The Young Physician

by Francis Brett Young

“Oh, we won’t be long,” said Mr. Ingleby.

And so they set off together for Highberrow, making, first of all, a straight line for the base of the hills and then following a green lane that skirted the foot of them but was so overshadowed with hazel that the slopes could not be seen. In a mile or so they cut into the main road again, by an iron milestone that said “Bridgwater 18: Bristol 14.” The road climbed along a quarried terrace in the hill-side, and to the left of it lay a deep valley, on the farther slope of which lay half a dozen pink-washed cottages with gardens falling to the bed of an attenuated stream; and behind the cottages a steep hill-side rose abruptly to a bare height crowned with ancient earthworks.

“That,” said Mr. Ingleby, “is Silbury camp. There’s an old rhyme about it. It is supposed to be full of buried gold. When I was a boy I often used to lie up there in the sun, gazing out over the channel. In spring all the meadows between the camp and Highberrow Batch are full of daffodils. I often used to wish there were daffodils in Halesby. . . .”

In a little while they came to the church of Highberrow, placed like a watch-tower on the edge of the Batch, surveying the immense relics of paganism on the opposite side of the valley. It was a humble and not very beautiful building; but Edwin entered the churchyard with awe, for it seemed to him that so much of the past that had made him lay buried there. And the inscriptions on the tombstones reinforced this idea; for the churchyard was veritably crowded with the remains of dead Inglebys. It made the past, a piece of knowledge so recent to him that it still held an atmosphere of unreality and phantasy, so ponderable, that in comparison with it his present condition seemed almost unreal. His father led him through the long grass, starry with yellow ragwort, to the corner in which his grandmother was buried.

“This is the place that I told you about,” he said.

“The place where my grandfather went out at night and blasted the rock?”

“Yes.”

It was incredible. Until that moment the story had been only a legend. Edwin wondered how ever his father could have broken away from the tradition of centuries and left the hills. The roots of their family had pierced so deeply into the soil, yes, even beneath the soil and into the veins of the solid rock. The conditions of his own life seemed to him the tokens of an unnatural and artificial thing.

They left the churchyard by a narrow lane that always climbed. They passed the village inn: a long, windswept building, so bare and so exposed to weather that even the tenure of the lichen on the tiles seemed precarious. Over the lintel a weathered board showed them the name of Ingleby in faded letters. Edwin pointed to it.

“Yes,” said his father. “I suppose he is some remote cousin of yours. Everybody that is left in this village must be related to us in some degree; though I don’t suppose any of them would remember me. You see, I went to Axcombe when I was a good deal younger than you.” He smiled. “I am like a ghost returning to its old home. Like a ghost. . . .”