Gentian Hill Page 8

  "Eh?" ejaculated Father Sprigg, red-faced, perspiring, almost throttling himself as he choked upon his wrath. “You left the door abroad, poppet?"

  “Yes," said Stella. "It wasn’t Sol, it was me. I took the bar down and then I couldn’t get it up again. I took the pigeon pie, too, and milk from the dairy, and gave them to that ragged boy."

  Both men gaped up at her in astonishment, and Father Sprigg took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead.

  "I’m strong," explained Stella. "Hodge helped."

  Hodge was standing up on his hind legs beside her now, his furry face framed beside hers in the little window. Father Sprigg blew out his cheeks, exhaled the air in a long whistling breath of bewilderment, turned and brought a hand like a large ham penitently down on Sol’s shoulder. If he was quick in his wrath he was equally quick in making amends if he found himself mistaken. "A little maid like her!" he ejaculated with admiration as Stella withdrew from the window to get dressed.

  But his admiration had evaporated by the time they met again at breakfast, and his anger was smoldering once more. If Stella ever did such a thing again he’d turn her upside down and spank her, big girl though she was, he declared between mighty mouthfuls of porridge, and it was no idle threat either, he meant what he said. Had she not those damned stable cats to pamper, and that vinny bag of bones, Daniel, a fool not worth his keep and kept only to pleasure her, but she must go wasting good vittles on some dirty scoundrel who might have murdered them all in their beds? He paused to stick a hunk of bread into his mouth and Mother Sprigg carried on where he left off. Stella had never seen her so annoyed. Had she not told Stella time and again that she must never speak to strangers, especially disreputable strangers? She might have come to some terrible harm and if she had, it would have been entirely her own fault, and a just punishment for as flagrant an act of disobedience as Mother Sprigg had ever heard of in all her days. Here Madge and old Sol murmured agreement and shook their heads sadly. Seraphine, presiding over her kittens beside the fire, had her back turned to Stella. Only Hodge, sitting beside her chair and pressing his head hard against her knee, was on her side.

  But Stella went on placidly eating her porridge and was not disturbed. She knew perfectly well that all this disapproval was caused by nothing but love. lf there had been no danger to her in what she had done, they would not have been so angry. But she did not say she was sorry because she was not. She knew she had done perfectly right to feed Zachary Moon. She knew that the inside people must always help the outside people. But she was sorry that she could not say she was sorry, because she could see that her silence was exasperating Father and Mother Sprigg worse than ever.

  "She shan’t be spanked this time, Father, since you say not," said Mother Sprigg, "but punished she must be. It’s her morning for going to the doctor for her lessons. She must bide at home; both to punish her and to keep her safe from that scoundrel, if he’s still about."

  Stella looked up, dropping her spoon, wounded to the quick. Her lessons with Dr. Crane were the most precious hours in the week, and Mother Sprigg knew it. The face she turned to her foster-mother was white and set hard. Mother Sprigg was jealous of her lessons, afraid of them for some reason, and now she was using this necessity for punishment as an opportunity to stop Stella learning things. It was not fair. The little girl got up, went to the cupboard under the window-seat where she kept her treasures, and came back with the ruler that Dr. Crane had given her.

  "Father," she said, standing in front of him, "please, I do not want to give up my lessons. If Mother does not wish me to be out in the lanes by myself, Sol will come with me to the village; you said yesterday he must take Bess to the blacksmith. And Dr. Crane will bring me back in his gig before he starts his rounds. Please, Father, instead of keeping me in, whip me instead. Please whip me just as hard as ever you can." She laid the ruler beside his plate and held out her slim, beautiful little hands, palms upward, considering them. "My left hand, please, Father, because I shall want to hold my pen in my right." She put her right hand behind her, out of harm’s way, and held out her left. "Hard, please, Father."

  Though it was an age when corporal punishment for the young was highly esteemed, he had never whipped her yet; he loved her far too well. But now, meeting her unflinching look with one of deep respect, he picked up the ruler, swung around in his chair, and gave it to her good and hard until her little palm was scarlet, and the ruler, not designed for corporal punishment, broke in his hand. Then he flung it into a corner, swore, and rising, left the room as near tears as Mother Sprigg had ever seen him.

  "Soft," said Mother Sprigg. "That’s what he is. Soft. Sit down at once, Stella, and finish your breakfast."

  She was very upset. Not only had her authority been openly flouted by Father Sprigg and

  Stella, but Stella had shown her, as never before, just how much her lessons meant to her. But she could not go on being angry with her darling child, and when Stella had gone upstairs to fetch her cloak, she followed her into her little room with a pot of ointment and a bandage. "My love, my love," she murmured, as Stella held out her hand, with white weals across the palm, the skin broken and the hand bleeding in one place.

  “Poor little maid!” He gave it you as hard as though you were a mutineer needing the cat."

  "I asked him to," said Stella.

  Her hand was hurting badly, but she was glad that it was. Zachary had had bloody bandages ’round his feet, and she was glad that she had a bloody bandage, too, even though it was only slightly bloody. But he and her mother came a little nearer to her, because she was not quite as comfortable in her body as she had been this time yesterday. Then she lifted her face to Mother Sprigg, and they kissed and hugged each other. "Of all the people on the farm I love you best, Mother," said Stella. "I love you very much. I love you best." Then she paused, truth compelling her. "After Hodge? Then she was out of the room and down the stairs, leaving Mother Sprigg laughing. What a ridiculous little maid it was! Only a child, after all, a child who would stay with her and be her own babe for a long time yet, in spite of this dratted book-learning.

  2

  During the day Stella and Hodge were frequently parted, for Hodge had often to attend Father Sprigg upon the farm. "But Daniel must come with me," said Stella to old Sol, as he led Bess from the stable. Sol growled and grumbled. Daniel, whirling and twirling and tangling himself up in his chain, wailed like a banshee in the desperation of his anxiety. "Yes," said Stella firmly. "I promised him." Stella forgot all about her srnarting hand in the delight of being enthroned on Bess. The old horse, lacking a shoe, went slowly and gently through the meadow. She was a magnificent creature, still able, in spite of increasing years, to carry Father Sprigg’s weight in the hunting field and put up a very creditable performance there. Yet she had no arrogance, and even had she not lacked a shoe, she would have gone gently with the child upon her back and lame old Sol walking beside her. Such was her nobility of character that she put up patiently with Daniel, who was whirling about them, barking shrilly in the most irritating way. Beautiful weather always went to his weak head.

  It was lovely in Pizzle Meadow on this perfect September morning. Up in the far corner a spring, the Pixies’ Well, which had given the meadow its name, bubbled up beneath an old hawthorne tree and ran off in a small stream that crossed the Held, fed the trough in the center of it, and then disappeared underground again. It mysteriously fed the well in the center of the yard and the duck pond in the orchard. In spring a mass of white blossoms covered the hawthorne tree and the few old apple trees that grew in the grass, and forget-me-nots and primroses bordered the stream, but today Stella thought it was just as lovely with the berries clustered thickly on the hawthorne branches, deep crimson against the blue sky, and with golden leaves floating gently down from the apple trees. Most of the apples had been taken to the cider press but a few still lay in the grass, and black pigs were rooting happily among them.

  Sol opened the gate and
they went through into the lane beyond, that led steeply up the hill toward the village. Stella wondered if Zachary had come this way last night, and she looked lovingly at the old oak tree among whose comfortable roots they had sat together. The leaves had begun to turn very early this year, and the oak tree was already crusted with gold, and in the thick hedge below the hips were scarlet, and the sloes had a purple bloom upon them and were all ready to be gathered for Mother Sprigg’s famous sloe gin. The old stony, rutted lane had sunk with each succeeding generation more and more deeply into the earth between its steep banks, and they could see little of the surrounding country until they had nearly reached the summit of the hill. There they stopped so that Sol, completely winded, might get his breath, and looked back the way they had come. Down below them was spread out a scene so lovely that the rosy color came flooding up into Stella’s face, as it always did when anything delighted her. Even old Sol grunted appreciatively, and Bess stood still as a statue, with Daniel for the moment quiet and attentive beside her.

  Weekaborough Farm lay in the valley below them, backed by low round hills, with Beacon Hill shouldering up into the sky behind like a friendly protecting giant. Somewhere beyond Beacon Hill, old Berry Pomeroy Castle was built upon a hill in the woods. Stella could not see it, but she knew it was there, and greeted it in her mind. To their right they looked through a break in the hills across a wide landscape of woods and fields to the splendid rampart of the moors rising against the western sky, while to the east, seen through another break in the hills, was the sea.

  Weekaborough Farm itself seemed to Stella, who loved it so much, to be the central point of the loveliness. She could see the whole of it there at her feet, dwarfed by distance and yet having the visionary quality of all things seen far off, so that the tiny domain that she could have picked up in her hands awed her as it never did when she was down there and a part of it. Home! It showed you its face when you sat quiet within it at that moment when day was passing to night, but it could only reveal its spirit, its eternal meaning, when you stood at a little distance, just turning to leave it or just returning to it, seeing it at that transition moment when a larger world was claiming or releasing you. It was always at these transition times, it seemed, when for a moment nothing owned you and you owned nothing, that you saw things so very clearly.

  The awed moment passed and she saw the details with Delight-the white thatched farm buildings, with the garden to the south gay with autumn Flowers, the big orchard to the west, and the vegetable garden and the walled garden where the beehives were to the east. Besides Pizzle Meadow, several fields and two round green hills where sheep and cattle were grazing also belonged to Father Sprigg. One of the hills, Bowerly Hill, to the south of the farm, was crowned by an old wind-twisted yew tree that Stella loved very much, and the other, Taffety Hill, upon whose summit they were now, had a copse of nut trees and thickets of blackberry bushes. This kingdom was surrounded by a great rampart of earth Hanked with stones, one of the Danmonian fences, old beyond memory, that divided the property of one man from that of another. Dr. Crane had told Stella that the word Devon came from the word Danmonian, meaning deep hollows, and the Danmonii, of whom she was one, were the dwellers in the glens. Father Sprigg’s fence was a grand one, eight feet wide at the base, and nearly as high, narrowed at the top to four feet and covered with coppice wood, oak, ash, birch, and hazel. These fences gave shelter from the winds and kept the cattle from straying; and nowadays they were saying that they might soon be put to what was perhaps their ancient purpose of giving protection against an invading army. Men, hidden with their muskets behind these fences, would be in

  a strong position.

  "But they won’t come!" Stella cried suddenly. "Sol, say they won’t come!"

  "Let ’em come!" growled Sol savagely. "Let ’em come, an' us’ll show ’em. Us an’ Them!"

  At the mention of Them, Stella began to tremble. She was a brave little girl but she was dreadfully afraid of three things-thunderstorms, rats, and Them. A few moments ago Sol had taken from his pocket a curious-looking wooden object, about the shape and size of a large bay leaf, with a long string fastened to one end which he twisted about his linger. Now he began to whirl the thing ’round and ’round. For a moment nothing happened, but Stella, knowing what was going to happen, set her teeth, shut her eyes, and put her hands over her ears. For this was Sol’s bull-roarer, a possession that had come down to him from his father before him, and to him from his father. Many Devon country boys possessed these ancient instruments for making uncanny, terrifying noise, but Sol had prolonged his passion for the thing right on into old age. It was the medium through which he expressed deep feeling. When another man would have played a fiddle or written a poem, Sol swung his bull-roarer.

  The noise started as a low whirring, with a strange sharp tone thrilling through it, but became louder and louder until it was like the roar of a mighty rushing wind. It was

  a dreadful and almost hellish noise, and always seemed to Stella to darken the world, as though the wings of demons were sweeping overhead between her and the sky. It was that she might not see Them that she always shut her eyes while Sol swung his instrument in evocation. Dr. Crane had told her once that the bull-roarer was to be found in many countries of the world and was used as a sacred instrument in connection with heathen mysteries. It had been so used in ancient Greece, and in England, long ago.

  "What heathen mystery is Sol thinking about when he swings his bull-roarer?" Stella had asked.

  "He has forgotten," the doctor had answered.

  "Who does he mean by Them?" she had asked.

  "He has forgotten," the doctor had said.

  The terrifying noise died away, the dreadful presences, the ancient defenders of the land, passed with it, and Sol pocketed the bull-roarer. Stella, shuddering with relief, took her hands from her ears and opened her eyes.

  Sol turned abruptly and opened the gate that closed the lane behind them. Here the lane cut through the rampart of the fence, and when they went through the gate, they had left Father Sprigg’s land.

  The lane led downhill to the village of Gentian Hill, lying in a secluded valley. This valley was another little kingdom all to itself, quite different in character to Weekcaborough. There was no break in the hills which surrounded it through which one could see the moors or the sea, and through which the fresh winds could blow, so that the trees were not bent by the winds as in the Weekaborough Valley, and the flowers came out earlier and were more luxuriant. In hot weather it could be very sultry down in Gentian Hill, and in wet weather, when the stream that ran down the side of the village street overflowed, it was often flooded.

  But it was a beautiful village, surrounded with orchards, its thatched cob cottages set in gardens packed tight with flowers, the low stone walls that surrounded them cascading with green ferns. The beautiful old church with its tall tower crowned the knoll that gave the village its name, and gentians grew in the churchyard. Grouped about the church were the Church House Inn, the Parsonage, Dr. Crane’s house, the forge, and the village shop, and this part of the village was considered highly respectable.

  But there was a secondary village, separated from Gentian Hill proper by a hill crowned with a small dense wood, Hangman’s Wood, that was not so highly esteemed. There a group of very old cottages lurched drunkenly in the midst of gay untidy gardens, surrounding an old inn with bulging walls, dilapidated thatch, and a gaudy painted sign showing a scarlet-hulled, full-rigged sailing ship breasting a purple sea. But in spite of the brilliant swinging sign the inn was never called the Ship Inn, but Smokyhouse, and the whole gay, disreputable group of cottages was known briefly as "Smoky." The people who lived at Gentian Hill had mostly lived there for generations, and seldom left their homes, but the Smoky people were a shifting population, sometimes there and sometimes not. The Excise men always had their eyes on Smoky, and so had the gamekeepers of the neighboring estates. Gentian Hill always spoke with patronizing disapprov
al of Smoky, but never gave it away. There were certain homes in Gentian Hill where a Smoky man in trouble knew he would not be refused a welcome and a hiding place, and there were few among the more well-to-do cottages whose secret cupboards had no hidden store of French brandy and tobacco.

  But not all the cottages in Gentian Hill were well-to-do. In an age when the wages of an agricultural laborer were barely enough to keep his family and himself alive, the white-washed cob walls and thatched roofs of some of the cottages hid such poverty that Dr. Crane, who dealt with its results, was careful to keep it hidden as far as possible from his pupil Stella. He knew her to be abnormally sensitive, unusually compassionate, and he was admitting her only gradually to knowledge of the suffering of the world.

  3

  The Doctor lived alone in his dark little creeper-covered house, waited on by his old sailor-servant Tom Pearse and by no one else. He had been a naval surgeon for most of his life, and had a hearty distaste for all female society. He did not dislike women when they were ill, provided they were genuinely ill, for then in his view they were no longer women but suffering bodies, and for suffering bodies he had a compassionate sympathy that made them almost sacred in his eyes. At Stella’s age they were hardly women yet, but merely children, though he would never himself have put the word

  “merely" before the word children. He worshipped childhood even as he worshipped the starry heavens, the windswept corn, untrodden snow, and all things healthy and fresh.

  Highly paradoxical was the love of this strange old man, for he gave with equal passion to the ideal and to its opposite, to the whole thing and to the broken thing that had fallen by the way. But for careful people, those who could not leap for fear of falling, who kept their windows shut against fresh air, and guarded their minds, hearts, or purses against the possibly painful inroads of truth and compassion, or for the evasive, the dawdlers, and the self-absorbed, he had nothing but contempt so biting that few patients subjected to it called him in again. Not that he cared-he preferred a small practice, now that he was getting old.