Gentian Hill

by Elizabeth Goudge

  "Has it got a story too?"

  “A good story."

  "As good as the de Bruiere story?"

  "Quite as good. A story of a hermit and two young lovers. But the lady had more spirit than Lady Hester. No going into declines for the valiant Rosalind."

  "Tell me the story!" begged Stella eagerly.

  But the doctor laughed and shook his head. "We’ll keep it for another day," he said. "It’s too good a story to spoil with a hasty telling, and you and I must get home in double quick time if we’re not going to get into hot water with Mother Sprigg."

  He touched Aesculapius with his whip, and turning their backs on the sea they began the slow climb up into the hills that were their home.

  3

  Dr. Crane drove Stella around to the front of the farm, arriving at the gate with a great flourish, as though she were a fine lady. Then he helped her down, pushed Daniel after her, and took oil his hat. "Good-by, my honey. And next time, mind you, it’s to be all work and no play. My compliments to your excellent foster-parents."

  He replaced his hat and drove oil, Stella waving until he had rounded the corner by the orchard and was out of sight. "Foster parents!" He had said it so easily; but then he had always known that they were not her 'real father and

  mother. But this was her real home. She went slowly up the little flight of stone steps that led to the iron gate in the garden wall, savoring the loveliness of coming home.

  A stone-paved path led between the yew trees, clipped to the shapes of peacocks, to the green-painted front door set deep within the old stone porch, with the parlor window to one side of it and the kitchen window to the other. The flower garden was bright with Michaelmas daisies and late roses, and the sun was distilling the scent from the lavender and rosemary bushes that grew among them. The stone wall enclosed the flower garden on the south, the house enclosed it to the north, to the east and west two yew hedges had archways in them heading through into the kitchen garden and the orchard. Stella guessed that everyone would be busy in the orchard with the cider pressing, and turning to her left, she ran along the smaller path that led from the central one through the archway to the orchard.

  It was a splendid orchard, stretching the length of house and stables, forming the whole of the western boundary of Weekaborough Farm. The chickens and ducks lived here, for there was a pond for the ducks at the southwest corner, and their white, buff, and russet shapes were seen bobbing and lurching about contentedly beneath the trees.

  The northern end of the orchard was devoted to the cider apple trees, and here was the shed that housed the cider press, but the southern end, into which the archway in the yew hedge led, was planted with the eating and cooking apple trees, the Bramley Seedlings, Jonathons and Blenheim Oranges, with a few cherries and damsons growing among them. The trees had borne splendidly this year and they stood proudly in the orchard grass as though they knew it.

  Stella knew them so well that sometimes in bed at night she would call her favorites by their names, for she had named most of them, and seen them standing before her, each with its own individual loveliness of shape and color. In the center of the goodly company stood the king of them all, the Duke of Marlborough, a huge Blenheim Orange beneath whose branches the wassailers stood when they came on Christmas Eve. She ran through the orchard, Daniel at her heels, scattering chickens right and left as she went, calling softly to the trees as she passed them. "Polly Permain, you look well today. Bob Bramley, you’ve a gold topknot on you. John Jonathon, are you well?" But when she came to the old Duke she stopped, laying her hand upon the hollow trunk with the round knothole that was the tits’ front door, looking up into the gray lichened branches above her head. The Duke had fairy powers, she thought. Mistletoe grew upon him, which was a sure sign. And all the birds loved him, and that was a sure sign too. The nut hatches were always running up and down him like little mice, and sometimes in winter there was a soft mist of color in his bare branches, made by the wings of the small birds, the chaifinches, the tits, robins, and finches. The Weekaborough thrush always sang his evening Nunc Dimitis on the topmost branch of the Duke, the yaffingale visited him constantly, and when you looked from the kitchen window on misty winter mornings you could see the white owl sitting enthroned in state upon his lowest branch.

  "Duke!" she whispered. "Bring Zachary back again. Please, Duke!" In answer, a shower of golden leaves fell upon her head and shoulders, and she ran on laughing, Daniel barking and leaping beside her, until she came to the wooden shed at the far end of the orchard where they were all grouped about the cider press-Father and Mother Sprigg, old Sol, Madge, Hodge, and jack Crocker the ploughboy. Hodge gave her a loving welcome, but the others were too engrossed to do more than nod and smile. Shem, the little dun-colored Devon horse, was going ’round and ’round, straining gallantly at the bar, and from between the two grinding stones the juice gushed out into the trough.

  They were all happy and excited, for Father Sprigg got a good price for his cider these days. It was always in demand for sea voyages, and with the fleet so often putting into Torbay, he could have sold twice as much as he made. Weekaborough made three kinds of cider-the rough fermented cider that Devon men demanded, but which gave men of other counties the colic; sweet cider for those weak-bellied foreigners, made by checking the fermentation, and by other arts; and the best cider of all, strong and luscious, made by boiling the cider and reducing two hogsheads to one. In delivering cider to the navy, you had to be very careful to find out if a ship was manned by Devon men or if it wasn’t, for there was a terrible row if rough cider was given to a crew of foreigners, and a worse one if sweet cider was given to the Devon men.

  "Had your nummet, love?" asked Mother Sprigg, as she and Stella stood hand in hand, watching Hodge and the men at work.

  "I had an apple pastry at Torre Abbey," said Stella.

  "At Torre Abbey! My gracious goodness! Only a pastry? Come in, love, and I’ll give you a drink of milk and some bread and honey."

  They sat at the kitchen table, and Stella ate and drank daintily, remembering about the conversion of her manners, and telling Mother Sprigg, when her mouth was not full, about the adventures of the day. Mother Sprigg smiled, and clacked her tongue in astonishment, but she felt almost as uneasy as she did when she found that Stella had acquired some new knowledge far beyond her comprehension. Visiting the houses of the great! That seemed like another barrier building up between herself and her beloved child. Yet the worst pang came at the end of the little meal, when Stella said gently, "Please, Mother, may I have my little coral, and the locket and the handkerchief that belonged to-to-" She stopped, looking up pleadingly at Mother Sprigg, not liking to give the word Mother to the woman in the brave green gown in the presence of this other woman to whom last night she had said, "You are my mother."

  Mother Sprigg flushed, but she replied steadily, "To your real mother. Yes, love, they’re yours by rights. Come up to my room and I’ll give ’em to you now."

  They went upstairs hand in hand, and Mother Sprigg took a small wooden box with sea shells stuck upon the lid out of one of her drawers, from underneath a pile of snowy be frilled nightgowns. "There you are, love," she said. “The box belonged to my mother, Eliza, whom I would have liked to name you after. I’ll give you that too."

  Stella took the box, kissed Mother Sprigg, went away to her own room, and closed the door. Mother Sprigg, with an aching throat, went back to the kitchen and the blessed comforting work that was never done, and thanked God for it.

  Stella sat on her bed, the box on her lap, and opened it. Inside was the handkerchief, that Mother Sprigg had carefully washed and ironed. It was quite plain, except for a monogram embroidered in one corner. Folded inside it was the coral, and the plain gold locket on a gold chain. The locket opened easily, and inside, as Mother Sprigg had said, was a curl of dark hair protected beneath glass, and a scrap of yellow paper with something written on it in the language which Mother Sprigg said no one co
uld make head or tail of. But she could not have shown it to Dr. Crane, for he would have known .... It was Greek .... Stella had not advanced far enough in her lessons to make head or tail of it either, but she knew the look of the words from the doctor’s books. Her heart beat fast. Dr. Crane would know what was written here. He would tell her. She fastened the locket around her neck under her dress, and put the handkerchief and coral back in the box and the box in her little chest. Then without giving herself time to think or feel, leaving that for bedtime, she ran downstairs again to help Mother Sprigg make the bread .... Never, never, if she could help it, should Mother Sprigg know of the something in her that cried out in longing for her real mother as it never cried out for Mother Sprigg .... As they rolled and shaped the dough together she was her merriest elfm self. Funny little scrap, thought Mother Sprigg. Did she feel anything at all?

  4

  That night Father Sprigg did an unprecedented thing, and jumped a few chapters of the Book. "Seeing the harvest’s so good this year, especially the apple harvest, and us like to make a good thing out of the cider, we’ll pass in thanksgiving to the 33rd chapter," he informed his astonished household. Then he cleared his throat, wetted his forefinger, and turned the pages.

  "Blessed of the Lord be His land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath,

  "And for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon,

  "And for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills,

  "And for the precious things of the earth and fullness thereof, and for the good will of Him that dwelt in the bush ....

  "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days so shall thy strength be ....

  "The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms."

  The brightness fell all around Stella, streaming from a small round sun in the air, that was the one word "precious;" and this time she looked up at once and met old Sol’s eyes, and smiled. If she had any dread at the thought of bedtime, and facing thoughts about her mother, they were banished. The whole universe, the living and the dead, those who dwelt in the lighted places and those in the dark outside, became to her no longer separate entities but one small thing, that round small thing up there in the air, no bigger than a hazel nut but bright as a diamond; and it was held securely in the hand of God, Who for its very preciousness would not let it fall.

  Chapter VII

  1

  After Zachary had said good-by to Stella, he had found a bed for himself behind a haystack, as he had told her he would, but it had been Father Sprigg’s haystack at the bottom of Bowerly Hill just the other side of the lane from the Weekaborough flower garden. When he left her he had started to go up the lane to the village, and then he had changed his mind and turned back. He had a sentimental longing to spend the night as close to Stella as he could. The two weeks since he had deserted, like the wretched weeks on board that had preceded them, had been weeks without kindness and without a home, and the friendliness and compassion of the little girl had seemed wonderful to him. She had not seemed like a stranger at all-she had seemed like someone whom he had known always.

  He had always felt alone. His grandmother, though she had loved him so much, had followed the fashion of the time, and for the good of his soul had permitted no real intimacy between the respectful obedience of his youth and the autocracy of her years and experience. Few young people had come to her house, and the older men and women who had been kind to him had been distantly kind; they had believed with Lady O’Connell that youth should be seen and not heard. Though he had scarcely realized his loneliness, there had always been an inexplicable hunger in him. Now that he had been with Stella it was no longer inexplicable. Everyone needed someone in the world who was like his other hand. You can’t hold much or do much with one hand only. It is with both hands that a man lifts the garnered gold of the wheatsheaf and the brimming bowl of milk, with both hands that he builds his house, with both hands, clasped together, that he prays. That had come to him with a flash of insight when Stella had laid her hand upon his knee, and he had turned it over and laid his palm against hers. You cannot gather the harvest alone, or make a home alone, or always pray alone, and he had known it when Stella’s hand lay against his. Yet he had tossed her hand away again, as though he had been tossing a bird to freedom. She was only a little girl, and he could not take her captive yet. He had his man’s way to make in the world before he could come back to the farm from which her father had driven him away.

  Curled up upon the further side of the haystack, hidden from the eyes of the farm, he considered his position. During the last fortnight he had gradually sunk into the condition of being too dulled by weariness to consider anything. He had spent the whole time tramping from farm to farm, asking for work but never getting it. Sometimes he had been driven away like a stray dog with a stone whistling past his ear, sometimes he had been given a hunk of bread and a drink of milk, or rags to bind up his feet when his shoes wore out, but always he had been turned away. Most of the farms had had their full complement of labor, and in any case he was obviously without the strength for hard work. And then, too, since the mutiny they had all been so afraid of being caught harboring mutineers. So he had just gone mechanically on, blundering ’round and ’round the idea that he would find a home at some farm as a moth blunders ’round a candle flame, and so he might have gone on until he dropped dead had he not blundered into Stella and had a sense of direction restored to him again.

  He did not think it odd that an unknown little girl should in so short a time have become to him the reason for existence. Like Stella herself, he was still young enough not to find anything odd. He did not waste consideration upon that, only upon the problem of his next move. He was not going to find work at a farm, that was obvious. Where then?

  Where, in all this lovely country of hills and valleys, was there a roof that would consent to shelter him and walls that would accept and not rebuff? A thatched roof and ivy colored walls set in a musical valley beneath a purple hill. He started violently. He had been half asleep and in the half sleep he had seen it again, the house he had imagined at the head of the stream in the valley behind Torquay. Well, when morning came he’d go there, and see if his dream had any existence in material reality. It was a crazy idea, but it was the only alternative he could think of to his present blundering. He wriggled close into the haystack, shut his eyes, and fell asleep.

  The same dawn that woke Stella, bringing her back from the far place, woke him, bringing him back from the same place. Lying awake the night before, suffering with him and for him, she must have identified herself with him so completely that she had taken him with her, for as far as he knew he had never been there before. He could not remember where he had been but he knew he had been somewhere, for he awoke saturated with the peace of the place. Within five minutes of waking he had forgotten all about it, and was wholly occupied with the problems of the day. The first thing to do was to climb this hill, at whose foot he had been sleeping, and find out where he was. If he could see the sea then he would know in what direction he must travel to reach the valley.

  Bowerly Hill had been well-named, for it wasindeed a comely hill. Its green turf sloped gently, and the wind-twisted old yew tree at the summit had a personality of its own. Bowerly Hill was the Weekaborough sheepfold, and something of the gentleness and patience of the sheep seemed to cling about it, culminating strangely in the compelling strength of the tree above. Zachary, going up through the gray light, felt his sore feet soothed by the softness of the dew-drenched grass, and his loneliness was eased by the companionship of the sheep. He looked at the woolly sleeping forms with a queer sort of hunger; he would ask nothing better, he thought, than to be their shepherd. He went on, and found that his feet were now following a path to the summit. Did Stella ever come this way, he wondered, climbing to the yew tree? Quite c
ertainly she did, for the personality of that yew tree would be certain to fascinate a child. He kept closely to the path, thinking how quickly her small feet would run up it, imagining that he saw her going on just ahead of him, her skirts swaying as she ran, imagining that he heard her singing.

  The old yew tree was not tall, but it spread its branches widely and its darkness was triumphantly jeweled with tiny red berries. Beneath it a small company of sheep were sleeping among the gray stones that were lying upon the hilltop. They awoke and scattered when he came among them but presently, when he sat down among the tree roots and stayed there motionless, waiting for the full light of the dawn, they came back again, gathering about him as though he were indeed their shepherd. He thrilled to their trust. Knowing nothing about it, he yet felt sure it was not usual for sheep to- be so friendly with a stranger. Was there some special beneficence about this tree? Was this space of earth beneath its arms blessed in some way? He felt that it was. One day, if he was ever able to win his way back again, he would find out. Meanwhile it was enough to sit here resting himself in his awareness of the sheep and of the tree, thinking of their mystic significance, remembering a poem his tutor had once read to him, written by St. john of the Cross, that told of the young shepherd who climbed up into the tree above his sheep, and died there gladly for love’s sake.

  The grayness all about him began to thin and shine softly, transfused with light, and then looking around he saw the body of each sheep faintly outlined with silver, while overhead in the yew tree a network of delicate silver spider’s webs suddenly shone out like frosted spray over the old gnarled branches. To the Cast, the sky was washed with silver light that seemed pulsing upward from a bar of molten metal that was the sea. Zachary-had watched many wonderful dawns this last fortnight, beginning with the one at the harbor, and all of them had been utterly different, each with its own voice and its own tale to tell, but this one was so piercingly lovely that he could not continue to watch it. He shut his eyes, and when he opened them again for a moment the silver had turned to gold and the gulls were flying inland. Slowly and mightily their bright squadrons soared up out of the eastern light, filling the whole sky, flying so low over the shining yew tree that the beat of their wings overhead was tumultuous. It seemed to pull Zachary to his feet, or else the yew tree lifted him. He stretched himself to his full height, and raising his arms, grasped the branches upon either side, his feet held firmly in the twisting roots. Gently yet strongly the tree held him, and he could have shouted aloud in gladness. Perhaps he did shout; he didn’t know. The whole air seemed crashing with music and ablaze with light.