next, inquired of his half brother, Is it edible?

254
00:17:21,559 --> 00:17:24,480
At which, with the faint smile on his face that

255
00:17:24,599 --> 00:17:28,400
had infuriated the fruit merchant even as a boy, the

256
00:17:28,440 --> 00:17:32,640
other had merely shrugged his shoulders. Why not try it

257
00:17:32,680 --> 00:17:38,160
on the pigs. I don't keep pigs, keep pigs. Indeed,

258
00:17:38,839 --> 00:17:41,359
there wasn't the faintest symptom that he would ever be

259
00:17:41,400 --> 00:17:45,960
able to keep himself. Well, aren't there any birds in

260
00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:51,160
these parts? It had been a singularly false move. It

261
00:17:51,200 --> 00:17:55,119
has brought its own, had been his half brother's muttered retort.

262
00:17:56,680 --> 00:17:59,119
There was no denying it, at least so far as

263
00:17:59,119 --> 00:18:04,079
the fruit merchants small ornithological knowledge went. At that very moment,

264
00:18:04,359 --> 00:18:08,799
birds of a peculiarly vivid green sheeniness were hovering and

265
00:18:08,960 --> 00:18:11,519
dipping between the deep blue of the sky and a

266
00:18:11,799 --> 00:18:20,880
mountainous blossoming little birds with unusually long and attenuated bills, playing, fluttering, lisping, courting,

267
00:18:21,079 --> 00:18:24,279
and apparently sucking the heady nectar from the snowy and

268
00:18:24,319 --> 00:18:28,119
ivory cups while poised like animate gems on the wing.

269
00:18:29,440 --> 00:18:32,400
He had once again opened his mouth, but his half

270
00:18:32,440 --> 00:18:37,519
brother had laid a lean, tingling hand on his sleeve. Listen,

271
00:18:38,240 --> 00:18:44,599
he said, half stifled, jetting, delirious bursts of song, twinkled,

272
00:18:44,960 --> 00:18:50,200
belled rose, died overflowed from the tented depths of the tree,

273
00:18:50,720 --> 00:18:53,519
like the yells and laughter of a playground of children

274
00:18:53,680 --> 00:18:59,720
suddenly released for an unexpected half holiday. Listen. Indeed, the

275
00:18:59,759 --> 00:19:02,200
noise of the creatures were still echoing in his ears

276
00:19:02,240 --> 00:19:06,039
as he sat there bulkily swaying, his eyes fixed on

277
00:19:06,119 --> 00:19:11,680
the pallid, gliding hedgerow from his fusty cab. Peep had

278
00:19:11,720 --> 00:19:15,240
not positively claimed that every single chorister in the chorus

279
00:19:15,319 --> 00:19:20,480
was an exdigenous visitant. He had gone further. He had

280
00:19:20,519 --> 00:19:24,279
gently bent down a low lying fan of leaves and bloom,

281
00:19:24,359 --> 00:19:28,359
and not content with exhibiting one by one living specimens

282
00:19:28,400 --> 00:19:32,440
of a spotted blue, iridescent little beetle, a horned kind

283
00:19:32,480 --> 00:19:36,960
of cockchafer, and a dappled black and yellow mottled ladybird,

284
00:19:37,440 --> 00:19:40,599
all of them following their lives in these surroundings. He

285
00:19:40,680 --> 00:19:44,519
had also chased in vain a couple of exotic butterflies

286
00:19:44,599 --> 00:19:47,119
down the slope of the garden, and had pointed out

287
00:19:47,240 --> 00:19:50,799
little clumps of saffron and sky blue flowers and a

288
00:19:50,880 --> 00:19:54,960
rank ungainly weed with a cluster of black helmet shaped

289
00:19:55,000 --> 00:19:58,759
florets at its tips, asserting that these were as rare

290
00:19:59,200 --> 00:20:03,279
as unpressed entered in those parts as the tree itself.

291
00:20:04,720 --> 00:20:07,480
You don't mean to say, because the thing's brought its

292
00:20:07,519 --> 00:20:10,799
own vermin, that it's any better for that. We can

293
00:20:10,839 --> 00:20:15,079
do that in the fruit trade it's brought me, said

294
00:20:15,079 --> 00:20:20,240
the other, mooning meanwhile in the opposite direction, And where

295
00:20:20,240 --> 00:20:24,160
do you raise your potatoes and artichokes and scarlet runners?

296
00:20:24,920 --> 00:20:27,480
It looks to me like a damn waste of soil.

297
00:20:29,160 --> 00:20:32,559
The wandering greenish gray eyes had rested for a moment

298
00:20:32,759 --> 00:20:36,440
on the puffy, contemptuous face a few inches beneath them,

299
00:20:36,640 --> 00:20:42,400
without the faintest symptom of intelligence, empty eyes, yet with

300
00:20:42,480 --> 00:20:45,079
a hint of danger in them, like a bright green

301
00:20:45,240 --> 00:20:49,680
pool of water in an old quarry. You shall have

302
00:20:49,680 --> 00:20:53,319
a basket of the fruit, if you'll risk it. It

303
00:20:53,400 --> 00:20:59,440
never really ripens queer looking seeds. You eat it yourself.

304
00:20:59,519 --> 00:21:04,319
Then the eyes slid away, the narrow shoulders lifted a little.

305
00:21:05,519 --> 00:21:09,440
I take things as they come. It was precisely how

306
00:21:09,480 --> 00:21:14,480
he had afterward taken the check. Seated there on each

307
00:21:14,559 --> 00:21:18,880
side of the deal table in the bare, uncarpeted, uncurtained

308
00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:22,240
living room of the cottage, over a luncheon of bread

309
00:21:22,319 --> 00:21:26,039
and dry cheese and onions, with the reflected light of

310
00:21:26,079 --> 00:21:29,720
the tree on his half brother's face, the talk between

311
00:21:29,759 --> 00:21:33,480
the two of them had gradually degenerated into an altercation.

312
00:21:35,160 --> 00:21:38,599
At length, the fruit merchant, with some little relief, had

313
00:21:38,640 --> 00:21:43,039
completely lost his temper. A half empty jam pot buzzing

314
00:21:43,079 --> 00:21:46,000
with bees was no more appetizing an object because the

315
00:21:46,079 --> 00:21:49,680
insects were not of the usual variety. He had literally

316
00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:54,839
been stung into repeating a few semi fraternal truths to

317
00:21:54,920 --> 00:21:58,680
submit to being half starved, simply because nobody with money

318
00:21:58,720 --> 00:22:00,759
to waste would so much as look at your bits

319
00:22:00,799 --> 00:22:04,200
of drawings. To sit there dreamily grinning at a tree

320
00:22:04,200 --> 00:22:07,599
in your back garden twenty times more useless, because there

321
00:22:07,680 --> 00:22:10,680
wasn't its like for miles around. Even if there wasn't

322
00:22:11,559 --> 00:22:15,279
to be content to hang like a bloodsucker on the

323
00:22:15,319 --> 00:22:19,799
generosity of a relative half blood and half water. Well

324
00:22:20,359 --> 00:22:23,000
he had given p P a bit of his mind.

325
00:22:25,279 --> 00:22:29,759
The fruit Merchant instinctively drew a cold, fat hand down

326
00:22:29,799 --> 00:22:33,720
his face as a more and more precise recollection of

327
00:22:33,759 --> 00:22:39,920
the subsequent scene recurred to him. Mere silence can be insulting.

328
00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:43,640
And there was one thing about his half brother, worse

329
00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:46,759
than all the rest of his peculiarities put together, that

330
00:22:46,880 --> 00:22:50,400
had never failed to reduce him to a helpless indignation.

331
00:22:51,599 --> 00:22:55,559
His eyes they didn't see you, even when they were

332
00:22:55,559 --> 00:22:59,359
fixed on you across two feet of deal board. They

333
00:22:59,440 --> 00:23:04,599
saw something else, and with no vestige of common courtesy.

334
00:23:05,759 --> 00:23:09,000
And those hands, you could swear at a glance that

335
00:23:09,039 --> 00:23:11,400
they had never done a single honest day's work in

336
00:23:11,440 --> 00:23:15,160
their owner's life. Every sight of them had made it

337
00:23:15,279 --> 00:23:18,119
easier for the fruit Merchant to work himself up into

338
00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:23,079
a blind, refreshing rage. The cottage had fairly shaken to

339
00:23:23,079 --> 00:23:26,680
his abuse. The raw onions had danced under his fist

340
00:23:26,720 --> 00:23:30,000
on the table, and twining in and out between his

341
00:23:30,240 --> 00:23:35,160
roarings and shoutings had meandered on that other, low, groping,

342
00:23:35,440 --> 00:23:41,720
dispassionate voice, his brothers. He had found his own place,

343
00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:45,880
and there he intended to remain. Rather than sit on

344
00:23:45,920 --> 00:23:49,119
a stool in a counting house writing invoices for crates

345
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:52,079
of oranges and pineapples, he would hang himself from the

346
00:23:52,119 --> 00:23:56,079
topmost branches of the tree. You had your own life

347
00:23:56,079 --> 00:23:58,359
to lead, and it didn't matter if you died of it.

348
00:23:59,279 --> 00:24:02,160
He was not making any claims. There was nothing the

349
00:24:02,200 --> 00:24:05,119
same in this world for any two persons, and the

350
00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:08,039
more different everything was, the more closely you should cling

351
00:24:08,160 --> 00:24:12,720
to the difference. Oh, yes, it was mere chance, or

352
00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:15,039
whatever you like to call it, that had brought him here,

353
00:24:15,359 --> 00:24:18,119
Mere chance that the tree had not even been charged

354
00:24:18,160 --> 00:24:21,359
for in the rent. There it was, and it would

355
00:24:21,440 --> 00:24:25,160
last him his lifetime, and when that was over he

356
00:24:25,200 --> 00:24:29,200
wouldn't complain. He had wagged his skimpy beard a pencil

357
00:24:29,240 --> 00:24:32,759
between his fingers. No, he wouldn't complain if they just

358
00:24:32,839 --> 00:24:35,319
dug a hole in the garden and shoveled his body

359
00:24:35,359 --> 00:24:38,200
in under the grass within reach of the Rootlets, what's

360
00:24:38,240 --> 00:24:42,039
your body they'll bury me all right when I'm safely dead.

361
00:24:42,599 --> 00:24:48,799
Try it, it's a fair speculation. Try what the fruit.

362
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:52,680
Merchant's countenance had suddenly set like a gargoyle in cast iron.

363
00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:57,400
His half brother had nodded towards a dingy portfolio that

364
00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:01,039
stood leaning against a half empty bookcase, and at that

365
00:25:01,559 --> 00:25:05,119
his guest had laid about him with a will. So

366
00:25:05,400 --> 00:25:07,400
that's the kind of profit you are hoping to make

367
00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:10,720
out of your old bee bush. That's your profit. That's

368
00:25:10,759 --> 00:25:15,680
your fine airs, your miserable scribblings and scragglings. He had

369
00:25:15,720 --> 00:25:18,720
once more slammed down his huge fist on the table

370
00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:23,200
and delivered his ultimatum. See here, I give you a

371
00:25:23,319 --> 00:25:27,319
hundred pounds here and now there's no claim on me,

372
00:25:27,839 --> 00:25:31,400
not a shred. We don't even share the same mother,

373
00:25:31,839 --> 00:25:35,000
even if we share the same dad. You talk this

374
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:38,680
abject rubbish to me. You have never earned a decent

375
00:25:38,880 --> 00:25:42,720
penny in your life. You never will. You are a

376
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:46,880
fool and a loafer. Go to the parish and go

377
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:50,759
for good. I'm sick of it, jahar sick of it.

378
00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:54,160
You sit there whiffling that I haven't eyes in my head,

379
00:25:54,279 --> 00:25:56,880
that I don't know black from white that you'd rather

380
00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:00,319
hang your miserable carcasse in your wretched old tree. Take

381
00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:05,000
a respectable job. Well hang it there, It won't break

382
00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:07,160
the branches. If this is the only kind of meal

383
00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:11,079
you can give a visitor, I'm done with you. I

384
00:26:11,319 --> 00:26:16,559
wash my hands of you. He had inaccurately pantomime the

385
00:26:16,559 --> 00:26:19,599
operation sweeping over the jam pot as he did so,

386
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:23,640
and now drew in his breath, a cold breath too,

387
00:26:24,079 --> 00:26:27,400
as with eyes fixed on the ever lightning hedgerows beyond

388
00:26:27,400 --> 00:26:31,480
his oblong window, he remembered the renewed, red hot stab

389
00:26:31,599 --> 00:26:36,200
of pain that transfixed the ball of his thumb. It

390
00:26:36,319 --> 00:26:41,640
recalled him instantaneously to his surroundings. Scrambling up from his seat,

391
00:26:41,799 --> 00:26:44,640
he ejected his head out of the cab into the open.

392
00:26:45,480 --> 00:26:50,720
Whoa there, jahar, I'm getting out. The horse was dragged

393
00:26:50,799 --> 00:26:53,960
up onto its haunches. The cab came to a standstill,

394
00:26:54,319 --> 00:26:57,640
and to the roaring suspirations of the animal, the fruit

395
00:26:57,720 --> 00:27:01,759
merchant alighted on the tinkling ice of a frozen wayside

396
00:27:01,839 --> 00:27:06,680
puddle of water. He turned himself about time, and the

397
00:27:06,799 --> 00:27:10,759
night had not tarried during his journey. The east was

398
00:27:10,799 --> 00:27:14,480
a blaze of moonlight. The moon glared in the gray

399
00:27:14,559 --> 00:27:19,559
heavens like a circular, flat, little window of glass. Wait here,

400
00:27:19,880 --> 00:27:23,559
the fruit merchant bade his cabman at the desolation, you've

401
00:27:23,599 --> 00:27:27,559
pretty near shaken the head off my body. The cabman

402
00:27:27,759 --> 00:27:31,200
ducked his own small head in reply, and saluted his

403
00:27:31,279 --> 00:27:35,000
fare with the jerk of his whip. You won't be long,

404
00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:39,680
he sang out between his whiskers. What did he mean

405
00:27:39,720 --> 00:27:43,519
by that? Was the fruit Merchant's querulous question to himself

406
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:46,759
as he mounted the few remaining yards of by lane

407
00:27:46,839 --> 00:27:50,279
toward the crest of the slope. He was tired and

408
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:55,880
elderly and cold. A pathetic look, one almost of sadness,

409
00:27:55,960 --> 00:28:00,880
came into his face. He pushed up his muffler and coughed. There,

410
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:04,519
replied the faintest echo from the low copse that bordered

411
00:28:04,559 --> 00:28:09,640
the lane. Grass cristled with hoar frost muffled his footsteps.

412
00:28:10,599 --> 00:28:14,279
What had he meant by that? Repeated self to self,

413
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:19,839
but not as if expectant of an answer. When well

414
00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:22,599
out of sight of the cabman and his vehicle beneath

415
00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:26,279
the slope of the hill, the fruit merchant paused, lifting

416
00:28:26,359 --> 00:28:30,640
his eyes League beyond league, beneath him, as if to

417
00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:35,079
the confines of the world. The countryside spread on frost

418
00:28:35,119 --> 00:28:40,759
beclad meadow, wood and winding lane, and one sole house

419
00:28:40,920 --> 00:28:46,519
in sight, a small, tumbled down, lightless, huddling cottage, its

420
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:50,799
ragged thatch and walls checkered black with shadow and dazzling

421
00:28:50,880 --> 00:28:55,599
white with wash of moonshine. And there, lifting itself into

422
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:59,799
the empty skies, its twigs and branches sweeping the stars,

423
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:08,160
stood the single, naked, gigantic tree. The fruit merchant gazed

424
00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:11,880
across at it like an obese minute belial on the

425
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:18,000
ramparts of Eden. He had been fooled, then tricked. He

426
00:29:18,079 --> 00:29:21,160
might have guessed the futurity of his enterprise. He had

427
00:29:21,279 --> 00:29:25,720
guessed it. The house was empty, the bird had flown.

428
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:30,640
Why for a single instant had he dreamed otherwise? Simply

429
00:29:30,640 --> 00:29:33,440
because all these years he had been deceived and believing

430
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:36,400
there was a kind of honesty in the fellow, just

431
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:44,279
that something quixotic, stupid, stubborn, dense, dull, demented, which nothing

432
00:29:44,359 --> 00:29:50,039
but lies. Then that bee in his bonnet, that snake

433
00:29:50,319 --> 00:29:56,079
in his grasp, nothing but lies. There was no principle

434
00:29:56,119 --> 00:29:58,759
by which you could judge a man like that and

435
00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:04,000
yet well, after all he was like anybody else. Give

436
00:30:04,079 --> 00:30:06,599
him a taste of the sweets of success, and his

437
00:30:06,720 --> 00:30:10,799
boasted solitude, his contempt for the mere decencies of life,

438
00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:15,559
his pretended disgust at men more capable and squareheaded than himself,

439
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:20,400
had vanished into thin air. There were fools in the world,

440
00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:23,720
he had discovered, who would pay ninety seven guineas for

441
00:30:23,759 --> 00:30:27,200
a second or third hand scrabble of a drawing. Right,

442
00:30:27,279 --> 00:30:29,960
you are hand over the DIBs, and I am off.

443
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:37,119
A scornful yet lugubrious smile, stole over the fruit merchant's

444
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:42,759
purplish features. He would be honest about it. He positively

445
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:46,079
enjoyed acknowledging when a rival had bested him over a bargain.

446
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:49,440
He would even agree that he had always nursed his

447
00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:55,039
own little superstitions. And now all that fine silly talk,

448
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:59,759
sheer fudge. He had been childish, fool enough to be

449
00:31:00,079 --> 00:31:03,039
pressed by it, Yes, and to have been even a

450
00:31:03,079 --> 00:31:09,160
little frightened by a tree. He eyed it there, that gaunt,

451
00:31:09,359 --> 00:31:13,920
prodigious weed, And then, with one furtive glance over his

452
00:31:14,039 --> 00:31:16,759
round shoulder towards the crest of the slope behind which

453
00:31:16,839 --> 00:31:19,519
lay his way of escape from this wintry landscape, and

454
00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:23,039
from every memory of the buffoon who had cheated him.

455
00:31:23,519 --> 00:31:27,319
He slowly descended the hill, pushed open the broken gate,

456
00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:34,480
and entered the icy, untended garden once more. He came

457
00:31:34,599 --> 00:31:38,039
to a standstill in his frieze coat, and from under

458
00:31:38,079 --> 00:31:41,559
the brim of his hard hat, stared up into the huge,

459
00:31:41,799 --> 00:31:47,440
frigid branches. There are a subtle lift and ease in

460
00:31:47,519 --> 00:31:51,240
the twigs of a tree asleep in winter. Green living

461
00:31:51,359 --> 00:31:56,839
buds are everywhere, huddling close in their drowsy defenses. Even

462
00:31:56,880 --> 00:32:00,000
the fruit merchant could distinguish between the dreaming and the dead,

463
00:32:00,599 --> 00:32:03,319
or at any rate, between the unripe and the rotten.

464
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:07,480
And as he looked, two thoughts scurried like rats out

465
00:32:07,480 --> 00:32:11,559
of the wainscot of his mind, those lean, shrunken twigs,

466
00:32:11,799 --> 00:32:16,559
those massive vegetable bones. The tree was dead, and up

467
00:32:16,599 --> 00:32:19,920
there he shifted rapidly to and fro in order to

468
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:23,200
secure an uninterrupted view of a kind of huddling shape.

469
00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:26,480
Up aloft there an object that appeared to be stooping

470
00:32:26,519 --> 00:32:29,559
crazily forward, as if on a similar quest in respect

471
00:32:29,599 --> 00:32:35,759
to himself. But no, he took a deep breath, the

472
00:32:35,799 --> 00:32:39,359
sudden knocking against the wall of his head ceased, he

473
00:32:39,480 --> 00:32:45,119
need not have alarmed himself an optical illusion. Nothing. The

474
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:51,839
tree was dead, that was clear, a gaunt, black, sapless nightmare.

475
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:56,359
But the ungainly clump and shape hoisted midway among its

476
00:32:56,440 --> 00:33:00,000
boughs was not a huddling human body. It was only

477
00:33:00,079 --> 00:33:05,960
another kind of derelict parasite, withered mistletoe. And that gentle

478
00:33:06,039 --> 00:33:09,519
skeleton like rattling high overhead was only the fingering of

479
00:33:09,559 --> 00:33:13,599
a faint breeze in the moonlight, clacking twig against twig.

480
00:33:15,319 --> 00:33:18,680
Maybe it would have simplified matters if but no need

481
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:21,359
as well on that one corpse at a time was

482
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:23,680
enough for any man on a night like this, and

483
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:26,160
in a country as cheerless as the plains of Gomorah,

484
00:33:27,519 --> 00:33:29,920
A phrase or two out of his familiar bills of

485
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:34,440
lading recurred to the fruit merchant's mind, the act of God.

486
00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:38,720
There was something so horrific in the contorted set of

487
00:33:38,759 --> 00:33:42,559
the branches outthrust in ungainly menace above his head, that

488
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:46,240
he was reminded of no lesser depravity than the devil himself.

489
00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:50,559
Thank the Lord, his half brother had not remembered to

490
00:33:50,640 --> 00:33:54,799
send him a parcel of the fruit. If ever poison

491
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:57,920
showed in a plant, it haunted every knot a knuckle

492
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:04,640
of this derelict. Judgment had overtaken it the act of God.

493
00:34:05,039 --> 00:34:08,800
That's what came of boasting. That's what came of idling

494
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:11,840
a useless life away in a day dream at other

495
00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:18,079
people's expense. And now the cunning bird was flown. The

496
00:34:18,159 --> 00:34:22,000
insult of his half brother's triumph stabbed the fruit merchant

497
00:34:22,280 --> 00:34:27,480
like a sword. A sudden giddiness, the roar as of water,

498
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:30,800
caused in part no doubt by the posture of his head,

499
00:34:31,119 --> 00:34:35,519
swept over him. Reverberated in his ears, he thrust a

500
00:34:35,559 --> 00:34:38,360
cautious hand into the breast of his coat and lowered

501
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:42,280
his eyes. They came to a stay on the rugged

502
00:34:42,519 --> 00:34:47,239
moonlit bowl, and there, with hardly less intensity of gaze,

503
00:34:47,519 --> 00:34:53,039
they once more fixed themselves. The natural living bark of

504
00:34:53,079 --> 00:34:56,320
the tree had been of a russet gray, resembling that

505
00:34:56,440 --> 00:35:00,920
of the beach, apart from a peculiar shimmer due to

506
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:03,800
the frost that crystaled over it, and as the skin

507
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:07,639
of a dead thing. That bark now suggested the silveriness

508
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:13,320
of leprosy. So far, so good, but Midway up the

509
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:16,880
unbranched bowl, at the height of from five to six

510
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:22,119
feet from the ground, appeared a wide, peculiar cicatrice. The

511
00:35:22,159 --> 00:35:27,159
iridescent grayness here abruptly ended. Above it stretched a clear,

512
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:31,159
blank ring of darker color, knobbed over in and out

513
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:36,719
with tiny, gaudy clusters of fungi. The fruit merchant stole

514
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:40,079
in a pace or two no feet of the inhuman

515
00:35:40,159 --> 00:35:44,760
This cleanly and precisely. The thick rind of the tree

516
00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:48,440
must sometimes since have been cut and pared away in

517
00:35:48,519 --> 00:35:52,000
a wide equal ring, a ring too far from the

518
00:35:52,039 --> 00:35:54,400
ground to have been the work of pigs or goats,

519
00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:57,239
too smooth and sharp edged to have been caused by

520
00:35:57,320 --> 00:36:01,639
the gnawings of cattle. It was perfect plane. The sap

521
00:36:01,719 --> 00:36:04,960
protecting skin of the thing had been deliberately cut and

522
00:36:05,119 --> 00:36:10,159
hacked away. The tree had been murdered. High in the

523
00:36:10,199 --> 00:36:16,480
moonlit heavens. It gloated there a victim. Not until then

524
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:20,400
did the fruit merchant stealthily turn and once more survey

525
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:25,360
his half brother's house. The slow and almost furtive movement

526
00:36:25,400 --> 00:36:28,880
of his head and shoulders suggested that the action was involuntary.

527
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:33,239
From this garden side, the aspect of the hovel was

528
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:38,320
even more abject and disconsolate. Its one ivy clustered chimney

529
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:43,679
stack was smokeless. The moonbeams rained softly and mercilessly on

530
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:47,559
the flint walls, the boarded windows, the rat and bird

531
00:36:47,679 --> 00:36:53,159
ravaged thatch. Only a specter could be content with such

532
00:36:53,199 --> 00:36:57,559
a dwelling, and a gilt stricken ratch at that. Yet,

533
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:01,119
without any doubt in the world, the house was still inhabited,

534
00:37:01,480 --> 00:37:04,719
For a slender amber beam of light leaned out at

535
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:07,920
an obtuse angle from some crevice in the shuttering wood

536
00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:13,440
into the vast bath of moonshine. For a moment, the

537
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:17,760
fruit merchant hesitated. He could leave the garden and regain

538
00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:20,880
his cab without nearing the house. He could yet once

539
00:37:20,920 --> 00:37:25,880
more wash his hands. Certainly, after sight of the maniac's

540
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:29,360
treacherous work on this unique, God given tree, he had

541
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:32,079
not the faintest vestige of a desire to confront his

542
00:37:32,159 --> 00:37:36,599
half brother. Quite the reverse, He would far rather fling

543
00:37:36,639 --> 00:37:39,480
a second hundred pounds after the first than be once

544
00:37:39,559 --> 00:37:44,239
more contaminated by the creature. There was something vile in

545
00:37:44,280 --> 00:37:48,679
his surroundings, In shadows as black as pitch like these,

546
00:37:49,119 --> 00:37:53,840
Any inconceivable evil creature might lie in covert. If the

547
00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:58,000
tree alive could decoy an alien fauna to its succulent nectar,

548
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:04,920
the tree dead might well invite even less pleasing ministrations come.

549
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:09,199
What would he was prepared. It might startle him, but

550
00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:12,760
he was dead cold already. And when your whole mind

551
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:16,039
is filled with disgust and disquiet, there is no room

552
00:38:16,079 --> 00:38:19,559
for physical fear. You merely want to shake yourself free,

553
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:25,440
edge out and be off. Nevertheless, the human intruder in

554
00:38:25,519 --> 00:38:30,480
this inhuman wilderness was already and with great caution, making

555
00:38:30,519 --> 00:38:35,599
his way toward the house on a pitch black night.

556
00:38:35,960 --> 00:38:40,079
He might have hesitated, hadn't venomous serpents the habit of

557
00:38:40,119 --> 00:38:43,039
stealing for their winter slumber into the crannies and hollows

558
00:38:43,039 --> 00:38:46,840
of fallen wood. Might not even the lightest northern zephyr

559
00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:50,119
bring down upon his head another vast bulk of timber

560
00:38:50,119 --> 00:38:54,320
from the withered labyrinth above. But so bright was the

561
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:58,400
earth's lantern, so still the starry sky, that he could

562
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:01,760
hear and even see the seeds from the humbler winter

563
00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:05,840
weeds scattering out from their yawning pods. As with exquisite care,

564
00:39:06,039 --> 00:39:10,679
he brushed on through the tangling growths around him, and

565
00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:14,760
having at length closely approached the walls, standing actually within

566
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:18,639
a jutting shadow, he paused yet again and took a

567
00:39:18,679 --> 00:39:22,559
deep breath into his body. Before gently lifting himself, he

568
00:39:22,679 --> 00:39:25,519
set his eye to the crevice, from which poured out

569
00:39:25,639 --> 00:39:31,519
that slender shaft of light. So artificially brilliant was the

570
00:39:31,599 --> 00:39:34,599
room within by comparison with the full moonlight of the

571
00:39:34,599 --> 00:39:38,119
fruit merchant's natural world. Without that, for an instant or

572
00:39:38,199 --> 00:39:42,519
two he saw nothing, But he persevered, and after a

573
00:39:42,559 --> 00:39:46,840
while his round, protruding eye found itself master of at

574
00:39:46,960 --> 00:39:50,360
least half the space on the other side of the shutters.

575
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:54,239
Stilled through and through his fingers clutching the frosted sill,

576
00:39:54,719 --> 00:39:58,079
he stood there, half suspended on his toes, and as

577
00:39:58,079 --> 00:40:02,679
if hypnotized, for scarcely more than a yard distant from

578
00:40:02,679 --> 00:40:07,039
his own there stooped a face his half brothers, a

579
00:40:07,119 --> 00:40:10,800
face to haunt you to your dying day. It was

580
00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:15,599
surmounted by a kind of nightcap, and was almost unrecognizable.

581
00:40:17,039 --> 00:40:21,239
The unfolding of the hours of twelve solitary years had

582
00:40:21,239 --> 00:40:26,039
played havoc with the once familiar features the projecting brows

583
00:40:26,079 --> 00:40:30,800
above the angular cheek bones resembled polished stone. The ear

584
00:40:30,840 --> 00:40:33,440
stood out like the vans of a bat on each

585
00:40:33,559 --> 00:40:37,960
side above the corded neck. The thin, unkempt beard on

586
00:40:38,039 --> 00:40:42,119
the narrow jaw brushed the long gnarled hand that was

587
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:45,840
moving with a great and tedious care on the bare

588
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:51,599
table beneath it motionlessly. The hanging paraffin lamp poured its

589
00:40:51,679 --> 00:40:57,800
radiance upon this engrossed, cadaverous visage, revealing every lion and bone,

590
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:05,519
hollow and wrinkle. Nevertheless its possessor, this old man, shrunken

591
00:41:05,679 --> 00:41:09,199
and hideous in his frame of abject poverty. His arms

592
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:13,239
drawn close up to his fallen body, worked sedulously on

593
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:18,320
and on and behind and around him showed the fruit

594
00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:22,320
of his labours. Pinned to the scaling walls propped on

595
00:41:22,360 --> 00:41:25,840
the ramshackle shelf, above his fireless hearthstone, and even against

596
00:41:25,920 --> 00:41:28,159
the stale remnant of a loaf of bread on the

597
00:41:28,199 --> 00:41:31,880
cracked blue dish. Beside him, was a litter of pictures,

598
00:41:33,039 --> 00:41:38,280
and everywhere, lovely and marvelous in all its guises. The tree,

599
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:42,039
the tree in spring's delight, in summer's quiet wonder, in

600
00:41:42,199 --> 00:41:49,400
autumn's garish decline in naked, slumbering wintry grace. The colours

601
00:41:49,440 --> 00:41:54,519
glowed from the old, fine, rough paper, like lamps and gems.

602
00:41:56,199 --> 00:42:00,000
There were drawings of birds, too, birds of dazzling plue,

603
00:42:00,039 --> 00:42:04,639
humage of flowers and butterflies, their crimson and emerald, rose

604
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:10,559
and saffron, seemingly shimmering and astir that every mellion, feathery

605
00:42:10,639 --> 00:42:14,800
and pollend, boss and petal and plume on fire with

606
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:20,559
hoarded life and beauty. And there a viper with its sinuous,

607
00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:25,199
molten scales, and there a face and shape looking out

608
00:42:25,239 --> 00:42:29,159
of its nothingness, such as would awaken even a dreamer

609
00:42:29,519 --> 00:42:36,239
in a dream. Only three sounds in that night quiet,

610
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:42,400
and these scarcely discernible, stirred in the watcher's ear, the

611
00:42:42,440 --> 00:42:45,639
faint shrill sing song of the flame in the lamp,

612
00:42:46,639 --> 00:42:51,119
the harsh wheezing breath of the artist, and the noise

613
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:58,239
of rats or mice. This austere and dying creature must

614
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:00,760
have come in at last from the world of nature

615
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:06,239
and mankind a long time ago. The arm that had

616
00:43:06,239 --> 00:43:09,679
given the tree its quietus had now not the strength

617
00:43:09,760 --> 00:43:14,960
to lift an axe. Yet the ungainly fingers toiled assiduously

618
00:43:15,079 --> 00:43:20,079
on the fruit merchant, spying in on the old, half

619
00:43:20,119 --> 00:43:23,599
starved creature that sat there, burning swiftly away among his

620
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:28,920
insane ghewgaws, as nearly broke out crying as laughing. He

621
00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:34,039
was frightened and elated, mute and bursting with words the

622
00:43:34,119 --> 00:43:38,599
act of God rather than even remotely resemble that old

623
00:43:38,679 --> 00:43:42,719
scarecrow in his second childhood. Pushing that tiny bladed knife

624
00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:45,519
across the surface of a flat of wood, he would

625
00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:52,880
an empty and resolute look stole into the gazing eye.

626
00:43:52,920 --> 00:43:57,239
Not that he professed to understand. He knew nothing. His

627
00:43:57,360 --> 00:44:01,639
head was completely empty. The last shred of rage and

628
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:06,360
vindictiveness had vanished away. He was glad he had come,

629
00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:10,239
for now he was going back. What little of the

630
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:15,440
present and future remained would soon be the past. He

631
00:44:15,599 --> 00:44:20,360
too was aging. His life also was coming to an end.

632
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:25,360
He stared on. Oh yes, and not even a nephew

633
00:44:25,519 --> 00:44:31,400
to inherit his snug little fortune, worldly goods shipload on shipload. Well,

634
00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:35,039
since he could not take it away with him, he

635
00:44:35,079 --> 00:44:38,360
would leave it behind. He would bequeath it to charity,

636
00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:41,760
to the w f m c A perhaps, and he

637
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:45,679
would make a note of the hundred pounds not in malice,

638
00:44:46,159 --> 00:44:49,360
only to leave things business like, and in order to

639
00:44:49,400 --> 00:44:52,880
do your duty by a greedy and ungrateful world, even

640
00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:55,119
though you were soon to be washing your hands of

641
00:44:55,159 --> 00:45:01,039
that too. All wist nothing but waste. But he thanked

642
00:45:01,039 --> 00:45:04,480
the Lord he had kept his sanity, that he was respected,

643
00:45:05,079 --> 00:45:08,159
that he wasn't in the artificial fruit trade, the stuff

644
00:45:08,199 --> 00:45:12,079
your grandmother belled under glass. He thanked the Lord. He

645
00:45:12,159 --> 00:45:15,199
was not foul to look at, foul probably to smell,

646
00:45:15,679 --> 00:45:20,119
and a poison even to think about. Yet still he

647
00:45:20,199 --> 00:45:23,880
peeped on this old tom though at no lady, goodriver,

648
00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:27,880
they would buy right enough, There's no doubt of that

649
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:32,079
Christie's would some day be humming with the things. He

650
00:45:32,159 --> 00:45:35,440
didn't deny, the old lunatic that he knew a bird

651
00:45:35,480 --> 00:45:39,320
when he saw it, even on paper ninety seven guineas.

652
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:42,400
At that rate. There was more money swimming about in

653
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:45,840
this pestilent hovel than ever he himself could lay his

654
00:45:45,960 --> 00:45:50,760
practiced hands on. And there were fools in plenty, rich

655
00:45:51,079 --> 00:45:56,360
dabbling affected silly fools, dilettants, you called them, who would

656
00:45:56,400 --> 00:46:01,039
never know that they're lying. Preposterous. Pea p had destroyed

657
00:46:01,079 --> 00:46:03,239
the very life of the tree that had given it

658
00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:09,119
all for him, And why and why the fruit Merchant

659
00:46:09,239 --> 00:46:12,039
was almost tempted to burn down the miserable cabin over

660
00:46:12,079 --> 00:46:16,599
his half brother's head. Who could tell? A gust of

661
00:46:16,639 --> 00:46:20,719
wind stirred in the bedraggled thatch feebly whined in the keyhole,

662
00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:25,199
and at that moment, as if an angry and helpless

663
00:46:25,239 --> 00:46:28,960
thought could make itself audible even above the hungry racketing

664
00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:32,199
of mice and the melancholic whistling of a paraffin lamp.

665
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:37,320
At that moment, the corpselike countenance, almost within finger touch

666
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:40,920
on the other side of the table, slowly raised itself

667
00:46:41,039 --> 00:46:43,840
from the labor of its regard, and appeared to be

668
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:46,880
searching through the shutter's cranny, as if into the fruit

669
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:53,800
Merchant's brain. The glance swept through him like an avalanche. No, no,

670
00:46:55,360 --> 00:46:59,119
but one instantaneous confrontation, and he had pushed himself back

671
00:46:59,159 --> 00:47:02,119
from the empious walls as softly as an immense sack

672
00:47:02,199 --> 00:47:06,880
of hay. These were not eyes in that abominable countenance,

673
00:47:08,000 --> 00:47:14,119
speck pupiled greenish gray, unfocussed under the protuberant matter of eyebrow.

674
00:47:15,079 --> 00:47:19,920
They remained as still as a salt and stagnant sea,

675
00:47:20,280 --> 00:47:24,480
and in their uplifted depths, stretching out into endless distances.

676
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:29,400
The fruit merchant had seen regions of a country. Whence,

677
00:47:29,599 --> 00:47:34,400
for neither love nor money, he could ever harvest one fruit,

678
00:47:35,039 --> 00:47:41,880
one pip, one cankered bud, and blossoming there beside a

679
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:45,519
glassy stream, in the mid distance of far mountain sword

680
00:47:47,039 --> 00:47:54,440
a tree. In after years, an old, fat, vulgar and

681
00:47:54,559 --> 00:47:59,639
bronchitic figure, muffled up in a pathetic shawl, would sometimes

682
00:47:59,679 --> 00:48:03,119
be seen seated in a place of honour, its hard

683
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:08,039
square hat upon its thick bald skull, within positive reach

684
00:48:08,119 --> 00:48:13,679
of the jovial auctioneer's ivory hammer. To purchase every pp

685
00:48:14,079 --> 00:48:17,079
that came into the market was a dream beyond even

686
00:48:17,079 --> 00:48:22,920
a multimillionaire's avarice. But small beetles or grubs, or single

687
00:48:22,960 --> 00:48:26,159
feathers drawn from the life were within the scope of

688
00:48:26,159 --> 00:48:30,280
the fruit merchant's purse. The eye that showed not the

689
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:33,400
faintest vestige of a reflected glory from the orange of

690
00:48:33,400 --> 00:48:36,760
the orange, the gamboge of the lemon, or the russet

691
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:40,519
bronze of the pomegranate, in their created myriads, would fitfully

692
00:48:40,599 --> 00:48:44,559
light up a while as one by one, and with

693
00:48:44,719 --> 00:48:48,960
reiterated grunts of satisfaction. He afterward, in the secrecy of

694
00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:53,679
his home, consigned these indifferent and early works of art

695
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:58,639
to the flames. But since his medical man had warned

696
00:48:58,679 --> 00:49:02,400
him that any manifestation of passion would almost unquestionably prove

697
00:49:02,440 --> 00:49:06,840
his ultimate manifestation of anything, he steadily avoided thinking of

698
00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:14,119
the tree. Yet there it remained unexercisable, ineradicable in his

699
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:21,280
fading imagination. Indeed, he finally expired in the small hours

700
00:49:21,519 --> 00:49:25,320
one black winter's morning, and as peacefully as a child,

701
00:49:25,880 --> 00:49:28,719
having dreamed that he was looking through a crevice into

702
00:49:28,760 --> 00:49:33,199
what could not be hell, but might be limbo or purgatory,

703
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:38,800
the place of departed spirits. For there sat his half brother,

704
00:49:39,559 --> 00:49:43,960
quite quite still, and all about him to be seen

705
00:49:44,920 --> 00:49:50,000
gay and painted birds, and crystal flowers and damasked butterflies,

706
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:55,800
and as it were, sylphs and salamanders, shapes of an

707
00:49:55,840 --> 00:50:03,760
unearthly beauty, but all of them strange, preternaturally still, as

708
00:50:03,760 --> 00:50:11,719
if in a peep show, as if stuffed end of

709
00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:12,239
the tree,