Gentian Hill

  “Thank you, Sir, I will come whenever you wish," she said. Then she curtsied to him. "Good-night, Sir. A happy Christmas." She turned to the doctor and curtsied again.

  "Good-night, Sir. A happy Christmas. Good-night, Tom. A happy Christmas."

  She stood at the top of the steps and watched them climb into the waiting gig. She had suddenly become very remote. Her small lifted face looked white in the moonlight, and though she was smiling, her smile was not that of a child. Her cloak fell in straight folds to the ground. Behind her the warm light streamed from the open door, but it did not seem to have anything to do with her. She belonged to the shadows of the garden, to the stillness and the strange shapes of the clipped yew trees. The Abbé, parting from her with difficulty, remembered those old fairy stories of seanymphs and wood sprites who left their own world to be the foster children of human peasant folk, and how they brought great joy with them, but sometimes sorrow too.

  "She lives in a world that is not her own," he said to the doctor as they drove away.

  The doctor looked at him sharply, slightly startled. "If she does, she is completely contented in it," he said.

  "They are always counterfeited," said the Abbé, "for they have the freedom of more worlds than one."

  They drove home in silence. The doctor’s thoughts were with Zachary; the Abbé was thinking of Therese.

  CHAPTER VII

  1

  Stella at the kitchen door was confronted by Mother Sprigg. "Go to bed, child," she said. "Take a cup of milk and a roasted apple and get to bed, or you’ll be Ht for nothing in the morning. Sol’s gone already."

  But Stella, unseen by Mother Sprigg, helped herself to a good deal more than a cup of milk and an apple. Taking a large willowa pattern plate from the dresser, she dodged around the table, between the merry guests, piling it with pigeon pie and rabbit pie, ham and beef and cake. This she deposited on the floor of the dark passage leading to the yard and was back again to fetch not a cup but a bowl of milk, a roast apple and clotted cream in a pink luster dish, and a pocketful of lumps of sugar. The Abbé, had he seen her at this moment, would not have compared her to any creature not of this earth. She was sparkling with human naughtiness as she called to Hodge and shut the kitchen door behind them.

  The Christmas party in the stable was not as noisy as the one in the kitchen, but it more than equaled it in enjoyment. Stella brought Daniel in from the yard and lit the stable lantern with the flint and stone that was always kept there. Seraphine and the current kittens were in the stable already, having been banished there to be out of the way of the trampling feet in the kitchen, and so were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the stable cats, Moses and Abraham, the oxen, the mare Bess, and the two little pack horses, Shem and Ham. While the dogs ate from the willow·pattern plate and the cats lapped from the bowl of milk, Stella fed the oxen and horses with the sugar. She loved to feel the warm gentle nuzzling in the palm of her hand. She patted their necks and talked to them and wished them a happy Christmas Then she sat down on a pile of hay beside the cats and Hodge and Daniel, and taking her own horn spoon from her pocket she ate her baked apple and clotted cream out of the pink luster dish. Then she stacked the empty dishes in a neat pile and lay down on the hay. Hodge stretched himself at her feet, and Daniel lay curled up against her left side. Seraphine was close in her basket with her kittens. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that poor battered crew, lay close upon her right.

  Stella had not outgrown her childhood’s sensitiveness to color, scent, and sound. The orange glow of the lantern, the warm velvety shadows of the stable, the contented purring of the cats and the breathing of the oxen, the smell of the clean beasts and the hay, seemed to weave themselves together and make for her a cloak of warm tranquillity. Wrapped in it she lay still, reaching down inside herself for that deep peace in which her being was rooted like a tree. Awareness of that peace gave her the deepest happiness that she knew. Sometimes it came, as now, like a deep echo of outward tranquillity, like a bell ringing far under the sea in answer to some church bell on the earth, and those were the moments when it lasted, but she had known it to come also in moments-of trouble and stress, though it was no more then than a touch, gone in a moment yet sufficient in strength to steady one for much longer than its moment of duration. And Zachary? Was he at peace? She looked up at the square window where she had first seen him and been so frightened until Hodge had reassured her. And now the stranger at the window was so a part of herself that there was scarcely a waking moment that she did not think of him, or a dream that had not got his thin lanky figure moving through it.

  She shut her eyes. She had had a long tiring day. The purring of the cats, the breathings and munchings of the horses and cattle, were sleepy sounds. She was sinking down and down through depth upon depth of peace, the green water closing over her head, but she was not afraid, because she knew that there would be something to stay her before she fell out of existence altogether. It was with no sense of shock that it stayed her, the awareness of arrival came so gradually that she found herself walking forward to the tolling of the bell without having realized that her feet had touched the ground. Though it wasn’t ground, it was silver sand jewelled with bright shells. The seaweeds all about her were some of them like flowers and some like stars, and the strange creatures that floated past, weaving in and out between the trunks of the trees, were gold and silver, translucent, luminous. The light was not of the earth. It was deep green, clear, without warmth, but not chill. It was the trees that told Stella where she was, the trees and the tolling of the bell. Though their trunks had become like polished ivory, and their branches bore, not leaves, but flowers and stars that were living creatures, she knew that these trees had once grown in the air and sunlight, and that the bell had rung out over green fields and red Devon earth. She was not far from home. It was from these depths of peace where she was walking now that the Torbay fishermen drew the antlers of harts in their nets. Men had hunted through this forest and the winding of their horns and the baying of their hounds had made deep music here, and the bell had tolled them to vespers at the ending of the day.

  And now of the old music only the bell was left and she was the only human being in all this strange green world to answer the summons. She paused and looked back and saw the print of her lonely feet on the silver sand. Yet she did not feel alone, for she knew it was not just the movement of the water that was ringing the bell. There was no movement of the water because far up above her head, on the sea’s surface, there brooded "the windless silence of storms." Some person was ringing the bell.

  She walked on until a strange sight checked her. She thought she saw the skeleton of some huge animal lying there on the sea’s bottom, until she looked again and saw it was the wreck of a ship, its hull crusted with barnacles and crimson seaweeds wound about its ribs. What ship was that? Was it the ship that had brought the hermit to Torre Abbey? Or the ship that had brought Rosalind’s love home to her? In which of the great storms had it been lost? She remembered how the Torbay fishermen and the country people thought some demon lived down here who sucked down one ship in each storm. And perhaps it did; there were evil things about everywhere except in heaven. But it was not here this Christmas Eve. She was not afraid when she looked at the wreck, not even when she noticed some human bones lying half buried in the sand beside it; because she knew her Shakespeare, and that one is safe everywhere on Christmas Eve.

  Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes

  Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,

  The bird of dawning singeth all night long;

  And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;

  The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike

  No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

  So hallowed and so gracious is the time.

  She ran on and presently she saw the church, looking like a gray rock. It was so small that it looked as though it had been made for two people only. The bell
swung slowly in the belfry and light shone from the door. She reached the door, stepped in over the doorstep that was silted up with sand, passed into the church, and knelt down. She knew that someone was standing behind her, just inside the door, ringing the bell, but she did not look to see who it could be, though the nearness of whoever it was made her intensely happy. At first she was too much in awe to look anywhere except at the floor upon which she was kneeling, and which was made up of a mosaic of small and beautiful shells. Then she looked up and saw that the tiny church was just like a cave. There was nothing in it at all except the beautiful sea creatures that clung to the walls and the roof. A bunch of them, like a cluster of stars, were in the center of the roof and it was from them that the light shone. Yet there was no mistaking this place as a church. It would not have occurred to Stella to do anything here except kneel down.

  The bell stopped and the person who had been ringing it came and knelt beside her and slipped his hand into hers, and it was Zachary. They did not speak to each other for they were listening intently to the mighty surging murmur that was all about them. It ebbed and flowed like waves, it broke against the walls that protected them and then receded. It was a great eager swell of sound and yet the quiet was unbroken, it was a roaring wind and yet nothing stirred; It was the voice of the sea itself.

  "If I take the wings of the morning, and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me .,.. Whither shall I go then from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I go then from Thy presence?" Zachary and Stella looked at each other and smiled. The presence was the peace, and the peace was the presence. If you could only sink down deep enough to find it, there was no separation, for you could find each other there.

  A trumpet sounded, or the horn of a long-dead huntsman. The surging voice of the sea was receding, this time without return, and Zachary’s fingers were slipping from her grasp. Stella gave one bitter cry, that was lost in the sound of the trumpet that was not a trumpet at all but a cock crowing. “The cock that is the trumpet to the morn." It was the Weekaborough cock and she slowly opened her eyes.

  She was back in the stable again and it was only in a dream that she had been with Zachary. Yet, though it had been only a dream, she found that she was kneeling upright

  as she had been kneeling in the church under the sea. Outside in the yard the cock was still crowing. It must be midnight! Her heart beat fast. That strange false dawn that comes about two or three in the morning, when the cocks crow and the animals stir and wake, and look about them and sleep again, for no reason of which a mere man is aware, comes early on Christmas night. Then it is at midnight that the cocks crow and the animals wake, and a legend that is alive in almost every country of the world says that they kneel and pray.

  "While all things were in quiet silence, and night was in the midst of her swift course, Thine Almighty Word leaped down from heaven out of Thy royal throne/’ She looked about her. Hodge and Daniel and the cats were lying still,but they were all awake and their eyes in the lantern light were uncommonly bright. She could not see the oxen and the horses, but she was intensely aware of their wakefulness. All her short life, since she had been told of the Christmas night legend, she had longed to be in the stable at midnight and see if it was really true that the animals kneeled down, but Mother Sprigg had always seen to it that she should be in her bed at that time. And now here she was. The first stroke of midnight sounded very faintly, floating through the still night from the church over the hill, and she covered her face with her hands. She listened to the twelve strokes of the bell and the beating of her heart seemed to keep time to their rhythm. Then the church bells began to ring and it was Christmas day. She took her hands from her face and met the bright glance of Hodge. His mouth was open and he seemed to be laughing at her. She looked round and all the animals seemed to be laughing at her, not in ridicule, but with a kindly, tolerant tenderness. "Well," they seemed to be saying, "you were here but you kept your face covered, and you don’t know now whether we kneeled down." "I had to," she said, "for it was your hour, and I had no right to be here."

  She put out the lantern, and followed by Hodge went out into the yard, that was almost as bright as day in the moonlight. They climbed up the thatch together and in through her window. In her room she listened anxiously, but as on the night when Zachary had appeared at the stable window, luck was with her, for Father and Mother Sprigg had not come to bed yet. She undressed and got into bed and curled herself up like a ball, as she did when she was supremely content. It had been only a dream about Zachary, but it had been a dream that had made her happy. And why say “only a dream?" That patient, longsuffering man, Saint Joseph, had not said "only a dream." He had taken his dreams very seriously indeed, and a terrible thing it would have been for the world if he had not.”

  2

  Christmas Day followed its accustomed happy course. There was church-going in the morning. Gentian Hill church was a bower of greenery and was packed with every man, woman, and the child in the village, all dressed in their best. The Christmas dinner at Weekaborough, which was shared by several lonely neighbors and strolling vagabonds who had come through the open door and not been refused, was colossal. The kitchen was filled with steam and heat, laughter, noise, and bustle. It was the only part of Christmas that Stella did not enjoy very much, and the fatigue of it left her with dark smudges under her eyes. When the men were sitting ’round the great fire with their pipes and glasses, and the women were stacking the dishes and carrying them to the scullery, Mother Sprigg whispered, "You can slip away, love, if you like. The parlor fire is laid and you can light it. Here’s the key."

  "Mother!" gasped Stella and squeezed her hand in gratitude. She was hardly ever allowed in the parlor by herself, such was Mother Sprigg’s fear that the child might break something, or tear something, or leave a smudge somewhere. It was the holy-of-holies and was kept locked, the key living in Mother Sprigg’s pocket. Mother Sprigg herself went in once a week to dust and polish, and to light a fire if the room felt damp, and sometimes she let Stella help her, but when they had finished, she led her firmly out and locked the door. It struck her that Mother Sprigg must think she was growing up, if she was now to be trusted alone in the parlor. She took her workbox and sampler from the window seat cupboard and slipped out into the shadowed hall, unlocked the parlor door and went in.

  She lit the fire of apple logs and fir cones and the two tall candles on the mantelpiece, and sitting down in one of the two high-backed chairs beside the fire, she looked about her. The parlor was a small room. Its stone floor was covered by a moss-green carpet, curtains of green velvet hung at the window, and the walls were paneled in dark oak. Whenevershe was in the parlor, Stella imagined herself in the secret heart of a dark mysterious wood. The treasures in the parlor increased this feeling. The two footstools that stood before the high-backed chairs had been embroidered by Mother Sprigg’s mother in a cross-stitch pattern of sweetbriar with small white roses and blood-red thorns, the kind of impenetrable briar that enclosed the Sleeping Beauty. The oval frame of the fire screen enclosed dried and pressed wild flowers under glass, anemones and wood sorrel, primroses, and white violets. On the mantelpiece, between the tall silver candlesticks, stood a china shepherd and shepherdess with crooks and flower-wreathed hats. They were so beautifully dressed in panniered flowered gown, embroidered waistcoat, and velvet coat, so elegant altogether, that Stella thought they were really a prince and princess, carrying the crooks just for fun. A small escritoire stood against the paneled wall, and on top of it was a goose feather pen and one of those large seashells which hold forever the murmur of the sea. A mirror so old that you could scarcely see yourself in its strange green glass hung upon another wall, and over the mantelpiece hung a small curved hunting horn, just such a horn as might have been slung over the shoulder of the prince when he slashed his way through the briars to find the Sleeping Beauty. This horn, like the mirror, was very old, and F
ather Sprigg did not know how it had come into the possession of his family.

  There was nothing else in the little parlor, and it needed nothing more. For the first time it struck Stella that it was a room for two people only, as the chapel under the sea had been for two people. It had two chairs, two footstools, and two candlesticks. It belonged to the prince and princess on the mantelpiece, "To me and Zachary," she said. She had once asked Mother Sprigg if the room was ever used, and Mother Sprigg had said, yes. When a bride and groom drove back from church they would step in for a few minutes’ peace and quiet before they joined the noisy guests in the kitchen. And when a baby had been christened, it would lie in state here in its cradle. And when anyone died in the house, the body would lie here in its coffin, like the baby in its cradle, until the hearse came and they took it off to church.

  And so she had thought of this room as having no personal connection with herself, but only with the babies, brides, bridegrooms, and corpses who had used it. But tonight, quite suddenly it had become her room, hers and Zachary’s. She opened her workbox, put on her new silver thimble, took a needle from the brocade needlecase, cleaned it in the emery cushion that looked like a strawberry, threaded it with a bit of crimson silk, and began to sew.

  She had not drawn the curtains, and outside the window was the deep blue of a winter dusk seen from a candlelit room, "gentian blue," she said to herself. She could not see Bowerly Hill, but she could picture the old yew tree, the fallen stones, and the sheep lying in the blue dusk as though folded in Our Lady’s cloak. She pictured the Christmas shepherds up there with them. One of them, she thought, was a very holy man. She imagined him sitting on one of the fallen stones, wrapped in his cloak, looking out towards the sea. Because he was a holy man, the sheep had gathered close about him. The Christmas stars were bright over his head, and his shepherd’s crook was in his hand.