"Never you mind me--that's of no consequence," said Giles. "Think of
yourself alone."
He looked out of the window in the direction of the woodman's gaze.
The tree was a tall elm, familiar to him from childhood, which stood at
a distance of two-thirds its own height from the front of South's
dwelling. Whenever the wind blew, as it did now, the tree rocked,
naturally enough; and the sight of its motion and sound of its sighs
had gradually bred the terrifying illusion in the woodman's mind that
it would descend and kill him. Thus he would sit all day, in spite of
persuasion, watching its every sway, and listening to the melancholy
Gregorian melodies which the air wrung out of it. This fear it
apparently was, rather than any organic disease which was eating away
the health of John South.
As the tree waved, South waved his head, making it his flugel-man with
abject obedience. "Ah, when it was quite a small tree," he said, "and
I was a little boy, I thought one day of chopping it off with my hook
to make a clothes-line prop with. But I put off doing it, and then I
again thought that I would; but I forgot it, and didn't. And at last
it got too big, and now 'tis my enemy, and will be the death o' me.
Little did I think, when I let that sapling stay, that a time would
come when it would torment me, and dash me into my grave."
"No, no," said Winterborne and Marty, soothingly. But they thought it
possible that it might hasten him into his grave, though in another way
than by falling.
"I tell you what," added Winterborne, "I'll climb up this afternoon and
shroud off the lower boughs, and then it won't be so heavy, and the
wind won't affect it so."
"She won't allow it--a strange woman come from nobody knows where--she
won't have it done."
"You mean Mrs. Charmond? Oh, she doesn't know there's such a tree on
her estate. Besides, shrouding is not felling, and I'll risk that
much."
He went out, and when afternoon came he returned, took a billhook from
the woodman's shed, and with a ladder climbed into the lower part of
the tree, where he began lopping off--"shrouding," as they called it at
Hintock--the lowest boughs. Each of these quivered under his attack,
bent, cracked, and fell into the hedge. Having cut away the lowest
tier, he stepped off the ladder, climbed a few steps higher, and
attacked those at the next level. Thus he ascended with the progress
of his work far above the top of the ladder, cutting away his perches
as he went, and leaving nothing but a bare stem below him.