Gentian Hill

  "Believe me, Monsieur, I am delighted that Stella should have the box. It is right, you know, that we should practice the virtue of detachment from worldly things, especially as we grow older. You have often said as much in your excellent sermons. Will you be so good as to ring the bell? Araminta shall pack up the box that it may be easy for you to carry." He walked to the bell, his eyes on the scissors, and she laughed again. "If you wish, Monsieur, you may hold the scissors until Araminta comes. They are a good bit of workmanship. Italian, I think. I have had them all my life."

  He sat down again, smiling, the scissors in the palm of his left hand. The curve of the swan’s neck was very lovely. His face grew grave again. It was strange, he thought; Stella and a swan had been linked together in his thoughts before today. Araminta entered and was told what she had to do. "It is for a child, Araminta," said Mrs. Loraine. "A Christmas gift. So put silver paper first with a colored ribbon. Then stout paper and string."

  Araminta’s expression was invariably so profoundly disapproving of mankind and all its works that it was not possible for her to deepen the profundity, but she sighed heavily, exhaling the air with a slight hissing sound. If Mrs. Loraine, with paradise just around the corner, was sitting light to material possessions-trying out her wings like a lark-Araminta was sitting more and more heavily, like a broody hen. It was almost with a swirl of feathers that she snatched the box to her, covering it with her apron, and traniped to the door with an indignation so heavy that it shook the room. Mrs. Loraine remained undisturbed. She had found that a spirit of detachment from Araminta’s moods, as well as from possessions, was necessary to the preservation of her serenity in old age, and she had set about practicing it some fifteen years ago. She laid one hand upon the little console table beside her, to still its agitation, and the other upon the Abbé’s arm to still him.

  "You have given me great pleasure, Monsieur, by this visit. You will call again, and bring the child, her parents permitting?"

  "I will indeed, Madame."

  She rose with the help of her stick, and stood with head bent humbly for his blessing. Seeing himself as he gave it as a wriggling worm at her feet, he pronounced the words rather less perfectly than usual, but with happiness, for he was glad that he also had something to give. He bowed and left her, and Araminta helped him into his cloak in the hall, and handed him the parcel, with movements so correct and yet so expressive of outrage, that Mrs. Sidclons herself could not have given a better performance.

  2

  He had some business to transact in Torquay, and striding along over Ladybird Walk, the box under his arm, unknown to himself he hummed a tune. Any of his Torre Abbey friends, hearing him, would have been astonished at his levity. And they would have been surprised, too, to see him pause at the Fleete bridge, look about him, and then sit down on the parapet with apparently no purpose in view except to bask in the sun and watch the gulls wheeling about the boats in the harbor. They were accustomed to think of the Abbé as one of those men who pass rapidly from point to point, from task to task, so intent on redeeming the time because the days are evil that they have no leisure to pause and enquire if perhaps the bad days have a few good points about them after all.

  The Abbé, blinking at the bright wings of the gulls, feeling the sun upon his cheek, was as astonished at himself as they would have been. Work upon his latest book awaited him at home, yet he had no inclination to go and do it. Instead, he took off his hat, and closing his eyes against the bright dazzle of wings and water, lifted his face to the sun. It was warm, beneficent! Had it always been so, through the past desolate years? Had the wind always had this invigorating tang, the sea murmured with this music about the hulls of ships? He had no sense of sin, sitting there upon the wall and wasting his time; instead he had a sudden sense of guilt because he had not done it before. It occurred to him that because all that he had possessed and loved, wife and child, home and country, had been taken from him, he had made a virtue of necessity and deliberately courted dereliction, and he had striven for personal sanctity, as though it were an end in itself. The ingratitude of it! And all the while the patient sun had waited, and, too, the hungry hearts of friends. The patient sun? He smiled, remembering St. Francis of Assisi, a man who had never permitted his poverty to include the loss of the creatures. "Our Brother the Sun. O Lord, he signifies to us, Thee." With what infinite silent patience did His glorious Majesty wait to have his warmth and light noticed by the ingrates he kept in being.

  3

  The quiet, the peace, were suddenly shattered by an astonishing turmoil. jumping up, the Abbé saw the mail coach approaching, hours before its time--the horses all in a lather, the men on the roof waving their hats, the postillion blowing his horn, a crowd of excited men and women, children and dogs, running along beside it, cheering, shouting, and barking, all making for the yard of the Crown and Anchor. The Abbé dropped hastily over the low parapet to the field below to avoid being trampled underfoot, then followed behind. The harbor came suddenly to life. Men came running up from the ship-building yard, women leaned out of the windows of the houses along the harbor wall, questions were shouted, and answers yelled back. The Abbé, striding fast towards the Crown and Anchor but disdaining to run, could make out nothing except the one word "Victory!" This endless, dragging, heartbreaking war had at last produced a victory. When? How? The coach had passed on, but men and women who had come hurrying after it from the houses up the valley were about him now, running to the inn. "At sea. Off Cape Trafalgar." The Abbé no longer disdained to run, and reached the inn yard as breathless as any. .

  But the shouting and cheering had died when he got there. A man was standing on the coach roof reading aloud from the paper that he held, and the packed crowd stood in shocked silence about the coach and the steaming horses. "Admiral Nelson killed in action." They were so stunned by the blow that they could hardly rejoice in the news of a great victory, or the knowledge that for the time being, at any rate,the dread of invasion had been taken from them. Men took off their hats and women wept. The Abbé, removing his hat and crossing himself, found that, Frenchman though he was, his years in England had not left him immune from the spell that Nelson had cast over his countrymen. He was as shocked and grieved as any man there. What was it about this particular man that, apart from his courage and ability as a naval commander, had so captured the imagination of his generation? A compassionate man in a brutal age, a man of simplicity and singleness of purpose in an age of bewildering complications? But there was more to it even than that, the Abbé thought. He was perhaps a man in love with glory; one of those who could strike it out of the stuff of life-like flame from stone-and kindle the glow of it for others as well as himself.

  For the benefit of those who were still arriving, the man on the coach roof was reading the announcement of the victory all over again, and the Abbé listened carefully. On Sunday, October 20th, the enemy ships had left Cadiz and the English fleet had prepared for battle. On October 21, the enemy fleet had been sighted at dawn; the battle had not been over until sunset. Eighteen of the enemy’s ships had been accounted for. Enemy casualties had been reckoned at over five thousand, with twenty thousand prisoners. The English casualties had been one thousand six hundred and ninety.

  After the battle a storm had raged, delaying the sending of news to England. Despatches had not reached London until November 5.

  There were many other details, but the Abbé’s mind fixed suddenly upon the date, Sunday, October 20, the day of preparation for battle. That had been the day when he had met Stella in the chapel--the day she had been so certain the boy Zachary would be afraid. Where had the boy been upon that day? He remembered that after he had taken Stella down to the doctor’s gig, talked a little to the doctor, and watched them drive away, he had returned to the chapel and prayed earnestly for those in peril at sea. He had had no special premonition of great events, either that day or the next; he had simply been uniting himself with the child Stella, who had had mor
e prescience than he. Where had Zachary been on October 20 and 21? Thoughtfully, hat in hand, he left the inn yard. As soon as he could he must go to Gentian Hill and find out.

  CHAPTER III

  1

  Rupert Huounslow was as efficient as he was kind hearted, and as persevering as he was both. Skillfully aided by distinguished influence in the background, he got Zachary back into the Navy with the minimum of unpleasantness and the maximum of speed. There had to be unpleasantness, of course a good deal of it. Zachary’s uncle had

  to be informed that he was still alive, and being on leave in London at the time, had insisted upon an interview that was sore and painful in every possible sense of the word. But the distinguished influence saw to it that Zachary did not return to his uncle’s ship. He served a grueling probationary period upon a ship of the Channel Heet, and then, taking the place of a midshipman who had fallen sick, was transferred to a frigate sailing to join the Mediterranean Command. Foreign service, Rupert Hounslow had thought, would be good for him-broaden his mind. It did much more than that. When he entered upon it, he was a badly scared boy; when he returned from it, he was a self-reliant man.

  The first ship was a good one, a rough and ready justice prevailed upon it and brutality was not, as upon his uncle’s ship, the order of the day. But Zachary found that he hated the life as much as ever, was as seasick as ever, and as borne down as before by cold and exposure, exhaustion, and sleeplessness. The knowledge that he was doing his duty gave him no pleasure whatever, but he tried to do it well and willingly, since he had to do it. I-Ie achieved an outward show of zeal and cheerfulness that he found, to his astonishment, as useful to him as a suit of armor. Upon his first ship his only weapon

  had been his obstinacy, which had deceived no one as to the true state of his craven mind; he had been like a tortoise on its back, immovable but vulnerable, and inviting prodding.

  Now he was the right way up, and no one had any idea how vulnerable he really was.

  Beneath his shell he went secretly exploring for the fortress that he knew of, trying as the first step to learn that trick of detachment that, he thought, is like diving-not so simple as it looks. He tried to practice it in all sorts of small ways. The doctor had given him a few books to bring away with him, and lying in his hammock at night he would try and shut out the din and stench of the lower cockpit and read. He did not take in very much, but every now and then some lovely phrase would shine up at him from the page, as though it were a pin prick in a dark curtain, letting in the light. When

  vile things happened outside himself, he now always managed to find something to pay attention to besides the vileness-the flash of fine anger in one man’s eyes when another was flogged at the gangway, the sudden gleam of moonlight through a rent torn in the clouds by the frenzy of a storm, good things that came into being only because of the evil.

  But detachment from the physical wretchedness of his own body, from mental and nervous misery, that was harder to learn, and not much use to try, he thought sometimes. When the evil tears at your own flesh that’s another thing entirely. Yet even here, one was not quite helpless; the mere effort to concentrate upon something other than one’s own wretchedness, even if it failed, was in itself something of an escape.

  His shell of cheerfulness was something more than a protection, it was an attraction too. To his further astonishment, he found that a few among his messmates seemed to like him. They were not, as before, all his enemies. No, it was not quite so bad as it had been before, though bad enough.

  The probationary period came to an end, and he was transferred to the frigate. A voyage in stormy weather from the English Channel through the Bay of Biscay to Sardinia, in the month of December, in a strange ship in the company of men whom he did not know yet, did not at first seem an improvement in his lot. Rather the contrary. He thought that this time he would really die of seasickness, complicated by some sort of fever that he had picked up. He hoped he would. It was no comfort to be told that Lord Nelson, to whom they were carrying despatches and under whose command they would find themselves when they reached their journey’s end, had never succeeded in conquering seasickness either. He cared nothing for Lord Nelson. Nor did he expect to reach his journey’s end, or wish to. The Christmas of 1804 came and went, but he could not even think of Stella and the doctor, the wassailing and mumming at Weekaborough.

  He could only think of how he was to keep upon his feet. That had been all that mattered, just not to be defeated in this effort to keep upon his feet.

  Eight bells! The pipes of the boatswain’s mates penetrated the snaky nightmares of an upset inside, and even while struggling in the grasp of a boa-constrictor who was coiling itself tighter and tighter ’round his middle, he knew that the morning watch was his, rolled out of his hammock, and clutched the stanchion beside him. He had learned now to catch hold of the stanchion first thing, lest he fall headlong. Clutching it, he became slowly aware of some curious facts. He was dizzy and trembling as usual, and his head was aching, but he was not retching. And the ship was steady. In the dim light of the swinging lantern, he reached with one hand for his coat and trousers, and dragged them on. Dressing while clinging to the stanchion had been a great problem in the past weeks, but he managed it more easily today. Another midshipman, possessed of a cast iron interior and a kind heart, who also had the morning watch, brought a basin of cold water and he soused his head in it, banishing the last of the snakes.

  "Storm blown itself out and we’re anchored, by God!" whispered the other midshipman, a ginger-haired urchin just turned fifteen, Jonathon Cobb. Then he gripped Zachary firmly by the elbow and towed him towards the ladder. He liked Zachary. He himself was tough, stocky, and profane impervious both to education and good manners-so his liking was at first sight surprising. But he had a queer motherly streak in him which caused him to cherish the ship’s cat and the seasick. Also he liked pluck, and considered that Zachary had it, throwing up the way he did, in a fever half the time, yet never asking to go to the sick bay.

  “Where are we, Cobb?" croaked Zachary, stumbling up the ladder.

  "Sardinia," said Cobb.

  They reached the top of the first ladder and were confronted by a glimmering gray shape. It was Snow, the ship’s cat, a creature who had been born white, but was caressed so often by Cobb, who washed only under compulsion, that you would not have known it. "Hi, Snow! Good old Snow!" He scooped the cat up under one arm and pushed Zachary up the next ladder. They reached the deck, and the icy air almost knocked the breath out of them; but the stars, that had been hidden for nights on end, were shining again and the whole world was bathed in moonlight.

  Clinging to the rail, Zachary looked about him, and caught his breath with something more than the cold. The fleet was riding at anchor off the coast of Sardinia; the long lovely shape of the island lay before him. The sea was peaceful and still, lit by strange lights. The weight of glory in the sky was almost terrifying. The great ships resting upon the gleaming sea, their poop lanterns shining softly, were dwarfed almost to nothing by the splendor above; yet each had its own dreamlike and perfect beauty. The light was as bright as day, yet unearthly. There was no sound, and the silence-the stillness-was like the hush in an auditorium before the curtain rises on some great drama. For the first time since he had been at sea a brief thrill went through Zachary. There was a leap of joy in him, like a flame lighting up in a dark lantern. At that moment he believed it was worth it. This moment of supreme beauty was worth all the wretchedness of the journey. It was always worth it. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." It was the central truth of existence, and all men knew it, though they might not know that they knew it. Each man followed his own star through so much pain because he knew it, and at journey’s end all the innumerable lights would glow into one.

  Cobb was pulling at his sleeve. "Look! There’s the Admiral’s flagship. You can see the Nelson check
er painted on her hull."

  Zachary sighed, rubbed his knuckles in his eyes, and stared at the Victory lying there at anchor under the stars, with one bright star in particular seeming to burn like a lantern just above her masthead. Another kind of thrill went through him. He had never seen Lord Nelson-had never even wanted to-yet it meant something to him now that he was serving under him, for he had remembered Nelson’s "radiant orb," about which they had talked in the doctor’s dining parlor. This man was consciously following glory, was in love with it, and so were they all because they followed him. Whatever was before them now, the end of it was going to be something memorable, something symbolic, and worth while. Cobb was pulling at his sleeve again. "Come on, you moonstruck fool. Come on!"

  The ship was coming to life, the everyday normal life of the morning watch, and Zachary came back to normal with it. There was a racket in the galley, where the cook was lighting his fire. The watch were tumbling up with buckets, scrubbers, brooms, holystone, and sand to clean ship. Cobb and Zachary went each to his station, Cobb still gripping the cat. The pumps were rigged, the wheel and lookouts relieved. A few hours later, when the boatswain piped to breakfast, the sun was rising in a clear sky, but it was starting to blow again, a bitter wind from the northwest. Yet the surge of cheerfulness, the sense that something was about to happen, had come to every man on board, not only to Zachary. Men whistled as they worked that day, and at dinner time, after the grog had been served, the strains of "Drops of Brandy" could be heard echoing from every ship in the fleet.

  And Johnny shall have a new bonnet,

  And Johnny shall go to the fair,

  And Johnny shall have a blue ribbon

  To tie up his bonny brown hair.

  The clouds had covered the sky again by mid-afternoon, and a heavy gale was blowing, yet no one seemed to care. The sense of expectation grew, and mounted and reached its culmination when two lookout frigates came flying in to the roadstead like birds, and a signal raced to the masthead of the Victory. "The enemy is at sea."