Gentian Hill Page 14

  Yet at the moment of departure, this icelike man surprised Zachary so much that he could scarcely collect himself to say good-by politely. While the doctor carried his bag out to his gig, it was he who came to Zachary, helped him to his feet, and steadied him with an arm about him. The feel of the arm was surprising in the first place; it was strong and there was a good will in the feel of it that almost equaled the doctor’s. Zachary looked up gratefully, responding to kindliness as a flower to the sun, and met the glance of a pair of unusually bright gray eyes. Then the man smiled, and it was as though light broke from his face. If the breaking out of the doctor’s hidden compassion was like spring water gushing out of a rock, the breaking out of this man’s inner light made one think of a rapier flashed in the sun. Zachary blinked. When he dared to look again the rapier was back in the sheath, and the man’s face was as before-set hard in its icy reserve. He felt shaken. It was his first experience of that transfiguration which can take place when something, someone, touches the spring which releases a great man’s hidden quality. It did not occur to Zachary, either then or later, that it might have been something in himself that had touched the spring. He did not know yet that in constant evocation and response, and in them only, lie the elements of spiritual growth.

  They were halfway down the garden path and the doctor, stowing his gear in the gig, was not attending to them. "Zachary," said the man, "you and I have seen each other before, I think. Do you remember? In the Chapel of St. Michael. I hope very much that we shall meet again one day."

  Zachary nodded, speechless. Aesculapius, regarding them benevolently between his blinkers, looked extremely smug.

  CHAPTER IX

  1

  The doctor was no pamperer of the young, far from it, but he put Zachary to bed and kept him there for a few days. Zachary had no objection. If he moved, his legs hurt, his head ached, and he felt more tired than he had known one could feel, so he lay still and slept, rousing only when Tom Pearse woke him by jabbing a horny thumb into his painful ribs and thrusting a tray with something to eat or drink beneath his nose, or when the doctor came to attend to his legs. Yet in spite of his sleepiness he found himself becoming aware of his surroundings, with no sense of unfamiliarity or vagueness but with that comforting sense of reality, almost of recognition, which comes when what is about us is what we want and can accept as part of ourselves. No more, now, of that exhausting never-ending struggle to hold off from himself the pressure of alien horrors. There was nothing about him now, either spiritual or material, from whose contact he need shrink, and every strained nerve in his body seemed separately to relax, to leave off jumping and twanging, to sit down quietly and take a rest.

  His room was a small one over the porch. The truckle bed was narrow and hard, there was the minimum of furniture, and no pictures on the whitewashed walls, but it was all scrupulously clean, and the coarse white sheets smelled of the rosemary bushes upon which they had been spread to dry. The blue and white check curtains swung at the open window and through it came the country sounds, the wind in the trees, the patter of rain, the church clock striking, the clip-clop of horses’ hoofs, the crowing of cocks, and the voices of little children. There were good clean smells in the house-baking bread, the doctor’s antiseptics and tobacco, Tom Pearse’s furniture polish, and yellow soap.

  Tom Pearse himself might have been a jarring note, for only half a glance out of one eye would have convinced any observer that he was a seaman, had been one and would continue one until his last hour, however many years he might continue for love of the doctor to perambulate upon dry land. He was a true bluejacket, a fine and rather rare type in these days of the press gang, "every hair a rope yarn, every tooth a marline spike, every finger a fish-hook and his blood right good Stockhollum tar." He had round, bright blue eyes set in a crumpled, clean-shaven face, with a purplish pock-marked nose and a large smiling toothless mouth, permanently half-moon shaped with good humor. He still dressed as a seaman in long loose blue trousers flapping comfortably ’round his feet, a short round blue jacket with brass buttons, and a canary waistcoat. He wore his gray hair in a pigtail, and walked with a rolling gait. Yet seaman though he was, Zachary accepted him as being not of the past but of the present, for the good humor in which he was steeped like a cherry in sugar was of this life, not of that; it might have been met with upon other happier ships but it had not existed upon his. So he liked Tom Pearse and his liking was reciprocated. Tom, in his sea days, had been gunner, he had looked after the "younkers," kept their clothes in order, and catered for them. He was a born mother, and without jealousy. It was a delight to have "a young gentleman" to care for again.

  Zachary woke up one evening rather suddenly just at twilight, with no pain in his head and a very clear mind. He lay for a little, thinking. The doctor was out, he knew, and Tom was working in the garden just below his window. He sat up slowly, moved his still painful legs cautiously from under the covers, and sat on the side of the bed; a comical figure in the doctor’s befrilled nightshirt.

  "Torn!" he shouted, "what did you do with my clothes?"

  "Clothes?" yelled Tom, and spat contemptuously. "Did ye call them rags ye come in clothes? I wouldn’t have demeaned the kitchen floor by washing it over with ’em. They’re burnt.’

  "Well, I want to get up. What shall I put on?"

  There was a pause in the rhythmical thud of Tom’s spade, and Zachary could picture him scratching his ear in some bewilderment. Then he came stumping indoors and up the stairs to his own little room in the attic. Presently he reappeared with his painted black canvas kit-bag slung over his shoulders. "It ain’t no manner of use riggin’ ye up in the doctor’s clothes, with him so short in the leg and broad in the shoulder as he be, an’ ye a gauglin’ scarecrow of a lad all leg an’ no beam. But here’s me best shore-going slops wot I ’ad in the navy afore I put on weight. ’Tisn’t every lad as I could abide to see struttin’ around in me shore slops, but ye’re a good lad an’ I’ll be proud to lend ’em to ye."

  He opened his kit-bag and a most astonishing assortment of brilliant garments tumbled out. The men in Zachary’s ship had been poorly dressed men, dressed in just anything that had come to hand in the purser’s slop chest, and Zachary had had no idea what a variety of garments could be collected by a dressy old seaman of long service and artistic taste, who had preferred to spend his money, when ashore in a foreign port, on dress rather than grog or women. White duck trousers, striped blue and white trousers, a red shirt, a white shirt, a spotted shirt, a spotted waistcoat, a striped waistcoat, and one of scarlet keyseymere jackets of blue and yellow. Stockings of good white silk and black shoes with big silver buckles. A low tarpaulin hat with a black ribbon dangling from it, bearing the proud word "Agamemnon," a painted straw hat with ribbons falling rakishly over the left eye, a beaver hat, a tam-o-shanter, and a fur cap. And three large

  handkerchiefs, red, yellow, and green, for twisting around the head as a turban, and two of fine black silk for wearing around the neck. Zachary gasped.

  "Admiral Nelson liked us smart," said Tom with tender reminiscence, laying them upon the bed. "There, now, lad. Take your pick."

  But Zachary in his weakened state felt incapable of making a selection and Tom arrayed him as a mother her child in a fine white shirt, with collar open at the neck in the Byronic manner, a black silk handkerchief knotted ’round the throat, white duck trousers, scarlet waistcoat, blue coat, white silk stockings, and buckled shoes. Those glories hung rather loosely on Zachary, but a belt ’round the waist kept them tethered, and when Tom had polished the shoes, and applied the doctor’s hairbrushes to Zachary’s rough head until it ached worse than ever, he was highly satisfied with the result of fifteen minutes hard labor.

  "Ye’ve no looks to mention but ye look a gentleman," he conceded. "An, I’ll lay the supper in the dinin’ parlor."

  Zachary went rather shakily downstairs to the doctor’s study and sat there waiting in the chair facing the windows. He had s
een this room only once before, on the night of his arrival, but had scarcely noticed it then. Now he sat taking it all in, the books, the engravings of the doctor’s heroes, the neatness, cleanliness, and peace, and he wondered painfully if he had really heard the doctor say a few nights ago, "After today-my son." Well, he’d soon know.

  He heard the gig drive up, heard Tom go out to take Aesculapius to his stable, and then the doctor’s firm footfall in the hall. With his heart beating like a sledge hammer, he stood up and bowed. The doctor’s hand came down kindly on his shoulder. "Hey, lad! And what made you get up?"

  "I was able, Sir," said Zachary.

  "Good. Now, I’ll go and change and have a wash and then we’ll eat. I missed dinner altogether, and I’m hungry as a hunter. After the meal we’ll talk. By gad, look at you in Tom’s shore slops!"

  Tom had been determined that the occasion should do justice to his slops. He had put four lighted candles on the round mahogany table in the paneled dining parlor, and two on the mantelpiece, and cooked an unusually appetizing meal. The doctor came down in his best blue coat, a fresh flower in his buttonhole and his eyeglass in his eye, and opened a bottle of Madeira and another of port. During the meal he kept the talk flowing easily about politics and the arts, and Zachary did his best to keep his end up, though the Madeira went instantly to his head and the port to his legs, and the sight of the candlelight reflected in the beautiful paneling, the gleam of silver and the luxury of a white napkin, brought back his Bath home so vividly and reduced him to such a state of nostalgia, that he could hardly keep his hands from shaking. But he kept his shoulders braced and his voice steady, and was thankful to see that the doctor did not seem to be observing him as he talked and ate.

  There was not a thing about him that the doctor did not observe his good and easy manners, his considerable intelligence, his eager yet humble mind that was already sufficiently well-informed to know that it knew nothing, his distress, and his determined mastery of it. He felt the same sort of delight that he had felt when the little Stella stood upon his doorstep and demanded to be told about Trygaeus. There was quality here, good malleable stuff ready for the punching into shape that it was his delight to give. And in the case of Zachary, he was conscious that there was something more, a hunger crying out to his hunger. It seemed too much to hope that this boy was fatherless, though in that cottage after the wrestling, he had felt for the moment convinced of it. Of all the denials with which in his youth his physical deformity had confronted him, the hardest of all to endure had been the denial of marriage and fatherhood. He could remember as though

  it were yesterday the sickening frustration and despair with which he had seen first one woman and then another turn with shrinking from his proffered love; and in those days the very sight of children had been a torment. He was annoyed to see that he had spilled his wine. Zachary, he noticed, had not done so. The boy had controlled emotion better than he had, and that, though it was obvious he had a weak head from his drink.

  They went back to the study, where Tom had lit the candles and kindled a fire of applewood and pinecones in the basket grate, and pulled up the chairs to the fragrant blaze. Zachary tried to take the cushionless chair but the doctor motioned him to the comfortable one. "I’m used to this one," he said, as he filled his pipe. And tamping down his tobacco he smiled a little, remembering the ridiculous austerities that he had practiced so desperately in his youth. "I keep under my body and bring it into subjection." The hard chairs, the straw mattress, the plain food, the water instead of wine, the struggle to turn toward the things of the intellect a nature almost wholly attracted by the things of the body. Well, he’d won the fight. There was no sensual hunger that he had not conquered now except the hunger for a child; and that was not a wholly sensual hunger; somewhere about it there was the creativeness of the artist, and the selfless love of God-What was this boy’s particular demon, he wondered? Not the sensual demon, that was clear from the natural austerity that showed itself already in his face. Something else. Something that tore with equal savagery at the stuff of his soul, and nearly broke his heart.

  The doctor lit his pipe and puffed at it, watching the boy. Zachary, now that the momentary inebriation caused by one small glass of Madeira and a thimbleful of port had subsided, was feeling the better for a good meal and the warmth of the fire. But he did not sit relaxed in his comfortable chair, he sat stiffly, his hands clasped between his knees, nerving himself to say something. Then he said it.

  "Thank you, Sir, for your goodness. I am quite well now. I must not encroach any longer upon your hospitality."

  "Where were you thinking of going, boy?" asked the doctor. "Have you a home?"

  “No, Sir. But I am perfectly capable of finding employment for myself. I found it before."

  There was a touch of defiance in the tone that made the doctor smile, though he liked it. "Yes, you did. At the mill. But I doubt if that was exactly suitable employment for a fellow of your type. I have a suggestion to make, Zachary. There is a spare room in this bachelor establishment. I like the company of boys. So does Tom. Stay here until we find some employment more suited to you than working a hopper. And even then, if you have no home of your own, you might like to look upon this house as not such a bad imitation. Got any parents living?" He put the query casually, blowing smoke rings, but never in his life had he waited more anxiously for an answer to a question, and when Zachary shook his head he could have shouted in his joy at the early demise of a probably most excellent couple. "Well then, you might look on me as a father for as long as you have any use for the commodity."

  So he had heard aright in the cottage. Zachary flushed scarlet to the roots of his hair. His throat swelled and choked him as completely as a quinsy. He clasped and unclasped his hands and could not look at the doctor. Yet he must look at him. He must my something. He turned his head somehow, their eyes met, and the doctor knew what was Zachary’s particular demon. Fear. Hundreds of times, as a doctor, had he seen that particular look in the eyes, when a man or woman was suddenly released from fear, but never so nakedly revealed as now.

  "No need to thank me, boy," he said easily. "If your need was great, so was mine, and I’ve no doubt we’ll shake down together very comfortably. You can tell me what you like about yourself when you like, or not at all, just as it pleases you. You’ll find me a crusty old bachelor to live with, I’m afraid, but at least I’ll always respect your reserve."

  "I’d like to tell you everything now, Sir," said Zachary. "I would rather there was nothing you did not know."

  "Very well then," said the doctor, and he leaned back in his chair, stuck his feet on the fender, and opened to Zachary, as to so many before him in this room, the comforting depth of his comprehending silence.

  Stumbling at first, then with growing confidence as he sensed with what absolute justice the doctor was taking his halting sentences and building them up into the complete picture that would be his judgment, Zachary told his story. He told the bare facts, neither exaggerating the cruelty of others nor his own suffering, making no excuses for himself, trying to match the doctor’s justice with his own. "I-deserted," he said, and only the agonizing little pause between the two words told the doctor that he knew now, if he had not known then, that that had been a battle that his demon had won.

  There were only two parts of the story where the doctor’s intuition was aware of something that had not been told. Some experience had come to the boy in the chapel, and again on Bowerly Hill, which his inexperience was incapable of describing. Perhaps he would be wise never to attempt to describe them. These experiences of adolescence, these first tentative apprehensions of eternal values, seemed only ridiculous when put into words; yet in the shaping of his destiny nothing that ever happened to a man had a greater importance.

  There was a third reservation, but this time only a partial one; Zachary was not able to tell the doctor exactly what Stella meant to him. For one thing, she seemed too precious to be talked abou
t, and for another, he scarcely understood himself what had happened between him and Stella. Yet the doctor understood well enough, and understanding, felt for Zachary a deep respect for a boy or young man who could so fall in love with a little girl was a man whose love would never be time’s fool. It had not been so with himself, he remembered grimly. His first love had been for a‘ lady of mature charms, and had been wholly of the senses. He remembered how Stella had grieved for Zachary was probably still grieving for him. The boy must have set his impress upon her very deeply, perhaps so deeply that, little girl though she was, no other image would ever wholly efface it.

  "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment." He’d do his best, but in the confusion of times such as these, cruel times of danger and war, the slow growths of love were apt to be torn up by the roots before they could come to however. The story was done and he sighed a little, the anxiety of the deep love of fatherhood already heavy upon him.

  Zachary’s anxiety, as he waited for the doctor to speak, was of a different sort. The old man’s silence had told him exactly what the doctor thought of his act of desertion. What would he do if told he must go back to the navy? His mind balked. As in the chapel, his soul seemed full again of that defiant shouting. "I can’t do it, I tell you. It is not possible. Flesh and blood cannot endure it. I tell you flesh and blood cannot endure it." Had he shouted aloud? He gripped his hands together and the sweat ran down his temples.