Gentian Hill

  “It was very stale bread. It was Thursday’s baking. Please, Sir, you must go to London and find Zachary."

  "Why London?" asked the astonished doctor.

  "In one of the sermons that Parson Ash reads it says that London is the City of Destruction."

  "Stella, use your wits. just because you have eaten too much bread and honey-stale bread can be just as indigestible as new-and looked at some frightening pictures in Mrs. Loraine’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and had a nightmare, do you think that, merely to set your mind at rest, I should leave my patients and go tearing off on a wild goose chase to

  London? Old Sol is very ill indeed. Mrs. Baxter in the village is going to have a baby. jo Stanberry has a witlowe that will need lancing in a couple of days. And there is a little girl of three years old with scarlet fever whom I do not leave now for more than a few hours at a time."

  Stella was silent for a while and then she said, "No, you can’t go. Sol and Mrs. Baxter and Jo Stanberry and the little girl would all die straight off, and that would not be right. But mon Pere could go to London instead of to Exeter.’

  "Is mon Pere going to Exeter?"

  "Yes. Sir George said he could take a holiday."

  "Has he any particular reason for wishing to go to Exeter?"

  "To see a man who lives there who is going to print a book he has written."

  "And what makes you think Monsieur le Comte de Colbert will change all his plans just because a little girl has had a nightmare? asked the doctor with amusement.

  "Mon Pere would do anything in the world for me, so long as it did not harm my immortal soul," said Stella with simple conviction.

  The doctor, startled, screwed his eyeglass in more firmly and looked down at her, and he was not above a slight twinge of instantly suppressed jealousy. He wondered what degree of intimacy this astonishing friendship between the French aristocrat and the English country child had now reached. "Is mon Pere suffering from any anxiety about your soul?" he asked dryly.

  "He would like me to be a different kind of Christian," said Stella. "He would like me to be the same kind as Mrs. Loraine and himself-and Zachary." Furious indignation sent the blood surging up over the doctor’s face to the brim of his top hat, but it receded when Stella said quickly, "He hasn’t said that to me. It was Mrs. Loraine who said so."

  Well, why not, thought the doctor suddenly. The child knew now that Zachary was her lover. Their union, when it came, should be as complete as possible.

  "Mon Pere will go," said Stella again.

  The doctor was not so sure. He doubted if faith in the fairies formed any part of the Abbé’s intellectual equipment. Nor did he imagine that a director of souls would think that a little girl should be encouraged to take her nightmares seriously. But there was another motive that might move the Abbé, and at thought of it his face crinkled- with slightly malicious amusement.

  “Stella," he said, "after you have told the Abbé about your nightmare, you might give him a message from me. Ask him if he dares go to Newgate and make intimate contact with the dirty, the ignorant, the thieves, and the murderers. Ask him to remember a conversation he once had with me. Tell him to each man his own devil, and I wish him good luck if he takes this chance of having a tilt at his. That must sound an odd message to you, my honey. See if you can remember it correctly."

  Stella repeated the message three times, until she had it right; and with the glorious stretch of the bay before them they drove down the hill to Torre. It was certainly a wonderful sparkling morning. Too sparkling. The glassy brilliance of the light presaged thunder. But the doctor was now silent and no longer amused. Again and again he looked at the taut white face of the strange elfin girl beside him. Had Granny Bogan guessed rightly, and was the beloved Stella really possessed of powers beyond the normal?

  He ceased to think of her. Zachary possessed his every thought as they drove along Robbers’ Lane .... My son. My son .... His love for Stella would never grow less, yet she was moving a little away from him now, away from him and nearer to the man she called mon Pere, while Zachary with every day and every night entered into firmer possession of his mind and heart. He would not have much ease now until they were sitting once more, one on each side of his study fire. Abruptly he pulled himself up. Ridiculous nonsense. Nothing but a child’s nightmare. This thunder weather made one fanciful. He smiled again as he wondered what effect the nightmare, the weather, and his message would have upon mon Pere.

  4

  The morning continued too hot and too bright. By midday the clouds were gathering on the horizon, and by the evening a storm was brewing. Mrs. Loraine went to bed early with a thunder headache, and told Stella to go too. But in her room, instead of undressing, Stella put on her bonnet and a pair of stout shoes. She hated storms and the mutter of thunder in the distance made her heart beat hard, but Mrs. Loraine had been ailing all day, and needing her, and she had not been able to go to St. Michael’s Chapel. And so she must go now. To stay at home would be to fail Zachary. Rosalind had never once failed her lover, and she would not fail either.

  Twice, running along the lane that led to Chapel Hill, she stumbled and nearly fell from sheer weariness. It had been a dreadful day. Her dream had haunted her ceaselessly. Mrs. Loraine, always so sweet-tempered, had not been so sweet tempered as usual because of her headache, and Araminta had been as cross as she knew how to be, and that was very cross, indeed. If that was not enough, mon Pere, who always came to see them on a Monday, had chosen-on this day when she wanted him so badly-not to come near them.

  The steep climb up Chapel Hill taxed her weary small body to the utmost, and halfway up she had to sit down and rest, looking out to sea, her back against a rock. The bay that had been so blue and sparkling in the morning was now the color of lead, and though there was not a breath of wind, a heavy sucking swell was giving an ugly tone to the voice of the sea as it surged in against the rocks. The menacing restlessness of the sea in thunder weather always frightened Stella. No wind, and yet that strange movement. It was uncanny. The clouds were black and heavy, edged here and there with livid light, and every moment it grew darker. It will be dark in the Chapel, thought Stella, as she started to climb again, it will be dark and frightening in the Chapel.

  Yet as she came near she was astonished to see light shining out from the Chapel windows, a deep orange glow that was lovely and most reassuring. The weariness went out of her, and she scrambled up the last bit of the way quite quickly and came to the Chapel door. Looking in, she saw a lantern burning in one of the alcoves in the north wall, and before the place where the altar had once been a white-haired man was kneeling saying his prayers. She gave a cry of delight and he turned and saw her, then got up and held out his arms and she ran across the rocky floor and fell into them. It was mon Pere. It was the first time that they had clung together like this, but it seemed so natural that it did not occur to either of them to be surprised.

  "You’re in trouble, child?" asked the Abbé, looking down at her.

  “Yes, mon Pere," said Stella.

  They sat down together on the outcrop of rock where they had sat the first day they had met and she poured out the whole story, and then carefully, word for word, repeated the doctor’s message. The Abbé nodded.

  "You’ll go, mon Pere?" asked Stella anxiously.

  "Certainly," he said briefly.

  The message was like a trumpet call, but the doctor had misjudged him, for he would have gone without it. Stella’s tale of fairies and eye-lotion he dismissed as nonsense, but her dream he took seriously, for he had not forgotten that she had known before when things were not well with Zachary. He knew better than the doctor the strength and mystery of the union that can sometimes exist between a man and a woman; knew because he had himself experienced it. Though never before, he thought, smiling a little, had he known it come into being when the woman was still a child.

  Stella saw the smile and put her hand on his knee. "Will it be all well, mon Pere?"


  "Yes, Stella. However bad this storm that has caught Zachary, even if it’s a shipwreck, he’ll come to land safely."

  "But he isn’t caught in a storm, mon Pere.’

  "The storms of nature aren’t the only sort of storms, Stella." He looked around at the Chapel, which had now become so dark that without the lantern they would scarcely have been able to see each other. "Though there is going to be one of the natural ones very soon I think. A bad one, too."

  One of those sudden gusts of wind that usher in a storm swept ’round the Chapel, sounding exactly like Zachary’s bull-roarer summoning Them, and without a word to each other, because it was the natural thing to do in this place, they knelt down and prayed for those in peril. At least the Abbé prayed, but Stella was so frightened that her, dry mouth felt full of dust, her cold hand trembled in the Abbé’s, and no words would come into her mind.

  “Afraid, Stella?" he rallied her, as they got to their feet again. "I thought you were never afraid."

  "I am afraid of rats and thunderstorms and Them," said Stella, her cheeks crimsoning with shame. "I am so afraid that I could not pray for Zachary."

  "Show no sign of your fear, offer it to God for Zachary, and the costly gift will be a more acceptable prayer than any repetition of mere words," said the Abbé slowly.

  Stella looked up at him, her eyes suddenly bright with the pleasure of a new idea. He very often now presented her with these new ideas, and always he spoke slowly as though underlining each word, so that she stowed his ideas away very carefully for future use. With a flash of intuition she knew that this one, when put into use, was going to revolutionize the whole of life.

  Going down the steep path, they were glad of the Abbé’s lantern, for the would scarcely have seen how to pick their way over the rocks without it. The roll of the thunder was near now, and the lightning was playing over the restless sea; but still there was no rain. At Mrs. Loraine’s gate, the Abbé stopped. "We’ll say good-by here,· Stella, shall we? I’m going down to the shore."

  "Mon Pere!" gasped Stella in astonishment. "Aren’t you going home before the storm breaks?" He looked down at her, smiling. "I'm not like you, Stella. I enjoy a storm. I could stand for an hour watching the lightning over the sea."

  She fought with herself for a moment, then came to him and put her hand into his. "I’ll come too," she said.

  For a moment he was on the point of sending her in to bed, where she certainly should be at this hour and in this weather, then he grasped her hand tightly and they went down the lane together, for he could not refuse her wish. Vaguely he remembered that old legend that he had heard, that fairy tale of a girl whose courage had saved her lover from drowning. But what he remembered, not vaguely but with a stabbing clarity, was Thérese’s fear of thunder. Her one fear, for she had not even minded rats. It was he who hated rats and vermin of every kind, and all that foulness of degradation with which, for love of Stella, he intended to establish intimate acquaintance within the next few days.

  The seashore had lost all its familiarity and become some dreadful dead country on a stricken star. The rocks. Were without color in the pallid lightning, and looked like the bones of prehistoric beasts sticking up out of the sand. The wind was steadily rising, roaring in the upper air as though great winged demons were rushing over their heads, yet leaving the earth itself to a waiting stillness. Stella thought she would have feared this wind less if it had been whipping her skirts about her and tearing at her bonnet strings. The roaring above and the stillness below made one wonder what would happen when the great wings swept too low. She dared not look up at the sky because she knew she would see them there. The sea as well as the wind was rising, and the waves roared and broke at their feet, stinging their faces. With white torn spray. At every reverberation of the thunder a tremor went through Stella's body, and every time the lightning flashed she unconsciously gripped the Abbé’s hand a little harder. Her other hand was clasping her locket which she had pulled out from under her dress. She always held it in this way when she needed courage, for she knew her mother had been brave.

  Yet she stood her ground, and would have stood it as long as the Abbé remained entranced by the wild terror of the scene, but she was delivered by a sudden ripping open of the black sky above them, a crash of nearer thunder, and the descent of the rain. It came suddenly, sheets of arrows hurled before the wind, abruptly restoring the world to normality. The wind was just wind now, tearing at their clothes, driving the rain against their faces, the rocks looked normal again, and scourged by the rain, the waves broke less violently.

  Before she had time to get wet the Abbé had picked Stella up in his arms, wrapped his cloak around her, and with his back turned to the storm, was striding along the lanes that led back to Torre. He upbraided himself furiously that he had let them stay too long, but she laughed, all her fear gone. His arms about her were as strong as iron, stronger even than Father Sprigg’s, and gave her a sense of safety, such as she had never felt before. She knew now how chickens felt when they scurried under their parent’s wing in a storm, and her laughter faded into a sigh of content.

  They reached Mrs. Loraine’s house and the Abbé opened the front door and set Stella gently down in the little hall, remaining himself dripping upon the mat. Araminta appeared carrying a candle and in a state of powerful indignation. "Gracious goodness, Sir, you’ve never taken the child out in all this wet?"

  “I make my apologies most profoundly," said the Abbé humbly.

  "I’m not wet, Araminta," said Stella. "Monsieur de Colbert carried me."

  She took off her bonnet and stood smiling up at him. But he did not return her smile. His face looked gray in the candlelight and he stood as though turned to stone, staring at the gold locket around Stella’s neck.

  "What ails you, Sir?" asked Araminta sharply. "Has the lightning struck you?"

  "Stella, the locket," he said harshly. "Where did you get it?"

  The harshness of his tone was almost ugly, and it so startled Stella that unconsciously she put up her hands to hide her treasure. "Mother Sprigg gave it to me," she whispered.

  The Abbé put a hand against the wall. "Fool!" he adjured himself. Gold lockets were not a rarity. The one he had chosen for Therese had been a cheap one, though it had been the best he could afford, and there had probably been another dozen in the shop of the same design. He achieved a smile and bowed to the startled girl still staring up at him.

  "Good-by, Stella. I shall be in London by the end of the week."

  The front door banged behind him and he was gone.

  "Well, I never!" said Araminta.

  Stella stood quite still for a moment or two, feeling extremely odd. She felt that the Comte de Colbert had vanished forever, as the hermit had done on the night when he and Rosalind had saved her lover from the storm. When he came back to her again it would not be as the Comte de Colbert, but as someone quite different. She unclasped her hands from her locket and slipped it back inside her dress with a sigh of happiness. Zachary, she knew, was saved already.

  CHAPTER V

  1

  The weather broke with the storm, which had been of the worst within living memo and the Abbé traveled up to London in wind and rain. He had managed to secure a seat inside the coach, and sat in his corner wrapped in his cloak against the icy draughts, with the raindrops that seeped through the roof dripping rhythmically upon his hat.

  The coach was crowded and the company not to his taste. He was astonished at himself. His visit to Exeter had been a most necessary one, and it had been arranged that he should travel there with a friend of the Careys in a private barouche, and here he was traveling to the London of painful memories in a not-too-clean public conveyance which leaked and smelt of manure, pressed upon by a hoi-polloi munching onions and bread, and cursing the government in voices that smote upon the delicate tympanums of his ears in a most painful manner. And why? Because a little girl he loved had had a nightmare, and a country doctor had sent
him a verbal challenge which his pride did not permit him to refuse. He was off on a wild goose chase with no cogent reasons behind it. What a fool he was! He must be suffering from that deterioration of the intellect which he had been informed befell those who lived for too long in this moist, mild climate of the West Country, among these round green fairy-haunted hills of Devon.

  Abruptly he pulled himself up. His mood was one of mere reaction, with which by this time he should have been only too familiar. One took a decision based upon that intuition which is a truer thing than worldly commonsense, and gloried in it, and then the next day there was the inevitable swing of the pendulum and the glory faded. Yet the intuition remained what it had been-true. And in any case, there was nothing he would not do for Stella.

  He suddenly bethought himself of another thing, a small thing, that she had asked him to do for her. It was ten days now since she had given him the book which Granny Bogan had found in the tower of Cockington church, and asked him to make out the story for her. He had been waiting for leisure to decipher the faint handwriting, and here this tedious coach journey was providing him with it. He had the book in one of the deep pockets of his traveling cloak, with his breviary in the other. He took it out and opened it, looking with delight at the exquisite little pictures of gentians on the first page, and presently he had forgotten the irritation of the hoi-polloi, the smell of onions, the drip of rain on his hat, and the icy draughts. Indeed, when the time came to say his next office, he forgot his breviary also. The book opened with the legend that he had half remembered upon the seashore, but that was only the beginning of the story which absorbed him all the way to London.

  Coffee houses and hotels, and all places overfull of the human beings whom he did not much care for, were abominated by the Abbé, but he was fortunate in renting a room in the house where he had lodged during those bitter days after he had first come back from Ireland. The same landlady was still in occupation, an honest and cleanly woman who did not bother him with too much talk. The house was tall and rickety and not in a fashionable quarter, it but the Abbé liked its high chimneys and wavy brown roof patched with moss, the fanlight over the door, and the old worn treads of the narrow staircase that twisted in darkness around its oak newel, up and up from the narrow entry to his room high in the attic. This room was octagonal and so small that it was almost entirely filled by the four-poster bed with its curtains of crimson rep. The paneling was painted apple green, with a press for clothes cleverly hidden behind it. A table and chair were in the window, and on the small Adams mantelpiece was one brass candlestick.