Gentian Hill

by Elizabeth Goudge

  "You have been at Weekaborough so early in the morning?"

  "I had business with the worthy couple there." He spoke with a studied courtesy that only thinly veiled his wild impatience. He looked like a heron poised on one leg ready for flight, she thought. But looking again at his face, she saw a sudden look of youth flash across it that, for the brief moment of its passing, made her heart miss a beat and her cheeks flush. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, she remembered what it was like to be passionately loved by a man, and put a hand on the mantelpiece to steady herself. That she should remember like this, remember so vividly in her old age! It was that look on his face, gone now. Had he been such a lover as the man she remembered? She sat down in her window, her knees shaking slightly. She lifted her hands and looked at them, surprised to see them so withered. The fires of youth are not dead in old age, she had just discovered, only banked down.

  "Stella?" repeated the Abbé.

  "She went with Araminta to the almshouses. We heard that old Granny Bogan died in her sleep last night. Stella wished to take a bunch of flowers to lay on her bed. I gave Araminta strict injunctions, of course, that the child should not be allowed to see the body."

  "It would not disturb Stella if she did see it," said the Abbé. "She is country bred and would see it for what it is, an empty husk with the living grain gone from it."

  He made the sign of the cross and said a wordless prayer for Granny Bogan. He remembered the day when they had met and had reverenced each other. Then he crossed his arms on his breast in an effort to still the impatience there.

  "You know so much about Stella," said Mrs. Loraine a little wistfully.

  He bent, took her hand, and kissed it with the ceremonious courtesy that was expected of him. "It is because of your great kindness that I know it, Madame," he said. "I should have known nothing had you not given your workbox to a little girl for a Christmas present. Later, Madame, I shall have so much to tell you. Will you excuse me now?"

  She smiled and withdrew her hand. "You’ll meet her on her way home with Araminta.’

  From one of the windows of the parlor, she saw him striding along Robbers’ Lane, and was reminded no longer of a heron or a man in love but of a giant who wore the seven league boots.

  2

  He went so fast that he encountered Stella and Araminta in Cockington Park, not far from the church. Under Araminta’s severe eye, he and Stella greeted each other with a very correct bow and curtsey. He looked at her once, hungrily, and then away. No wonder her smile had so stabbed him at their first meeting, for it was Thérese’s own. She had his mother’s eyes, that she had handed on to her sons. There was grace in every line of her body, and in her slim hands. She would be tall when she was full grown, tall and very slender. Though he was looking away from her, he saw her still.

  He turned to Araminta. "Will you go back to your mistress, Araminta? I have her permission to greet your young charge after my return from London."

  He turned to Stella and offered his arm. She took it sedately, but it was with a child’s eagerness that she looked up at him. "Shall we go to the church, mon Pere? I want to show you the birds there."

  Araminta curtsied and departed homewards in high dudgeon. Birds. in the church indeed! There were no birds in the church so far as she knew. Bats in the belfry, perhaps. She’d always doubted if the man had the full possession of his wits. Treating the child like a princess in the way he did. He’d turn her head. Then there would be bats in her belfry, as well as his. She returned to Torre, and worked off her wrath pommeling the feather beds.

  "Will Zachary be home soon, mon Pere?" asked Stella eagerly, as soon as they were alone.

  He managed to walk very slowly towards the church, and to talk about Zachary. He even stood still and attempted to admire the view, talking about Zachary. He did not find it impossibly hard. In the years to come, out of his own experience, he would understand how she felt about Zachary better than anyone else. They did not walk on until there was nothing more that she wanted to say to him about Zachary.

  "You took your flowers to Granny Bogan, Stella?" he asked when they were at last walking up the path towards the church.

  "Yes. Araminta took them in for me and I stayed in the herb garden. All the herbs were smelling nice, but especially the rue. That’s for clear sight, you know."

  "I have often thought that the awakening after death must be like the opening of the eyes of one born blind," said the Abbé.

  Stella nodded and they went into the dim, musty-smelling church and up the aisle to the screen. "Granny Bogan did not know what the birds meant," said Stella. "Please, mon Pere, will you tell me what they mean?"

  Luckily he had been to the Church before and had in- formed himself about it. "The bird with the grape in its beak is the penitent soul of man feeding on the true vine. The bird attacking the caterpillar is the strengthened soul of man lighting evil. The singing bird is the soul that has overcome praising God. You take them in that order, Stella."

  Stella’s eyes went from the singing bird to the carving of the Madonna and Child just below it. "She is crowned like a queen," she said.

  "That’s because this church was built long ago in the days when the people of this country still held the old Catholic faith, and worshipped the Mother of God as the Queen of Heaven."

  "The old faith-that’s yours and Zachary’s."

  "And yours, for you were baptized into it."

  He had wondered how he would begin to tell her, and now the beginning had come so easily. Her hand trembled on his arm, and then slipped from his arm and into his hand, where it went on trembling as though one of the birds from the screen had taken refuge there. They went into the Mallock family pew and sat down on the cushioned seat. The high walls towered about them, so that they could see nothing beyond. They were shut away in a secret world of their own. "Stella, once I told you a story about my boyhood. Now I am going to tell you one about myself grown up."

  "Yes," said Stella, and moved a little nearer to him. She did not know what it was that had suddenly happened between them, but it had made her tremble with the same sort of happy awe that she had felt when, as a small child, she had lain in bed on Christmas Eve, knowing that the front door was set wide to welcome whoever might come. She had lain listening for a step on the stairs. Would Gabriel come, mounting very swiftly, his wings brushing against the paneling? Would it be Saint George, climbing from stair to stair slowly because of the weight of his armor? Or the Mother of God herself, her step as light as leaves falling? Who came now? When she had said good-by to the Comte de Colbert on the night of the storm she had known that, when he came back, it would be as someone different.

  "When I was a younger man, before I became a priest, I had a wife and baby daughter. I had to go to Ireland and leave them in England to follow me later. They tried to follow me, but the ship on which they embarked was wrecked at Plymouth before ever she put to sea, and nearly all the people on her lost their lives. I came back to Plymouth and they told me that my wife and child were dead. I went back to Ireland in great grief, and I became a priest there. Just lately I have found out that the baby girl was saved."

  "What was the name of the ship, mon Pere?" How practical she was, how blessedly practical, like Therese.

  "The Amphion. My child was brought to Gentian `Hill and became the adopted child of Father and Mother Sprigg." How abruptly he had spoken! What a fool he was, he

  thought. He dared not look at her. She lifted his hand to her lap and held it in both hers, and now hers were warm and steady while his was cold and trembling. At last, he turned to look at her, and she was looking up at him with a warm and glowing face, and her eyes were as compassionate as though she was his mother.

  "I am glad it is you who have come," she said. And then abruptly she began to cry, quietly, and he took her in his arms to comfort her. But he soon discovered that it was not

  from shock that she was crying.

  "You’ve been such a long time withou
t my mother," she sobbed. `

  “Do you remember anything at all of your mother?" he asked her.

  "Only how tight her arms were when there was all the noise, and tire, and black water," she said, and began to tremble again.

  He got up, and with her still in his arms, strode out of the dim church into the park, where the dappled deer’ were moving in and out of the pools of sunshine and the sky was

  the color of turquoise above the murmuring trees.

  "Forget the noise and fire and dark water," he said almost sternly as he sat her down. "It passed quickly. All earthly life passes quickly, and then we open blind eyes."

  They walked slowly towards Torre, hardly speaking, but happy. The Abbé felt their two spirits moving towards each other, reaching out for the new adjustments, touching, taking hold. And with each movement, each touch, surety grew. He knew that his love for his daughter, as hers for him, would be all joy until the end. Blind? Yes, that was true. Yet earthly love was a foretaste of light that could dazzle the eyes.

  At Mrs. Loraine’s gate Stella stopped and looked up at him. "Father," she said with sudden urgency, "I must go at once to Mother and Father Sprigg? Her voice dropped. "It was so quiet in the garden when Father Sprigg brought me home, and Mother Sprigg’s arms felt so comfortable?

  "After we’ve seen Mrs. Loraine, I’ll get a chaise and take you there," he said. He had never loved her so much for anything as for this.

  3

  At Mrs. Lorairne’s suggestion, Stella stayed on at Weekaborough for the harvesting, partly for the harvesting, partly for the comforting of Mother Sprigg, and partly to keep old Sol company during his last days on earth. For Sol had not died when Dr. Crane expected him to; he had apparently decided to see the harvest safely gathered in first, but they all thought that he would die when the corn was safely stacked.

  The comforting of Mother Sprigg had not been easy. Father Sprigg had not needed so much-so delighted was he to find his Stella a lady of such quality. But Stella and the Abbé had achieved it between them. The finding of her real father had increased, not lessened, Stella’s love for her foster parents. If like all children, she had taken their devotion rather for granted, she did not do this now. Her intuition told her that the depth and mystery, which she felt in the Abbé’s love for her, was a part of the depth and mystery of nature. She had been fashioned from his being, as flowers are fashioned from warmth and rain and soil; and his love flowed to her as naturally and powerfully as showers and sunshine to the flower. But Father and Mother Sprigg’s love for her and care for her through her life was not such a natural thing. It was a rare gift to her, an outflowing of their own selfless generosity, and her gratitude caused a fresh flowing of her love. After the first few bewildering days, she seemed to become more their child than ever, and she managed to make it clear that she always would be.

  And the Abbé managed to make it clear that he was not going to take her away from them. He was a priest now, and had no right to home or family. And as soon as possible he was leaving Torre and going to fresh work in London. He would come to see Stella as often as he could but, until she married, her home would be with them and Mrs. Loraine as before.

  "And if she marries Zachary," Father Sprigg said privately to the Abbé, "her home will always be here. I’ve no near kin of my own and I’ll make them my heirs. I like the lad. Weekaborough means more to him than it does to any of my own distant kin. It’s odd, Sir, how he cares for the place. Might have been born here."

  The Abbé smiled. He had come up this morning to see Stella, and Father Sprigg had taken a short time off from work to sit with him in the little green parlor, which was

  used more often now in his honor, and looking out at the garden he seemed to see a tall figure moving lightly among the yew trees. Not Zachary, but like him.

  "Will she marry the lad, do you think, Sir?” continued

  Father Sprigg.

  "I think that she will," said the Abbé.

  "In another two years, maybe," mused Father Sprigg.

  "Fifteen is a good marriageable age. My own wife, she was seventeen when I married her, but I was sorry I’d not had her earlier. She was a bit set upon her own way by that time. The younger they are, Sir, the easier brought to heel. It’s the same with a colt or a pup."

  The Abbé smiled again. He could not visualize Zachary bringing Stella to heel. It was more likely to be the other way ’round.

  "And she must be a papist, Sir?" went on Father Sprigg a little wistfully.

  "I’m afraid that she must. She comes of a Catholic family and was baptized a Catholic. And Zachary is a Catholic." He paused, seeking comfort for Father Sprigg. "The men who built this home of yours were Catholics, you know, and so was your ancestor whose hunting horn hangs there on the wall."

  "That’s so," agreed Father Sprigg. "And the chant of the plough, they say that came from the old faith. And the Yule log and the wassailing, they’re older still. And the harvest maiden-she comes from a long way back."

  Puffing at his pipe, he was looking out of the window, and the Abbé followed the direction of his eyes. The reapers were busy in the wheat field to the right of Bowerly Hill. The Abbé watched them with delight. The reaping hook, larger and broader than the common sickle, was held in the mower’s right hand, and his left arm gathered the standing corn. The sweep of the hook, the encircling movement of the left arm, the bend and rise of the body, had the rhythm of music, and the curve of the golden hill against the blue sky was part of it.

  “‘Well, I must be getting back to work in the field," said Father Sprigg, knocking his pipe out of the window. "You'll find Stella in the walled garden, Sir. She always hides there while the reaping is on. Can’t abide to see the rabbits knocked on the head. But she’ll watch the binding up of the sheaves. and the arish-mow."

  The incredible age of it all, thought the Abbé, walking with Father Sprigg down to the garden gate. Arish must come from the Latin aridus. It was from their Roman conquerors that the British had learned how to collect their sheaves of corn in stacks in the field that it might dry and harden before it was housed, with the heads turned inwards

  in the form of a pyramid to shed the rain. He leaned on the garden gate for a moment or two, watching the scene, and then made his way through the vegetable garden with its narrow winding paths and trim box hedges, and lifted the latch of the green door under the stone arch that led to the walled garden.

  Stella was sitting on the bench that stood against the wall just inside the door sewing her sampler, her workbox beside her, and the sampler was nearly done. She jumped up when she saw her father, curtsied and bent her head for the blessing that he always gave her now. Then they sat down. together and the Abbe stretched out his long legs and sighed contentedly, while Stella continued to stitch silently. Their companionship was already so tested and welded a thing that, resting themselves upon the fact of being together, they could be silent when they wanted silence, and yet be speaking to each other in their hearts. The Abbé liked the walled garden better than any other place at Weekaborough, though he had come to love the whole of it, and Father Sprigg’s decision to make Zachary and Stella his heirs had given him joy. His two children would eventually live here, and he would have a share in their home. He supposed that, when he was too old to work any longer for his vagabonds, he would live out his last years here, sitting blinking in the sun on this very bench perhaps, with one of Stella’s little girls sitting beside him, sewing her seam. He would tell her stories of his boyhood, he supposed, for by that time his mind would be doddering about between the two extremes of his earthly existence, focused upon the two points of entry and departure, and he would have forgotten the time between.

  The high old walls of the small garden were patched with moss and crowned with pink and white valerian. Peach and nectarine trees grew against the south wall, and in one corner was the old mulberry tree, and in another an ancient fig tree. The six beehives stood facing them on a square of green turf, and
not far away was Mother Sprigg’s herb garden with its mystic herbs. Here and there were flowers and bushes that the bees especially loved, a budlea with its purple tassels, a few rose bushes, and clumps of michaelmas daisies. It was a fragrant and cloistered place, and when you were within it, time stood still. There was never any sound here except the humming of the bees. ,

  "The autumn bees are being born now," said Stella. "The summer bees live only for six weeks, but the autumn bees live till the primroses come. They have to look after the queen, their mother, you see, through the long winter. They comb her, smooth her wings, and offer her honey on their outstretched tongues, and they always keep their heads towards her because they love her so. When it is warm again, she comes out and flies into the sunshine, up and up as far as she can, following the larks. She meets her love high up in the sky, and they look down together on the great world. Then she comes back to the hive, and unless she takes her children to a new home, she does not leave it again. I’d like to do that. I’d like to see the kingdoms of the world with my lover, and then come home forever and ever. Father Sprigg says the queen can have two million babies in three years, but I think that’s a bit many. I’d rather just have two in three years. She is like a goddess, she goes on living from generation to generation. Bees are another sort of fairy, I think. They eat the nectar of flowers and drink dew, just like the fairies, and they have diaphanous wings. They can fly backwards, too, as the fairies can; the birds don’t do that. They are very wise. They know their bee-master. Father Sprigg can lay his hand in the entrance of a hive, and they will run over his hand and never sting him. They never sting a child they know, either. They never sting me. But when the bee-aster dies, they must be told at once. The new master must go from hive to hive and say, ‘Bees, your old master is dead and now I am master. But he must say it very politely and bow to each hive. If he does not do that, they will all fly away and never come back."