Rawblood Page 10

  After making my purchases, I tucked the parcel under my arm and took my ease along the river, and was pleased with the effect of the sunlight on the brown water, where speckled trout rose, and, in a quiet corner upriver from the dwellings, was privileged to witness a kingfisher taking his nuncheon from a pool. The path was lined with banks of bracken and yellow gorse, in which, to judge from the scuffling and chirpings that emerged, the many urgent businesses of a country hedgerow in autumn were being conducted. Butterflies crossed my path, flashes of blue so small and quick as to tease the eye. They assert their presence in a trembling, diffident fashion, as if conscious of the brevity of their existence; indeed, it is only the unseasonable warmth which has drawn them out, and when the weather turns, as it will soon do, it will put a period to them. In the distance, the moor rose beneath a clear sky in smooth long furrows, of purple, brown and grey, marching on as far as the eye could see.

  As I dawdled on with my eye occupied with Nature, my mind set to work independently, with no great urgency, on a problem of calculation we had happened upon that morning. So engaged was I in rehearsing arguments which must make Alonso see that accepting an ordinary ratio of red to white corpuscles – rather than counting within each screen – would save days and hours, that I did not hear hooves approaching on the narrow path, the approach hidden as it was by a bend in the river. The consequence was that as I rounded the turn so did the horse, and I was under the animal before I knew it.

  There was the suspension of attention that occurs in moments of crisis, when all that was apparent in the world was shining legs and iron and hooves, and a great deal of sturdy bone and equine muscle bearing down upon me; I threw the cabbages one way, and myself the other.

  Raising myself from a tangle of brush and bracken, and finding good quantities of both these estimable plants about my person and in my mouth, I was engaged for some little time in ridding myself of them. When at length I was at liberty to take notice of such things, I perceived that the horse – which had borne all the appearance of a demonic thing, with flared nostrils and fearful strength, as well as the dimensions and speed of a steam engine – was in fact a small brown mare, now cropping the grass contentedly. Of her two riders, one sat stiff atop her – a small plump child with white skin and coppery hair. I stared and he stared too, and put his thumb in his mouth to suck.

  I presently became aware that the other rider stood beside me, offering consolations of a heartfelt and sympathetic nature. This person held in his arms the string bag of cabbages, which had burst open, and was saying, ‘Dear God, I had not supposed that anyone would have been on the path! For in Dartmeet they go by the high road, and I thought, if there should chance to be a traveller, that perhaps they would hear Sadie coming …’

  ‘You thought, in fact, that I should get out of your way,’ I retorted, for several bruises were making themselves felt. My assailant was a man, younger than myself, fair, with large blue eyes, dressed for riding, and who clutched his hat to him tightly, with entreaty in his face.

  ‘Not at all! I cannot be profuse enough in my apologies. I am fond of this ride, and it being narrow, almost a sheep track, it is not used by carts or horses as a general rule. I was paying insufficient care, and was thinking only of my own pleasure; you are quite right, sir …’

  He went on in this fashion for some time, before I tired of the whole thing, and said that it was no matter, and that I had best get on. But this would not do at all for the gentleman, who hastened to introduce himself as Mr Henry Gilmore. This was his brother, Robert – here the small red-haired child plucked his thumb from his mouth in order to give me the full benefit of his stare – and they were of Trubb’s Farm, which lay – did I know? – to the east of Princetown. I said I hoped that he would ride there at once, as sedately as he knew how, at which he laughed. Nothing in my manner or my evident desire to be rid of him was of any avail, save to convince him that he must at all costs aid me, and seek to repair the damage he had done. I suppose he is one of those men who places all their consequence on being liked. I could not oblige him in this, but nor could I fight him, and, as it was less exertion to go along with his cajoling, I named myself to him, and told him my direction.

  ‘I will put this up on Sadie,’ he said decidedly, clutching the cabbages to him. ‘Rob, you will hold it, there, and no nonsense from you – I do not believe they have more than one or two slugs on them, so you will not mind it – and we will go along together. If,’ he said, for the seventh or eighth time, ‘you are quite sure you are not hurt, Mr Danforth? And are fit to walk?’

  ‘It is Doctor Danforth. And I am not made of porcelain, I assure you.’ Here my leg gave a twinge which confirmed this statement, but I elected to keep it to myself. Here followed an encomium on doctors, and his assurances to me that I must be a clever fellow indeed. For he himself could not keep to his books, which was a good thing, very likely, since he was to be a farmer, and farmers would do no good with that sort of stuff in their heads. And also his sisters – six of them, could I imagine the trials he endured? – must be provided for – here a little gloom clouded his bright brow – that could not be done through learning or universities – it took too long – it made one fit only for indoor work. No, it must be instant yields, of hay, wheat, and the rearing of ruby reds.

  ‘And little Robert – so that makes eight of us all told, Dr Danforth – who is a mischief, if ever I saw one. He’d best learn to knuckle under!’

  ‘I will be a butler,’ said Robert with a plump frown. ‘Not a farmer. Farming is dirty.’

  ‘Is it so, mischief?’ said Henry Gilmore, and reached up to clip him about the ear. Turning back to me he went on, ‘My sisters are of such unfortunate relation in age; the youngest, Rebecca, is eight and is only now coming into her magpiedom. She has the trinkets which have been through five others before her. And Sarah, the oldest, always needs new, but will not have them, through some sentiment, which she calls conscience – she gives her pin money instead to buy blades for the plough, if you will. Nothing is bought, all is transformed, from one thing to another, like something out of those indecent Greek tales: a shawl to a muff, a dress ribbon to bind a hat; we live in a lively atmosphere of imagination, barter and exchange. I believe that they could contrive anything from a scrap of fabric and a hatpin.’

  I had no answer to this sally, not being familiar with the ways of nice females, and we went on.

  Mr Gilmore was an entertaining companion, I suppose, to those who care for such things. His talk was light and full of interest in the doings of the world and those in it; however it was impossible to keep him to one subject for longer than a moment, and his talk flowed freely, with the idle brightness of a stream, over innumerable topics: the slight indisposition of the Queen, and the price of corn, and the wisdom of enclosures. To know just a little about so many things – it cannot make for resolute character. I prefer a mind more sober, of a more uniform hue; Mr Gilmore is a motley piece. But he asks for one’s thoughts in so deferential a manner – with such an ingenuous air and such a cherubic countenance! – that I was led into feeling that my opinion held the gravest weight, and it would be churlish to refuse it in a quarter where it was esteemed so highly.

  I found, as we went through Dartmeet and the outlying cottages, that he sacrificed all his acquaintance on the same altar as his unfortunate sisters: he was an incurable gossip; we could not pass one homestead set on a distant hill but he would point to it and inform me that the eldest girl was enamoured of the blacksmith at Bovey Tracey, and her family did not look well on it since he was a lad of the first kind … And Townall there, in that stone house, had been weighting the scales at sheep shearing for years, and made a profit out of it – which he was going to spend on a cottage for his mother at Dartmouth, so no one had the heart to complain, except Miss Poole, who taught the school, and she said she would report him at Assizes … It was all harmless enough, and there was such a lively humour and lack of malice in his utterances that it s
eemed impossible to quell him. So it went on, until we passed a gate hung with late, fragrant roses, and here he slowed to a halt.

  ‘And here,’ he said, looking at the gate, ‘here lives Mrs Gowan … and Miss Charlotte Gowan.’ And he paused in the lane with such an expression on his face that I paused too. Finding the sudden cessation of such a copious and generous outpouring of confidence as unnerving as I had done its beginning, I asked, what of the Gowans? He shrugged. The mother … she was well enough although …

  ‘And Miss Gowan?’

  ‘She is the best girl in the world,’ he said simply.

  ‘Henry is soft on her,’ said Robert, breaking his thumb-struck silence. ‘Soft! Never saw anything like it.’

  ‘You settle, you,’ said Henry. The words were mild enough but his face was crestfallen. When I sought to turn his mood and offer him my felicitations he only shrugged, and turned the subject. I saw a stern reserve in his face, which sat so oddly in a countenance not designed for it that I was hard put not to laugh.

  ‘You are young yet to be thinking of such things.’

  ‘I am six and twenty,’ he said, turning to me quickly, with the sternness abated not a bit. I was, I own, surprised. I had thought him not yet twenty. I murmured some apology for prying in his business (although in truth it was proffered to me on a platter). He laughed, then, and slapped me on the back.

  ‘You will understand, Danforth,’ he said, ‘if you do not already! Presently, or some day, you will understand!’ Such is the force of his good nature and open ways that I could not be affronted by this presumption, but looked, I fancy, a trifle sheepish, and desired him to not beat me any further, as I had taken a good drubbing today already at his hands, at which he laughed even harder.

  When we reached the path that leads down to Rawblood, through the orchard, he made as if to go on, and I detained him, with some word of thanks. He looked at me curiously.

  ‘Do you stop here?’ he asked.

  ‘Why yes, my host is Alonso Villarca. Whom you may know.’ I waited to see what pearls would fall.

  He rubbed his head and said, ‘I had forgotten that it is now called Rawblood. For you know it was Dempsey House, before.’

  ‘But that must have been fifty years ago.’

  ‘Arr, ’tis not over long in these here parts!’ He affected an accent and an air that reminded me irresistibly of Shakes. ‘I had not recalled … I thought you meant Two Bridges, over the way.’

  ‘Why should I not stay here?’

  ‘You may, of course. But no one else chooses to, and Mrs Hitchens, who was the housekeeper, whose daughter married a corn chandler in Exeter—’

  ‘Yes, yes, very well!’

  ‘She stayed until the last, she says. For having had employment there with Mr Villarca’s mother and father she wished to, and because of having known Mr Villarca since he was a baby. But she could not stomach it, and left, too, in the end.’

  I exclaimed. I felt for Alonso. It was no wonder that he cherished a strong consciousness of the small-mindedness of the English.

  ‘If they choose to go, that is their affair. I will not presume to judge the promptings of another man’s conscience. But what Alonso does is for the benefit of all, of medicine, and of England …’ I heard myself going on in this fashion, and was obliged to pull myself up when I realised I was repeating a large part of Alonso’s speech to me in the cellar. Mr Gilmore looked at me in puzzlement.

  ‘Oh, the experiments? But they did not care for that, indeed,’ he said. ‘For Mr Villarca has had fits like that since he came back from the university, and they are all devilish fond of him. No, that would not have troubled them. It was the other thing which sent them off.’

  ‘What other thing?’ I asked, in no small exasperation, for I had expended a good deal of passion on what I perceived to be an unappreciative audience.

  ‘It was – well! – they got the priest to the house.’

  ‘For illness? For what cause?’

  Here Robert, who had been occupied with pulling hairs out of Sadie’s mane, piped up. ‘For the haunting of it,’ he said in his high voice. ‘For the Rawblood Ghost!’ and settled back to his task, cherubic face intent.

  Henry Gilmore nodded, and turned serious eyes on me. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘it was so.’

  I was so taken aback by this piece of village mummery that for a moment I could not find a thing to say. Presently I found my voice. ‘I have known Mr Villarca these twenty years – more! Those who held household positions for my friend seemed in fact excessively happy with their lot, and with the house, and with their master. I think it very wrong, Mr Gilmore, to put about such things. Why, Alonso cannot get another servant to wait on him! That country people believe in such things, and can take a sudden whim into their heads – well, it is due to small knowledge of the world, and cannot be helped. But that you, a man with pretensions to gentility, should repeat to me this piece of nonsense – it is beyond anything. I will ask you not to spread such a tale – for all the good it may do! – and avoid further damaging my friend’s comfort and position here.’

  ‘He has done that himself, Doctor Danforth, if you will forgive me.’ He sighed, and turned his face to the sun, as if to gain some strength from it. He is a remarkable sight in a Devon village, to be sure – the planes of his face, and those curls of guinea gold, shining in the afternoon light – he belongs on a frieze in the Parthenon, not standing in shabby gaiters on an English hillside. ‘You cannot argue with local opinion,’ he said.

  ‘And what is local opinion’s opinion?’ I allowed the scorn to enter my voice.

  ‘It is like this. After the Villarcas, that is the old master and his lady, were taken in those shocking and horrible circumstances it affected this district for some time after. You may be sure the name Rawblood was a watchword for notoriety. But as for Mr Villarca the younger, there was great sadness for his sake, in these parts. Folk were resolved to be kind to him. For he was but a lad, my father says, and a pleasant one, although full of freaks. They see him as a Devon boy, you know. As one of their own. Or rather, they did. And he came to manhood and went to the university, and was set to be a doctor, and all seemed well.’

  ‘I have been here in years past,’ I said, moved despite myself, ‘and Rawblood seemed home to him indeed.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Henry Gilmore with an inflection I could not place. ‘I had heard you and he would spend a deal of time together here, in those days.

  ‘But then, of a sudden he abandoned his study. He went off to Italy with barely a word to anyone. And was not seen or heard of for nigh-on twenty years! It was a great sadness to those who had seen him grow from boy to man. All the household kept on full pay, mind, as though he were expected any minute. If folk did not know before that the Villarca purse is deep – why, they know it now.

  ‘Then but a few months ago there came the word of his return. Late August, that was. You can imagine the hubbub! There was a bustle, and deliveries, and linen aired, and peculiar things in boxes carried to the cellar, and someone set to hack at the brambles on the drive. There was quite a joyful scramble. Rawblood was to be set up again! We were most glad, in Dartmeet and all around. For it is not good to let a house stand empty so long. It makes the stones and the walls strange – mad. And do not tell me that houses have no feelings, all their own.

  ‘Then Mr Villarca arrived himself. Well. You have seen his face, Doctor Danforth. I do not need to tell you that he is a horror. He is fearful to look on. As if his years numbered seventy, not barely above forty. It is not his looks alone; he is wrong. He speaks to people who are not there. He rages and curses in the night, in place of sleep. There is something amiss. The household began to have great misgivings. It is as if a different man sits in his body. Some said, is it indeed young Mr Villarca? Or is it an imposter, like in a story, come to take his inheritance?

  ‘Strange things were afoot within the house. It put fright into people. As a natural consequence, they began to recall the happ
enings that took place all those years ago in his father’s time … Mr Villarca answered their fears with grim words, or with silence. And the priest did no good; indeed, it seemed to make matters worse. And at last those who worked at Rawblood took their leave. He is alone again. Perhaps that is how he likes it.

  ‘Now, no terrible things passed in that place –’ Henry Gilmore waved a hand at Rawblood, which lay below us, snug in the folds of the hill – ‘when the Dempseys were there, albeit the younger Mr Dempsey by all accounts was not a saint, and acquitted himself in a rare way among the village girls – it is said that there is more than one strapping young man in Dartmeet who bears a remarkable look of the squire – but as for that, why, does one expect anything else? Some say now that the Villarcas never should have been allowed to come here – although how old Ned thinks he could have prevented them I do not know – but is there perhaps something to it? When foreigners come here they bring their own things with them, do they not, that may be strange to us – whether it be a new way of cooking a lamb, or a language, or something else which you might not want them to bring.’

  I was conscious of the echo of my own thoughts concerning Alonso and his rights to his nation. I replied with more heat than I should have done. ‘You are very mysterious, and like to coax my interest with hints of terrible things, Mr Gilmore, but you have so far offered me no more than suspicions unworthy of a young gentleman – you have in short acquitted yourself no better than a woman, gossiping of indiscretion in a tea room. You cloak the matter in intrigue and hint at direful conclusions, and tell me nothing. Perhaps you wish me to be frightened or impressed, and I can assure you that it is not so – no, no more, sir. I bid you good evening.’