6
It was clasped so hard that breathing was difficult and painful. Struggling against the weakness and oppression, he had a sudden sense of warmth, companionship, and growing light. "He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light. So, all these things worketh God often times with man. To bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living." He thought he was lying on the hard bed hidden behind the altar in the little church in the pine woods, and Therese was coming toward him carrying some precious gift very carefully in her hands.
"Thérese!" he murmured.
"Could you not even light a fire?" said a deep voice angrily.
"Dammee, the room’s like a vault!"
"I’ve not had the time yet, Sir," said another voice indignantly. "With poor Jewell off to Gentian Hill in all this weather to fetch you, who was to bring the wood in? I’ve but the one pair of hands."
It was the righteous wrath that was so warming, the lingers holding his wrist that gave him that sense of companionship. He opened his eyes and in a gleam of sudden sunshine saw the weather-beaten ugly old face of Dr. Crane bending over him, the eyes alight with that heartening anger, the high broad forehead creased with concern. He smiled politely and the doctor’s indignation was immediately turned upon himself. "The criminal folly of not calling me in before! Do you think that the grippe is a thing to be trifled with at your age?
“What a vast amount of trouble men of your temperament do cause in the world!"
"If he’d listened to me, he’d have had the barber in and been blooded long before this," said Mrs. Jewel.
"Blooded be damned! My good woman, are you or I to get that wood and light that fire?"
She left the room and Dr. Crane made his examination.
"You are a very sick man," he said bluntly. "But if you wish to live, I give you my word that I can pull you through. If you don’t, no doctor on earth can do anything for you."
For so long Charles de Colbert had thought of death as the best gift that life could bring, and for a moment a thrill of relief went through him; he had only to stop fighting now, only to let go. But had he? Through his bewildering weakness he was very much aware of the man beside him. The doctor had brought the cold tang of the winter’s day with him into the room, and that together with the smell of strong tobacco, of leather riding boots and the chrysanthemum in his buttonhole, was clean and invigorating. Dr. Crane had pulled up a chair beside the bed, had sat down, and was waiting. He was aware of the courage of this man, his love of a good fight, his patience and friendliness above all, of his friendliness. He thought confusedly that it would be extremely discourteous of him to disappoint this man. He was finding speech increasingly difficult, but politeness was second nature to him. "My good Sir, I will try my best to do credit to your skill," he murmured.
"Good," said the doctor.
Both men kept their word, and fought a hard battle for a week; both at times thought it was a losing battle, but both held on. At the end of the week the Abbé’s iron constitution abruptly asserted itself, the fight was over, and in a few days’ time, the patient was recovering with astonishing rapidity.
"Well, you’re through," said the doctor with satisfaction one morning. "But I do not trust your convalescence either to yourself or Mrs. Jewell. A more incompetent couple, where illness is concerned, I have yet to meet. As soon as you are fit to be moved you will come to me at Gentian Hill and spend Christmas with me."
"Though deeply grateful for the invitation, Sir, I fear I am unable to accept it," said the Abbé suavely. "I am the chaplain of the Torre Abbey community and have my duties to attend to."
"I have seen Sir George upon the subject," said the doctor.
"I have told him that you will be unfit for your duties until after Christmas. I understand that he knows of a priest who will be pleased to stay at the Abbey over Christmas and take your place there. I will, of course, drive you to the abbey to attend mass whenever you wish, but only as a member of the congregation?
There was a Hash of anger in the Abbé’s eyes. He was not accustomed to being dictated to. He glared frostily at the doctor, and the doctor glared back. In the matter of the health of his patients, as indeed in most other matters, the doctor was accustomed to dictate. Then abruptly on both sides, the anger died. There had come into being between
them a mutual respect and liking that their mutual obstinacy would never be able to cloud for long.
"Thank you, I shall be glad to come," said the Abbé quietly. He looked at the man sitting beside him, his heavy shoulders and large head outlined against the window. It seemed to him that the doctor had spent an abnormal amount of time with him during his illness. He seemed to have been aware of him sitting there, a figure of power, very often and for very long periods. There had been one whole night, forinstance. He had seemed almost kinglike in his strength, though by morning the heavy shoulders had been sagging a good deal. "I am afraid your other patients have been neglected of late," he said.
"All of them are in the condition when a little neglect could do ’em nothing but good," said the doctor. "Indignant with me some of them may be, but there are times when indignation can be a very powerful stimulant. I’ve known patients, whom I deliberately neglected, get up in their indignation and be the better for it."
"Do your patients ever leave you?”’ enquired the Abbé dryly.
"Frequently."
"Not those who have ever been sufficiently ill for you to have fought for their lives as you did for mine."
The doctor smiled. "No, not those."
"I wondered at times why you fought so hard," said the Abbé.
"Doctors. are lighting men. I would not admit that I need any further incentive to put up a good fight than the presence of the enemy death. Had I needed it, there was in your case the fact of my friendship for you. You put up a good fight yourself. Why? You do not strike me as a man whose past experience has made him much in love with life."
"The same reason. My friendship for you." He paused.
"There were two more reasons, I think, though the reason of friendship was the one that was clearest to me. We Christians may not dismiss ourselves from life-failures though we may be. Perhaps least of all when we are failures." He stirred restlessly. "I cannot leave this life until I have again made contact with my fellowmen."
The doctor nodded. "Did you ever make it?"
"I thought that I did. I was exceedingly gregarious as a young man."
"Only with your own kind," said the doctor, stating a fact, not asking a question. “Not with the dirty, the ignorant, the wicked, the thieves, murderers, and harlots, who so often turn out upon intimate acquaintance to be the best of us all." A look of horror and distaste spread itself like a mask over the Abbé’s proud and fastidious features. "You’ve a long way to go. But for the sake of your immortal soul, I’m glad I saved your life." He grinned disarmingly at his outraged patient. "To each man his own devil," he said cheerfully.
CHAPTER VI
1
The Abbé arrived at Gentian Hill a week before Christmas in a condition of silent frostiness that would have chilled less warm-hearted men than the doctor and Tom Pearse. It was a long while since he had stayed as a guest in another man’s house, and he was so inhibited by shyness that his courtesy almost, though not quite, forsook him. He was profoundly irritated, too, by the idiocy of intellect, weakness of body, and depression of spirit left behind by his illness. Altogether, he was very miserable and wished he had not come. The doctor and Tom Pearse, aware of his wish, remained unaffected by it. They had him here for his physical good, not necessarily for his pleasure, and though they hoped the one would result from the other, they were both of them single-minded men who attended to first things first. Tom Pearse cooked him nourishing and most delicious meals, kept the wood fires replenished, and then let him alone. The doctor supplied him with plenty of light literature, and let him alone. Finding himself let alone, th
e Abbé’s taut nerves relaxed a little. Courtesy dictated that he should eat the meals and sit by the fires, though both of them were of the type that his austerity would have instantly condemned had he been his own master. He read the books, though he considered them to be an insult to his intelligence. The result was a general relaxation of his whole condition-moral and spiritual, as well as nervous-which horrified him extremely until he forgot about it in his awakening interest in the life about him.
The Devon climate had performed one of its wonted conjuring tricks, and the long spell of cold wet weather had been followed by days as warm and balmy as those of spring. The birds sang, and the jasmine that grew on the doctor’s house was in full flower. The Abbé took short strolls about the village, and found to his pleasure that the heightened awareness of the blessedness of sun and wind that had come to him on the day he had visited Mrs. Loraine was with him still. Rosy-cheeked children passed him in the village street, and he smiled at them in a terrified sort of way and received shy smiles and bobs of curtseys in return. He went to the church, and though he mourned over the fungus growth of Protestantism that had overspread the Catholic structure, he rejoiced in its beauty, and did not find it impossible to pray there. He admired the line old yew trees in the churchyard, and it delighted him to find what he thought were fleur-de-lis carved upon two of the old graves. Men, women, and children came and went seeking the doctor’s help, and though the Abbé saw little of them, he realized with reverence and admiration how great is the power of a man whose good will is not bounded by creed or class.
One evening Parson Ash came in, as he often did, to smoke a pipe and drink a glass of brandy with the doctor, and the two priests, one on each side of the study fire, with the amused doctor between them, gazed at each other in astonishment, then tried politely to establish some sort of contact across the gulf that separated them. But they could not do it. The good points of each were not apparent to the other, and presently the doctor with twinkling eye refilled the Parson’s glass and turned the talk to ferrets, while the Abbé courteously excused himself and went to bed.
He was happy and at ease after the first few days, and on other evenings he and the doctor talked long over the study fire. They spoke sometimes of Stella and Zachary. Stella had not been to the doctor’s since the arrival of the Abbé, she was deep in Christmas preparations at the farm, but the fact of her nearness was to the Abbé an added warmth in the glow of these days. He had not forgotten her during the days and nights of his illness; she had lived most vividly in his dreams, and Mrs. Loraine’s box had come with him to Gentian Hill. The doctor thought it would be a hard Christmas for Stella, for the ships returning from Trafalgar had brought a letter from Zachary telling them that he was safe, but that his frigate was remaining in the Mediterranean. And Stella had hoped he would be back for Christmas.
“It is disappointing for you as well as for Stella,” said the Abbé.
"Best for the boy," said the doctor. "The painful process being turned from boy to man by adversity is sometimes more quickly completed if there are no interruptions."
He talked a good deal, with pride and delight, of his adopted son, but not very much of Stella, for he did not suppose the Abbé was the type of man to be interested in little girls.
But on Christmas Eve, the weather being still fine and his patient having gained strength amazingly, he suggested a visit to Weekaborough Farm.
"All well-to-do Devon farmhouses keep open house on Christmas Eve," he said. "There is the ceremony of the was sailing of the apple trees, and then the yule-log and the Christmas bread. If you are not too tired to come, I think you would be interested. Here in the heart of the country, the fairy world is still very much with us, you know. Perhaps, deep down, pagan traditions have a firmer hold on the people than the Christian faith. At this moment in England, I am afraid that if you want real Christian fervor you must turn to the followers of John Wesley rather than to the Established Church."
"So I have observed," said the Abbé dryly.
The doctor smiled. "Yet interwoven with the bright colors of the fairy lore, you will find threads of gold that are the remnant of the old Catholic faith. There are the mummers. And there is the chant of the plough. It will be an irreparable loss to England when that is no more heard over the Devon hills. Would you like to come with me?"
He had expected a cold but courteous refusal. To his astonishment, the Abbé said almost genially, "I would like to come. I am not averse to fairies, and I have a Christmas present for Stella."
In the clear golden afternoon they set off in the gig, Tom Pearse behind.
"It’s early yet," said the doctor. "We’ll drive up to the top of Beacon Hill, that you may see the view from there." The lane that led to the Beacon was the same lane that led
to Weekaborough Farm, and as they drove past, the Abbé exclaimed in delight at the beauty of the old house. "I have always thought our old French chateaux-those that are left-the most beautiful homes in the world. Yet I am not sure that the English farmhouses and manors are not their equal," he said. "That one is almost worthy to house the fairy child Stella."
Aesculapius’s brisk trot became a walk when they came to the steep lane that wound up to the top of Beacon Hill, and the doctor and Tom Pearse got out and toiled along beside him. They stopped at last beside a gate leading to a field, and hitched Aesculapius to the gatepost. Then the three men walked a little further up the green slope until they reached the summit of the hill and found themselves beside the Beacons. There were two of them, one of furze and one of turf, and near them was the watchman’s wooden hut. At the first sight of the enemy out at sea, the furze would be lit to give a good blaze, then the turf, which would burn less brightly, but would last longer. And then, leaping from hill-top to hilltop, the news would spread all over the countryside.
"You there, Isaac?" called the doctor, looking in through the doorway of the little hut. But the old man inside, whose turn it was to keep watch today, was fast asleep. “No matter," chuckled the doctor. "Since November 21st we have scarcely needed the watchers on the hilltops. Thank God."
"And Admiral Nelson, God rest his soul," chimed in Tom Pearse belligerently.
The Abbé absently crossed himself, but he was scarcely paying attention. He was gripped by this spectacle of England spread out beneath him-only a very small portion of her, one aspect of a country of many aspects, but for him now at this passing moment, England. They were upon the summit of a ridge of hill--not really much of a hill, but so much higher than the round green hillocks below that it seemed to have lifted them very high into the sky. The Abbé looked west over the rolling country of woods and pastures and orchards to where the sun was just setting behind the purple `ridges of the moors, and east to the calm sea. The colors of the winter woods, of the fields, and tilled earth, were delicate and lovely in the sparkling light, here and there wood smoke coiled up from the scattered farms and cottages, and sheep and cattle upon the distant slopes looked like toys set down there for a child to play with. A few late gulls were flying home to the sea, and the rooks were cawing in the tall elms. There was no hint of wildness here, no exaggeration, no harshness contrast or of outline. It was hard, at this moment, to realize that beyond the narrow strip of sea was France where he had endured so much. And all the while here the sheep had been quietly cropping the turf, and the wood smoke curling lazily up into the blue air.
“It must seem a little smug to you," said the doctor. “Too tidy. Too prosperous. A little self-satisfied perhaps. And the people of England, to refugees from Europe, must seem the same."
The Abbé smiled. "Perhaps-yes. Yet if you seem to us sometimes like children playing a game on your small safe island, you are kindly hospitable children. Though most of you will never understand the broken adults who stumble to you from across the seas, you will never shut your doors in our faces. And you have a strength, a sort of reluctant toughness that is hard to get at, but is there. I believe that if the storm had broken h
ere you would all have become adult in a night. Now and again, you see a hint of the toughness in the landscape. Look at that tree there, and those old gray stones.” just below them was Bowerly Hill. The old tree looked stark and black in the surrounding softness, and the heavy stones, contrasted with the moving bodies of the grazing sheep, seemed to press into the grass with immovable strength.
"We will go back that way," said the doctor, "while Tom takes the gig down along the lane."
They walked down the green slope and came to the yew tree. The Abbé said nothing, but he stood for a moment attentive to the spell of this place, his face absorbed as though he listened to the far-off call of a hunting horn, or the roll of a drum. The doctor smiled; to him it was always the roll of the drum.
“Our yews grow to a great age," he said. "Though I think this one is not more than a couple of centuries old. And they have always been sacred to us. To the Druids first, and then to the Christians?
"Always this fleur-de-lis," said the Abbé, stooping. "In the Chapel of St. Michael, on the graves in the churchyard, and here on this stone."
"You’ve a quick eye," said the doctor. "I noticed this one for the first time only the other day. But is it a fleur-de-lis? I thought of it as an unfolding gentian. You are listening again. Do you hear it?"
"Yes," said the Abbé.
2
Stella and Hodge meanwhile were sitting beside old Sol in the chimney corner in the Weekaborough kitchen, Stella stitching at her sampler. Sol never left the chimney corner now, except to go to his bed. In the recent cold wet weather he had succumbed abruptly and completely to his inlirmities; old age had felled him, as a gale fells a twisted old tree. He could neither get up nor sit down without help, and Father Sprigg carried him upstairs to bed like a child in his arms. Dr. Crane said he’d be no good again; he guessed him to be well over eighty years old.