CHAPTER V
RANULPH GOES TO THE WIDOW GIBBERTY'S FARM
But Endymion Leer was right. Reason is only a drug, and its effects cannot be permanent. Master Nathaniel was soon suffering from life-sickness as much as ever.
For one thing, there was no denying that in the voice of Endymion Leer singing to Ranulph, he had once again heard the Note; and the fact tormented him, reason with himself as he might.
But it was not sufficient to make him distrust Endymion Leer—one might hear the Note, he was convinced, in the voices of the most innocent; just as the mocking cry of the cuckoo can rise from the nest of the lark or the hedge sparrow. But he was certainly not going to let him take Ranulph away to that western farm.
And yet the boy was longing, nay craving to go, for Endymion Leer, when he had been left alone with him in the parlour that morning, had fired his imagination with its delights.
When Master Nathaniel questioned him as to what other things Endymion Leer had talked about, he said that he had asked him a great many questions about the stranger in green he had seen dancing, and had made him repeat to him several times what exactly he had said to him.
"Then," said Ranulph, "he said he would sing me well and happy. And I was just beginning to feel so wonderful, when you came bursting in, father."
"I'm sorry, my boy," said Master Nathaniel. "But why did you first of all scream so and beg not to be left alone with him?"
Ranulph wriggled and hung his head. "I suppose it was like the cheese," he said sheepishly. "But, father, I want to go to that farm. Please let me go."
For several weeks Master Nathaniel steadily refused his consent. He kept the boy with him as much as his business and his official duties would permit, trying to find for him occupations and amusements that would teach him a "different tune." For Endymion Leer's words, in spite of their having had so little effect on his spiritual condition, had genuinely and permanently impressed him. However, he could not but see that Ranulph was daily wilting and that his talk was steadily becoming more fantastic; and he began to fear that his own objection to letting him go to the farm sprang merely from a selfish desire to keep him with him.
Hempie, oddly enough, was in favour of his going. The old woman's attitude to the whole affair was a curious one. Nothing would make her believe that it was not fairy fruit that Willy Wisp had given him. She said she had suspected it from the first, but to have mentioned it would have done no good to anyone.
"If it wasn't that what was it then?" she would ask scornfully. "For what is Willy Wisp himself? He left his place—and his wages not paid, too, during the twelve nights of Yule-tide. And when dog or servant leaves, sudden like, at that time, we all know what to think."
"And what are we to think, Hempie?" enquired Master Nathaniel.
At first the old woman would only shake her head and look mysterious. But finally she told him that it was believed in the country districts that, should there be a fairy among the servants, he was bound to return to his own land on one of the twelve nights after the winter solstice; and should there be among the dogs one that belonged to Duke Aubrey's pack, during these nights he would howl and howl, till he was let out of his kennel, and then vanish into the darkness and never be seen again.
Master Nathaniel grunted with impatience.
"Well, it was you dragged the words from my lips, and though you are the Mayor and the Lord High Seneschal, you can't come lording it over my thoughts ... I've a right to them!" cried Hempie, indignantly.
"My good Hempie, if you really believe the boy has eaten ... a certain thing, all I can say is you seem very cheerful about it," growled Master Nathaniel.
"And what good would it do my pulling a long face and looking like one of the old statues in the fields of Grammary I should like to know?" flashed back Hempie. And then she added, with a meaning nod, "Besides, whatever happens, no harm can ever come to a Chanticleer. While Lud stands the Chanticleers will thrive. So come rough, come smooth, you won't find me worrying. But if I was you, Master Nat, I'd give the boy his way. There's nothing like his own way for a sick person—be he child or grown man. His own way to a sick man is what grass is to a sick dog."
Hempie's opinion influenced Master Nathaniel more than he would like to admit; but it was a talk he had with Mumchance, the captain of the Lud Yeomanry, that finally induced him to let Ranulph have his way.
The Yeomanry combined the duties of a garrison with those of a police corps, and Master Nathaniel had charged their captain to try and find the whereabouts of Willy Wisp.
It turned out that the rogue was quite familiar to the Yeomanry, and Mumchance confirmed what Endymion Leer had said about his having turned the town upside down with his pranks during the few months he had been in Master Nathaniel's service. But since his disappearance at Yule-tide, nothing had been seen or heard of him in Lud-in-the-Mist, and Mumchance could find no traces of him.
Master Nathaniel fumed and grumbled a little at the inefficiency of the Yeomanry; but, at the bottom of his heart he was relieved. He had a lurking fear that Hempie was right and Endymion Leer was wrong, and that it had really been fairy fruit after all that Ranulph had eaten. But it is best to let sleeping facts lie. And he feared that if confronted with Willy Wisp the facts might wake up and begin to bite. But what was this that Mumchance was telling him?
It would seem that during the past months there had been a marked increase in the consumption of fairy fruit—in the low quarters of town, of course.
"It's got to be stopped, Mumchance, d'ye hear?" cried Master Nathaniel hotly. "And what's more, the smugglers must be caught and clapped into gaol, every mother's son of them. This has gone on too long."
"Yes, your Worship," said Mumchance stolidly, "it went on in the time of my predecessor, if your Worship will pardon the expression" (Mumchance was very fond of using long words, but he had a feeling that it was presumption to use them before his betters), "and in the days of his predecessor ... and way back. And it's no good trying to be smarter than our forebears. I sometimes think we might as well try and catch the Dapple and clap it into prison as them smugglers. But these are sad times, your Worship, sad times—the 'prentices wanting to be masters, and every little tradesman wanting to be a Senator, and every dirty little urchin thinking he can give impudence to his betters! You see, your Worship, I sees and hears a good deal in my way of business, if you'll pardon the expression ... but the things one's eyes and ears tells one, they ain't in words, so to speak, and it's not easy to tell other folks what they say ... no more than the geese can tell you how they know it's going to rain," and he laughed apologetically. "But I shouldn't be surprised—no, I shouldn't, if there wasn't something brewing."
"By the Sun, Moon, and Stars, Mumchance, don't speak in riddles!" cried Master Nathaniel irritably. "What d'ye mean?"
Mumchance shifted uneasily from one foot to the other: "Well, your Worship," he began, "it's this way. Folks are beginning to take a wonderful interest in Duke Aubrey again. Why, all the girls are wearing bits of tawdry jewelry with his picture, and bits of imitation ivy and squills stuck in their bonnets, and there ain't a poor street in this town where all the cockatoos that the sailors bring don't squawk at you from their cages that the Duke will come to his own again ... or some such rubbish, and...."
"My good Mumchance!" cried Master Nathaniel, impatiently, "Duke Aubrey was a rascally sovereign who died more than two hundred years ago. You don't believe he's going to come to life again, do you?"
"I don't say that he will, your Worship," answered Mumchance evasively. "But all I know is that when Lud begins talking about him, it generally bodes trouble. I remember how old Tripsand, he who was Captain of the Yeomanry when I was a little lad, used always to say that there was a deal of that sort of talk before the great drought."
"Fiddlesticks!" cried Master Nathaniel.
Mumchance's theories about Duke Aubrey he immediately dismissed from his mind. But he was very much disturbed by what he had said about fairy fruit, and began to think that Endymion Leer had been right in maintaining that Ranulph would be further from temptation at Swan-on-the-Dapple than in Lud.
He had another interview with Leer, and the long and short of it was that it was decided that as soon as Dame Marigold and Hempie could get Ranulph ready he should set out for the widow Gibberty's farm. Endymion Leer said that he wanted to look for herbs in the neighbourhood, and would be very willing to escort him there.
Master Nathaniel, of course, would much have preferred to have gone with him himself; but it was against the law for the Mayor to leave Lud, except on circuit. In his stead, he decided to send Luke Hempen, old Hempie's grand-nephew. He was a lad of about twenty, who worked in the garden and had always been the faithful slave of Ranulph.
On a beautiful sunny morning, about a week later, Endymion Leer came riding up to the Chanticleers' to fetch Ranulph, who was impatiently awaiting him, booted and spurred, and looking more like his old self than he had done for months.
Before Ranulph mounted, Master Nathaniel, blinking away a tear or two, kissed him on the forehead and whispered, "The black rooks will fly away, my son, and you'll come back as brown as a berry, and as merry as a grig. And if you want me, just send a word by Luke, and I'll be with you as fast as horses can gallop—law or no law." And from her latticed window at the top of the house appeared the head and shoulders of old Hempie in her nightcap, shaking her fist, and crying, "Now then, young Luke, if you don't take care of my boy—you'll catch it!"
Many a curious glance was cast at the little cavalcade as they trotted down the cobbled streets. Miss Lettice and Miss Rosie Prim, the two buxom daughters of the leading watchmaker who were returning from their marketing considered that Ranulph looked sweetly pretty on horseback. "Though," added Miss Rosie, "they do say he's a bit ... queer, and it is a pity, I must say, that he's got the Mayor's ginger hair."
"Well, Rosie," retorted Miss Lettice, "at least he doesn't cover it up with a black wig, like a certain apprentice I know!"
And Rosie laughed, and tossed her head.
A great many women, as they watched them pass, called down blessings on the head of Endymion Leer; adding that it was a pity that he was not Mayor and High Seneschal. And several rough-looking men scowled ominously at Ranulph. But Mother Tibbs, the half-crazy old washerwoman, who, in spite of her forty summers danced more lightly than any maiden, and was, in consequence, in great request as a partner at those tavern dances that played so great a part in the life of the masses in Lud-in-the-Mist—crazy, disreputable, Mother Tibbs, with her strangely noble innocent face, tossed him a nosegay and cried in her sing-song penetrating voice, "Cockadoodle doo! Cockadoodle doo! The little master's bound for the land where the eggs are all gold!"
But no one ever paid any attention to what Mother Tibbs might say.
Nothing worth mentioning occurred during their journey to Swan; except the endless pleasant things of the country in summer. There were beech spinneys, wading up steep banks through their own dead leaves; fields all blurred with meadow-sweet and sorrel; brown old women screaming at their goats; acacias in full flower, and willows blown by the wind into white blossom.
From time to time, terrestrial comets—the blue flash of a kingfisher, the red whisk of a fox—would furrow and thrill the surface of the earth with beauty.
And in the distance, here and there, standing motionless and in complete silence by the flowing Dapple, were red-roofed villages—the least vain of all fair things, for they never looked at their own reflection in the water, but gazed unblinkingly at the horizon.
And there were ruined castles covered with ivy—the badge of the old order, clinging to its own; and into the ivy doves dived, seeming to leave in their wake a trail of amethyst, just as a clump of bottle-green leaves is shot with purple by the knowledge that it hides violets. And the round towers of the castles looked as if they were so firmly encrusted in the sky that, to get to their other side, one would have to hew out a passage through the celestial marble.
And the sun would set, and then our riders could watch the actual process of colour fading from the world. Was that tree still really green, or was it only that they were remembering how a few seconds ago it had been green?
And the nymph whom all travellers pursue and none has ever yet caught—the white high-road, glimmered and beckoned to them through the dusk.
All these things, however, were familiar sights to any Ludite. But on the third day (for Ranulph's sake they were taking the journey in easy stages) things began to look different—especially the trees; for instead of acacias, beeches, and willows—familiar living things for ever murmuring their secret to themselves—there were pines and liege-oaks and olives. Inanimate works of art they seemed at first and Ranulph exclaimed, "Oh, look at the funny trees! They are like the old statues of dead people in the Fields of Grammary!"
But, as well, they were like an old written tragedy. For if human, or superhuman, experience, and the tragic clash of personality can be expressed by plastic shapes, then one might half believe that these tortured trees had been bent by the wind into the spiritual shape of some old drama.
Pines and olives, however, cannot grow far away from the sea. And surely the sea lay to the east of Lud-in-the-Mist, and with each mile they were getting further away from it? It was the sea beyond the Hills of the Elfin Marches—the invisible sea of Fairyland—that caused these pines and olives to flourish.
It was late in the afternoon when they reached the village of Swan-on-the-Dapple—a score of houses straggling round a triangle of unreclaimed common, on which grew olives and stunted fruit trees, and which was used as the village rubbish heap. In the distance were the low, pine-covered undulations of the Debatable Hills—a fine unchanging background for the changing colours of the seasons. Indeed, they lent a dignity and significance to everything that grew, lay, or was enacted, against them; so that the little children in their blue smocks who were playing among the rubbish on the dingy common as our cavalcade rode past, seemed to be performing against the background of Destiny some tremendous action, similar to the one expressed by the shapes of the pines and olives.
When they had left the village, they took a cart-track that branched off from the high-road to the right. It led into a valley, the gently sloping sides of which were covered with vineyards and corn-fields. Sometimes their path led through a little wood of liege-oaks with trunks, where the bark had been stripped, showing as red as blood, and everywhere there were short, wiry, aromatic shrubs, beset by myriads of bees.
Every minute the hills seemed to be drawing nearer, and the pines with which they were covered began to stand out from the carpet of heath in a sort of coagulated relief, so that they looked like a thick green scum of watercress on a stagnant purple pond.
At last they reached the farm—a fine old manor-house, standing among a cluster of red-roofed barns, and supported, heraldically, on either side by two magnificent plane-trees, with dappled trunks of tremendous girth.
They were greeted by the barking of five or six dogs, and this brought the widow hurrying out accompanied by a pretty girl of about seventeen whom she introduced as her granddaughter Hazel.
Though she must have been at least sixty by then, the widow Gibberty was still a strikingly handsome woman—tall, imposing-looking, and with hair that must once have had as many shades of red and brown as a bed of wallflowers smouldering in the sun.
Then a couple of men came up and led away the horses, and the travellers were taken up to their rooms.
As befitted the son of the High Seneschal, the one given to Ranulph was evidently the best. It was large and beautifully proportioned, and in spite of its homely chintzes and the plain furniture of a farm-house, in spite even of the dried rushes laid on the floor instead of a carpet, it bore unmistakable traces of the ancient magnificence when the house had belonged to nobles instead of farmers.
For instance, the ceiling was a fine specimen of the flat enamelled ceilings that belonged to the Duke Aubrey period in domestic architecture. There was just such a ceiling in Dame Marigold's bedroom in Lud. She had stared up at it when in travail with Ranulph—just as all the mothers of the Chanticleers had done in the same circumstances—and its colours and pattern had become inextricably confused with her pain and delirium.
Endymion Leer was put next to Ranulph, and Luke was given a large pleasant room in the attic.
Ranulph was not in the least tired by his long ride, he said. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright, and when the widow had left him alone with Luke, he gave two or three skips of glee, and cried, "I do love this place, Luke." At six o'clock a loud bell was rung outside the house, presumably to summon the labourers to supper; and, as the widow had told them it would be in the kitchen, Ranulph and Luke, both feeling very hungry, went hurrying down.
It was an enormous kitchen, running the whole length of the house; in the olden days it had been the banqueting hall. It was solidly stone-vaulted, and the great chimney place was also of stone, and decorated in high relief with the skulls and flowers and arabesques of leaves ubiquitous in the art of Dorimare. It was flanked by giant fire-dogs of copper. The floor was tiled with a mosaic of brown and red and grey-blue flag-stones.
Down the centre of the room ran a long narrow table laid with pewter plates and mugs, for the labourers and maid servants who came flocking in, their faces shining from recent soap and scrubbing, and stood about in groups at the lower end of the room, grinning and bashful from the presence of company. According to the good old yeoman custom they had their meals with their masters.
It was a most delicious supper—a great ham with the aromatic flavour of wood-smoke, eaten with pickled cowslips; brawn; a red-deer pie; and, in honour of the distinguished guests, a fat roast swan. The wine was from the widow's own grapes and was flavoured with honey and blackberries.
Most of the talking was done by the widow and Endymion Leer. He was asking her if many trout had been caught that summer in the Dapple, and what were their markings. And she told him that a salmon had recently been landed weighing ten pounds.
Ranulph, who had been munching away in silence, suddenly looked up at them, with that little smile of his that people always found a trifle disconcerting.
"That isn't real talk," he said. "That isn't the way you really talk to each other. That's only pretence talk." The widow looked very surprised and very much annoyed. But Endymion Leer laughed heartily and asked him what he meant by "real talk;" Ranulph, however, would not be drawn.
But Luke Hempen, in a dim inarticulate way, understood what he meant. The conversation between the widow and the doctor had not rung true; it was almost as if their words had a double meaning known only to themselves.
A few minutes later, a wizened old man with very bright eyes came into the room and sat down at the lower end of the table. And then Ranulph really did give everyone a fright, for he stopped eating, and for a few seconds stared at him in silence. Then he gave a piercing scream.
All eyes turned toward him in amazement. But he sat as if petrified, his eyes round and staring, pointing at the old man. "Come, come, young fellow!" cried Endymion Leer, sharply; "what's the meaning of this?"
"What ails you, little master?" cried the widow.
But he continued pointing in silence at the old man, who was leering and smirking and ogling, in evident delight at being the centre of attention.
"He's scared by Portunus, the weaver," tittered the maids.
And the words "Portunus," "old Portunus the weaver," were bandied from mouth to mouth down the two sides of the table.
"Yes, Portunus, the weaver," cried the widow, in a loud voice, a hint of menace in her eye. "And who, I should like to know, does not love Portunus, the weaver?"
The maids hung their heads, the men sniggered deprecatingly.
"Well?" challenged the widow.
Silence.
"And who," she continued indignantly, "is the handiest most obliging fellow to be found within twenty miles?"
She glared down the table, and then repeated her question.
As if compelled by her eye, the company murmured "Portunus."
"And if the cheeses won't curdle, or the butter won't come, or the wine in the vats won't get a good head, who comes to the rescue?"
"Portunus," murmured the company.
"And who is always ready to lend a helping hand to the maids—to break or bolt hemp, to dress flax, or to spin? And when their work is over to play them tunes on his fiddle?"
"Portunus," murmured the company.
Suddenly Hazel raised her eyes from her plate and they were sparkling with defiance and anger.
"And who," she cried shrilly, "sits by the fire when he thinks no one is watching him roasting little live frogs and eating them? Portunus."
With each word her voice rose higher, like a soaring bird. But at the last word it was as if the bird when it had reached the ceiling suddenly fell down dead. And Luke saw her flinch under the cold indignant stare of the widow.
And he had noticed something else as well.
It was the custom in Dorimare, in the houses of the yeomanry and the peasantry, to hang a bunch of dried fennel over the door of every room; for fennel was supposed to have the power of keeping the Fairies. And when Ranulph had given his eerie scream, Luke had, as instinctively as in similar circumstances a mediaeval papist would have made the sign of the Cross, glanced towards the door to catch a reassuring glimpse of the familiar herb.
But there was no fennel hanging over the door of the widow Gibberty.
The men grinned, the maids tittered at Hazel's outburst; and then there was an awkward silence.
In the meantime, Ranulph seemed to have recovered from his fright and was going on stolidly with his supper, while the widow was saying to him reassuringly, "Mark my words, little master, you'll get to love Portunus as much as we all do. Trust Portunus for knowing where the trout rise and where all the birds' nests are to be found ... eh, Portunus?"
And Portunus chuckled with delight and his bright eyes twinkled.
"Why," the widow continued, "I have known him these twenty years. He's the weaver in these parts, and goes the round from farm to farm, and the room with the loom is always called 'Portunus' Parlour.' And there isn't a wedding or a merry-making within twenty miles where he doesn't play the fiddle."
Luke, whose perceptions owing to the fright he had just had were unusually alert, noticed that Endymion Leer was very silent, and that his face as he watched Ranulph was puzzled and a little anxious.
When supper was over the maids and labourers vanished, and so did Portunus; but the three guests sat on, listening to the pleasant whirr of the widow's and Hazel's spinning-wheels, saying but little, for the long day in the open air had made all three of them sleepy.
At eight o'clock a little scrabbling noise was heard at the door. "That's the children," said Hazel, and she went and opened it, upon which three or four little boys came bashfully in from the dusk.
"Good evening, my lads," said the widow, genially. "Come for your bread and cheese ... eh?"
The children grinned and hung their heads, abashed by the sight of three strangers.
"The little lads of the village, Master Chanticleer, take it in turn to watch our cattle all night," said the widow to Ranulph. "We keep them some miles away along the valley where there is good pasturage, and the herdsman likes to come back to his own home at night."
"And these little boys are going to be out all night?" asked Ranulph in an awed voice.
"That they are! And a fine time they'll have of it too. They build themselves little huts out of branches and light fires in them. Oh, they enjoy themselves."
The children grinned from ear to ear; and when Hazel had provided each of them with some bread and cheese they scuttled off into the gathering dusk.
"I'd like to go some night, too," said Ranulph.
The widow was beginning to expostulate against the idea of young Master Chanticleer's spending the night out of doors with cows and village children, when Endymion Leer said, decidedly, "That's all nonsense! I don't want my patient coddled ... eh! Ranulph? I see no reason why he shouldn't go some night if it amuses him. But wait till the nights are warmer."
He paused just a second, and added, "towards Midsummer, let us say."
They sat on a little longer; saying but little, yawning a great deal. And then the widow suggested that they should all go off to bed.
There were home-made tallow candles provided for everyone, except Ranulph, whose social importance was emphasised by a wax one from Lud.
Endymion Leer lit it for him, and then held it at arm's length and contemplated its flame, his head on one side, eyes twinkling.
"Thrice blessed little herb!" he began in a whimsical voice. "Herb o' grease, with thy waxen stem and blossom of flame! Thou art more potent against spells and terrors and the invisible menace than fennel or dittany or rue. Hail! antidote to the deadly nightshade! Blossoming in the darkness, thy virtues are heartsease and quiet sleep. Sick people bless thee, and women in travail, and people with haunted minds, and all children."
"Don't be a buffoon, Leer," said the widow roughly; in quite a different voice from the one of bluff courtesy in which she had hitherto addressed him. To an acute observer it would have suggested that they were in reality more intimate than they cared to show.
For the first time in his life Luke Hempen had difficulty in getting off to sleep.
His great-aunt had dinned into him for the past week, with many a menacing shake of her old fist, that should anything happen to Master Ranulph she would hold him, Luke, responsible, and even before leaving Lud the honest, but by no means heroic, lad, had been in somewhat of a panic; and the various odd little incidents that had taken place that evening were not of a nature to reassure him.
Finally he could stand it no longer. So up he got, lit his candle, and crept down the attic stairs and along the corridor to Ranulph's room.
Ranulph, too, was wide awake. He had not put out his candle, and was lying staring up at the fantastic ceiling.
"What do you want, Luke?" he cried peevishly. "Why won't anyone ever leave me alone?"
"I was just wondering if you were all right, sir," said Luke apologetically.
"Of course I am. Why shouldn't I be?" and Ranulph gave an impatient little plunge in his bed.
"Well, I was just wondering, you know."
Luke paused; and then said imploringly, "Please, Master Ranulph, be a good chap and tell me what took you at supper time when that doitered old weaver came in. You gave me quite a turn, screaming like that."
"Ah, Luke! Wouldn't you like to know!" teased Ranulph.
Finally he admitted that when he had been a small child he had frequently seen Portunus in his dreams, "And that's rather frightening, you know, Luke."
Luke, much relieved, admitted that he supposed it was. He himself was not given to dreaming; nor did he take seriously the dreams of others.
Ranulph noticed his relief; and rather an impish expression stole into his eyes.
"But there's something else, Luke," he said. "Old Portunus, you know, is a dead man."
This time Luke was really alarmed. Was his charge going off his head?
"Get along with you, Master Ranulph!" he cried, in a voice that he tried to make jocose.
"All right, Luke, you needn't believe it unless you like," said Ranulph. "Good night, I'm off to sleep."
And he blew out his candle and turned his back on Luke, who, thus dismissed, must needs return to his own bed, where he soon fell fast asleep.