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The Old Willow Tree, and Other Stories
The Old Willow-tree
1
There are many kinds of willows and they are so unlike that you would hardly believe them to be relations.
There are some so small and wretched that they creep along the ground. They live on the heath, or high up in the mountains, or in the cold arctic regions. In the winter, they are quite hidden under the snow; in the summer, they just poke up their noses above the tops of the heather.
There are people who shrink from notice because they are so badly off. It is simply stupid to be ashamed of being poor; and the little dwarf-willows are not a bit ashamed. But they know that the soil they grow in is so poor that they can never attain the height of proper trees. If they tried to shoot up and began to carry their heads like their stately cousins the poplars, they would soon learn the difference.
For the poplars are their cousins. They are the stateliest of all the willow-trees and they know it, as any one can see by looking at them with half an eye. You only have to notice the way in which they hold themselves erect to perceive it.
The beech and the oak and the birch and whatever the other trees are called stick out one polite branch on this side and one polite branch on that.
"May I beg you kindly to give me a little bit of sunshine?" says the branch up in the air.
"Can I help you to a little bit of shadow?" says the branch down by the ground.
But the poplars sing a very different tune. With them it is:
"Every branch straight up on high! Close up to the trunk with you! There's nothing to stare at down below! Look above you! Heads up!.. March!"
And all the branches strut right up to the sky and the whole tree shoots up, straight and proud as a pikestaff.
It's tiring. But it's elegant. And it pays. For has any one ever seen a smarter tree than one of those real, regular poplars, as stiff as a tin soldier and as tall as a steeple?
And, when the poplars stand along the road, in a long row on either side, you feel very respectful as you walk between them and are not in the least surprised when it appears that the avenue leads right up to a fine country-house.
The dwarf-willows and the poplars belong to the same family. The first are the commonest on the common side, the second are the smartest on the smart side. Between them are a number of other willow-trees. There are some whose leaves are like silver underneath and some whose leaves quiver so mournfully in the warm summer wind that the poets write verses about them. There are some whose branches droop so sorrowfully towards the ground that people plant them on their graves and some whose branches are so tough and flexible that people use them to weave baskets of. There are some out of which you can carve yourself a grand flute, if you know how. And then there are a heap about which there is nothing very remarkable to tell.
2
The willow-tree in this story was just one of the middling sort. But he had a destiny; and that is how he came to find his way into print.
His destiny began with this, that one of the proud poplars who stood in the avenue leading to the manor-house was blown down in a terrible storm. He snapped right down at his roots; the stump was dug up; and it left a very ugly gap in the middle of the long row of trees. As soon as spring came, therefore, the keeper brought a cutting and stuck it where the old poplar used to stand, stamped down the ground firmly all around it and nodded to it:
"Hurry, now, and shoot up," he said. "I know it's in your blood; and you have only to look down the road to see good examples for you to follow in growing."
Now the man thought it was a poplar he had planted. But it was only a quite ordinary willow-twig, which he had taken by mistake, and, as time passed and the cutting grew up, this came to light.
"What a monster!" said the keeper. "We must pull this up again."
"Let him be, now that he's there," said the squire.
For that happened to be his mood that day.
"Shall we put up with him?" asked the poplars along the road.
They whispered about it for a long time; and, as no one knew how to get rid of him, they agreed to put up with him. After all, he belonged to the family, though not to the smart side of it.
"But let me see you make an effort and grow as straight as you're able," said the poplar who stood nearest to him. "You have found your way into much too fine a company, let me tell you. You would have done better beside a village-pond than in the avenue of a manor. But now the scandal is an accomplished fact and we must hush it up as best we may. The rest of us will shoot up and grow a bit straighter and thinner still; and then we'll hope that the quality will drive past without noticing you."
"I'll do my best," said the willow-tree.
In the fields close by, on a little hillock, stood an oak. On the hillock also grew a charming wild rose. They both heard what the trees of the avenue had said and the oak began to scoff at them:
"Fancy caring to stand out there in the road!" he said. "I suppose you will want to be running up and down next, like those silly men and women? It was unkind and thoughtless of your mother to sow you out there. Trees ought to grow together in a wood, if they are not as handsome and stately as I, who can stand alone."
"My mother didn't sow me at all," said the willow-tree.
"Oh, Lord preserve us!" said the oak. "So your mother didn't sow you at all, didn't she? Perhaps the others weren't sown either? Perhaps you just dropped down from the sky?"
"If you had eyes in your head, you would have seen that the keeper put me here," said the willow. "I am a cutting."
And all along the road the poplars whispered to one another:
"We are cuttings … cuttings … cuttings…"
It was a real avenue and a real adventure.
"You managed that very well," said the poplar who stood nearest to the willow-tree. "Only go on as you've begun and we will forgive you for not being as smart as the rest of us."
"I'll do my best," replied the willow-tree.
The oak said nothing. He did not know what cuttings were, and did not want to commit himself or make a blunder. But, later on, in the evening, he whispered to the wild rose-bush:
"What was that rubbish he was talking about cuttings?"
"It's not rubbish at all," said the rose-bush. "It was right enough, what the willow said. I myself came out of a seed, like you, and I didn't see the keeper plant him either, for I happened to be busy with my buds that day. But I have some smart cousins up in the garden at the manor-house. They came out of cuttings. Their scent is so sweet, their colours so bright and their blossoms so rich and full that one simply can't believe it. But they get no seed."
"What next!" said the oak.
"Yes, I, too, would rather be the wild rose I am," said the rose-bush.
3
Now years passed, as they are bound to pass.
Spring
