Gentian Hill

by Elizabeth Goudge

  "Last night I dreamed about the country where one goes. You know the country, Sir?"

  "Yes," said the Abbé.

  "Zachary was there, but I could not find him. He was afraid. I know he was there, and I know he was afraid, but yet I could not find him."

  "That was natural," said the Abbé. "Fear is a lonely thing. Even those who love us best cannot get close to us when we are afraid."

  "When I woke up, I wondered why he was afraid," said Stella. "I thought perhaps there was a storm-"

  “And so you came here to remember Zachary in this place especially set apart for prayer for those at sea."

  “Yes. The doctor came to listen to old Sol’s bronchitis it’s noisy Sol’s our ploughman, and I asked him to bring me here. Mother Sprigg was not pleased. It meant I could not go with her to church. But this is church, isn’t it?"

  "Certainly it is. Have you already prayed to le bon Dieu for your friend, my child?"

  "Yes. I was here quite five minutes before you knew that I was. It was me getting up and sitting down that made you turn around.’

  "And this Zachary who is not your brother, he is a child of neighbors, perhaps?"

  "No. He has no father or mother. But the doctor looks after him."

  Lear and Cordelia? The Abbé opened his mouth to en- quire eagerly as to the appearance of the doctor and Zachary, then it suddenly struck him that, for a man who resented curiosity as deeply as he did, he was asking an appalling number of questions. He had noticed before that the one idea of adults, when conversing with children, seemed to be to ask them questions. Extremely vulgar and ill bred. Though in his case, his vulgarity had been caused by the intense interest he felt in this little girl. No, interest was hardly the word-it was more than interest. But there must be no more of this ill-mannered questioning. She had most courteously and sweetly satisfied his curiosity. Now he must satisfy hers, if she had any.

  "When I was a little boy," he said, "perhaps a little younger than you are now, I had a very happy Christmas. All my Christmases were happy, but this one, I remember, was especially good. My father and mother, my brothers and I, lived in a big old house on the edge of a pine forest, and inside the forest was a small village with a little church, and every Christmas Eve we walked through the forest to a service there at midnight. This particular Christmas Eve was the first I had been allowed to go with the others; until then my mother had thought me too small to go. It had snowed, I remember, and my father carried me on his back. I remember what fun I thought it was to ride on my father’s back, and how wonderful it was in the forest, with the lanterns my brothers carried sending their warm light over the snow, and the stars shining above us through the branches of the

  pine trees, and the church bells ringing.

  "Nearly all the village people had gathered in the church when we arrived, but they had left seats for us near the crib and the Christmas tree. All through the service I stared at the little crib, with the lights burning about it, and at the Christmas tree with its lighted candles, and I was full of wonder and delight. When the service was over the old priest, because I was the youngest there, and because this was my first attendance at midnight mass, took a lighted candle from the tree, and gave it to me.

  " ‘I lighted a candle for every soul in this parish, Madame,’ he said to my mother. ‘One hundred and fifteen souls aflame with the love of God, or if they are not, the more shame to them,’ Then he looked at me. ‘Carry the candle home, my son, and do not let it go out.’

  "I was too young to understand his meaning, but I understood that the candle must not go out, and going home I would not let my father carry me, even though I was tired

  and my legs ached, because I thought there would be more wind up there than down below. I walked behind him all the way, so that his broad back should keep the wind off my candle, and because the snow was deep, I trod in his foot steps like the page in the footsteps of Good King Wenceslas."

  "And the candle did not go out?" asked, Stella eagerly.

  “No, not then." He paused and added slowly, truth com- pelling him. "Not until later."

  "But it was lighted again?" The man saw once more the white swan Hying over the mere, and the Hash of its wings in the sun. "Yes, it was lighted again." `

  "Tell me more about when you were a little boy," commanded Stella eagerly, "Sir," she added.

  He laughed, looking down at her eager face, suddenly remembering many happy incidents of childhood, forgotten until now, that he would like to tell her. His Torre Abbey friends would have been astonished had they heard his laugh; they thought he never laughed. But a growing sensation of hunger reminded him that the doctor had perhaps a considerable round to make before he could go home to dinner.

  "And your friend the doctor," he asked, "is he fetching you here or waiting for you below?"

  "He’ll wait below," said Stella. "He doesn’t like climbing up here. He has the rheumatics."

  The Abbé crossed to one of the windows and looked out. Down at the foot of the rock he could see a gig. The horse was a gray gelding, and the elderly gentleman sitting on the high seat wore a many-caped great-coat and a curly-brimmed top-hat poised at a singular angle. Even at this distance, slightly aided by imagination, the Abbé thought he could make out the flash of an eyeglass and a large and broken nose, and most joyfully did he recognize the person and equipage of the king.

  He turned back to Stella. "We must keep the other stories for another day, for the good doctor is waiting." Then he asked just one more question. "Will you tell me your name, my child?"

  She had got up and stood facing him, her hands inside the muff. "Stella Sprigg." He smiled at Stella, for it pleased him, then he unconsciously made a little gesture with his hand, as though repudiating the Sprigg.

  "Please, Sir, what is your name?"

  "Charles Sebastian Michel de Colbert," he said, his eyes twinkling as hers grew round with astonishment and dismay. "But most people call me the Abbé, and others just mon Pére."

  "Mon Pére," said Stella gravely and sweetly.

  She had him completely overturned again, as by that first smile. Hardly knowing what he did he held out his hand to her to lead her from the chapel, as he had held it out to many a great lady at Versailles. Stella, though entirely ignorant of court manners, did not hesitate for a moment. She curtseyed low, and rising from her curtsey took one small

  hand from her muff and laid it delicately upon his wrist.

  CHAPTER II

  1

  The thought of her ceaselessly, and was astonished at himself. He, who had never cared for children, to have been so enchanted by a farmer’s child by the name of Sprigg. It was ridiculous. Enchanted, that was the word. Moonstruck! As though she had really been some fairy creature, some white witch who had cast a spell over him, he strove resolutely against the ever-present thought of her. But it was no use. The small green-clad creature stood beside him at his desk as he wrote, leaning against his shoulder to see what he had written, sat upon his knee while he was reading (and once or twice he actually caught himself reading aloud because she so loved the beauty of words) and kept him awake at night with the haunting of her smile.

  And yet he was not really companioned because his loneliness had quite suddenly become a burden. Eating his solitary breakfast a fortnight or so later, he wondered if loneliness pressed upon other elderly people as it was now beginning to press upon him. Quite possibly. Contented with his cloistered state, he had not hitherto considered the loneliness of others. That was shameful, and he a priest in charge of souls. Personal sanctity, after which he had striven with such desperation ever since his sojourn in the Irish monastery, was not enough. He had been regarding it as an end in itself instead of as that which determines the quality of what a man can do for his fellow men. Mrs. Loraine, for instance, widowed as he was widowed, her children dead even as his child was dead, was loneliness to her not a treasure, but a grief? Folding his napkin he decided to accept the invitation that she had g
iven him so many months ago and pay her a morning call. Wrapped in his cloak, he stepped out into the bright sunshine. The weather upon this seventh day of November was still what it had been when he met Stella, cold and frosty, but cloudless, and he enjoyed his short walk to Torre. Mrs. Loraine’s attractive little white house, separated from the lane in front of it by a wooden palisade, and with a pebbled path leading up through a small flower garden to the front door opposite the lych gate of Torre Church, and close to the holy well of St. Elfride, where the water bubbled up clear and cold from great depths, and in all the centuries had never been known to fail. It was a very lovely spot, with a clear view down to the sea through a break in the trees. There was a right of way through the churchyard. There were nearly always children playing there and sheep grazing among the tombstones. The bells of Torre had a very sweet tone as Zachary had already discovered, and in the spring the fields were enameled with buttercups. And Mrs. Loraine had told him that she knew where to find patches of precious gentian. The Abbé walked up the pebbled path and lifted the brass knocker on the front door.

  The door was opened by a stout elderly maidservant in mob cap and apron-a dour looking creature, but the Abbé knew that she had served her mistress with devotion for many years, and doubtless would till the end of their lives. Like many another mistress and maid, they were a typical example of one of the best human combinations, two people living together who do not allow their mutual respect and affection to be cheapened by striving after too great an intimacy. The Abbé was no believer in too much intimacy. Human beings, precariously making their souls, could not press in too closely upon each other without damage, he thought. The instinct for fusion was one of those immortal longings whose complete satisfaction was not for this life.

  He followed the maid into Mrs. Loraine’s parlor, and found himself bowing with extreme formality, then, straightening and meeting the amused glance of her cool blue eyes, he knew there was no danger here. His hostess was one of those women who even in an overcrowded room can create a sense of spaciousness. Whatever the tragedies of her life, she was unresentful. She had never made demands upon life, filling the atmosphere about her with hot clamor; wherever she was, it would seem cool and quiet.

  "Pray be seated, Monsieur."

  She spoke in exquisite French, and as he sat in the Chippendale chair she indicated, there was a gleam of amusement in his eyes too. Unworldly though she was, she had her little vanities. One was her proficiency as a linguist. Another was the perfection of taste which distinguished the appointment of her rooms and the adornment of her person. A third shared by her maid, Araminta-was the fairy lightness of the heart-shaped queen cakes, served to her morning callers with their glass of wine.

  "I have called to pay you the compliments of the season, Madame."

  "What an unexpected honor, Monsieur. And you are indeed prompt with your good wishes. We are still more than a month from Christmas."

  He did not resent the touch of irony. He answered humbly, "I have been too long a recluse. I have been most remiss in leaving my friends to know of my regard through intuition only."

  She smiled at him. "It is a pleasure, Monsieur, when one’s intuition is proved to be not at fault."

  For a moment or two they enjoyed the delicate innuendo and elegant repartee of the art of conversation in which they had been trained, meanwhile watching, without appearing to do so, the gradual unfolding of this hour placed like a flower in their hands. For such was unconsciously the attitude of both of them towards the new phase of each new day-it was not unimportant, it had some new discovery hidden within it for the finding. It was the attitude of the trained mind collecting the evidence, in their case for the Christian thesis that all things, somehow, work together for good.

  Mrs. Loraine, the Abbé believed, was nearer eighty than seventy, but she held herself upright in her high-backed chair, disdaining to lean back, her mittened hands quietly folded in her lap, her small feet in their heelless slippers resting upon a tapestry footstool. Her abundant white hair was piled high on her head, and she wore a lace cap with black velvet strings tied beneath her pointed chin. A white lace fichu crossed the bosom of her voluminous grey silk dress, that spread itself over her many petticoats with the hooplike effect of a past age. She was of the opinion that she had come to the time of life when a woman should dress in the style that suited her regardless of fashion, and she needed the solidity of many petticoats, for there was nothing of her. Were hand to hold her, the Abbé thought, she would feel like a starved bird; there would be nothing but brittle bones beneath the plumage. But only physically was Mrs. Loraine an old woman. Her blue eyes, her smiling mouth, and her fresh clear voice were young. Her memory was perfect and her judgments quick and decisive.

  The fresh and dainty room with its spinet, Chippendale furniture, muslin curtains, miniatures, books, and china was perhaps a little overcrowded, but the shelves and cabinets held nothing that was not beautiful. Exploring only one of them would have kept a careful little girl happy for a whole day, thought the Abbé. He was sure that Stella was careful. She had the deft movements of those who do not drop, bump, or trip.

  The wine was brought in, and the little heart-shaped cakes. He ate one, wishing he could see Stella eat one. He was sure she ate as a bird eats, with decisive enjoyment, finishing it all and leaving no crumbs. So many children fidgeted and gobbled. She would do neither.

  There was a beautiful cedarwood workbox, inlaid with ivory, on the table beside Mrs. Loraine. He thought it was Indian work, probably sent her by one of her dead sons. The lid was lifted and he could see that inside there were carved lids that lifted up from different compartments, ivory spools wound with colored silks, an emery cushion shaped like a strawberry, a silver thimble, and a pair of scissors fashioned in the shape of a bird-was it a swan? Stella had perhaps reached the age when little girls had to sew samplers.

  He realized suddenly that, for the last five minutes, he had not been attending to a word his hostess was saying, and started guiltily.

  "Your thoughts wander, Monsieur?" There was a hint of severity in Mrs. Loraine’s tone, for she had never expected to be confronted in her own parlor by anything remotely resembling bad manners from the courteous Abbé.

  "Forgive me, Madame. I was thinking how a child would delight in that workbox of yours."

  "Yes," said Mrs. Loraine. "'There is much in this room that would delight a child. It is a grief to me that I know very few children. I am a little shy of them, I think, and hesitate to ask them here."

  She spoke gently, but he noticed a stiffening of her lips as she finished speaking, and he accused himself. He believed that her grandchildren had also died in India. Fool! What was the matter with him today? But having gone so disastrously far, his instinct told him it would be best to go yet further, even to the taking a step towards that intimacy with another that he so dreaded.

  "I, too, am shy of them. My own child died so young."

  She looked up quickly, her cheeks flushed with her pleasure that he should thus confide in her. If he had hurt her, he had healed that hurt again. She must be even lonelier than he had guessed. Well, if he was in for it now, it was his own doing-not hers. He steeled himself to endure her questioning.

  But no, he had judged her aright when he first entered the room. She asked him no questions. She had shown him bythat look that he could say what he liked, when he would, and that was all she wanted of him.

  In his gratitude that? he need not speak of Thérese and the child, he began to tell her instead about his meeting with Stella in the chapel, and of how he had gone with her down to the foot of the hill and renewed acquaintances with Dr. Crane. He told her of his first meeting with the doctor, and of the boy Zachary, and she was eagerly interested.

  "You must see this child again," she said. "And bring her to see me. It is not right that we should allow our reserve to cut us off from young society. We need it, especially at Christmas. You should pay Stella a visit and take her a Chr
istmas gift."

  The Abbé was horrified. "Madame! The farmer and his wife, her parents-I do not know them. I could not possibly intrude myself."

  "But this Dr. Crane, did he not express a wish for a closer acquaintance with you?"

  "He did me the honor of hoping that we should meet again but he gave me no definite invitation."

  "Then you must take the initiative and wait upon him yourself; and then perhaps he will take you to see Stella." She looked about her, then lifted the workbox to her lap, her mittened hands winding spools and lifting mysterious lids as she tidied it. "I’ll just set this to rights and then you shall take it as a gift to the child."

  "Madame!" cried the Abbé in horror, "I could not possibly do such a thing! I can see it is a great treasure. Madame, I could not deprive you"

  "You will do as I tell you, Monsieur," the old lady interrupted him suavely. "The little maid doubtless sews her sampler, and doubtless finds it a burden, as I did at her age.

  A pretty box will ease the burden. There are many trinkets here that will amuse her. See this little pair of scissors shaped like a swan?"

  "I had noticed them, Madame." ‘

  "Yes. I thought that you had. Your eye had a very acquisitive gleam, Monsieur, when it rested upon this box. I thought to myself at the time it cannot be for himself that he wants it."

  "Madame, I protest-" In his mingled delight and distress, he was suddenly excessively French, his hands speaking for him, his eyebrows shooting halfway up his forehead, his eyes alight as the eyes of an Englishman are never alight. She laughed delightedly. Was this the man whom the Torre Abbey community spoke of sometimes as a dry old stick? But she had never described him so; she had been one of those who had always been aware of the banked fires.