Gentian Hill Page 17

  "Admiral Cornwallis knows his job," he said slowly. Tom Pearse sniffed dubiously and poured out the claret. The doctor and Zachary were sitting reading in front of the study fire, when they heard the low boom of a gun. The doctor lifted his head and waited. Ship in distress. Tom Pearse’s head came around the door. "Puttin’ in Aesculapius, Sir," he said briefly. The doctor grunted, read steadily to the end of the paragraph, then closed his book and reached for

  his doctor’s bag. "Coming, Zachary?" he asked. Zachary nodded and got up.

  Bundled up in thick coats, the three of them packed into the gig and drove oif into the windy darkness. Scuds. of rain came now and then upon the wind, lashing their faces. The darkness hindered their pace not at all, for Aesculapius knew every inch of these roads. Yet he slowed down as they neared Smokyhouse, where the door stood open showing the glow of fire-light, and a man’s bulky figure blocked against it. He hailed them and the doctor stopped. "Take me along with ee, doctor?" shouted George Spratt. "Make haste then, George," the doctor called back. George swung himself up behind, swaying perilously down the steep hill, the roar of the sea sounding always louder in their ears.

  "The Venerable, Captain Hunter, on the rocks on Paignton Ledge," growled George. "Allus the one ship lost in every great storm. Torbay claims her."

  Zachary pondered this idea of George Spratt’s, remembering the doctor’s story of the day before. Was there some sort of demon in Torbay, living down there in the submerged forest that yielded the antlers of deer to the fishermen’s nets, that now and again must claim a victim?

  “Know any details, George?" asked the doctor.

  George knew all about it, of course. While the Venerable’s anchor was being secured, one of the seamen had fallen from it. A boat was ordered away but, one of the falls being let go too soon, it was swamped, a midshipman and two sailors being drowned. Zachary felt cold, thinking of that wretched midshipman. A second boat was lowered and the Hrst sailor saved. Meanwhile all the ships were tacking, but the Venerable, having lost way, was unable to gain her position and to avoid collision was forced close to the shore. The heavy swell had caught her, and now she was on the rocks on Paignton Ledge. It was George’s opinion that the guns would not avail her much, for the rest of the fleet was probably out of hearing.

  Paignton village was deserted, for everyone had gone down to the shore. They put up Aesculapius and the gig at the inn, where one lame ostler had been left in charge, and fought their way down to the beach through the wind and rain. The flares and hurricane lamps lit up a scene that seemed to Zachary like some scene in hell. The crowd upon the beach might have been a multitude of lost souls, figures and faces now hidden in darkness, now leaping suddenly into view lit by crimson light. The waves breaking on the beach leaped savagely, the flung white spray turned to flecks of fire now and then by the flares, and the scream of the wind rising above the boom of the guns was a dreadful thing to hear.

  They could dimly make out the doomed ship on the rocks. The sea had made a complete breach in her and the waves were pouring through. At sight of her, and at thought of the men aboard her, all his old hatred of the sea swept over Zachary, sickening him. Then the nausea passed and rage took its place. Why was no one doing anything? Were they all to stand here and watch those men drown? I must have shouted aloud in his fury, for he felt the doctor take his arm and shake it, shouting something unintelligible. Then he saw that there were some boats tossing about the Venerable, and that a handful of courageous fishermen were trying to get more boats off from the beach. Evidently the guns had been heard by at least two of the other ships, they had sent their boats, and the order had now been given to abandon ship. The Venerable was almost on her beam ends now and looked as though she might break in two at any moment. Yet her guns still fired, and would do as long as any of her seamen remained on board.

  Then began one of the most splendid efforts to save life that Torbay had ever witnessed. The fight continued all through that stormy pitch-black night. One after the other, the small pitching boats passed under the Venerable’s stern, and her officers, keeping the saving of their own lives till the last, helped their men in. Lines were flung and made fast on the shore, and other men tried to haul themselves along to safety, but the surf was so tremendous that most of those making the attempt were either drowned or dashed to pieces upon the rocks. There was less loss of life from the boats, for few of these attempted to get to shore but rowed out to sea to the ships that had sent them, but some were capsized, and no one could survive in that terrible sea. At five in the morning Captain Hunter at last consented to leave his ship. In single file, the junior officer leading, the officers and ten seamen who had declared they would die with their officers and refused to leave without them, scrambled into the last two boats, while a few officers, for whom there was no room in the boats, succeeded in climbing to safety along the bowsprit. Only one man was left behind, a drunken marine who refused to get into the last boat. He alone went down with the Venerable.

  Throughout that night Zachary worked as hard and courageously as any man upon the beach. Soon after the doctor had shaken him by the arm he found himself in one of the boats, taking an oar behind George Spratt. Theirs was one of the few boats that got out to the Venerable and back with a boatload of sailors without capsizing. Later he was in the sea, up to the waist in ice-cold water, Tom Pearse beside him, struggling to save the exhausted men clinging to the lines. Later still he was inside the inn at the harbor, laboring with the doctor to bring back life to half-drowned bodies. And all through the night it was his rage that kept him going, rage lit now and then by some sort of light, a triumph of some kind. He reasoned nothing out through the turmoil of the night; just found himself possessed alternatively by the rage and triumph.

  It was still dark when at last there was no more for them to do; and the rescuers carried the rescued back to their homes with them, for hot drinks, hot baths, and bed. The doctor captured two-young officers and drove them home in the gig. Zachary, George Spratt, and Tom Pearse followed on foot. They were too weary for much speech, but Tom said to Zachary, "You did a man’s work this night, Sir," and George growled agreement. Zachary nodded. He knew he had. His rage had gone now, but the triumph remained, and though his teeth were chattering it warmed him through.

  CHAPTER XI

  1

  Stella did not know, when she woke up the next morning, what had happened during the night. None of them knew at the farm yet, though the grown-ups had heard the boom of the guns and guessed the neighbors would have some tale to tell at church today. Stella jumped out of bed and ran to look at the day; the wind was dropping and the

  rain clouds were passing away, and soon it would be blue and clear after the storm. She sang as she dressed, for she liked Sunday. It was an exciting day. Breakfast was exciting, with fried ham instead of just porridge. Father Sprigg in his militia uniform, in which he drilled recruits before church, was exciting, and so were Mother Sprigg and herself in their best clothes. And church was exciting, with all the singing and the parson’s voice booming so loudly.

  After an early breakfast, and with the work upon the farm finished for the morning, there was the business of getting Father Sprigg into his uniform, a gorgeous affair of scarlet and white and gold that seemed to grow ever tighter as the weeks went past. They all helped, old Sol cleaning his glossy black top-boots, and Madge his jingling accoutrements, Stella brushing his hat, and Mother Sprigg easing him into his coat and soothing his rullled feelings. For getting into his uniform always upset Father Sprigg. Good patriot though he was, this business of spending time on drill, when there was work to do about the farm, acerbated his temper. He wished he could settle it with Bony in single combat, once and for all, and have done with the business.

  "Single combat, like David and Goliath," said Stella today, as he gave explosive vent to these views. "Only Bony is a little man, and it seems it is the little man who wins."

  Father Sprigg, purple in the face as his b
efrogged coat came into position, regarded his precious child with an unfavorable eye, and Mother Sprigg hastened to pour oil upon the troubled waters. "David beat Goliath, Stella, not because of his smaller stature but because the Lord fought upon his side. Therefore your Father, lighting Bony, would win."

  "Then does the Lord always fight upon the side of the English?" asked Stella.

  The four adults present gazed at her in shocked astonishment. This questioning of an established religious principle upon the Lord’s day seemed to them to smack of blasphemy.

  "To hear ee talk, a body’d think ee were a foreigner!" gasped Madge.

  "Perhaps I am," said Stella.

  "That’s enough of your nonsense, child," said Mother Sprigg with sudden severity. "Come along upstairs at once and get your Sunday clothes on. Make haste to your drill,

  Father. We’ll not be long after you."

  Leaving Madge, Sol, and Hodge to look after the farm and cook the dinner, Mother Sprigg and Stella set off on foot for church, dressed in their best. Madge and Sol would go to evening church, carrying a lantern and the Weelcaborough Prayer Book, which neither of them could read but which looked well. Stella carried it this morning, taking both hands to it, for it was very heavy with its thick black covers and strong brass clasps. It was an heirloom, like the Book, and the Spriggs had used it for generations. Stella loved carrying it, for if she had been feeling cross before it made her feel goodtempered again.

  As they went down the hill to the village, the church bells began to ring and Stella gave a sigh of pleasure. The Gentian Hill bells were old and clear toned, and the Gentian Hill Bell-ringers rang them with consummate art. On one of them was engraved, "Jesu merce, Lady help," and upon another,

  ‘“Draw neare unto God,” and Stella always fancied that she heard these words pealing through the bell-music. As they came to the village, the ferocious bellow of Father Sprigg drilling his men in the open space before the Church House Inn mingled with the sound of the bells.

  Everyone came early to church these days, so as to watch the drilling, and they were very proud of their husbands and sons and brothers and grandsons, standing there in two irregular lines, shouldering the pikes that, between drills, were kept inside the church. They should, of course, have had muskets, but they had not been issued yet, and probably, when the French landed, they would still not have been issued. But that was not worrying the men of Gentian Hill. It was their belief that one Englishman with one pike was the equal of six Frenchmen with six muskets any day. Father Sprigg was occasionally not so sure, and it was this uncertainty, as well as the irregularity of the two lines confronting him, which he could never get dressed correctly however hard he tried, that caused him to bellow so ferociously as he drilled his squad.

  They were a mixed lot, apart from the stiffening of a few militia men, laborers, farmers, shepherds and thatchers, young, old and middle-aged, of all sizes. and shapes, but all with the placid good-humor of the Devon men, and all with the same obstinate refusal to be hurried, no matter what the urgency. Let Father Sprigg shout as he might, they obeyed his orders in their own time and at their own pace. "They wouldn’t hurry, not if they heard the French had landed this morning!" said a voice behind Stella. "Come away, Greensleeves! You don’t want to watch this play acting, do you?"

  It was Zachary, white~faced and hollow-eyed, and suffering severely from reaction. He had slept heavily after the potent hot drinks Dr. Crane had administered to them all the night before, and it had been torment to be dragged out of his dreams at ten in the morning by the doctor’s determined hand. But the doctor saw no reason why his household should miss church because they had attended a shipwreck the night before. He left his guests to sleep on, but not Zachary and Tom Pearse. They must do their duty.

  "Come, Stella," he begged. Talk of the wreck was bubbling up excitedly among the crowd of villagers gathering in their Sunday best, and he did not want Stella to listen to it. She did not like to slip away unnoticed by Mother Sprigg, deep in conversation with the woman next her, but she always went with Zachary when he wanted her. And she knew he would not stay and watch the drilling. He always seemed to shrink away from anything at all that had to do with the war.

  They went in under the lychgate into the churchyard and passed the church porch, the bells pealing over their heads, and Zachary averted his eyes from the proclamation pinned there upon the notice board. Not that that did him any good, for certain phrases of it seemed seared into his memory.

  “Address to all ranks and descriptions of Englishmen .... Friends and countrymen, the French are now assembling the largest force that ever was prepared to invade this kingdom. .. .They have spared neither rich nor poor, old nor young. . . . No man’s service is compelled, but you are invited voluntarily to come forward in defense of everything that is dear to you .... Your king and country .... Victory will never be-long to those who are slothful and unprepared." It was really a very long proclamation and in the middle of the night Zachary would find to his astonishment that he knew it all.

  "Did you see the wreck, Zachary?" asked Stella.

  "Yes, Stella. The doctor and Tom and I went down to Paignton. Wasn’t it good that all those men were saved?"

  Stella, who had been very much afraid that perhaps they had not all been saved, gave a quick sigh of relief and towed him around to the north side of the church, where there was no one but themselves and where the sound of the drilling mime to them only very faintly. Here the graves were very old and moss-grown, and three of the five splendid old yew mees that grew in the churchyard spread their branches widely. Stella had a great affection for these yews with their bright red berries hanging like lamps in the darkness, and also for two among the graves that lay side by side and seemed even older than the rest. The gentians for which this church-hymn was famous grew about them, and upon each of them could still see the faint curved outline of something that might have been a fleur-de-lis, or perhaps a half-opened gentian.

  "Hundreds of years ago, when Englishmen went to war, they carried bows made of the wood of the churchyard yew," she said. “The doctor told me. They carried yew tree bows at Agincourt."

  Zachary, who had been looking unseeingly at the two old graves half buried in the grass at his feet, lifted his head suddenly like an angry colt. "It was not for making bows that the monks planted live yew trees in every churchyard," he said bitterly. "It was to remind people of the five wounds of Our Lord. To use the wood for war was a desecration."

  Stella’s small face looked troubled. Her mind was still pursuing the train of thought that had started when Father Sprigg was struggling into his uniform. "It was wicked to take the wood if the English were fighting a wrong war," she said, "but not if it was a right one, like this. Father thinks the English never fought a wrong war, but I think they were wicked to go to France and try to take away the homes from the French. But now the French are trying to take away our homes from us, so it’s a good war we’re fighting." She sighed with relief, having got it straight. "Do you hate the French,

  Zachary? Lord Nelson does."

  "No," said Zachary somberly. "My Mother was French. Lord Nelson’s mother wasn’t."

  "Nor do I," said Stella. "But most people do"

  "It’s not the mark of a good patriot to hate the enemy," said Zachary. "It’s the mark of a patriot to love his country."

  "Do you love England? asked Stella.

  “Yes."

  "Would you enlist and fight for her, like the proclamation says on the door, if you were grown up?"

  She asked the question in all simplicity. He had never told her he had been in the navy and deserted. Only the doctor knew that. His face went tight, as though he had the toothache, and he evaded the question by lightly asking her one.

  "Would you, Greensleeves? If you were a man and grown up?"

  She nodded seriously, then suddenly dimpled, becoming a child again. "And I’d make myself a bow out of the yew tree on Bowerly Hill. The arrows would fly fast f
rom it, because that tree was once an angel who turned himself into a yew. . . . At least that’s what I used to think when I was little."

  "Why did you think that?" demanded Zachary eagerly.

  "Because the branches spread out like wings, and because when you climb up into the tree you feel winged yourself."

  Zachary laughed. "Yes, that's true. There’s the one-minute bell going, and you’ve got Mother Sprigg’s Prayer Book."

  The doctor had joined Mother Sprigg and they were both waiting in the porch. Here the families divided, the Weekaborough pew being upon the left hand side of the church and the doctor’s on the right. "Voluntarily to come forward in defense of everything that is dear to you," shouted the notice board to Zachary as he passed.

  2

  The church of Gentian Hill was old and lovely, with beautiful perpendicular windows and a fine stone rood screen. It had an eighteenth century three decker pulpit and box pews. The gallery was at the west end of the church and the choir was already tuning up as the doctor and Zachary knelt down on their straw-filled hassocks and covered their faces with their hats. Zachary, as a Catholic, had no right at all to be in

  Weekaborough Church, but where the doctor and Stella went, he went too if he possibly could, quite prepared to do a bit extra in purgatory to atone for it later. And though the

  amazing noise perpetrated by the Gentian Hill choir in the gallery did not compare favorably with the chanting of the mass to which he was accustomed, and was besides an offense to a musician’s ear, Devon folk being anything but musical., yet he managed to enjoy this service. If it was an unholy din, it was hearty and greatly enjoyed. There was not a man, woman, or child who did not sing at the top of his voice; unless otherwise engaged in the gallery blowing or sawing away at bugle, trombone, clarionet, trumpet, flute, fiddle, or bass viol. The service seemed to Zachary to be a paft of this country life that he was getting to know so well, this self-satisfied, hard-working, and full-blooded life of an independent and contented people. It did not seem to him to have much to do with religion, there had been more true worship, he thought, in the ploughing of the half-acre field, but it was a great social occasion, as delightful as the Christmas wassailing and the pagan harvest home of which the doctor had told him.