to Cornwall. He was, indeed, far too well-mannered to allow a host to guess that any pleasure was being sought outside his own hospitality. He had a long standing invitation from Vane, whom he had met in Cyprus in the latter’s days of undiplomatic diplomacy; and Vane was not aware that relations had only been thus renewed after the critic had read Merlin and Other Verses, by a new writer named John Treherne. Nor did the Squire even begin to realize the much more diplomatic diplomacy by which he had been induced to invite the local bard to lunch on the very day of the American critic’s arrival.
Mr. Paynter was still standing with his gripsack, gazing in a trance of true admiration at the hollowed crags, topped by the gray, grotesque wood, and crested finally by the three fantastic trees.
“It is like being shipwrecked on the coast of fairyland,” he said,
“I hope you haven’t been shipwrecked much,” replied his host, smiling. “I fancy Jake here can look after you very well.”
Mr. Paynter looked across at the boatman and smiled also. “I am afraid,” he said, “our friend is not quite so enthusiastic for this landscape as I am.”
“Oh, the trees, I suppose!” said the Squire wearily.
The boatman was by normal trade a fisherman; but as his house, built of black tarred timber, stood right on the foreshore a few yards from the pier, he was employed in such cases as a sort of ferryman. He was a big, black-browed youth generally silent, but something seemed now to sting him into speech.
“Well, sir,” he said, “everybody knows it’s not natural. Everybody knows the sea blights trees and beats them under, when they’re only just trees. These things thrive like some unholy great seaweed that don’t belong to the land at all. It’s like the—the blessed sea serpent got on shore, Squire, and eating everything up.”
“There is some stupid legend,” said Squire Vane gruffly. “But come up into the garden; I want to introduce you to my daughter.”
When, however, they reached the little table under the tree, the apparently immovable young lady had moved away after all, and it was some time before they came upon
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