Gentian Hill Page 13

  Where was he? Bemused with fatigue, he had taken a wrong turning, or rather Aesculapius, unchecked, had taken a wrong turning. Instead of heading for home they were heading for a small hamlet close to Torre Abbey. The doctor pulled Aesculapius to a standstill in some indignation.

  "It was my belief, after all our years together, that you could be trusted to take me straight home when a job of work was completed," he growled. "What’s the matter with you? About turn."

  But Aesculapius refused to turn. He jerked his head free and moved forward again. Once more the doctor reined him in and once more he moved forward.

  "Have it your own way," conceded the doctor. "But if I’m not wanted at the village when we get there, if this is some wild goose chase you’re leading me, there’ll be no bran mash for you this night."

  He spoke with vexation and sighed wearily, yet he did not force Aesculapius. He knew the sure instinct of a wise old horse, far more highly developed than that of a man, even of a doctor or priest whose professional antenna are kept perpetually quivering and outstretched by the pull of so much need.

  The narrow lane down which Aesculapius had brought him branched into a wider one, and he found himself part of what was, for this country neighborhood, quite a stream of traffic-a couple of gigs, a wagon piled full of country folk, a dozen yokels on foot, and innumerable dogs. "What’s toward?" he demanded of one of the gigs.

  "Wrestlin’ match, Sir."

  "Wrestling?" said the doctor, and his weariness suddenly forgotten, he settled his hat more firmly on his head and permitted Aesculapius to carry him forward at a brisk pace. The wrestling of the Devon men was rather a brutal sport, entailing physical damage of which professionally it was his duty to disapprove, yet as a Devonian born and bred he could not but take a pride in the traditional skill and courage of his countrymen. And, in these days of war, it was good training.

  When he reached the village green, the match had already been in progress for some time, and the crowd of men and boys and women and girls, too, was compact about the four sides of the roped-off hollow square of grass that was the ring. But his gig was a high one and pulled up behind the thinnest part of the crowd made an excellent grandstand. Aesculapius, having reached the end of his instinctive journey, stood like

  a rock.

  2

  The roped-off ring was about twenty yards in diameter and within it, watching the wrestling, were the three triers, or conductors of the lists, men of great experience in the art, intent upon the keeping of the rules and the honor of a great occasion. They decided all disputes immediately and without appeal. One of them, the doctor knew, would be in possession of the purse of perhaps six or eight pounds subscribed by persons of property in the neighborhood, which would be presented to the winner at the close of the match. The wrestling began usually in the early afternoon and went on sometimes until dusk, the excitement increasing when the lanterns were lit and the crowd leaned over the ropes lynx-eyed to see fair play.

  The rules were simple but they had to be kept, and roars of fury greeted any slightest infringement of them. The wrestlers might take hold anywhere above the waistband, but not below it. They might kick below the knee until blood streamed and bones were broken, but they must not kick above it .... The men from Dartmoor were especially feared, for they kicked like the devil, and when kicked themselves, their endurance passed belief .... At the outset of the match every man who twice in succession threw another man upon his back, belly, or side became a standard for the purse. When the number of these men had been reduced to eight, they each received a crown. Then these eight fought it out until the bitter end, until only one remained. To be one of the eight was accounted a great honor. To be the winner was to be held in greater honor in the neighborhood than the king himself.

  The doctor settled himself comfortably, with pleasurable anticipation. It was a perfect day for the great game, no sun to dazzle the fighters, no cold wind to nip the spectators, and everywhere that lovely deepening of color that was the day’s special gift. No matching an English crowd for good-humored, sensible gaiety, thought the doctor, glancing at the rosy country faces, and the bright gowns and cloaks. Many of the gigs and wagons had bunches of flowers tied to them, or rosettes of colored ribbon. As far as the doctor could see, there was not a single anxious shadow upon any face. They were at war, and might be invaded by the enemy next week, but with the happy, if exasperating, capacity of the English for refusing to contemplate disaster until the final moment, they were not sparing a thought for that. And however the wrestling went today, there would be no rancor or hysteria. There would be no questioning the decision of the triers and

  no bitterness in defeat. And no kicking of a man when he was down, either. The injured and defeated would be so tenderly cared for that they would collect almost as much glory as the final eight.

  And by gad, thought the doctor, running his eye over the wrestlers, here was a fine bunch of young men for you! Where else in the world would you see such broad shoulders, such strength and muscle? And that in time of war, when so many men were in the services. And where a fellow lacked physical strength, he made up for it by agility and skill, like that dark-haired boy there, slim as a hazel wand, yet wiry, with more strength in his arms than you’d expect, and using his feet so cleverly that he’d not been thrown yet, though he was scarcely the type for this sport and was not likely, the doctor thought, to stay the course for long. Fine young fellow, though.

  Gradually the doctor’s interest and attention became focused upon him, to the exclusion of others. Who was he? Not a country yokel. He had a thoroughbred air that touched the doctor so deeply that more and more his consciousness was centered painfully upon the boy! Almost in his own body he could feel the laboring of his lungs beneath the aching ribs, feel the thrill of fear that came with the consciousness of ebbing strength, and the courage that mounted with such desperate effort to subdue it. Dammee, but he liked the fellow’s face with its startling contrasts, the sensitiveness of it with the delicate lips and flaring nostrils like those of a startled horse, and then the broad thinker’s forehead, the obstinate jaw and somber eyes beneath thick dark eyebrows. He was down! No, he was not. He’d saved himself by that clever footwork. Down? Not he! He’d thrown his man, thrown him flat on his back with as neat a twist of his wiry arms as a man could wish to see. He was one of the honored eight now, and he’d won the honor with as fine a display of skill and courage as any the doctor could recollect. He found himself cheering like a youngster, the last of his fatigue forgotten in delight.

  There was a pause now. The eight received their crowns, put on their coats and rested themselves, surrounded by admiring friends. But the dark boy appeared to have no friends. He waited alone. The doctor noticed that the ragged coat that he slung ’round his shoulders was several sizes too large and looked as though it had been bought for the price of a drink from some old clothes pedlar, but that he possessed what few of the others had, and that was a fine cambric handkerchief, not a man’s handkerchief but a woman’s, small and white. But he did not use it, he took it out of his pocket, looked at it for a moment, folded it carefully, and put it away again, as though it possessed great value for him. Suddenly the doctor remembered Stella’s young vagabond Zachary, the boy from the moon, and the handkerchief she had given him. He had promised himself to look for Zachary, and at first he had done so, but had forgotten him again as the weeks passed and no boy in the least like Stella’s description came his way. Was this the fellow?

  His scrutiny was now so intense that Zachary felt it and looked his way. Their eyes met and the doctor smiled, and there was in his smile such extraordinary tenderness that he might have been a father smiling at his son. Zachary’s face, that had been white with exhaustion, flushed scarlet. His lips parted, and his eyes clung to the doctor’s as the eyes of his patients so often did, when it seemed that in him lay their only hope. As with his patients, so with Zachary, the doctor tried to infuse his own confidence and courage
into the steadiness of his answering look. Then abruptly Zachary looked away, closed his lips, relaxed his tensed muscles, and waited quietly, the hand that had replaced the handkerchief still in his pocket, holding it. The doctor, too, relaxed and waited until the wrestling started again, and it seemed to him that all that the boy was feeling of fear and exhaustion he felt, too.

  He understood the fear when he saw Zachary confronting that great lout of a fellow, Sam Bronescombe. In the moment or two before they closed with each other, Zachary stood quite still, while Sam moved from side to side with the prowling movement of a wild beast, but in the intensity of the one and the restlessness of the other the doctor was aware of the same deadly purpose. These two had come here to fight each other, and they meant their fight to decide more than their relative strength and skill. The doctor stood up, and he felt as anxious as at the crisis of a pneumonia case. Sam Bronescombe! All Zachary’s intelligence and skill would not avail him against that brutal young lout with his oxlike strength and the Dartmoor toughness in his legs. The doctor tried to add his shouts of encouragement to those of the fest of the spectators, but only a croak would issue from his aching throat.

  Zachary kept going longer than the doctor would have thought possible, though the blood ran down his shins and nearly all the breath in his thin body must have been squeezed out of him by Sam’s brawny arms. But he lost his footing at last and with a savage twist Sam whirled him round and flung him brutally upon his back. He lay still where he had been flung, looking like some long-legged dead bird upon the grass, a heron or a stork who had been shot upon the wing and fallen untidily, but his stillness had scarcely been ominous before the doctor had jumped from his gig and was beside him.

  "Get back, you fools!" he said angrily to the crowd that had collected, and knelt to examine the boy with hands that for the first time in his doctor’s career were not entirely steady. Something of his own anxiety communicated itself to the onlookers. They were quite silent as he made his brief examination and they echoed his quick sigh of relief with quite a gale of gusty good fellowship.

  “No more than stunned, as far as I can see at present," said the doctor, standing up. Then his eyes, falling upon Sam, where he stood in the attitude of a conquering and most self-satisfied hero, blazed with a fury so sudden and so alarming that Sam positively fell back a pace. "But no thanks to you, you young brute! You fought fair but you flung to kill. If you win the purse, my lad, I wish you no joy of it." He stooped and lifted Zachary in his long, immensely strong arms as though he were a featherweight, hardly knowing what he meant to do with him-just to get him out of this. He looked grotesque enough, with his bow legs and bowed shoulders, holding the gawky boy, yet no one laughed, and a tall thin man with a cold gray face, severely dressed in black, who stood watching, was suddenly poignantly reminded of something, some scene that he had seen somewhere, some scene in a tragedy. What was it? He snapped his fingers. He had it. King Lear, with his dead child in his arms. Instantly he stepped forward, roused to helpful action as only the memory of bereavement could rouse him.

  "The cottage where I lodge is exactly behind you, Sir," he said to Dr. Crane in his beautiful, incisive voice.

  The doctor followed him, still conscious of nothing at all except the boy in his arms. Aesculapius followed too, bumping the gig over the rough grass, and conscious of certain human affairs now brought to a happy conclusion by his own personal intervention, he thrust his head over the low fence of the cottage garden and chewed contentedly at a succulent bush within.

  3

  Zachary, coming painfully back to consciousness to find himself flat on a table in a book-lined study that smelled deliciously of hot coffee with the doctor attending with conscientious thoroughness to the condition of his legs, was dimly aware of being in the presence of two of the most singular-looking elderly gentlemen he had ever set eyes on.

  Then, the doctor’s ministrations being quite extraordinarily painful, he shut his eyes again, gritted his teeth, groped with his hands for the edges of the table and took no further notice of them for the moment. Yet through the singing in his ears and the buzzing in his head, he heard a very astonishing question and answer pass between them.

  "Your son, Sir?" enquired the beautifully modulated voice, with its slightly foreign inflection.

  "Never set eyes on him till today," growled the deep-toned rich voice with its west-country burr. "But after today I should say, most probably, my son."

  Zachary was unable to puzzle this out, he had all he could do at the moment holding on to the edges of the table and keeping still. Yet he felt there was some vague comfort in the last remark, and in the rest of the talk that flowed over his head, though it did not concern him, there was comfort too the comfort of familiarity.

  "You’ve the first edition, so I notice," said the deep voice. "I recognize that binding. Were you personally acquainted with the Doctor?"

  "I had the honor of meeting him once or twice in London," said the voice that was like music. "A profound scholar. Without doubt your greatest man of letters in this generation-and that a generation which has produced Swift, Goldsmith, Addison, and Pope. Now that you have applied those bandages, Cordelia should be more comfortable. I should suggest transferring your child to the settle. The coffee pot is boiling."

  "Cordelia!" ejaculated the deep voice indignantly. "The boy may have a girlishly delicate appearance, but, dammee, he lights like a man!"

  "Nothing personal was intended, Sir," said the other voice courteously. "The spectacle of you with the boy in your arms reminded me of that poignant scene. You remember?" And he quoted with a strange depth of feeling that silenced the doctor, " ‘. . . She lives. If it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrow that ever I have felt.’ "

  Shakespeare! How long since he had heard Shakespeare quoted, Zachary wondered. There was healing in the sound of the words, and in the feel of those strong arms lifting him, and the feel of the cushioned settle. And then he was gulping hot coffee and was in partial possession of his wits again. Yet he was still highly bewildered. Who was he now? Anthony? Zachary? Cordelia? Was he to begin life all over again for the third time? But he did not want to be Cordelia, who had nothing to do with Stella. Zachary had. Therefore he must remain Zachary.

  "I’m Zachary," he said.

  The doctor nodded reassuringly, pulling up a chair beside the settle. "I know. Zachary Moon. My name is Crane. I’m a crusty bachelor doctor, living alone. Is there any reason, Zachary, why you should not come home with me and pay me a visit?"

  "I don’t think so, Sir," said Zachary. He was silent a moment, puzzling it out, trying to remember if he belonged anywhere now, and if so, where. "No. I don’t think I belong anywhere. I was at the mill, working for Jacob Bronescombe. He liked me, but Sam didn’t. I told Sam that if he threw me today, I’d clear out."

  "Then you’ve cleared out," said the doctor. "Good. Now keep still and sort out your addled wits while I take a stroll ’round his bookshelves with our host. Then we’ll drive home."

  Zachary couldn’t take it in and did not try. He merely knew it was all right. He lay for a while with his eyes shut. Then he opened them and gazed in astonishment at the two

  men facing each other at the other side of the room, deep in talk, precious volumes in their hands, two infatuated scholars who seemed not to have met before but whose mutual love of learning had now apparently made them friends. They were so entirely different, the one broad-shouldered, heavy, short, bow-legged, and hunch-backed, the other tall, graceful, and thin, that the contrast between them would have been ludicrous had not each man possessed his own tempered and impressive quality. Both these men had obviously suffered much, and suffered it in such manner that, to the outward eye, one was now rock and the other steel. No one, now, would be likely to get the better of either of these men; no one would be likely to dare to try.

  Yet Zachary felt no fear of the doctor with his great strength, growling voice, and almost grotesque deformity o
nly reverence and a quite astonishing affection. He would not forget, as long as he lived, the moment in the ring when he had looked around and met the doctor’s eyes. The tenderness in the man’s brown weather-beaten face had been like spring water gushing out of a rock, and like water it had refreshed Zachary. Why should a stranger look at him like that, as though he mattered? He did not know, but the mere fact that in this harsh world a stranger could feel for a stranger an almost divine compassion was an earnest to him that the world might not be quite as harsh after all as he had thought it was. He had been sickeningly afraid, hopeless, and discouraged before. Afterwards, though knowing quite well what the outcome of the fight with Sam would be, he had felt strong and serene.

  The other man, at first sight, lacked the doctor’s compassion. His appearance reminded Zachary of certain aristocratic emigrés whom he had known in Bath, and for this reason, half Frenchman that he was himself, his heart warmed to him, even though in the man’s colorless coldness there was nothing to attract warmth. He looked a prematurely aged man. His thin hair, receding at the temples, immaculately brushed and tied with a black ribbon, was white. His thin, tight-lipped, fine-featured face was the color of parchment and stamped with a reserve so icy, a control so hard, that it was difficult to think of it relaxing or softening into any human weakness or tenderness. The only softness about him was the grace of his tall spare figure and the beauty of his voice. He was severely dressed in black, with a meticulously folded plain white stock. His dress was that of a savant, but the set of his head and shoulders was almost military. His hands were well-shaped and looked surprisingly youthful and strong in contrast with his face. Zachary had the feeling that he had seen him before, but in his dazed condition he could not remember where.