A Traveller in Little Things

by W. H. Hudson

She lived happily for some months in her apartment and was very popular in Parisian society and visited by many distinguished people, who all greatly admired her Eastern decorations, especially the skull, before which they would stand expressing their delight with fervent exclamations.

One day when on a visit at a friend's house, her host brought up a gentleman who wished to be introduced to her. He made himself extremely agreeable, but was a little too effusive with his complimentary speeches, telling her how delighted he was to meet her, and how much he had been wishing for that honour.

After hearing this two or three times she turned on him and asked him in the directest way why he had wished to see her so very much; then, anticipating that the answer would be that it was because of what he had heard of her charm, her linguistic, musical and various other accomplishments, and so on, she made ready to administer a nice little snub, when he made this very unexpected reply:

"O madame, how can you ask? You must know we all admire you because you are the only person in all Paris who has the courage and originality to decorate her salon with a human skull."

XXVII

A STORY OF A WALNUT

He was a small old man, curious to look at, and every day when I came out of my cottage and passed his garden he was there, his crutches under his arms, leaning on the gate, silently regarding me as I went by. Not boldly; his round dark eyes were like those of some shy animal peering inquisitively but shyly at the passer-by. His was a tumble-down old thatched cottage, leaky and miserable to live in, with about three-quarters of an acre of mixed garden and orchard surrounding it. The trees were of several kinds—cherry, apple, pear, plum, and one big walnut; and there were also shade trees, some shrubs and currant and gooseberry bushes, mixed with vegetables, herbs, and garden flowers. The man himself was in harmony with his disorderly but picturesque surroundings, his clothes dirty and almost in rags; an old jersey in place of a shirt, and over it two and sometimes three waistcoats of different shapes and sizes, all of one indeterminate earthy colour; and over these an ancient coat too big for the wearer. The thin hair, worn on the shoulders, was dust-colour mixed with grey, and to crown all there was a rusty rimless hat, shaped like an inverted flowerpot. From beneath this strange hat the small strange face, with the round, furtive, troubled eyes, watched me as I passed.

The people I lodged with told me his history. He had lived there many years, and everybody knew him, but nobody liked him,—a cunning, foxy, grabbing old rascal; unsocial, suspicious, unutterably mean. Never in all the years of his life in the village had he given a sixpence or a penny to anyone; nor a cabbage, nor an apple, nor had he ever lent a helping hand to a neighbour nor shown any neighbourly feeling.

He had lived for himself alone; and was alone in the world, in his miserable cottage, and no person had any pity for him in his loneliness and suffering now when he was almost disabled by rheumatism.

He was not a native of the village; he had come to it a young man, and some kindly-disposed person had allowed him to build a small hut as a shelter at the side of his hedge. Now the village was at one end of a straggling common, and many irregular strips and patches of common-land existed scattered about among the cottages and orchards. It was at a hedge-side on the border of one of these isolated patches that the young stranger, known as an inoffensive, diligent, and exceedingly quiet young man, set up his hovel. To protect it from the cattle he made a small ditch before it. This ditch he made very deep, and the earth thrown out he built into a kind of rampart, and by its outer edge he put a row of young holly plants, which a good-natured woodman made him a present of. He was advised to plant the holly behind the ditch, but he thought his plan the best, and to protect the young plants he made a little fence of odd sticks and bits of old wire and hoop iron. But the sheep would get in, so he made a new ditch; and then something else, until in the course of years the three-quarters of an acre had been appropriated. That was the whole history, and the pilfering had gone no further only because someone in authority had discovered and put a stop to it. Still, one could see that (in spite of the powers) a strip a few inches in breadth was being added annually to the estate.