Dear Auntie,—I trust this finds you as well as it leaves me. I'm remembering what you said, and trying to look after the little master, but this is a queer place and no mistake, and I'd liefer we were both safe back in Lud. Not that I've any complaint to make as to victuals and lodging, and I'm sure they treat Master Ranulph as if he was a king—wax candles and linen sheets and everything that he gets at home. And I must say I've not seen him looking so well, nor so happy for many a long day. But the widow woman she's a rum customer and no mistake, and wonderful fond of fishing, for a female. She and the doctor are out all night sometimes together after trout, but never a trout do we see on the table. And sometimes she looks so queerly at Master Ranulph that it fairly makes my flesh creep. And there's no love lost between her and her granddaughter, her step-granddaughter I should say, her who's called Miss Hazel, and they say as what by the old farmer's will the farm belongs to her and not to the widow. And she's a stuck-up young miss, very high and keeping herself to herself. But I'm glad she's in the house all the same, for she's well liked by all the folk on the farm and I'd take my oath that though she's high she's straight. And there's a daft old man that they call Portunus and it's more like having a tame magpie in the house than a human man, for he can't talk a word of sense, it's all scraps of rhyme, and he's always up to mischief. He's a weaver and as cracked as Mother Tibbs, though he do play the fiddle beautiful. And it's my belief the widow walks in fear of her life for that old man, though why she should beats me to know. For the old fellow's harmless enough, though a bit spiteful at times. He sometimes pinches the maids till their arms are as many colours as a mackerel's back. And he seems sweet on Miss Hazel though she can't abear him, though when I ask her about him she snaps my head off and tells me to mind my own business. And I'm afraid the folk on the farm must think me a bit high myself through me minding what you told me and keeping myself to myself. Because it's my belief if I'd been a bit more friendly at the beginning (such as it's my nature to be) I'd have found out a thing or two. And that cracked old weaver seems quite smitten by an old stone statue in the orchard. He's always cutting capers in front of it, and pulling faces at it, like a clown at the fair. But the widow's scared of him, as sure as my name's Luke Hempen. And Master Ranulph does talk so queer about him—things as I wouldn't demean myself to write to an old lady. And I'd be very glad, auntie, if you'd ask his Worship to send for us back, because I don't like this place, and that's a fact, and not so much as a sprig of fennel do they put above their doors.—And I am, Your dutiful grand-nephew,LUKE HEMPEN.
Dear Auntie,—
I trust this finds you as well as it leaves me. I'm remembering what you said, and trying to look after the little master, but this is a queer place and no mistake, and I'd liefer we were both safe back in Lud. Not that I've any complaint to make as to victuals and lodging, and I'm sure they treat Master Ranulph as if he was a king—wax candles and linen sheets and everything that he gets at home. And I must say I've not seen him looking so well, nor so happy for many a long day. But the widow woman she's a rum customer and no mistake, and wonderful fond of fishing, for a female. She and the doctor are out all night sometimes together after trout, but never a trout do we see on the table. And sometimes she looks so queerly at Master Ranulph that it fairly makes my flesh creep. And there's no love lost between her and her granddaughter, her step-granddaughter I should say, her who's called Miss Hazel, and they say as what by the old farmer's will the farm belongs to her and not to the widow. And she's a stuck-up young miss, very high and keeping herself to herself. But I'm glad she's in the house all the same, for she's well liked by all the folk on the farm and I'd take my oath that though she's high she's straight. And there's a daft old man that they call Portunus and it's more like having a tame magpie in the house than a human man, for he can't talk a word of sense, it's all scraps of rhyme, and he's always up to mischief. He's a weaver and as cracked as Mother Tibbs, though he do play the fiddle beautiful. And it's my belief the widow walks in fear of her life for that old man, though why she should beats me to know. For the old fellow's harmless enough, though a bit spiteful at times. He sometimes pinches the maids till their arms are as many colours as a mackerel's back. And he seems sweet on Miss Hazel though she can't abear him, though when I ask her about him she snaps my head off and tells me to mind my own business. And I'm afraid the folk on the farm must think me a bit high myself through me minding what you told me and keeping myself to myself. Because it's my belief if I'd been a bit more friendly at the beginning (such as it's my nature to be) I'd have found out a thing or two. And that cracked old weaver seems quite smitten by an old stone statue in the orchard. He's always cutting capers in front of it, and pulling faces at it, like a clown at the fair. But the widow's scared of him, as sure as my name's Luke Hempen. And Master Ranulph does talk so queer about him—things as I wouldn't demean myself to write to an old lady. And I'd be very glad, auntie, if you'd ask his Worship to send for us back, because I don't like this place, and that's a fact, and not so much as a sprig of fennel do they put above their doors.—And I am, Your dutiful grand-nephew,
LUKE HEMPEN.
Hempie read it through with many a frown and shake of her head, and with an occasional snort of contempt; as, for instance, where Luke intimated that the widow's linen sheets were as fine as the Chanticleers'.
Then she sat for a few minutes in deep thought.
"No, no," she finally said to herself, "my boy's well and happy and that's more than he was in Lud, these last few months. What must be must be, and it's never any use worrying Master Nat."
So she did not show Master Nathaniel Luke Hempen's letter.
As for Master Nathaniel, he was enchanted by the accounts he received from Endymion Leer of the improvement both in Ranulph's health and state of mind. Ranulph himself too wrote little letters saying how happy he was and how anxious to stay on at the farm. It was evident that, to use the words of Endymion Leer, he was learning to live life to a different tune.
And then Endymion Leer returned to Lud and confirmed what he had said in his letters by his accounts of how well and happy Ranulph was in the life of a farm.
The summer was simmering comfortably by, in its usual sleepy way, in the streets and gardens of Lud-in-the-Mist. The wives of Senators and burgesses were busy in still-room and kitchen making cordials and jams; in the evening the streets were lively with chattering voices and the sounds of music, and 'prentices danced with their masters' daughters in the public square, or outside taverns, till the grey twilight began to turn black. The Senators yawned their way through each other's speeches, and made their own as short as possible that they might hurry off to whip the Dapple for trout or play at bowls on the Guild Hall's beautiful velvety green. And when one of their ships brought in a particularly choice cargo of rare wine or exotic sweetmeats they invited their friends to supper, and washed down the dainties with the good old jokes.
Mumchance looked glum, and would sometimes frighten his wife by gloomy forebodings; but he had learned that it was no use trying to arouse the Mayor and the Senate.
Master Nathaniel was missing Ranulph very much; but as he continued to get highly satisfactory reports of his health he felt that it would be selfish not to let him stay on, at any rate till the summer was over.
Then the trees, after their long silence, began to talk again, in yellow and red. And the days began to shrink under one's very eyes. And Master Nathaniel's pleached alley was growing yellower and yellower, and on the days when a thick white mist came rolling up from the Dapple it would be the only object in his garden that was not blurred and dimmed, and would look like a pair of gigantic golden compasses with which a demiurge is measuring chaos.
It was then that things began to happen; moreover, they began at the least likely place in the whole of Lud-in-the-Mist—Miss Primrose Crabapple's Academy for young ladies.
Miss Primrose Crabapple had for some twenty years "finished" the daughters of the leading citizens; teaching them to sing, to dance, to play the spinet and the harp, to preserve and candy fruit, to wash gauzes and lace, to bone chickens without cutting the back, to model groups of still life in every imaginable plastic material, edible and non-edible—wax, butter, sugar—and to embroider in at least a hundred different stitches—preparing them, in fact, to be one day useful and accomplished wives.
When Dame Marigold Chanticleer and her contemporaries had first been pupils at the Academy, Miss Primrose had only been a young assistant governess, very sentimental and affected, and full of nonsensical ideas. But nonsensical ideas and great practical gifts are sometimes found side by side, and sentimentality is a quality that rarely has the slightest influence on action.
Anyhow, the ridiculous gushing assistant managed bit by bit to get the whole direction of the establishment into her own hands, while the old dame to whom the school belonged became as plastic to her will as were butter, sugar or wax to her clever fingers; and when the old lady died she left her the school.
It was an old rambling red-brick house with a large pleasant garden, and stood a little back from the high-road, about half a mile beyond the west gate of Lud-in-the-Mist.
The Academy represented to the ladies of Lud all that they knew of romance. They remembered the jokes they had laughed at within its walls, the secrets they had exchanged walking up and down its pleached alleys, far more vividly than anything that had afterwards happened to them.
Do not for a moment imagine that they were sentimental about it. The ladies of Lud were never sentimental. It was as an old comic song that they remembered their school-days. Perhaps it is always with a touch of wistfulness that we remember old comic songs. It was at any rate as near as the ladies of Lud could get to the poetry of the past. And whenever Dame Marigold Chanticleer and Dame Dreamsweet Vigil and the rest of the old pupils of the Academy foregathered to eat syllabub and marzipan and exchange new stitches for their samplers, they would be sure sooner or later to start bandying memories about these funny old days and the ridiculous doings of Miss Primrose Crabapple.
"Oh, do you remember," Dame Marigold would cry, "how she wanted to start what she called a 'Mother's Day', when we were all to dress up in white and green, and pretend to be lilies standing on our mothers' graves?"
"Oh, yes!" Dame Dreamsweet would gurgle, "And mother was so angry when she found out about it. 'How dare the ghoulish creature bury me alive like this?' she used to say."
And then they would laugh till the tears ran down their cheeks.
Each generation had its own jokes and its own secrets; but they were always on the same pattern; just as when one of the china cups got broken, it was replaced by another exactly like it, with the same painted border of squills and ivy.
There were squills and ivy all over the Academy, embroidered on the curtains in each bedroom, and on all the cushions and screens, painted in a frieze around the wall of the parlour, and even stamped on the pats of butter. For one of Miss Primrose Crabapple's follies was a romantic passion for Duke Aubrey—a passion similar to that cherished by highchurch spinsters of the last century for the memory of Charles I. Over her bed hung a little reproduction in water-colours of his portrait in the Guildhall. And on the anniversary of his fall, which was kept in Dorimare as a holiday, she always appeared in deep mourning.
She knew perfectly well that she was an object of ridicule to her pupils and their mothers. But her manner to them was not a whit less gushing in consequence; for she was much too practical to allow her feelings to interfere with her bread and butter.
However, on the occasions when her temper got the better of her prudence she would show them clearly her contempt for their pedigree, sneering at them as commercial upstarts and interlopers. She seemed to forget that she herself was only the daughter of a Lud grocer, and at times to imagine that the Crabapples had belonged to the vanished aristocracy.
She was grotesque, too, in appearance, with a round moon face, tiny eyes, and an enormous mouth that was generally stretched into an ingratiating smile. She always wore a green turban and gown cut in the style of the days of Duke Aubrey. Sitting in her garden among her pretty little pupils she was like a brightly-painted Aunt Sally, placed there by a gardener with a taste for the baroque to frighten away the birds from his cherries and greengages.
Though it was flowers that her pupils resembled more than fruit—sweetpeas, perhaps, when fragrant, gay, and demure, in muslin frocks cut to a pattern, but in various colours, and in little poke-bonnets with white frills, they took their walk, two and two, through the streets of Lud-in-the-Mist.
At any rate it was something sweet and fresh that they suggested, and in the town they were always known as the "Crabapple Blossoms."
Recently they had been in a state of gleeful ecstasy. They had reason to believe that Miss Primrose was being courted, and by no less a person than Endymion Leer.
He was the school physician, and hence to them all a familiar figure. But, until quite lately, Miss Primrose had been a frequent victim of his relentless tongue, and many a time a little patient had been forced to stuff the sheet into her mouth to stifle her laughter, so quaint and pungent were the snubs he administered to their unfortunate schoolmarm.
But nearly every evening this summer his familiar cane and bottle-green hat had been seen in the hall. And his visits they had learned from the servants were not professional; unless it be part of a doctor's duties to drop in of an evening to play a game of cribbage with his patients, and sample their cakes and cowslip wine.
Moreover, never before had Miss Primrose appeared so frequently in new gowns.
"Perhaps she's preparing her bridal chest!" tittered Prunella Chanticleer. And the very idea sent them all into convulsions of mirth.
"But do you really think he'll marry her? How could he!" said Penstemmon Fliperarde. "She's such an old fright, and such an old goose, too. And they say he's so clever."
"Why, then they'll be the goose and the sage!" laughed Prunella.
"I expect he wants her savings," said Viola Vigil, with a wise little nod.
"Or perhaps he wants to add her to his collection of antiques," tittered Ambrosine Pyepowders.
"Or to stick her up like an old sign over his dispensary!" suggested Prunella Chanticleer.
"But it's hard on Duke Aubrey," laughed Moonlove Honeysuckle, "to be cut out like this by a snuffy old doctor."
"Yes," said Viola Vigil. "My father says it's a great pity she doesn't take rooms in the Duke Aubrey's Arms, because," and Viola giggled and blushed a little, "it would be as near as she'd ever get to his arms, or to anybody else's!"
But the laughter that greeted this last sally was just a trifle shame-faced; for the Crabapple Blossoms found it a little too daring.
At the beginning of autumn, Miss Primrose suddenly sent all the servants back to their homes in distant villages; and, to the indignation of the Crabapple Blossoms, their places were filled (only temporarily, Miss Primrose maintained) by the crazy washerwoman, Mother Tibbs, and a handsome, painted, deaf-mute, with bold black eyes. Mother Tibbs made but an indifferent housemaid, for she spent most of her time at the garden gate, waving her handkerchief to the passers-by. And if, when at her work, she heard the sound of a fiddle or flute, however distant, she would instantly stop whatever she was doing and start dancing, brandishing wildly in the air broom, or warming-pan, or whatever domestic implement she may have been holding in her hands at the time.
As for the deaf-mute—she was quite a good cook, but was, perhaps, scarcely suited to employment in a young ladies' academy, as she was known in the town as "Bawdy Bess."
One morning Miss Primrose announced that she had found them a new dancing master (the last one had been suddenly dismissed, no one knew for what reason), and that when they had finished their seams they were to come up to the loft for a lesson.
So they tripped up to the cool, dark, pleasant loft, which smelt of apples, and had bunches of drying grapes suspended from its rafters. Long ago the Academy had been a farm-house, and on the loft's oak panelled walls were carved the interlaced initials of many rustic lovers, dead hundreds of years ago. To these Prunella Chanticleer and Moonlove Honeysuckle had recently added a monogram formed of the letters P. C. and E. L.
Their new dancing-master was a tall, red-haired youth, with a white pointed face and very bright eyes. Miss Primrose, who always implied that it was at great personal inconvenience and from purely philanthropic motives that their teachers gave them their lessons, introduced him as "Professor Wisp, who had very kindly consented to teach them dancing," and the young man made his new pupils a low bow, and turning to Miss Primrose, he said, "I've got you a fiddler, ma'am. Oh, a rare fiddler! It's your needlework that has brought him. He's a weaver by trade, and he dearly loves pictures in silk. And he can give you some pretty patterns to work from—can't you, Portunus?" and he clapped his hands twice.
Whereupon, "like a bat dropped from the rafters," as Prunella, with an inexplicable shudder, whispered to Moonlove, a queer wizened old man, with eyes as bright as Professor Wisp's, all mopping and mowing, with a fiddle and a bow under his arm, sprang suddenly out of the shadows.
"Young ladies!" cried Professor Wisp, gleefully, "this is Master Portunus, fiddler to his Majesty the Emperor of the Moon, jester-in-chief to the Lord of Ghosts and Shadows ... though his jests are apt to be silent ones. And he has come a long long way, young ladies, to set your feet a dancing. Ho, ho, hoh!"
And the professor sprang up at least three feet in the air, and landed on the tips of his toes, as light as a ball of thistledown, while Master Portunus stood rubbing his hands, and chuckling with senile glee.
"What a vulgar young man! Just like a cheap Jack on market-day," whispered Viola Vigil to Prunella Chanticleer.
But Prunella, who had been looking at him intently, whispered back, "I'm sure at one time he was one of our grooms. I only saw him once, but I'm sure it's he. What can Miss Primrose be thinking of to engage such low people as teachers?"
Prunella had, of course, not been told any details as to Ranulph's illness.
Even Miss Primrose seemed somewhat disconcerted. She stood there, mouthing and blinking, evidently at a loss what to say. Then she turned to the old man, and, in her best company manner, said she was delighted to meet another needlework enthusiast; and, turning to Professor Wisp, added in her most cooing treacley voice, "I must embroider a pair of slippers for the dear doctor's birthday, and I want the design to be very original, so perhaps this gentleman would kindly lend me his sampler."
At this the professor made another wild pirouette, and, clapping his hands with glee, cried, "Yes, yes, Portunus is your man. Portunus will set your stitches dancing to his tunes, ho, ho, hoh!"
And he and Portunus dug each other in the ribs and laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks.
At last, pulling himself together, the Professor bade Portunus tune up his fiddle, and requested that the young ladies should form up into two lines for the first dance.
"We'll begin with 'Columbine,'" he said.
"But that's nothing but a country dance for farm servants," pouted Moonlove Honeysuckle.
And Prunella Chanticleer boldly went up to Miss Primrose, and said, "Please, mayn't we go on with the jigs and quadrilles we've always learned? I don't think mother would like me learning new things. And 'Columbine' is so vulgar."
"Vulgar! New!" cried Professor Wisp, shrilly. "Why, my pretty Miss, 'Columbine' was danced in the moonlight when Lud-in-the-Mist was nothing but a beech wood between two rivers. It is the dance that the Silent People dance along the Milky Way. It's the dance of laughter and tears."
"Professor Wisp is going to teach you very old and aristocratic dances, my dear," said Miss Primrose reprovingly. "Dances such as were danced at the court of Duke Aubrey, were they not, Professor Wisp?"
But the queer old fiddler had begun to tune up, and Professor Wisp, evidently thinking that they had already wasted enough time, ordered his pupils to stand up and be in readiness to begin.
Very sulkily it was that the Crabapple Blossoms obeyed, for they were all feeling as cross as two sticks at having such a vulgar buffoon for their master, and at being forced to learn silly old-fashioned dances that would be of no use to them when they were grown-up.
But, surely, there was magic in the bow of that old fiddler! And, surely, no other tune in the world was so lonely, so light-footed, so beckoning! Do what one would one must needs up and follow it.
Without quite knowing how it came about, they were soon all tripping and bobbing and gliding and tossing, with their minds on fire, while Miss Primrose wagged her head in time to the measure, and Professor Wisp, shouting directions the while, wound himself in and out among them, as if they were so many beads, and he the string on which they were threaded.
Suddenly the music stopped, and flushed, laughing, and fanning themselves with their pocket-handkerchiefs, the Crabapple Blossoms flung themselves down on the floor, against a pile of bulging sacks in one of the corners, indifferent for probably the first time in their lives to possible damage to their frocks.
But Miss Primrose cried out sharply, "Not there, dears! Not there!"
In some surprise they were about to move, when Professor Wisp whispered something in her ear, and, with a little meaning nod to him, she said, "Very well, dears, stay where you are. It was only that I thought the floor would be dirty for you."
"Well, it wasn't such bad fun after all," said Moonlove Honeysuckle.
"No," admitted Prunella Chanticleer reluctantly. "That old man can play!"
"I wonder what's in these sacks; it feels too soft for apples," said Ambrosine Pyepowders, prodding in idle curiosity the one against which she was leaning.
"There's rather a queer smell coming from them," said Moonlove.
"Horrid!" said Prunella, wrinkling up her little nose.
And then, with a giggle, she whispered, "We've had the goose and the sage, so perhaps these are the onions!"
At that moment Portunus began to tune his fiddle again, and Professor Wisp called out to them to form up again in two rows.
"This time, my little misses," he said, "it's to be a sad solemn dance, so Miss Primrose must foot it with you—'a very aristocratic dance, such as was danced at the court of Duke Aubrey'!" and he gave them a roguish wink.
So admirable had been his imitation of Miss Primrose's voice that, for all he was such a vulgar buffoon, the Crabapple Blossoms could not help giggling.
"But I'll ask you to listen to the tune before you begin to dance it," he went on. "Now then, Portunus!"
"Why! It's just 'Columbine' over again...." began Prunella scornfully.
But the words froze on her lips, and she stood spellbound and frightened.
It was 'Columbine,' but with a difference. For, since they had last heard it, the tune might have died, and wandered in strange places, to come back to earth, an angry ghost.
"Now, then, dance!" cried Professor Wisp, in harsh, peremptory tones.
And it was in sheer self-defence that they obeyed—as if by dancing they somehow or other escaped from that tune, which seemed to be themselves.
"Within and out, in and out, round as a ball,With hither and thither, as straight as a line,With lily, germander, and sops in wine.With sweet-brierAnd bon-fireAnd strawberry-wireAnd columbine,"
"Within and out, in and out, round as a ball,With hither and thither, as straight as a line,With lily, germander, and sops in wine.With sweet-brierAnd bon-fireAnd strawberry-wireAnd columbine,"
"Within and out, in and out, round as a ball,
With hither and thither, as straight as a line,
With lily, germander, and sops in wine.
With sweet-brier
And bon-fire
And strawberry-wire
And columbine,"
sang Professor Wisp. And in and out, in and out of a labyrinth of dreams wound the Crabapple Blossoms.
But now the tune had changed its key. It was getting gay once more—gay, but strange, and very terrifying.
"Any lass for a Duke, a Duke who wears green,In lands where the sun and the moon do not shine,With lily, germander, and sops in wine.With sweet-brierAnd bon-fireAnd strawberry-wireAnd columbine,"
"Any lass for a Duke, a Duke who wears green,In lands where the sun and the moon do not shine,With lily, germander, and sops in wine.With sweet-brierAnd bon-fireAnd strawberry-wireAnd columbine,"
"Any lass for a Duke, a Duke who wears green,
In lands where the sun and the moon do not shine,
With lily, germander, and sops in wine.
With sweet-brier
And bon-fire
And strawberry-wire
And columbine,"
sang Professor Wisp, and in and out he wound between his pupils—or, rather, not wound, but dived, darted, flashed, while every moment his singing grew shriller, his laughter more wild.
And then—whence and how they could not say—a new person had joined the dance.
He was dressed in green and he wore a black mask. And the curious thing was that, in spite of all the crossings and recrossings and runs down the middle, and the endless shuffling in the positions of the dancers, demanded by the intricate figures of this dance, the newcomer was never beside you—it was always with somebody else that he was dancing. You never felt the touch of his hand. This was the experience of each individual Crabapple Blossom.
But Moonlove Honeysuckle caught a glimpse of his back; and on it there was a hump.
Master Ambrose Honeysuckle had finished his midday meal, and was smoking his churchwarden on his daisy-powdered lawn, under the branches of a great, cool, yellowing lime; and beside him sat his stout comfortable wife, Dame Jessamine, placidly fanning herself to sleep, with her pink-tongued mushroom-coloured pug snoring and choking in her lap.
Master Ambrose was ruminating on the consignment he was daily expecting of flowers-in-amber—a golden eastern wine, for the import of which his house had the monopoly in Dorimare.
But he was suddenly roused from his pleasant reverie by the sound of loud excited voices proceeding from the house, and turning heavily in his chair, he saw his daughter, Moonlove, wild-eyed and dishevelled, rushing towards him across the lawn, followed by a crowd of servants with scared faces and all chattering at once.
"My dear child, what's this? What's this?" he cried testily.
But her only answer was to look at him in agonized terror, and then to moan, "The horror of midday!"
Dame Jessamine sat up with a start and rubbing her eyes exclaimed, "Dear me, I believe I was napping. But ... Moonlove! Ambrose! What's happening?"
But before Master Ambrose could answer, Moonlove gave three blood-curdling screams, and shrieked out, "Horror! Horror! The tune that never stops! Break the fiddle! Break the fiddle! Oh, Father, quietly, on tiptoe behind him, cut the strings. Cut the strings and let me out, I want the dark."
For an instant, she stood quite still, head thrown back, eyes alert and frightened, like a beast at bay. Then, swift as a hare, she tore across the lawn, with glances over her shoulder as if something were pursuing her, and, rushing through the garden gate, vanished from their astonished view.
The servants, who till now had kept at a respectful distance, came crowding up, their talk a jumble of such exclamations and statements as "Poor young lady!" "It's a sunstroke, sure as my name's Fishbones!" "Oh, my! it quite gave me the palpitations to hear her shriek!"
And the pug yapped with such energy that he nearly burst his mushroom sides, and Dame Jessamine began to have hysterics.
For a few seconds Master Ambrose stood bewildered, then, setting his jaw, he pounded across the lawn, with as much speed as was left him by nearly fifty years of very soft living, out at the garden gate, down the lane, and into the High Street.
Here he joined the tail of a running crowd that, in obedience to the law that compels man to give chase to a fugitive, was trying hard to catch up with Moonlove.
The blood was throbbing violently in Master Ambrose's temples, and his brains seemed congested. All that he was conscious of, on the surface of his mind, was a sense of great irritation against Master Nathaniel Chanticleer for not having had the cobbles on the High Street recently renewed—they were so damnably slippery.
But, underneath this surface irritation, a nameless anxiety was buzzing like a hornet.
On he pounded at the tail end of the hunt, blowing, puffing, panting, slipping on the cobbles, stumbling across the old bridge that spanned the Dapple. Vaguely, as in delirium, he knew that windows were flung open, heads stuck out, shrill voices enquiring what was the matter, and that from mouth to mouth were bandied the words, "It's little Miss Honeysuckle running away from her papa."
But when they reached the town walls and the west gate, they had to call a sudden halt, for a funeral procession, that of a neighbouring farmer, to judge from the appearance of the mourners, was winding its way into the town, bound for the Fields of Grammary, and the pursuers had perforce to stand in respectful silence while it passed, and allow their quarry to disappear down a bend of the high road.
Master Ambrose was too impatient and too much out of breath consciously to register impressions of what was going on round him. But in the automatic unquestioning way in which at such moments the senses do their work, he saw through the windows of the hearse that a red liquid was trickling from the coffin.
This enforced delay broke the spell of blind purpose that had hitherto united the pursuers into one. They now ceased to be a pack, and broke up again into separate individuals, each with his own business to attend to.
"The little lass is too nimble-heeled for us," they said, grinning ruefully.
"Yes, she's a wild goose, that's what she is, and I fear she has led us a wild goose chase," said Master Ambrose with a short embarrassed laugh.
He was beginning to be acutely conscious of the unseemliness of the situation—he, an ex-Mayor, a Senator and judge, and, what was more, head of the ancient and honourable family of Honeysuckle, to be pounding through the streets of Lud-in-the-Mist at the tail end of a crowd of 'prentices and artisans, in pursuit of his naughty, crazy wild goose of a little daughter!
"Pity it isn't Nat instead of me!" he thought to himself. "I believe he'd rather enjoy it."
Just then, a farmer came along in his gig, and seeing the hot breathless company standing puffing and mopping their brows, he asked them if they were seeking a little lass, for, if so, he had passed her a quarter of an hour ago beyond the turnpike, running like a hare, and he'd called out to her to stop, but she would not heed him.
By this time Master Ambrose was once more in complete possession of his wits and his breath.
He noticed one of his own clerks among the late pursuers, and bade him run back to his stables and order three of his grooms to ride off instantly in pursuit of his daughter.
Then he himself, his face very stern, started off for the Academy.
It was just as well that he did not hear the remarks of his late companions as they made their way back to town; for he would have found them neither sympathetic nor respectful. The Senators were certainly not loved by the rabble. However, not having heard Moonlove's eldritch shrieks nor her wild remarks, they supposed that her father had been bullying her for some mild offence, and that, in consequence, she had taken to her heels.
"And if all these fat pigs of Senators," they said, "were set running like that a little oftener, why, then, they'd make better bacon!"
Master Ambrose had to work the knocker of the Academy door very hard before it was finally opened by Miss Primrose herself.
She looked flustered, and, as it seemed to Master Ambrose, a little dissipated, her face was so pasty and her eyelids so very red.
"Now, Miss Crabapple!" he cried in a voice of thunder, "What, by the Harvest of Souls, have you been doing to my daughter, Moonlove? And if she's been ill, why have we not been told, I should like to know? I've come here for an explanation, and I mean to get it."
Miss Primrose, mopping and mowing, and garrulously inarticulate, took the fuming gentleman into the parlour. But he could get nothing out of her further than disjointed murmurs about the need for cooling draughts, and the child's being rather headstrong, and a possible touch of the sun. It was clear that she was scared out of her wits, and, moreover, there was something she wished to conceal.
Master Ambrose, from his experience on the Bench, soon realized that this was a type of witness upon whom it was useless to waste his time; so he said sternly, "You are evidently unable to talk sense yourself, but perhaps some of your pupils possess that useful accomplishment. But I warn you if ... if anything happens to my daughter it is you that will be held responsible. And now, send ... let me see ... send me down Prunella Chanticleer, she's always been a sensible girl with a head on her shoulders. She'll be able to tell me what exactly is the matter with Moonlove—which is more than you seem able to do."
Miss Primrose, now almost gibbering with terror, stammered out something about "study hours," and "regularity being so desirable," and "dear Prunella's having been a little out of sorts herself recently."
But Master Ambrose repeated in a voice of thunder, "Send me Prunella Chanticleer, at once."
And standing there, stern and square, he was a rather formidable figure.
So Miss Primrose could only gibber and blink her acquiescence and promise him that "dear Prunella" should instantly be sent to him.
When she had left him, Master Ambrose paced impatiently up and down, frowning heavily, and occasionally shaking his head.
Then he stood stock-still, in deep thought. Absently, he picked up from the work-table a canvas shoe, in process of being embroidered with wools of various brilliant shades.
At first, he stared at it with unseeing eyes.
Then, the surface of his mind began to take stock of the object. Its half finished design consisted of what looked like wild strawberries, only the berries were purple instead of red.
It was certainly very well done. There was no doubt but that Miss Primrose was a most accomplished needle-woman.
"But what's the good of needlework? It doesn't teach one common sense," he muttered impatiently.
"And how like a woman!" he added with a contemptuous little snort, "Aren't red strawberries good enough for her? Trying to improve on nature with her stupid fancies and her purple strawberries!"
But he was in no mood for wasting his time and attention on a half-embroidered slipper, and tossing it impatiently away he was about to march out of the room and call loudly for Prunella Chanticleer, when the door opened and in she came.
Had a stranger wanted to see an upper class maiden of Lud-in-the-Mist, he would have found a typical specimen in Prunella Chanticleer.
She was fair, and plump, and dimpled; and, as in the case of her mother, the ruthless common sense of her ancestors of the revolution had been trivialized, though not softened, into an equally ruthless sense of humour.
Such had been Prunella Chanticleer.
But, as she now walked into the room, Master Ambrose exclaimed to himself, "Toasted cheese! How plain the girl has grown!"
But that was a mere matter of taste; some people might have thought her much prettier than she had ever been before. She was certainly less plump than she used to be, and paler. But it was the change in the expression of her eyes that was most noticeable.
Hitherto, they had been as busy and restless (and, in justice to the charms of Prunella let it be added, as golden brown) as a couple of bees in summer—darting incessantly from one small object to another, and distilling from each what it held of least essential, so that in time they would have fashioned from a thousand trivialities that inferior honey that is apt to be labeled "feminine wisdom."
But, now, these eyes were idle.
Or, rather, her memory seemed to be providing them with a vision so absorbing that nothing else could arrest their gaze.
In spite of himself, Master Ambrose felt a little uneasy in her presence. However, he tried to greet her in the tone of patronizing banter that he always used when addressing his daughter or her friends. But his voice had an unnatural sound as he cried, "Well, Prunella, and what have you all been doing to my Moonlove, eh? She came running home after dinner, and if it hadn't been broad daylight, I should have said that she had seen a ghost. And then off she dashed, up hill and down dale, like a paper chaser without any paper. What have you all been doing to her, eh?"
"I don't think we've been doing anything to her, Cousin Ambrose," Prunella answered in a low, curiously toneless voice.
Ever since the scene with Moonlove that afternoon, Master Ambrose had had an odd feeling that facts were losing their solidity; and he had entered this house with the express purpose of bullying and hectoring that solidity back to them. Instead of which they were rapidly vanishing, becoming attenuated to a sort of nebulous atmosphere.
But Master Ambrose had stronger nerves and a more decided mind than Master Nathaniel. Two facts remained solid, namely that his daughter had run away, and that for this Miss Crabapple's establishment was responsible. These he grasped firmly as if they had been dumb-bells that, by their weight, kept him from floating up to the ceiling.
"Now, Prunella," he said sternly, "there's something very queer about all this, and I believe you can explain it. Well? I'm waiting."
Prunella gave a little enigmatical smile.
"What did she say when you saw her?" she asked.
"Say? Why, she was evidently scared out of her wits, and didn't know what she was saying. She babbled something about the sun being too hot—though it seems to me very ordinary autumn weather that we're having. And then she went on about cutting somebody's fiddle strings ... oh, I don't know what!"
Prunella gave a low cry of horror.
"Cut the fiddle strings!" she repeated incredulously. And then she added with a triumphant laugh, "she can't do that!"
"Now, young lady," he cried roughly, "no more of this rubbish! Do you or do you not know what has taken Moonlove?"
For a second or two she gazed at him in silence, and then she said slowly, "Nobody ever knows what happens to other people. But, supposing ... supposing she has eaten fairy fruit?" and she gave a little mocking smile.
Silent with horror, Master Ambrose stared at her.
Then he burst out furiously, "You foul-mouthed little hussy! Do you dare to insinuate...."
But Prunella's eyes were fixed on the window that opened on to the garden, and instinctively he looked in that direction too.
For a second he supposed that the portrait of Duke Aubrey that hung in the Senate Room of the Guildhall had been moved to the wall of Miss Primrose's parlour. Framed in the window, against the leafy background of the garden stood, quite motionless, a young man in antique dress. The face, the auburn ringlets, the suit of green, the rustic background—everything, down to the hunting horn entwined with flowers that he held in one hand, and the human skull that he held in the other, were identical with those depicted in the famous portrait.
"By the White Ladies of the Fields!" muttered Master Ambrose, rubbing his eyes.
But when he looked again the figure had vanished.
For a few seconds he stood gaping and bewildered, and Prunella seized the opportunity of slipping unnoticed from the room.
Then he came to his senses, on a wave of berserk rage. They had been playing tricks, foul, vulgar tricks, on him, on Ambrose Honeysuckle, Senator and ex-Mayor. But they should pay for it, by the Sun, Moon and Stars, they should pay for it! And he shook his fist at the ivy and squill bedecked walls.
But, in the meantime, it was he himself who was paying for it. An appalling accusation had been made against his only child; and, perhaps, the accusation was true.
Well, things must be faced. He was now quite calm, and, with his stern set face, a much more formidable person than the raging spluttering creature of a few seconds ago. He was determined to get to the bottom of this affair, and either to vindicate his daughter from the foul insinuation made by Prunella Chanticleer, or else, if the horrible thing were true (and a voice inside him that would not be silenced kept saying that it was true) to face the situation squarely, and, for the good of the town, find out who was responsible for what had happened and bring them to the punishment they merited.
There was probably no one in all Lud-in-the-Mist who would suffer in the same degree from such a scandal in his family as Master Ambrose Honeysuckle. And there was something fine in the way he thus unflinchingly faced the possibility. Not for a moment did he think of hushing the matter up to shield his daughter's reputation.
No, justice should run its course even if the whole town had to know that Ambrose Honeysuckle's only child—and she a girl, which seemed, somehow, to make it more horrible—had eaten fairy fruit.
As to his vision of Duke Aubrey, that he dismissed as an hallucination due to his excited condition and perhaps, as well, to the hysterical atmosphere that seemed to lie like a thick fog over the Academy.
Before he left Miss Primrose's parlour his eyes fell on the half embroidered slipper he had impatiently tossed away on the entrance of Prunella Chanticleer.
He smiled grimly; perhaps, after all, it had not been due to mere foolish feminine fancy that the strawberries were purple instead of red. She may have had real models for her embroidery.
He put the slipper in his pocket. It might prove of value in the law courts.
But Master Ambrose was mistaken in supposing that the berries embroidered on the slipper were fairy fruit.
Master Ambrose fully expected on reaching home to find that one of the grooms he had despatched after Moonlove had returned with her in safe custody.
This, however, was not the case, and he was confronted with another frightful contingency. Moonlove had last been seen running, at a speed so great and so unflagging as to hint at some sustaining force that was more than human, due West. What if she were making for the Debatable Hills? Once across those hills she would never again be seen in Dorimare.
He must go to Mumchance at once, and give the alarm. Search parties must immediately be sent to ransack the country from one end to the other.
On his way out he was stopped by Dame Jessamine in the fretful complaining condition that he always found so irritating.
"Where have you been, Ambrose?" she cried querulously. "First Moonlove screaming like a mad cockatoo! And then you rushing off, just after your dinner too, and leaving me like that in the lurch when I was so upset that I was on the verge of swooning! Where did you go to Ambrose?" and her voice grew shrill. "I do wish you would go to Miss Primrose and tell her she must not let Moonlove be such a tom-boy and play practical jokes on her parents ... rushing home in the middle of the day like that and talking such silly nonsense. She really is a very naughty girl to give us such a fright. I feel half inclined to go straight off to the Academy and give her a good scolding."
"Stop chattering, Jessamine, and let me go," cried Master Ambrose. "Moonlove is not at the Academy."
And he found a sort of savage satisfaction in calling back over his shoulder as he hurried from the room, "I very much fear you will never see your daughter again, Jessamine."
About half an hour later, he returned home even more depressed than when he had set out, owing to what he had learned from Mumchance as to the recent alarming spread in the town of the consumption of fairy fruit. He found Endymion Leer sitting in the parlour with his wife.
Her husband's parting words had brought on an attack of violent hysterics and the alarmed servants, fearing a seizure, had, on their own responsibility, summoned the only doctor of Lud in whom they had any faith, Endymion Leer. And, judging from Dame Jessamine's serene and smiling face, he had succeeded in removing completely the terrible impression produced by her husband's parting words, and in restoring to what she was pleased to call her mind its normal condition, namely that of a kettle that contains just enough water to simmer comfortably over a low fire.
She greeted Master Ambrose with a smile that for her was quite eager.
"Oh, Ambrose!" she cried, "I have been having such a pleasant talk with Dr. Leer. He says girls of her age often get silly and excited, though I'm sure I never did, and that she's sure to be brought home before night. But I do think we'd better take her away from Miss Primrose's. For one thing she has really learned quite enough now—I know no one who can make prettier groups in butter. So I think we had better give a ball for her before the winter, so if you will excuse me, Dr. Leer, I have just a few things to see to...." and off she bustled to overhaul Moonlove's bridal chest, which, according to the custom of Dorimarite mothers, she had been storing, ever since her daughter's birth, with lace and velvets and brocade.
Not without reason, Dame Jessamine was considered the stupidest woman in Lud-in-the-Mist. And, in addition, the Ludite's lack of imagination and inability to feel serious emotions, amounted in her to a sort of affective idiocy.
So Master Ambrose found himself alone with Endymion Leer; and, though he had never liked the man, he was very glad to have the chance of consulting him. For, socially, however great his shortcomings might be, Master Ambrose knew him to be undeniably the best doctor in the country, and a very clever fellow into the bargain.
"Leer," he said solemnly, when Dame Jessamine had left the room, "there are very queer things happening at that Academy ... very queer things."
"Indeed?" said Endymion Leer, in a tone of surprise. "What sort of things?"
Master Ambrose gave a short laugh: "Not the sort of things, if my suspicions are correct, that one cares to talk about—even between men. But I can tell you, Leer, though I'm not what one could call a fanciful man, I believe if I'd stayed much longer in that house I should have gone off my head, the whole place stinks with ... well, with pernicious nonsense, and I actually found myself, I, Ambrose Honeysuckle, seeing things—ridiculous things."
Endymion Leer looked interested.
"What sort of things, Master Ambrose?" he asked.
"Oh, it's not worth repeating—except in so far as it shows that the fancies of silly overwrought women can sometimes be infectious. I actually imagined that I saw the Senate room portrait of Duke Aubrey reflected on the window. And if I take to fancying things—well, there must be something very fishy in the offing."
Endymion Leer's expression was inscrutable.
"Optical delusions have been known before, Master Ambrose," he said calmly. "Even the eyes of Senators may sometimes play them tricks. Optical delusions, legal fictions—and so the world wags on."
Master Ambrose grunted. He loathed the fellow's offensive way of putting things.
But he was sore at heart and terribly anxious, and he felt the need of having his fears either confirmed or dispelled, so, ignoring the sneer, he said with a weary sigh: "However, that's a mere trifle. I have grave reasons for fearing that my daughter has ... has ... well, not to put too fine a point on things, I'm afraid that my daughter has eaten fairy fruit."
Endymion Leer flung up his hands in horror, and then he laughed incredulously.
"Impossible, my dear sir, impossible! Your good lady told me you were sadly anxious about her, but let me assure you such an idea is mere morbidness on your part. The thing's impossible."
"Is it?" said Master Ambrose grimly; and producing the slipper from his pocket he held it out, saying, "What do you say to that? I found it in Miss Crabapple's parlour. I'm not much of a botanist, but I've never seen purple strawberries in Dorimare ... toasted cheese! What's taken the man?"
For Endymion Leer had turned livid, and was staring at the design on the shoe with eyes as full of horror as if it had been some hideous goblin.
Master Ambrose interpreted this as corroboration of his own theory.
He gave a sort of groan: "Not so impossible after all, eh?" he said gloomily. "Yes, that I very much fear is the sort of stuff my poor little girl has been given to eat."
Then his eyes flashed, and clenching his fist he cried, "But it's not her I blame. Before I'm many days older I'll smoke out that nest of wasps! I'll hang that simpering old woman from her own doorpost. By the Golden Apples of the West I'll...."
Endymion Leer had by this time, at any rate externally, recovered his equanimity.
"Are you referring to Miss Primrose Crabapple?" he asked in his usual voice.
"Yes, Miss Primrose Crabapple!" boomed Master Ambrose, "nonsensical, foul-minded, obscene old...."
"Yes, yes," interrupted Endymion Leer with good-humoured impatience, "I daresay she's all of that and a great deal more, but, all the same, I don't believe her capable of having given your daughter what you think she has. I admit, when you first showed me that slipper I was frightened. Unlike you, I am a bit of a botanist, and I certainly have never seen a berry like that in Dorimare. But after all that does not prove that it grows ... across the hills. There's many a curious fruit to be found in the Cinnamon Isles, or in the oases of the Amber Desert ... why, your own ships, Master Ambrose, sometimes bring such fruit. The ladies of Lud have no lack of exotic fruit and flowers to copy in their embroidery. No, no, you're a bit unhinged this evening, Master Ambrose, else you would not allow so much as the shadow of foul suspicions like these to cross your mind."
Master Ambrose groaned.
And then he said a little stiffly, "I am not given, Dr. Leer, to harbouring foul suspicions without cause. But a great deal of mischief is sometimes done by not facing facts. How is one to explain my daughter's running away, due west, like one possessed? Besides, Prunella Chanticleer as much as told me she had ... eaten a certain thing ... and ... and ... I'm old enough to remember the great drought, so I know the smell, so to speak, of evil, and there is something very strange going on in that Academy."
"Prunella Chanticleer, did you say?" queried Endymion Leer with an emphasis on the last word, and with a rather odd expression in his eyes.
Master Ambrose looked surprised.
"Yes," he said. "Prunella Chanticleer, her school fellow and intimate friend."
Endymion Leer gave a short laugh.
"The Chanticleers are ... rather curious people," he said drily, "Are you aware that Ranulph Chanticleer has done the very thing you suspect your daughter of having done?"
Master Ambrose gaped at him.
Ranulph had certainly always been an odd and rather disagreeable boy, and there had been that horrid little incident at the Moongrass cheese supper-party ... but that he actually should have eaten fairy fruit!
"Do you mean? Do you mean...?" he gasped.
Endymion Leer nodded his head significantly: "One of the worst cases I have ever known."
"And Nathaniel knows?"
Again Endymion Leer nodded.
A wave of righteous indignation swept over Master Ambrose. The Honeysuckles were every bit as ancient and honourable a family as the Chanticleers, and yet here was he, ready to tarnish his escutcheon for ever, ready if need be to make the town crier trumpet his disgrace from the market-place, to sacrifice money, position, family pride, everything, for the good of the community. While the only thought of Nathaniel, and he the Mayor, was to keep his skeleton safely hidden in the cupboard.
"Master Ambrose," continued Endymion Leer, in a grave impressive voice, "if what you fear about your daughter be true, then it is Master Nathaniel who is to blame. No, no, hear me out," as Master Ambrose raised a protesting hand. "I happen to know that some months ago Mumchance warned him of the alarming increase there has been recently in Lud in the consumption of ... a certain commodity. And I know that this is true from my practice in the less genteel parts of the town. Take it from me, Master Ambrose, you Senators make a great mistake in ignoring what takes place in those low haunts. Nasty things have a way of not always staying at the bottom, you know—stir the pond and they rise to the top. Anyway, Master Nathaniel was warned, yet he took no steps."
He paused for a few seconds, and then, fixing his eyes searchingly on Master Ambrose, he said, "Did it never strike you that Master Nathaniel Chanticleer was a rather ... curious man?"
"Never," said Master Ambrose coldly. "What are you insinuating, Leer?"
Endymion Leer gave a little shrug: "Well, it is you who have set the example in insinuations. Master Nathaniel is a haunted man, and a bad conscience makes a very good ghost. If a man has once tasted fairy fruit he is never the same again. I have sometimes wondered if perhaps, long ago, when he was a young man...."
"Hold your tongue, Leer!" cried Master Ambrose angrily. "Chanticleer is a very old friend of mine, and, what's more, he's my second cousin. There's nothing wrong about Nathaniel."
But was this true? A few hours ago he would have laughed to scorn any suggestion to the contrary. But since then, his own daughter ... ugh!
Yes, Nathaniel had certainly always been a very queer fellow—touchy, irascible, whimsical.
A swarm of little memories, not noticed at the time, buzzed in Master Ambrose's head ... irrational actions, equivocal remarks. And, in particular, one evening, years and years ago, when they had been boys ... Nat's face at the eerie sound produced by an old lute. The look in his eyes had been like that in Moonlove's today.
No, no. It would never do to start suspecting everyone—above all his oldest friend.
So he let the subject of Master Nathaniel drop and questioned Endymion Leer as to the effects on the system of fairy fruit, and whether there was really no hope of finding an antidote.
Then Endymion Leer started applying his famous balm—a balm that varied with each patient that required it.
In most cases, certainly, there was no cure. But when the eater was a Honeysuckle, and hence, born with a healthy mind in a healthy body there was every reason to hope that no poison could be powerful enough to undermine such a constitution.
"Yes, but suppose she is already across the border?" said Master Ambrose. Endymion Leer gave a little shrug.
"In that case, of course, there is nothing more one can do," he replied.
Master Ambrose gave a deep sigh and leant back wearily in his chair, and for a few minutes they sat in silence.
Drearily and hopelessly Master Ambrose's mind wandered over the events of the day and finally settled, as is the way with a tired mind, on the least important—the red juice he had noticed oozing out of the coffin, when they had been checked at the west gate by the funeral procession.
"Do the dead bleed, Leer?" he said suddenly.
Endymion Leer sprang from his chair as if he had been shot. First he turned white, then he turned crimson.
"What the ... what the ..." he stuttered, "what do you mean by that question, Master Ambrose?"
He was evidently in the grip of some violent emotion.
"Busty Bridget!" exclaimed Master Ambrose, testily, "what, by the Harvest of Souls, has taken you now, Leer? It may have been a silly question, but it was quite a harmless one. We were stopped by a funeral this afternoon at the west gate, and I thought I saw a red liquid oozing from the coffin. But, by the White Ladies of the Fields, I've seen so many queer things today that I've ceased to trust my own eyes."
These words completely restored Endymion Leer's good humour. He flung back his head and laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks.
"Why, Master Ambrose," he gurgled, "it was such a grisly question that it gave me quite a turn. Owing to the deplorable ignorance of this country I'm used to my patients asking me rather queer things ... but that beats anything I've yet heard. 'Do the dead bleed? Do pigs fly?' Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
Then, seeing that Master Ambrose was beginning to look stiff and offended, he controlled his mirth, and added, "Well, well, a man as sorely tried as you have been today, Master Ambrose, is to be excused if he has hallucinations ... it is wonderful what queer things we imagine we see when we are unhinged by strong emotion. And now I must be going. Birth and death, Master Ambrose, they wait for no man—not even for Senators. So I must be off and help the little Ludites into the world, and the old ones out of it. And in the meantime don't give up hope. At any moment one of Mumchance's good Yeomen may come galloping up with the little lady at his saddle-bow. And then—even if she should have eaten what you fear she has—I shall be much surprised if a Honeysuckle isn't able with time and care to throw off all effects of that foul fodder and grow up into as sensible a woman—as her mother."
And, with these characteristic words of comfort, Endymion Leer bustled off on his business.
Master Ambrose spent a most painful evening, his ears, on the one hand, alert for every sound of a horse's hoof, for every knock at the front door, in case they might herald news of Moonlove; and, at the same time, doing their best not to hear Dame Jessamine's ceaseless prattle.
"Ambrose, I wish you'd remind the clerks to wipe their shoes before they come in. Have you forgotten you promised me we should have a separate door for the warehouse? I've got it on paper.
"How nice it is to know that there's nothing serious the matter with Moonlove, isn't it? But I don't know what I should have done this afternoon if that kind Doctor Leer hadn't explained it all to me. How could you run away a second time, Ambrose, and leave me in that state without even fetching my hartshorn? I do think men are so heartless.
"What a naughty girl Moonlove is to run away like this! I wonder when they'll find her and bring her back? But it will be nice having her at home this winter, won't it? What a pity Ranulph Chanticleer isn't older, he'd do so nicely for her, wouldn't he? But I suppose Florian Baldbreeches will be just as rich, and he's nearer her age.
"Do you think Marigold and Dreamsweet and the rest of them will be shocked by Moonlove's rushing off in this wild way? However, as Dr. Leer said, in his quaint way, girls will be girls.
"Oh, Ambrose, do you remember my deer-coloured tuftaffity, embroidered with forget-me-nots and stars? I had it in my bridal chest. Well, I think I shall have it made up for Moonlove. There's nothing like the old silks, or the old dyes either—there were no galls or gum-syrups used in them. You remember my deer-coloured tuftaffity, don't you?"
But Master Ambrose could stand it no longer. He sprang to his feet, and cried roughly, "I'll give you a handful of Yeses and Noes, Jessamine, and it'll keep you amused for the rest of the evening sorting them out, and sticking them on to your questions. I'm going out."
He would go across to Nat's ... Nat might not be a very efficient Mayor, but he was his oldest friend, and he felt he needed his sympathy.
"If ... if any news comes about Moonlove, I'll be over at the Chanticleers. Let me know at once," he called over his shoulder, as he hurried from the room.
Yes, he was longing for a talk with Nat. Not that he had any belief in Nat's judgement; but he himself could provide all that was needed.
And, apart from everything else, it would be comforting to talk to a man who was in the same boat as himself—if, that is to say, the gossip retailed by Endymion Leer were true. But whether it were true or not Leer was a vulgar fellow, and had had no right to divulge a professional secret.
So huge did the events of the day loom in his own mind, that he felt sure of finding their shadow lying over the Chanticleers; and he was prepared to be magnanimous and assure the conscience-stricken Master Nathaniel that though, as Mayor, he may have been a little remiss and slack, nevertheless, he could not, in fairness, be held responsible for the terrible thing that had happened.
But he had forgotten the gulf that lay between the Magistrates and the rest of the town. Though probably the only topics of conversation that evening in every kitchen, in every tavern, in every tradesman's parlour, were the good run for his money little Miss Honeysuckle had given her revered father that afternoon, and the search parties of Yeomen that were scouring the country for her—not to mention the terrible suspicions as to the cause of her flight he had confided to Mumchance; nevertheless not a word of it all had reached the ears of the other Magistrates.
So, when the front-door of the Chanticleers was opened for him, he was greeted by sounds of uproarious laughter proceeding from the parlour.
The Polydore Vigils were spending the evening there, and the whole party was engaged in trying to catch a moth—flicking at it with their pocket-handkerchiefs, stumbling over the furniture, emulating each other to further efforts in the ancient terms of stag-hunting.
"Come and join the fun, Ambrose," shouted Master Nathaniel, crimson with exertion and laughter.
But Master Ambrose began to see red.
"You ... you ... heartless, gibbering idiots!" he roared.
The moth-hunters paused in amazement.
"Suffering Cats! What's taken you, Ambrose?" cried Master Nathaniel. "Stag-hunting, they say, was a royal sport. Even the Honeysuckles might stoop to it!"
"Don't the Honeysuckles consider a moth a stag, Ambrose?" laughed Master Polydore Vigil.
But that evening the old joke seemed to have lost its savour.
"Nathaniel," said Master Ambrose solemnly, "the curse of our country has fallen upon you and me ... and you are hunting moths!"
Now, "curse" happened to be one of the words that had always frightened Master Nathaniel. So much did he dislike it that he even avoided the words that resembled it in sound, and had made Dame Marigold dismiss a scullery-maid, merely because her name happened to be Kirstie.
Hence, Master Ambrose's words sent him into a frenzy of nervous irritation.
"Take that back, Ambrose! Take that back!" he roared. "Speak for yourself. The ... the ... the cur ... nothing of that sort is on me!"
"That is not true, Nathaniel," said Master Ambrose sternly. "I have only too good reason to fear that Moonlove is stricken by the same sickness as Ranulph, and...."
"You lie!" shouted Master Nathaniel.
"And in both cases," continued Master Ambrose, relentlessly, "the cause of the sickness was ... fairy fruit."
Dame Dreamsweet Vigil gave a smothered scream, Dame Marigold blushed crimson, and Master Polydore exclaimed, in a deeply shocked voice, "By the Milky Way, Ambrose, you are going a little too far—even if there were not ladies present."
"No, Polydore. There come times when even ladies must face facts. You see before you two dishonoured men—Nathaniel and myself. One of our statutes says that in the country of Dorimare each member of a family shall be the master of his own possessions, and that nothing shall be held in common but disgrace. And before you are many days older, Polydore, your family, too, may be sharing that possession. Each one of us is threatened in what is nearest to us, and our chief citizen—hunts moths!"
"No, no, Nathaniel," he went on in a louder and angrier voice, "you needn't glare and growl! I consider that you, as Mayor of this town, are responsible for what has happened today, and...."
"By the Sun, Moon and Stars!" bellowed Master Nathaniel, "I haven't the slightest idea what you mean by 'what has happened today,' but whatever it is, I know very well I'm not responsible. Were you responsible last year when old Mother Pyepowders's yapping little bitch chewed up old Matt's pet garters embroidered by his first sweetheart, and when...."
"You poor, snivelling, feeble-minded buffoon! You criminal nincompoop! Yes, criminal, I say," and at each word Master Ambrose's voice grew louder. "Who was it that knew of the spread of this evil thing and took no steps to stop it? Whose own son has eaten it? By the Harvest of Souls you may have eaten it yourself for all I know...."
"Silence, you foul-mouthed, pompous, brainless, wind-bag! You ... you ... foul, gibbering Son of a Fairy!" sputtered Master Nathaniel.
And so they went at it, hammer and tongs, doing their best to destroy in a few minutes the fabric built up by years of fellowship and mutual trust.
And the end of it was that Master Nathaniel pointed to the door, and in a voice trembling with fury, told Master Ambrose to leave his house, and never to enter it again.