Master Nathaniel awoke the following morning with a less leaden heart than the circumstances would seem to warrant. In the person of Ranulph an appalling disgrace had come upon him, and there could be no doubt but that Ranulph's life and reason were both in danger. But mingling with his anxiety was the pleasant sense of a new possession—this love for his son that he had suddenly discovered in his heart, and it aroused in him all the pride and the pleasure that a new pony would have done when he was a boy.
Besides, there was that foolish feeling of his that reality was not solid, and that facts were only plastic toys; or, rather, that they were poisonous plants, which you need not pluck unless you choose. And, even if you do pluck them, you can always fling them from you and leave them to wither on the ground.
He would have liked to vent his rage on Willy Wisp. But during the previous winter Willy had mysteriously disappeared. And though a whole month's wages had been owing to him, he had never been seen or heard of since.
However, in spite of his attitude to facts, the sense of responsibility that had been born with this new love for Ranulph forced him to take some action in the matter, and he decided to call in Endymion Leer.
Endymion Leer had arrived in Lud-in-the-Mist some thirty years ago, no one knew from where.
He was a physician, and his practice soon became one of the biggest in the town, but was mainly confined to the tradespeople and the poorer part of the population, for the leading families were conservative, and always a little suspicious of strangers. Besides, they considered him apt to be disrespectful, and his humour had a quality that made them vaguely uncomfortable. For instance, he would sometimes startle a polite company by exclaiming half to himself, "Life and death! Life and death! They are the dyes in which I work. Are my hands stained?" And, with his curious dry chuckle, he would hold them out for inspection.
However, so great was his skill and learning that even the people who disliked him most were forced to consult him in really serious cases.
Among the humbler classes his was a name to conjure with, for he was always ready to adapt his fees to the purses of his patients, and where the purses were empty he gave his services free. For he took a genuine pleasure in the exercise of his craft for its own sake. One of the stories told about him was that one night he had been summoned from his bed to a farm-house that lay several miles beyond the walls of the town, to find when he got there that his patient was only a little black pig, the sole survivor of a valuable litter. But he took the discovery in good part, and settled down for the night to tend the little animal; and by morning he was able to declare it out of danger. When, on his return to Lud-in-the-Mist, he had been twitted for having wasted so much time on such an unworthy object, he had answered that a pig was thrall to the same master as a Mayor, and that it needed as much skill to cure the one as the other; adding that a good fiddler enjoys fiddling for its own sake, and that it is all the same to him whether he plays at a yokel's wedding or a merchant's funeral.
He did not confine his interests to medicine. Though not himself by birth a Dorimarite, there was little concerning the ancient customs of his adopted country that he did not know; and some years ago he had been asked by the Senate to write the official history of the Guild Hall, which, before the revolution, had been the palace of the Dukes, and was the finest monument in Lud-in-the-Mist. To this task he had for some time devoted his scanty leisure.
The Senators had no severer critic than Endymion Leer, and he was the originator of most of the jokes at their expense that circulated in Lud-in-the-Mist. But to Master Nathaniel Chanticleer he seemed to have a personal antipathy; and on the rare occasions when they met his manner was almost insolent.
It was possible that this dislike was due to the fact that Ranulph when he was a tiny boy had seriously offended him; for pointing his fat little finger at him he had shouted in his shrill baby voice:
"Before the cry of ChanticleerGibbers away Endymion Leer."
"Before the cry of ChanticleerGibbers away Endymion Leer."
"Before the cry of Chanticleer
Gibbers away Endymion Leer."
When his mother had scolded him for his rudeness, he said that he had been taught the rhyme by a funny old man he had seen in his dreams. Endymion Leer had gone deadly white—with rage, Dame Marigold supposed; and during several years he never referred to Ranulph except in a voice of suppressed spite.
But that was years ago, and it was to be presumed that he had at last forgotten what had, after all, been nothing but a piece of childish impudence.
The idea of confiding to this upstart the disgraceful thing that had happened to a Chanticleer was very painful to Master Nathaniel. But if anyone could cure Ranulph it was Endymion Leer, so Master Nathaniel pocketed his pride and asked him to come and see him.
As Master Nathaniel paced up and down his pipe-room (as his private den was called) waiting for the doctor, the full horror of what had happened swept over him. Ranulph had committed the unmentionable crime—he had eaten fairy fruit. If it ever became known—and these sort of things always did become known—the boy would be ruined socially for ever. And, in any case, his health would probably be seriously affected for years to come. Up and down like a see-saw went the two aspects of the case in his anxious mind ... a Chanticleer had eaten fairy fruit; little Ranulph was in danger.
Then the page announced Endymion Leer.
He was a little rotund man of about sixty, with a snub nose, a freckled face, and with one eye blue and the other brown.
As Master Nathaniel met his shrewd, slightly contemptuous glance he had an uncomfortable feeling which he had often before experienced in his presence, namely that the little man could read his thoughts. So he did not beat about the bush, but told him straight away why he had called him in.
Endymion Leer gave a low whistle. Then he shot at Master Nathaniel a look that was almost menacing and said sharply, "Who gave him the stuff?"
Master Nathaniel told him it was a lad who had once been in his service called Willy Wisp.
"Willy Wisp?" cried the doctor hoarsely. "Willy Wisp?"
"Yes, Willy Wisp ... confound him for a double-dyed villain," said Master Nathaniel fiercely. And then added in some surprise, "Do you know him?"
"Know him? Yes, I know him. Who doesn't know Willy Wisp?" said the doctor. "You see not being a merchant or a Senator," he added with a sneer, "I can mix with whom I choose. Willy Wisp with his pranks was the plague of the town while he was in it, and his Worship the Mayor wasn't altogether blessed by the townsfolk for keeping such a rascally servant."
"Well, anyway, when I next meet him I'll thrash him within an inch of his life," cried Master Nathaniel violently; and Endymion Leer looked at him with a queer little smile.
"And now you'd better take me to see your son and heir," he said, after a pause.
"Do you ... do you think you'll be able to cure him?" Master Nathaniel asked hoarsely, as he led the way to the parlour.
"I never answer that kind of question before I've seen the patient, and not always then," answered Endymion Leer.
Ranulph was lying on a couch in the parlour, and Dame Marigold was sitting embroidering, her face pale and a little defiant. She was still feeling every inch a Vigil and full of resentment against the two Chanticleers, father and son, for having involved her in this horrible business.
Poor Master Nathaniel stood by, faint with apprehension, while Endymion Leer examined Ranulph's tongue, felt his pulse and, at the same time, asked him minute questions as to his symptoms.
Finally he turned to Master Nathaniel and said, "I want to be left alone with him. He will talk to me more easily without you and your dame. Doctors should always see their patients alone."
But Ranulph gave a piercing shriek of terror. "No, no, no!" he cried. "Father! Father! Don't leave me with him."
And then he fainted.
Master Nathaniel began to lose his head, and to buzz and bang again like a cockchafer. But Endymion Leer remained perfectly calm. And the man who remains calm inevitably takes command of a situation. Master Nathaniel found himself gently but firmly pushed out of his own parlour, and the door locked in his face. Dame Marigold had followed him, and there was nothing for them to do but to await the doctor's good pleasure in the pipe-room.
"By the Sun, Moon, and Stars, I'm going back!" cried Master Nathaniel wildly. "I don't trust that fellow, I'm not going to leave Ranulph alone with him, I'm going back."
"Oh, nonsense, Nat!" cried Dame Marigold wearily. "Do please be calm. One really must allow a doctor to have his way."
For about a quarter of an hour Master Nathaniel paced the room with ill-concealed impatience.
The parlour was opposite the pipe-room, with only a narrow passage between them, and as Master Nathaniel had opened the door of the pipe-room, he soon was able to hear a murmur of voices proceeding from the parlour. This was comforting, for it showed that Ranulph must have come to.
Then, suddenly, his whole body seemed to stiffen, the pupils of his eyes dilated, he went ashy white, and in a low terrified voice he cried, "Marigold, do you hear?"
In the parlour somebody was singing. It was a pretty, plaintive air, and if one listened carefully one could distinguish the words.
"And can the physician make sick men well,And can the magician a fortune divineWithout lily, germander, and sops in wine?With sweet-brier,And bon-fire,And strawberry-wire,And columbine."
"And can the physician make sick men well,And can the magician a fortune divineWithout lily, germander, and sops in wine?With sweet-brier,And bon-fire,And strawberry-wire,And columbine."
"And can the physician make sick men well,
And can the magician a fortune divine
Without lily, germander, and sops in wine?
With sweet-brier,
And bon-fire,
And strawberry-wire,
And columbine."
"Good gracious, Nat!" cried Dame Marigold, with a mocking look of despair. "What on earth is the matter now?"
"Marigold! Marigold!" he cried hoarsely, seizing her wrists, "don't you hear?"
"I hear a vulgar old song, if that's what you mean. I've known it all my life. It is very kind and domesticated of Endymion Leer to turn nursemaid and rock the cradle like this!"
But what Master Nathaniel had heard was the Note.
For a few seconds he stood motionless, the sweat breaking out on his forehead. Then blind with rage, he dashed across the corridor. But he had forgotten the parlour was locked, so he dashed out by the front door and came bursting in by the window that opened on to the garden.
The two occupants of the parlour were evidently so absorbed in each other that they had noticed neither Master Nathaniel's violent assault on the door nor yet his entry by the window.
Ranulph was lying on the couch with a look on his face of extraordinary peace and serenity, and there was Endymion Leer, crouching over him and softly crooning the tune to which he had before been singing words.
Master Nathaniel, roaring like a bull, flung himself on the doctor, and, dragging him to his feet, began to shake him as a terrier does a rat, at the same time belabouring him with every insulting epithet he could remember, including, of course, "Son of a Fairy."
As for Ranulph, he began to whimper, and complain that his father had spoiled everything, for the doctor had been making him well.
The din caused terrified servants to come battering at the door, and Dame Marigold came hurrying in by the garden window, and, pink with shame, she began to drag at Master Nathaniel's coat, almost hysterically imploring him to come to his senses.
But it was only to exhaustion that he finally yielded, and relaxed his hold on his victim, who was purple in the face and gasping for breath—so severe had been the shaking.
Dame Marigold cast a look of unutterable disgust at her panting, triumphant husband, and overwhelmed the little doctor with apologies and offers of restoratives. He sank down on a chair, unable for a few seconds to get his breath, while Master Nathaniel stood glaring at him, and poor Ranulph lay whimpering on the couch with a white scared face. Then the victim of Master Nathaniel's fury got to his feet, gave himself a little shake, took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead, and with a little chuckle and in a voice in which there was no trace of resentment, remarked, "Well, a good shaking is a fine thing for settling the humours. Your Worship has turned doctor! Thank you ... thank you kindly for your physic."
But Master Nathaniel said in a stern voice, "What were you doing to my son?"
"What was I doing to him? Why, I was giving him medicine. Songs were medicines long before herbs."
"He was making me well," moaned Ranulph.
"What was that song?" demanded Master Nathaniel, in the same stern voice.
"A very old song. Nurses sing it to children. You must have known it all your life. What's it called again? You know it, Dame Marigold, don't you? 'Columbine'—yes, that's it. 'Columbine.'"
The trees in the garden twinkled and murmured. The birds were clamorous. From the distance came the chimes of the Guildhall clock, and the parlour smelt of spring-flowers and pot-pourri.
Something seemed to relax in Master Nathaniel. He passed his hand over his forehead, gave an impatient little shrug, and, laughing awkwardly, said, "I ... I really don't quite know what took me. I've been anxious about the boy, and I suppose it had upset me a little. I can only beg your pardon, Leer."
"No need to apologize ... no need at all. No doctor worth his salt takes offence with ... sick men," and the look he shot at Master Nathaniel was both bright and strange.
Again Master Nathaniel frowned, and very stiffly he murmured "Thank you."
"Well," went on the doctor in a matter-of-fact voice, "I should like to have a little private talk with you about this young gentleman. May I?"
"Of course, of course, Dr. Leer," cried Dame Marigold hastily, for she saw that her husband was hesitating. "He will be delighted, I am sure. Though I think you're a very brave man to trust yourself to such a monster. Nat, take Dr. Leer into the pipe-room."
And Master Nathaniel did so.
Once there the doctor's first words made him so happy as instantly to drive away all traces of his recent fright and to make him even forget to be ashamed of his abominable behaviour.
What the doctor said was, "Cheer up, your Worship! I don't for a moment believe that boy of yours has eaten—what one mustn't mention."
"What? What?" cried Master Nathaniel joyfully. "By the Golden Apples of the West! It's been a storm in a tea-cup then? The little rascal, what a fright he gave us!"
Of course, he had known all the time that it could not be true! Facts could never be as stubborn as that, and as cruel.
And this incorrigible optimist about facts was the same man who walked in daily terror of the unknown. But perhaps the one state of mind was the outcome of the other.
Then, as he remembered the poignancy of the scene between himself and Ranulph last night and, as well, the convincingness of Ranulph's story, his heart once more grew heavy.
"But ... but," he faltered, "what was the good of this cock and bull story, then? What purpose did it serve? There's no doubt the boy's ill in both mind and body, and why, in the name of the Milky Way, should he go to the trouble of inventing a story about Willy Wisp's giving him a taste of that damned stuff?" and he looked at Endymion Leer appealingly, as much as to say, "Here are the facts. I give them to you. Be merciful and give them a less ugly shape."
This Endymion Leer proceeded to do.
"How do we know it was ... 'that damned stuff'?" he asked. "We have only Willy Wisp's word for it, and from what I know of that gentleman, his word is about as reliable as ... as the wind in a frolic. All Lud knows of his practical jokes ... he'd say anything to give one a fright. No, no, believe me, he was just playing off one of his pranks on Master Ranulph. I've had some experience in the real thing—I've an extensive practice, you know, down at the wharf—and your son's symptoms aren't the same. No, no, your son is no more likely to have eaten fairy fruit—than you are."
Master Nathaniel smiled, and stretched his arms in an ecstasy of relief. "Thank you, Leer, thank you," he said huskily. "The whole thing was appalling that really I believe it almost turned my head. And you are a very kind fellow not to bear me a grudge for my monstrous mishandling of you in the parlour just now."
For the moment Master Nathaniel felt as if he really loved the queer, sharp-tongued, little upstart.
"And now," he went on gleefully, "to show me that it is really forgotten and forgiven, we must pledge each other in some wild-thyme gin ... my cellar is rather noted for it, you know," and from a corner cupboard he brought out two glasses and a decanter of the fragrant green cordial, left over from the supper-party of the previous night.
For a few minutes they sat sipping in silent contentment.
Then Endymion Leer, as if speaking to himself, said dreamily, "Yes, this is perhaps the solution. Why should we look for any other cure when we have the wild-thyme distilled by our ancestors? Wild time? No, time isn't wild ... time-gin, sloe-gin. It is very soothing."
Master Nathaniel grunted. He understood perfectly what Endymion Leer meant, but he did not choose to show that he did. Any remark verging on the poetical or philosophical always embarrassed him. Fortunately, such remarks were rare in Lud-in-the-Mist.
So he put down his glass and said briskly, "Now then, Leer, let's go to business. You've removed an enormous load from my mind, but, all the same, the boy's not himself. What's the matter with him?"
Endymion Leer gave an odd little smile. And then he said, slowly and deliberately, "Master Nathaniel, what is the matter with you?"
Master Nathaniel started violently.
"The matter with me?" he said coldly. "I have not asked you in to consult you about my own health. We will, if you please, keep to that of my son."
But he rather spoiled the dignified effect his words might have had by gobbling like a turkey cock, and muttering under his breath, "Damn the fellow and his impudence!" Endymion Leer chuckled.
"Well, I may have been mistaken," he said, "but I have sometimes had the impression that our Worship the Mayor was, well, a whimsical fellow, given to queer fancies. Do you know my name for your house? I call it the Mayor's Nest. The Mayor's Nest!"
And he flung back his head and laughed heartily at his own joke, while Master Nathaniel glared at him, speechless with rage.
"Now, your Worship," he went on in a more serious voice. "If I have been indiscreet you must forgive me ... as I forgave you in the parlour. You see, a doctor is obliged to keep his eyes open ... it is not from what his patients tell him that he prescribes for them, but from what he notices himself. To a doctor everything is a symptom ... the way a man lights his pipe even. For instance, I once had the honour of having your Worship as my partner at a game of cards. You've forgotten probably—it was years ago at the Pyepowders. We lost that game. Why? Because each time that you held the most valuable card in the pack—the Lyre of Bones—you discarded it as if it had burnt your fingers. Things like that set a doctor wondering, Master Nathaniel. You are a man who is frightened about something."
Master Nathaniel slowly turned crimson. Now that the doctor mentioned it, he remembered quite well that at one time he objected to holding the Lyre of Bones. Its name caused him to connect it with the Note. As we have seen, he was apt to regard innocent things as taboo. But to think that somebody should have noticed it!
"This is a necessary preface to what I have got to say with regard to your son," went on Endymion Leer. "You see, I want to make it clear that, though one has never come within a mile of fairy fruit, one can have all the symptoms of being an habitual consumer of it. Wait! Wait! Hear me out!"
For Master Nathaniel, with a smothered exclamation, had sprung from his chair.
"I am not saying that you have all these symptoms ... far from it. But you know that there are spurious imitations of many diseases of the body—conditions that imitate exactly all the symptoms of the disease, and the doctors themselves are often taken in by them. You wish me to confine my remarks to your son ... well, I consider that he is suffering from a spurious surfeit of fairy fruit."
Though still angry, Master Nathaniel was feeling wonderfully relieved. This explanation of his own condition that robbed it of all mystery and, somehow, made it rational, seemed almost as good as a cure. So he let the doctor go on with his disquisition without any further interruption except the purely rhetorical ones of an occasional protesting grunt.
"Now, I have studied somewhat closely the effects of fairy fruit," the doctor was saying. "These effects we regard as a malady. But, in reality, they are more like a melody—a tune that one can't get out of one's head," and he shot a very sly little look at Master Nathaniel, out of his bright bird-like eyes.
"Yes," he went on in a thoughtful voice, "its effects, I think, can best be described as a changing of the inner rhythm by which we live. Have you ever noticed a little child of three or four walking hand in hand with its father through the streets? It is almost as if the two were walking in time to perfectly different tunes. Indeed, though they hold each other's hand, they might be walking on different planets ... each seeing and hearing entirely different things. And while the father marches steadily on towards some predetermined goal, the child pulls against his hand, laughs without cause, makes little bird-like swoops at invisible objects. Now, anyone who has tasted fairy fruit (your Worship will excuse my calling a spade a spade in this way, but in my profession one can't be mealy-mouthed)—anyone, then, who has tasted fairy fruit walks through life beside other people to a different tune from theirs ... just like the little child beside its father. But one can be born to a different tune ... and that, I believe, is the case with Master Ranulph. Now, if he is ever to become a useful citizen, though he need not lose his own tune, he must learn to walk in time to other people's. He will not learn to do that here—at present. Master Nathaniel, you are not good for your son."
Master Nathaniel moved uneasily in his chair, and in a stifled voice he said, "What then do you recommend?"
"I should recommend his being taught another tune," said the doctor briskly. "A different one from any he has heard before ... but one to which other people walk as well as he. You must have captains and mates, Master Nathaniel, with little houses down at the seaport town. Is there no honest fellow among them with a sensible wife with whom the lad could lodge for a month or two? Or stay," he went on, without giving Master Nathaniel time to answer, "life on a farm would do as well—better, perhaps. Sowing and reaping, quiet days, smells and noises that are like old tunes, healing nights ... slow-time gin! By the Harvest of Souls, Master Nathaniel, I'd rather any day, be a farmer than a merchant ... waving corn is better than the sea, and waggons are better than ships, and freighted with sweeter and more wholesome merchandise than all your silks and spices; for in their cargo are peace and a quiet mind. Yes. Master Ranulph must spend some months on a farm, and I know the very place for him."
Master Nathaniel was more moved than he cared to show by the doctor's words. They were like the cry of the cock, without its melancholy. But he tried to make his voice dry and matter of fact, as he asked where this marvellous farm might be.
"Oh, it's to the west," the doctor answered vaguely. "It belongs to an old acquaintance of mine—the widow Gibberty. She's a fine, fresh, bustling woman and knows everything a woman ought to know, and her granddaughter, Hazel, is a nice, sensible, hard-working girl. I'm sure...."
"Gibberty, did you say?" interrupted Master Nathaniel. He seemed to have heard the name before.
"Yes. You may remember having heard her name in the law-courts—it isn't a common one. She had a case many years ago. I think it was a thieving labourer her late husband had thrashed and dismissed who sued her for damages."
"And where exactly is this farm?"
"Well, it's about sixty miles away from Lud, just out of a village called Swan-on-the-Dapple."
"Swan-on-the-Dapple? Then it's quite close to the Elfin Marches!" cried Master Nathaniel indignantly.
"About ten miles away," replied Endymion Leer imperturbably. "But what of that? Ten miles on a busy self-supporting farm is as great a distance as a hundred would be at Lud. Still, under the circumstances, I can understand your fighting shy of the west. I must think of some other plan."
"I should think so indeed!" growled Master Nathaniel.
"However," continued the doctor, "you have really nothing to fear from that quarter. He would, in reality, be much further moved from temptation there than here. The smugglers, whoever they are, run great risks to get the fruit into Lud, and they're not going to waste it on rustics and farmhands."
"All the same," said Master Nathaniel doggedly, "I'm not going to have him going so damnably near to ... a certain place."
"The place that does not exist in the eyes of the law, eh?" said Endymion Leer with a smile.
Then he leaned forward in his chair, and gazed steadily at Master Nathaniel. This time, his eyes were kind as well as piercing. "Master Nathaniel, I'd like to reason with you a little," he said. "Reason I know, is only a drug, and, as such, its effects are never permanent. But, like the juice of the poppy, it often gives a temporary relief."
He sat silent for a few seconds, as if choosing in advance the words he meant to use. Then he began, "We have the misfortune of living in a country that marches with the unknown; and that is apt to make the fancy sick. Though we laugh at old songs and old yarns, nevertheless, they are the yarn with which we weave our picture of the world."
He paused for a second to chuckle over his own pun, and then went on, "But, for once, let us look things straight in the face, and call them by their proper names. Fairyland, for instance ... no one has been there within the memory of man. For generations it has been a forbidden land. In consequence, curiosity, ignorance, and unbridled fancy have put their heads together and concocted a country of golden trees hanging with pearls and rubies, the inhabitants of which are immortal and terrible through unearthly gifts—and so on. But—and in this I am in no way subscribing to a certain antiquary of ill odour—there is not a single homely thing that, looked at from a certain angle, does not become fairy. Think of the Dapple, or the Dawl, when they roll the sunset towards the east. Think of an autumn wood, or a hawthorn in May. A hawthorn in May—there's a miracle for you! Who would ever have dreamed that that gnarled stumpy old tree had the power to do that? Well, all these things are familiar sights, but what should we think if never having seen them we read a description of them, or saw them for the first time? A golden river! Flaming trees! Trees that suddenly break into flower! For all we know, it may be Dorimare that is Fairyland to the people across the Debatable Hills."
Master Nathaniel was drinking in every word as if it was nectar. A sense of safety was tingling in his veins like a generous wine ... mounting to his head, even, a little bit, so unused was he to that particular intoxicant.
Endymion Leer eyed him, with a little smile. "And now," he said, "perhaps your Worship will let me talk a little of your own case. The malady you suffer from should, I think, be called 'life-sickness.' You are, so to speak, a bad sailor, and the motion of life makes you brain-sick. There, beneath you, all round you, there surges and swells, and ebbs and flows, that great, ungovernable, ruthless element that we call life. And its motion gets into your blood, turns your head dizzy. Get your sea legs, Master Nathaniel! By which I do not mean you must cease feeling the motion ... go on feeling it, but learn to like it; or if not to like it, at any rate to bear it with firm legs and a steady head."
There were tears in Master Nathaniel's eyes and he smiled a little sheepishly. At that moment his feet were certainly on terra firma; and so convinced are we that each mood while it lasts will be the permanent temper of our soul that for the moment he felt that he would never feel "life-sickness" again.
"Thank you, Leer, thank you," he murmured. "I'd do a good deal for you, in return for what you've just said."
"Very well, then," said the doctor briskly, "give me the pleasure of curing your son. It's the greatest pleasure I have in life, curing people. Let me arrange for him to go to this farm."
Master Nathaniel, in his present mood, was incapable of gainsaying him. So it was arranged that Ranulph should shortly leave for Swan-on-the-Dapple.
It was with a curious solemnity that, just before he took his leave, Endymion Leer said, "Master Nathaniel, there is one thing I want you to bear in mind—I have never in my life made a mistake in a prescription."
As Endymion Leer trotted away from the Chanticleers he chuckled to himself and softly rubbed his hands. "I can't help being a physician and giving balm," he muttered. "But it was monstrous good policy as well. He would never have allowed the boy to go, otherwise."
Then he started, and stood stock-still, listening. From far away there came a ghostly sound. It might have been the cry of a very distant cock, or else it might have been the sound of faint, mocking laughter.
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.
About a week later, Mistress Hempen received the following letter from Luke: