Read Gentian Hill Page 36


  Down below in the cobbled street there was a miniature market, with stalls for flowers and vegetables, and between two gables across the way, one could catch a glimpse of the branches of green trees with the slender spire of a church rising beyond them. This was one of the corners of London from which the country scents and sounds had not yet receded. Standing at his open window he remembered how, in the spring, birdsong had chimed through the ringing of bells, and how on winter evenings one could hear the horns of the huntsmen coming home. He remembered the autumn smell of wet earth and bonfire smoke from hidden gardens, and the scent of the chrysanthemums on the flower stalls. Well, if he had to endure the filth of London for a while, he was glad that he would have this quiet retreat swinging like a green nest high up in the clean air. And it did swing, he remembered, when the wind blew, for the lovely flimsy old house, with, slipping tiles and dry-rot in the beams, was fast tottering to decay. It would be a very suitable place in which to transcribe for Stella, by the light of the moon and the candle in the brass candlestick, the story of the lovers of Gentian Hill.

  2

  The Abbé wasted no time. The very 'next morning he presented himself at Newgate prison, joining the pitiful crowd of prisoners’ friends watching at the felons’ door. Owing to his respectable appearance, he was the first to be admitted and was ushered straight away into the anteroom where the visitors were searched. He submitted to this process with cold distaste, even though in his case his clothes were not stripped from him, and only his pockets were examined. "What do you expect to find upon me?" he asked the turnkey who was dealing with him.

  "Poison or a bit of rope, Sir," was the answer. "You’d be surprised how smart the relatives of prisoners can be in providing them with the means of doing away with themselves. And that even though they know they’ll be Hung into jail themselves if anything of the sort is found on ’em." The Abbé looked grimly around the dirty, dark room where he was standing. It was guarded by blunderbusses mounted on movable carriages, and the walls were hung with chains and fetters. "Hell above ground" they called this place. He knew how cruel the penal laws of England were at this time, and for what slight offenses men and women were tortured and hanged. He had a pretty shrewd idea of the dreadfulness of the scene he would look on in a moment, and he knew that it would bring back all the horror of the past that he had tried to forget. Then abruptly he re-

  membered the view from Beacon Hill on Christmas Eve, Stella in the small green parlor, and the mummers coming through the garden gate in the moonlight. That, too, was England, and life.

  He went down a stone passage to a door which a second turnkey, keeping guard beside it, unlocked and unbolted. Passing through, he found himself in a long narrow passage, its walls formed of iron bars. On one side was a yard, around which the prison was built and where the prisoners were exercised, and on the other, behind a double grating, was the first of the prison wards.

  It was even worse than he had thought, and it brought back the past more sharply than he had thought it would. Involuntarily he stepped back a few paces, his back against the bars that surrounded the courtyard. A wave of nausea swept over him and he did not see very clearly for a moment or two. There was a roaring in his ears, like the sea, and he felt deathly cold. Then he controlled himself, and stepped forward, just as the door opened again and the first of the crowd who had been waiting at the felons’ gate surged through it, shouting to the men shut in behind the double grating, pressing against him, knocking him against the bars so that he had to cling to them to prevent himself being swept off his feet.

  Breathing like a man in pain, he forced himself to look steadily at the inmates of the dreadful cage. Most of them looked inhuman and many of them were only half clothed. The dirt and overcrowding, the noise and stench were if horrible. Many of the men were sodden with drink, for by the proceeds of their begging they could purchase liquor in the prison. The begging had started already; they were thrusting wooden spoons on long sticks through the double grating and their visitors, many of them almost as ragged as they were, were putting in their few pitiful pence. But only the strongest could keep their pence, for each man had to fight to keep what he was given. Many were too weak even to try, and these did not come to the grating. There were young boys among those weak ones, and it was among them that the Abbé searched for Zachary, his eyes going slowly from one gaunt face to another. But he could not find Zachary, and with relief he turned away, pushed through the crowd of visitors and found again the turnkey who had let him in.

  "Are these condemned men?" he asked.

  "Yes, Sir. Men condemned to the hulks or Botany Bay."

  "For what offenses?"

  The turnkey shrugged. "Smuggling in rope to a prisoner, maybe. Hiding a thief, or receiving stolen goods. Some minor offense."

  "Have they been here long?"

  "Months, Sir, some of ’em, waiting for trial, and then waiting to be sent to the hulks."

  "Where are the men condemned to the gallows?"

  "In cells, Sir. You can’t see those."

  "And the untried men?" ·

  "Round the other side of the yard, Sir."

  The Abbé walked slowly around to the other side, noticing as he went the military sentinels posted on the roof. He imagined that the hour for exercise was near, and that they would shoot if there was lawlessness. Once again, he fought down his nausea. In France he had witnessed scenes more terrible than the one he had just left, but those scenes had taken place during a civil war, they had not been part of the normal life of a country at peace within its own borders. It was the organized horror of this wild beast show that shocked him as nothing in his life had shocked him yet.

  He came around to the other side, to the ward of the untried men. The scene here was much the same, but not quite so terrible because the men had not been here so long, and many still had some hope. Yet it was bad enough, and if this was the scene Stella had seen in her dream, he thanked God for her sake that dreams, remembered on waking, lose a little of their sharpness of horror or joy. Once more he pressed himself against the double bars, his anxious gaze going from face to face of the crowd who were pressing against them on the other side. But though he stayed there for what seemed to himself an interminable time, he could not see Zachary. The depression of his weariness and horror engulfed him. It had all been for nothing. The boy was not here.

  He was on the point of moving away when the pallid ravaged faces, the surging movement, the noise, reminded him of something. The sea! It was a sea of misery that was breaking against the bars only a few feet from him, as the waves had broken on the beach the other night, white and torn in the glare of the lightning. The dreadful sea came nearer, reared itself up, crashed over his head. He was drowning in the darkness, sucked down in that horror. Mon Dieu, was he losing consciousness? With all his strength he exerted his will, swung back again toward that from which he had swung away, clutched the bars tighter. Was he a squeamish woman, an untried boy, to be so overwhelmed by dreadful sights? He remembered the legend of the storm and the drowning boy saved from it, and vividly he remembered Stella’s courage in the face of storm, her offered fear. He stayed his ground. His vision cleared and through a sudden gap in the crowd, as though a wave had toppled and parted, he saw a picture that he should never forget.

  Under a grating high in the wall, a wooden washtub had been set and four or tive men were gathered about it attempting to wash their clothes. The water in the tub appeared filthy, the rags they were wringing out of it scarcely less so, yet the Abbé found the sight incredibly heartening, for here were a few men struggling after decency-men who were not yet wild beasts like the Test. One of them, stripped to the waist, had his back to the Abbé. He was a tall boy with dark tumbled hair and a thin brown back upon which the ribs showed starkly. He half turned, wringing out his shirt, but before the Abbé could see his face the gap in the crowd had closed again and he was hidden. It might have been Zachary, or it might not, but the Abbé was not going t
o leave this hell above ground until he knew.

  During the next twenty minutes he passed through one of the oddest experiences of his life. As he moved up and down before the bars, trying ceaselessly for another sight of that boy, he began to recognize some of the faces that came and went in front of him. One hulking brute of a fellow had the ` bluest Irish eyes he had ever seen. Another, a boy, with the face of a depraved old man, had a mouth as sensitively cut as Stella’s own. A third, hunchbacked and deformed, had a pock-mocked face that startled the Abbé by suddenly splitting into a grin. He noticed other eyes, other mouths, other gallant attempts at cheerfulness. Occasionally, when he slipped a coin into a wooden spoon, his eyes would meet the eyes of the poor devil who held it, and he had the sensation that the trivial act was not trivial at all, but an actual entering in of himself into the being of the man before him. He was recognizing as though these men were not strangers, and giving as though to his friends. When the appalling sea had broken over his head, he had passed, as it were, through the breakers into the calmer water beyond. But he was in the sea now, path of it, no longer an isolated spectator on the shore. With a sudden sensation of sheer panic, he knew he would never get back to the shore. Then came the calm knowledge that he did not want to. And all through the twenty minutes he was praying as he had never prayed before, every atom of himself poured out like water for those men behind the bars, but especially for one of them.

  Quite suddenly he saw him again. He had finished his bit of washing and hung it on a nail to dry, and now he was leaning against the wall, shivering without his shirt. He was Zachary, but so changed that for a full moment the Abbé was not quite certain. Then, in this haggard young man, his eyes dull and somber with hopelessness, ugly lines of exhaustion scored heavily on his face, he recognized some lingering remnants of the beauty that had so touched him in the king’s child. Some of the colt like grace was still there, the mouth was the same, and the nostrils of the acquiline nose still flared like those of a startled thoroughbred. But Zachary, if like the young man in the legend he had traveled forth into the world to gain knowledge, had certainly gained it, too quickly and too much.

  He was not looking at the Abbé, and the turnkeys were coming down the passage, shouting that the visiting hour was over. The Abbé called "Zachary!" But his voice did not carry to where the boy stood, and then the turnkeys were among them, seizing the visitors by their shoulders and pulling them roughly away from the bars. In his desperation the Abbé remembered their meeting in his sitting room after the wrestling match, and how quick had been their response, one to the other. Nothing that had happened since had had any power to destroy the instant liking that had been like a bridge between them. It must still hold. He did not shout again, but with his eyes on Zachary, he set himself to cross it. It was not difficult, for in the last twenty minutes he had issued forth from the citadel of himself as never before. Zachary turned his head and their eyes met just as a turnkey’s hand descended on the Abbé’s shoulder and he was pulled from the bars. It did not matter. Almost unbelieving joy shone over Zachary’s face, and from the Abbé’s came that gleam of light, like a rapier flashing in the sun, that had so startled Zachary at their first meeting. The Abbé, pushed backwards like the rest, a turnkey’s stave against his chest, could see tears pouring down the boy’s face, but only the tears of a child awaking suddenly from nightmare. Zachary knew now that he was not forgotten in the pit into which he had fallen. The Abbé waved his hat, turned, and made his way back into the outer world.

  3

  He had all the aristocrat’s power of getting what he wanted with the minimum of difficulty. Priest though he was, his old arrogance was by no means dead in him; he still had the habit of command, a caustic tongue, and a most intimidating presence. The various letters of introduction which he needed were soon in his possession, and three days later the governor of the prison allowed him an interview with Zachary. They were locked in one of the cells where condemned criminals were imprisoned before a hanging, and sitting together on a stone bench, the Abbé listened attentively to Zachary’s carefully told story. They had very little time and could waste no words, but dazed and stupefied though he looked, Zachary had the facts of the case quite clearly in his mind. He knew exactly what he had done and `not done, and what were the alternatives before him. "If I killed Mike I’ll be tried for manslaughter; if I did not kill him, only for assault. But I’ll have to wait months for my trial. Everyone does here."

  “I can see to it that you are committed for trial quickly. But first I must find out what happened to Mike."

  "I should like to know that I did not kill Mike," said Zachary. He spoke quietly, but the Abbé was aware of his misery.

  "Alive or dead, he has not the stain of murder on his soul," said the Abbé.

  "No," said Zachary. That fact was the only comfort that he had-that and the fact that the Abbé was here beside him. "The doctor--my father-" he went on, and then stopped.

  "I will write to him tonight. He will be proud of you."

  "Will it be a matter for pride to have his son hanged for manslaughter?" asked Zachary with bitterness.

  "In the circumstances, yes," said the Abbé tersely.

  "And Stella," said Zachary, and then stopped again. He could not go on with the subject of Stella.

  "There are few things that are not understood by that girl," said the Abbé. "She is a child only in years."

  And then he told Zachary the story of Stella’s dream, not forgetting Granny Bogan, the rue, and the Pisgie’s Well. To him these three were mere incidental additions, but he liked to speak of them in this terrible cell. The fairy world might have no existence in actual fact, but the thought of it purified the air. Zachary suddenly laughed delightedly and tenderly, and the laugh startled the Abbé nearly out of his wits, for this was surely the first time that any man had ever laughed in this cell.

  “She’s a white witch!" chuckled Zachary. A shaft of summer sunlight, piercing the high grating, touched the opposite wall with a pencil of light. It drew for him a picture of the wise old tree, the cold water of the Pisgie’s Well bubbling up beneath it, the clear pool fringed with forget-me-nots, and Stella and Hodge sitting there in the golden dust of the sunset. He remembered how a handful of this same brightness had floated through the prison grating on the evening of his first day there, and how his whole soul had cried out in anguish to Stella. He thought the little white witch must have heard.

  The key grated in the lock, and the Abbé thanked heaven that he had just had time to admit the fairies to Newgate prison.

  CHAPTER VI

  1

  The Abbé now passed his days tramping through the streets of lpondon toihng for Zachary and his evenings withdrawn far above it in a green nest, translating Stella’s book into English for her. Daily, too, he attended mass, and daily he said his oflices. The darkness of squalor and wretchedness, the twinkling colors of fairyland, and the clear white shining of his steadfast faith were woven by the passing days into a strange tapestry. Yet this was the stuff of life in the world, he told himself, and from henceforth he would accept the whole of it, neither shunning the darkness nor despising the small twinkling colored lights. He was not yet ready for the white light only, for he was still a sinner and a man of dreams.

  After anxious search and inquiry, he found the officers of the watch who had arrested Zachary. He discovered that in England at this date, a method in the maintenance of order was as conspicuously absent as justice in the administration of law and sobriety in the officers of it. The men vaguely remembered that a dark young fellow had killed another young fellow with red hair, and they had taken one to prison and the other to the mortuary. The Abbé’s stern eyes upon them, his questions rapping at their muddled wits, they became uncertain about the mortuary. They owned, when pressed, that they had not been too sober at the time. After deep cogitation they suddenly remembered that the corpse had shown signs of life before it reached its destination and that they had switched
it over to the hospital. What hospital, the Abbé demanded? It might, they thought, have been Guy’s. Then one of them, visited by a sudden brilliant flash of memory, felt in his pocket and produced two curiously shaped bits of wood, with a length of cord wrapped ’round them. "Found it on the cobbles where the lads had been fighting," he said. "Picked it up and kept it out of curiosity like."

  "What is it?" asked the Abbé.

  "Couldn’t tell you, Sir. Never seen such a thing. Looks like it might be a sort of top."

  The Abbé in his turn pocketed the toy. It might come in useful. Then, slipping a gold piece into each grimy palm, he reminded them that they would be called upon to give evidence and hoped their report of the prisoner would be favorable. He left them assured that it would.

  He went immediately to Guy’s hospital and found the wards there only slightly less terrible than those of Newgate. The dirt was appalling, the smells as bad, and the heat insufferable. And again he was sickened by the way in which suffering humanity was put on show. The doctors, top-hatted and wearing the dirty frock coats which they kept for hospital use only, went their rounds followed by hordes of medical students. Each patient was displayed and lectured upon as though it were an insentient specimen beneath a microscope. The feet of the students were loud upon the bare floors, and their voices and laughter were strident. If consideration and compassion formed any part of their make-up, they were kept well hidden.