Gentian Hill Read online

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  The farmer’s wife and the elfin child were a delightful contrast as they sat there together in the quiet of the autumn evening, in the mingled light of sunset, candlelight, and firelight, before the broad hearth of the beautiful farmhouse kitchen. Mother Sprigg was in her fifties but she had worked so hard all her life that she looked older than her age. She was short, round and stout, with a red, weather-beaten face, and plump, toil-worn hands. She had no beauty to commend her apart from the sweetness of her smile and the kindliness of her round brown eyes, but she carried with her wherever

  she went that aura of almost heavenly motherliness which so often shines about a woman who has borne only one child, and in losing it has become mother to all the world, shining more wonderfully than about the mother of a dozen. And she was a comfortable person, her comfortableness such a perfect blend of commonsense, unselfishness, capability, and a complete absence of either physical or mental angularities, that like her motherliness it had become with the years so excellent a virtue that now it seemed hardly of this earth. She had her faults, of course, a hint of jealousy and possessiveness in

  her love, a sharp tongue at times when deliberate stupidity or sluttishness offended beyond endurance, but her failings were all on the surface, and one knew her to be sound and sweet right through, like a ripe nut.

  Though she cared nothing for fashion, she had an eye for line and color, and the gown of homespun Dartmoor wool which she wore was well cut, of an exquisite shade of lichen-dyed beech brown, and the folds of the voluminous skirt fell beautifully about her as she sat very upright in the straight-backed chair. Her apron and fichu and mob cap

  were of the finest lawn, and white as snow.

  And she knew exactly how to dress the elfin Stella. The child’s short-sleeved, high-waisted gown was made of green gingham, fresh and crisp, and supplied with a deep hanging pocket, but no frills except the small white one ’round the neck. She wore a diminutive white apron tied ’round her waist, but no mob cap or ribbon on the head of dark curls cut almost as short as a boy’s. Frills and furbelows did not suit Stella, for she was not a very feminine child. She was tall for her age, with small bones and a beautifully shaped little head set rather proudly on a long slender neck. She had none of the normal plumpness of childhood, and her swift graceful movements were those of some wild woodland creature, a fawn or gazelle, rather than of a little girl. Her small, heart-shaped face was thin and brown, with little color in the cheeks, and she had a straight, arrogant little nose, a short, determined upper lip, a cupid’s bow of a mouth and a very dainty but very purposeful pointed chin. Though her face was so thin, there was a dimple in each cheek. Her dark grey eyes were star-bright with a direct gaze which was sometimes quite difficult to meet, and her lips coral pink and with always a hint of laughter in their delicate curves. She had, for so young a creature, a most astonishing elegance. Doctor Crane and her doting foster-parents thought her a beautiful child, but the village folk called her downright plain. She played very little with the other children, for they did not like her. They said, with injustice, that she gave herself airs. This she did not do, but she did not speak their language nor they hers, and so she was shy and aloof with them. She grieved and puzzled over this sometimes, but try as she would, she could not bridge the gulf of their unlikeness. And so she remained, unknown to anyone, a little lonely.

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  Outside, the birds were silent and the light grew dim. The orchard trees seemed to Stella to step more closely about the house, gathering in like men-at-arms to protect them against the perils of the night. The candle flames and the flames of the burning apple logs, having it all their own way now, seemed to breathe and glow like living creatures, and slowly and triumphantly the grand old kitchen came into its own. By day, the business of the farm filled it with bustle and clamor, and the bright, gay world outside the windows challenged attention, and soon there would be the weight of dreams and darkness on its life, but this pause between the one and the other, between the day and the night, the fork

  and sleep, was its hour. Stella, looking up, saw the kitchen and recognized a friend coming towards her. The kitchen, to her, was the face of the house, that expressed its personality more accurately than did the walls, the roof, and chimneys that she thought of as its body, and at this hour the face smiled and she knew as much as she would ever know about Weekaborough Farm-the rugged, strong old creature that was her home, her fortress, and her friend.

  The kitchen was the living room of the farm, for they scarcely used the small paneled parlor upon the other side of the flagged hall. It was a large room, roughly square, but with many nooks and bulges, like a cave, and with two wide mullioned windows with deep window seats in the long west wall, and one smaller one to the south. The walls were whitewashed, and the whitewashed ceiling was crossed by strong oak beams with iron hooks for hanging the hams and bunches of herbs. The furniture-the huge kitchen table, the tall dresser, the settle, and the straight-backed chairs was of oak, shiny and black with age. The stone-flagged floor was snowy white from years of scrubbing, and under the kitchen table were the pails of water that were kept filled from the big well in the yard.

  But the greatest glory of the kitchen was the fireplace that filled nearly the whole of the north wall and was almost a room in itself. It was so deep that there was room for seats on each side, while across the opening in front was a sturdy oak beam with a little red curtain hanging beneath it. The wood fire never went out, winter or summer. On each side of it were firedogs to hold the spits for the roasting, and swinging cranes for the pots and kettles. Delicious smells were creeping out now from the fireplace, onion broth cooking in the pot that hung from one of the cranes, and apples roasting in a dish placed under the outer ashes of the fire.

  All the crannies and bulges of this enchanting, cavelike room had unexpected things in them-the bread oven in the thickness of the wall underneath its fascinating little arch, the grandfather clock, Mother Sprigg’s spinning wheel, the warming pans, secret cupboards filled with homemade wines (and in the very secret cupboards under the fireplace seats, and in recesses made by removing a few stones from the wall, something even stronger), shelves piled with pickles and preserves, brass candlesticks, and Toby jugs. The window seats in the west wall lifted up, and inside one of them Stella kept her sampler and her few treasures, and in the other Mother Sprigg kept her workbox and the current patchwork quilt. Stella had no workbox and the lack of it was the one and only grievance of her life. She longed for one with little compartments in it, and an emery cushion, and a real silver thimble. But Mother Sprigg said that, until she could sew a bit better, she must be content with her tiny hussif and brass thimble. Stella was quite sure that if she had a workbox and a silver thimble, she could immediately sew beautifully.

  But though the irregular shape of the great kitchen made one think of a cave, there was no suggestion of damp or darkness; the sun streaming in all day saw to that, and later

  the light of the fire that never went out. And there was plenty of color in the kitchen with the blue willow pattern china on the dresser, the scarlet rag rugs on the floor, the scarlet window curtains, and always baskets of apples and plums in their season, golden marrows, and pumpkins in their striped jackets of yellow and green. Beside the hearth,

  a door opened onto the passage that led to the dairy, still room, and larder beyond, and a door in the east wall led to the stone-flagged hall and front door. On windy days the

  kitchen could be draughty, and the smoke of the fire might swirl out into the room, but Mother Sprigg and Stella were inured to draughts and smoke, just as they were inured to

  the perpetual talk and racket of farm men and neighbors coming and going all day long. That was all part of the daily living, of the unceasing toil that made the background of

  their life. But in this twilight hour, the doors were shut and the smoke went where it should, up the chimney to the stars that one could see quite clearly when one pee
red up the great shaft from below; there was no coming and going, and in the quiet the house unveiled its face and smiled upon them.

  "I wish it lasted longer," said Stella.

  "What, love?" asked Mother Sprigg.

  "Just you and me sitting here talking and sewing, with Seraphine and the kittens, and the house loving, us."

  "Weekaborough Farm," said Mother Sprigg softly. "Your father, he was born and brought up here, and he’s never left it for more than one night at a time. And I came here as a bride thirty-five years ago and I’ve never left it for a night, and I don’t suppose I ever shall."

  "I shall," said Stella decidedly. "I shall go to all sorts of places all over the world. But wherever I go, Weekaborough kitchen will always be in the middle, like the hub of a cart wheel, and all the roads and seaways will be spokes leading back home."

  Mother Sprigg looked at the child sharply. Here was another of the contrasts; this adventurous, roving spirit of Stella’s was a thing she could not begin to understand. And

  the child’s strange way of talking, always catching hold of one thing and setting it down in the middle of another, like a cartwheel in the middle of the kitchen, a most unsuitable

  place for it in Mother Sprigg’s opinion, made a body’s head go ’round. Yet, apart from her adventurousness, which caused her to go dashing off now and then to goodness knows where in a most disconcerting manner, she was a good little maid who never went roving until she had finished the work which it was her duty to do, and never put things in unsuitable places except in her conversation, and she was to Mother Sprigg the dearest thing in all the world.

  CHAPTER III

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  A man's heavy footsteps in the hall and a hearty hail warned them of the approach of Father Sprigg. The quiet hour was over and

  it was time for supper and bed. They rolled up their work and put it away, and while Mother Sprigg bustled about setting the table, Stella flew out into the hall and precipitated herself, as from a catapult,

  into the arms of Father Sprigg. Her foster-father was the only person in the world with whom she was exuberant, and that not because she loved him best (she loved him dearly, but not best) but because Father Sprigg himself was so exuberant that it was next to impossible to be anything but exuberant with him.

  He was like a great genial wind that slaps people so boisterously upon the back that even the most precise among them are obliged to break into a run, and skip and clutch their hats. He was six feet tall, and broad to match, and though he was sixty years old he was only slightly bent about the shoulders after half a century of hard toil. He had a weather beaten countenance surrounded by a fringe of grizzled ginger whiskers, and blue eyes that were like two bright windows beneath the ginger eyebrows that came down over them like a thatched roof. His head was bald except for a ginger fringe that surrounded its vast shining expanse as his whiskers surrounded his face. He had kept all his teeth and was a mighty trencherman. He had the choleric temper that goes with ginger hair, touchingly combined with a vast patience and a superb courage, so that, though his language in the face of

  disaster was enough to make all the godly within miles fear for his immortal soul, his method of dealing with it would have commended itself to the greatest of the saints. Moreover, he was a very wise man.

  He was a great bee-master and a fine shepherd, and what he did not know about bees and sheep was not worth knowing; indeed, in no single branch of husbandry did he know less than the most knowledgeable of his men. When he had stepped into his father’s shoes, Weekaborough Farm had been on the brink of disaster, but in ten years he had made it

  one of the most prosperous farms in the countryside. He was an indulgent and loving husband and father, a just if severe master, a good patriot, and a good Christian; but a farmer first and last and all the time, paying attention to family, country, and God in that order and only at what he considered the proper hours--at mealtime and bedtime, at the appointed meetings of the South Devon militia, at evening prayer and church on Sundays-but not allowing any of the three to interfere with the serious business of his life.

  He was always a well-dressed man, but like his wife, he paid

  no attention to fashion. His various suits of clothes were kept so carefully in the great oak press in the best bedroom, were so tenderly brushed and pressed before and after use by Mother Sprigg, that they never wore out. And neither did the series of smocks that he wore on ordinary week days, for they were hand-sewn from such stoutly woven material that no amount of rough weather or rough usage seemed able to

  harm them. Each of these garments was a work of art, and the wearing of them for farm labor would have filled a modern woman with horror. Mother Sprigg, perpetually washing and ironing them, only to have them perpetually dirtied and rumpled again, did not feel that way. To her husband and herself, their work upon the farm was not just something

  they were obliged to do to make a living, it was life itself, a prideful thing in which they gloried, and without realizing that they did so, they endowed it with almost religious pageantry and ceremony. Beautiful garments were dedicated to the labor, age-old festivals were interwoven with it, each branch of it had its own especial ritual that must not be departed from by a hair’s breadth. And the particular garments and festivals and rituals had their flowering times at particular seasons, just as the corn and fruits of the earth had theirs,

  with all of it linked to the rhythm of the turning world, the waxing and waning of the moon’s light and the sun’s heat, the sweep of the rain and the wind, the fall of the snow and the dew.

  Of this glorious unity Father Sprigg seemed somehow the human personification. When you looked at him you were conscious at once of so many virtues, so much comeliness, wisdom, and strength, and all of it so well integrated and so finely balanced, that no one could wish for him that he should have more or less of anything that made up the fact of him. Even his choleric temper, like the hot sun of harvest, was

  not a thing that one could wish away, so excellent was the use to which it was frequently put. For there was no meanness in Father Sprigg. He frequently went too far, but he never stopped too short. He might, all in the day’s work and with no more personal animosity than that of the hurricane or the avalanche, crush you to powder, but he would never

  stick pins of sarcasm into you with malice of forethought, or defraud you of the smallest iota of what he thought was yours.

  Upon the sensitive Stella, with her love of life and adventure, this elemental quality in Father Sprigg took strong hold. She leaped into his arms in much the same sort of way as she would sometimes fling herself down into the meadow. Grass and lie with arms outspread and cheek against the warm earth; both places gave her a satisfying sense of oneness with all that was. It was Father Sprigg, everyone thought, whom Stella loved best. They did not know that where she loved most deeply the little girl made least display of emotion.

  "Hey, lass!" said Father Sprigg, receiving the impact of the small creature upon his bulk as though she were of no more weight than a sparrow. "Steady, lass, you’ll have me over!"

  This was a mighty joke with them. Laughing, Stella leaned her cheek against Father Sprigg’s smock, enjoying the scent of wood smoke that clung to it. The wood smoke was one of the best of the autumn smells, almost as good as the blackberry smell, and the smell of pumpkin jam. Then she leaned over Father Sprigg’s arm and peered at the shadows beyond him. "Hodge?" she whispered softly, stretching down a hand. A cold nose touched her palm and then a warm tongue caressed it. The dog Hodge was present, and she sighed with relief and satisfaction, for Hodge was one of her dearest on earth.

  A sudden delicious smell of onion came through the crack of the kitchen door and all three entered precipitately to find Mother Sprigg ladling the broth into the big brown bowls on the table. Seraphine was stirring in her basket, and Madge, the dairymaid, was coming through from the dairy with the butter and cheese and a big blue dish of clotted cream. Solomon Doddridge, th
e ploughman, had come in from

  the back when Father Sprigg entered from the front, and was now sitting in the seat within the fireplace to the left of the fire, which was always his by right, his knotted hands on his knees, and his short clay pipe sticking out at the side of his mouth. Of the several who worked on the farm, he and Madge were the only two who actually slept in the farmhouse, and with Father and Mother Sprigg, Stella, Seraphine, and

  Hodge, made up a household compactly knit together in a loyalty that had never been expressed in words but of which each was so unconsciously aware that they acted upon it, and, as in the case of Seraphine, traded upon it with just the same certainty with which they trod the solid earth and knew, without considering the matter, that it would not give way beneath them.

  Old Sol did not know how old he was, could not remember when he had been born, had no idea whether he had been christened or not, knew nothing whatever about himself except that, man and boy, he had worked at Weekaborough Farm, eaten there, slept there, and would die there. He was now bent almost into the shape of a hoop with the rheumatics, and when he stood up, leaning on his stick, he reminded Stella of the old mulberry tree in the walled garden whose main bough would have grown right down into the earth again had it not been propped up by a forked stick. Indeed, old Sol was now much more like a tree than a man. His legs and arms were like brittle old branches, his face was brown and seamed like bark, and the stubble of grey beard upon it was like the lichen that grew over the oldest of the apple trees. His voice, after so many years of exposure to bad weather, was nothing but a raven’s croak, and a complete absence of teeth made articulation difficult. Yet his dark eyes were bright as a robin’s, his sense of humor was a perpetual delight, and, incredible as it seemed, he could still guide the plough, and still, with his ploughboy as counter-tenor, provide the deep notes of the beautiful mysterious chant with which the Devon ploughmen animated their teams. Indeed, without the chanting of Sol, the Weekaborough oxen refused to plough at all.