About half-way to Swan, Master Nathaniel, having tethered his horse to a tree, was reclining drowsily under the shade of another. It was midday, and the further west he rode the warmer it grew; it was rather as if he were riding backward through the months.
Suddenly he was aroused by a dry little laugh, and looking round, he saw crouching beside him, an odd-looking old man, with very bright eyes.
"By my Great-aunt's rump, and who may you be?" enquired Master Nathaniel testily.
The old man shut his eyes, gulped several times, and replied:
"Who are you? Who is me?Answer my riddle and come and see,"
"Who are you? Who is me?Answer my riddle and come and see,"
"Who are you? Who is me?
Answer my riddle and come and see,"
and then he stamped impatiently, as if that had not been what he had wished to say.
"Some cracked old rustic, I suppose," thought Master Nathaniel, and closed his eyes; in the hopes that when the old fellow saw he was not inclined for conversation he would go away.
But the unwelcome visitor continued to crouch beside him, now and then giving him little jogs in the elbow, which was very irritating when one happened to be hot and tired and longing for forty winks.
"What are you doing?" cried Master Nathaniel irritably.
"I milk blue ewes; I reap red flowers,I weave the story of dead hours,"
"I milk blue ewes; I reap red flowers,I weave the story of dead hours,"
"I milk blue ewes; I reap red flowers,
I weave the story of dead hours,"
answered the old man.
"Oh, do you? Well, I wish you'd go now, this moment, and milk your red ewes ... I want to go to sleep," and he pulled his hat further down over his eyes and pretended to snore.
But suddenly he sprang to his feet with a yap of pain. The old man had prodded him in his belly, and was standing looking at him out of his startlingly bright eyes, with his head slightly on one side.
"Don't you try that on, old fellow!" cried Master Nathaniel angrily. "You're a nuisance, that's what you are. Why can't you leave me alone?"
The old man pointed eagerly at the tree, making little inarticulate sounds; it was as if a squirrel or a bird had been charged with some message that they could not deliver.
Then he crept up to him, put his mouth to his ear, and whispered, "What is it that's a tree, and yet not a tree, a man and yet not a man, who is dumb and yet can tell secrets, who has no arms and yet can strike?"
Then he stepped back a few paces as if he wished to observe the impression his words had produced, and stood rubbing his hands and cackling gleefully.
"I suppose I must humour him," thought Master Nathaniel; so he said good-naturedly, "Well, and what's the answer to your riddle, eh?"
But the old man seemed to have lost the power of articulate speech, and could only reiterate eagerly, "Dig ... dig ... dig."
"'Dig, dig, dig.' ... so that's the answer, is it? Well, I'm afraid I can't stay here the whole afternoon trying to guess your riddles. If you've got anything to tell me, can't you say it any plainer?"
Suddenly he remembered the old superstition that when the Silent People returned to Dorimare they could only speak in riddles and snatches of rhyme. He looked at the old man searchingly. "Who are you?" he said.
But the answer was the same as before. "Dig ... dig ... dig."
"Try again. Perhaps after a bit the words will come more easily," said Master Nathaniel. "You are trying to tell me your name."
The old man shut his eyes tight, took a long breath, and, evidently making a tremendous effort, brought out very slowly, "Seize—your—op-por-tun-us. Dig ... dig. Por-tun-us is my name."
"Well, you've got it out at last. So your name is Portunus, is it?"
But the old man stamped his foot impatiently. "Hand! hand!" he cried.
"Is it that you want to shake hands with me, old fellow?" asked Master Nathaniel.
But the old man shook his head peevishly. "Farm hand," he managed to bring out. "Dig ... dig."
And then he lapsed into doggerel:
"Dig and delve, delve and dig,Harness the mare to the farmer's gig."
"Dig and delve, delve and dig,Harness the mare to the farmer's gig."
"Dig and delve, delve and dig,
Harness the mare to the farmer's gig."
Finally Master Nathaniel gave up trying to get any sense out of him and untethered his horse. But when he tried to mount, the old man seized the stirrup and looking up at him imploringly, repeated, "Dig ... dig ... dig." And Master Nathaniel was obliged to shake him off with some roughness. And even after he had left him out of sight he could hear his voice in the distance, shouting, "Dig ... dig."
"I wonder what the old fellow was trying to tell me," said Master Nathaniel to himself.
On the morning of the following day he arrived at the village of Swan-on-the-Dapple.
Here the drama of autumn had only just reached its gorgeous climax, and the yellow and scarlet trees were flaming out their silent stationary action against the changeless chorus of pines, dark green against the distant hills.
"By the Golden Apples of the West!" muttered Master Nathaniel, "I'd no idea those accursed hills were so near. I'm glad Ranulph's safe away."
Having inquired his way to the Gibbertys' farm, he struck off the high road into the valley—and very lovely it was looking in its autumn colouring. The vintage was over, and the vines were now golden and red. Some of the narrow oblong leaves of the wild cherry had kept their bottle-green, while others, growing on the same twig, had turned to salmon-pink, and the mulberries alternated between canary-yellow and grass-green. The mountain ash had turned a fiery rose (more lovely, even, than had been its scarlet berries) and often an olive grew beside it, as if ready, lovingly, to quench its fire in its own tender grey. The birches twinkled and quivered, as if each branch were a golden divining rod trembling to secret water; and the path was strewn with olives, looking like black oblong dung. It was one of those mysterious autumn days that are intensely bright though the sun is hidden; and when one looked at these lambent trees one could almost fancy them the source of the light flooding the valley.
From time to time a tiny yellow butterfly would flit past, like a little yellow leaf shed by one of the birches; and now and then one of the bleeding, tortured looking liege-oaks would drop an acorn, with a little flop—just to remind you, as it were, that it was leading its own serene, vegetable life, oblivious to the agony ascribed to it by the fevered fancy of man.
Not a soul did Master Nathaniel pass after he had left the village, though from time to time he saw in the distance labourers following the plough through the vineyards, and their smocks provided the touch of blue that turns a picture into a story; there was blue smoke, too, to tell of human habitations; and an occasional cock strutting up and down in front of one of the red vines, like a salesman before his wares, flaunting, by way of advertisement, a crest of the same material as the vine leaves, but of a more brilliant hue; and in the distance were rushes, stuck up in sheaves to dry, and glimmering with the faint, whitish, pinky-grey of far-away fruit trees in blossom.
While, as if the eye had not enough to feed on in her own domain, the sounds, even, of the valley were pictorial—a tinkling of distant bells, conjuring up herds of goats; the ominous, melancholy roar which tells that somewhere a waggoner is goading on his oxen; and the distant bark of dogs that paints a picture of homesteads and sunny porches.
As Master Nathaniel jogged leisurely along, his thoughts turned to the farmer Gibberty, who many a time must have jogged along this path, in just such a way, and seen and heard the very same things that he was seeing and hearing now.
Yes, the farmer Gibberty had once been a real living man, like himself. And so had millions of others, whose names he had never heard. And one day he himself would be a prisoner, confined between the walls of other people's memory. And then he would cease even to be that, and become nothing but a few words cut in stone. What would these words be, he wondered.
A sudden longing seized him to hold Ranulph again in his arms. How pleasant would have been the thought that he was waiting to receive him at the farm!
But he must be nearing his journey's end, for in the distance he could discern the figure of a woman, leisurely scrubbing her washing on one of the sides of a stone trough.
"I wonder if that's the widow," thought Master Nathaniel. And a slight shiver went down his spine.
But as he came nearer the washerwoman proved to be quite a young girl.
He decided she must be the granddaughter, Hazel; and so she was.
He drew up his horse beside her and asked if this were the widow Gibberty's farm.
"Yes, sir," she answered shortly, with that half-frightened, half-defiant look that was so characteristic of her.
"Why, then, I've not been misdirected. But though they told me I'd find a thriving farm and a fine herd of cows, the fools forgot to mention that the farmer was a rose in petticoats," and he winked jovially.
Now this was not Master Nathaniel's ordinary manner with young ladies, which, as a matter of fact, was remarkably free from flirtatious facetiousness. But he had invented a role to play at the farm, and was already beginning to identify himself with it.
As it turned out, this opening compliment was a stroke of luck. For Hazel bitterly resented that she was not recognized as the lawful owner of the farm, and Master Nathaniel's greeting of her as the farmer thawed her coldness into dimples.
"If you've come to see over the farm, I'm sure we'll be very pleased to show you everything," she said graciously.
"Thank'ee, thank'ee kindly. I'm a cheesemonger from Lud-in-the-Mist. And there's no going to sleep quietly behind one's counter these days in trade, if one's to keep one's head above the water. It's competition, missy, competition that keeps old fellows like me awake. Why, I can remember when there weren't more than six cheesemongers in the whole of Lud; and now there are as many in my street alone. So I thought I'd come myself and have a look round and see where I could get the best dairy produce. There's nothing like seeing for oneself."
And here he launched into an elaborate and gratuitous account of all the other farms he had visited on his tour of inspection. But the one that had pleased him best, he said, had been that of a very old friend of his—and he named the farmer near Moongrass with whom, presumably, Ranulph and Luke were now staying.
Here Hazel looked up eagerly, and, in rather an unsteady voice, asked if he'd seen two lads there—a big one, and a little one who was the son of the Seneschal.
"Do you mean little Master Ranulph Chanticleer and Luke Hempen? Why, of course I saw them! It was they who told me to come along here ... and very grateful I am to them, for I have found something well worth looking at."
A look of indescribable relief flitted over Hazel's face.
"Oh ... oh! I'm so glad you saw them," she faltered.
"Aha! My friend Luke has evidently been making good use of his time—the young dog!" thought Master Nathaniel; and he proceeded to retail a great many imaginary sayings and doings of Luke at his new abode.
Hazel was soon quite at home with the jovial, facetious old cheesemonger. She always preferred elderly men to young ones, and was soon chatting away with the abandon sometimes observable when naturally confiding people, whom circumstances have made suspicious, find someone whom they think they can trust; and Master Nathaniel was, of course, drinking in every word and longing to be in her shoes.
"But, missy, it seems all work and no play!" he cried at last. "Do you get no frolics and junketings?"
"Sometimes we dance of an evening, when old Portunus is here," she answered.
"Portunus?" he cried sharply, "Who's he?"
But this question froze her back into reserve. "An old weaver with a fiddle," she answered stiffly.
"A bit doited?"
Her only answer was to look at him suspiciously and say, "Do you know Portunus, sir?"
"Well, I believe I met him—about half-way between here and Lud. The old fellow seemed to have something on his mind, but couldn't get it out—I've known many a parrot that talked better than he."
"Oh, I've often thought that, too! That he'd something on his mind, I mean," cried Hazel on another wave of confidence. "It's as if he were trying hard to tell one something. And he often follows me as if he wanted me to do something for him. And I sometimes think I should try and help him and not be so harsh with him—but he just gives me the creeps, and I can't help it."
"He gives you the creeps, does he?"
"That he does!" she cried with a little shiver. "To see him gorging himself with green fruit! It isn't like a human being the way he does it—it's like an insect or a bird. And he's like a cat, too, in the way he always follows about the folk that don't like him. Oh, he's nasty! And he's spiteful, too, and mischievous. But perhaps that's not to be wondered at, if ..." and she broke off abruptly.
Master Nathaniel gave her a keen look. "If what?" he said.
"Oh, well—just silly talk of the country people," said Hazel evasively.
"That he's—er, for instance, one of what you call the Silent People?"
"How did you know?" And Hazel looked at him suspiciously.
"Oh, I guessed. You see, I've heard a lot of that sort of talk since I've been in the west. Well, the old fellow certainly seemed to have something he wanted to tell me, but I can't say he was very explicit. He kept saying, over and over again, 'Dig, dig.'"
"Oh, that's his great word," cried Hazel. "The old women round about say that he's trying to tell one his name. You see, they think that ... well, that he's a dead man come back and that when he was on earth he was a labourer, by name Diggory Carp."
"Diggory Carp?" cried Master Nathaniel sharply.
Hazel looked at him in surprise. "Did you know him, sir?" she asked.
"No, no; not exactly. But I seem to have heard the name somewhere. Though I dare say in these parts it's a common enough one. Well, and what do they say about this Diggory Carp?"
Hazel looked a little uneasy. "They don't say much, sir—to me. I sometimes think there must have been some mystery about him. But I know that he was a merry, kind sort of man, well liked all round, and a rare fiddler. But he came to a sad end, though I never heard what happened exactly. And they say," and here she lowered her voice mysteriously, "that once a man joins the Silent People he becomes mischievous and spiteful, however good-natured he may have been when he was alive. And if he'd been unfairly treated, as they say he was, it would make him all the more spiteful, I should think. I often think he's got something he wants to tell us, and I sometimes wonder if it's got anything to do with the old stone herm in our orchard ... he's so fond of dancing round it."
"Really? And where is this old herm? I want to see all the sights of the country, you know; get my money's worth of travel!" And Master Nathaniel donned again the character of the cheerful cheesemonger, which, in the excitement of the last few minutes, he had, unwittingly, sloughed.
As they walked to the orchard, which was some distance from the washing trough, Hazel said, nervously:
"Perhaps you hadn't heard, sir, but I live here with my granny; at least, she isn't my real granny, though I call her so. And ... and ... well, she seems fond of old Portunus, and perhaps it would be as well not to mention to her that you had met him."
"Very well; I won't mention him to her ... at present." And he gave her rather a grim little smile.
Though the orchard had been stripped of its fruit, what with the red and yellow leaves, and the marvelous ruby-red of the lateral branches of the peach trees there was colour enough in the background of the old grey herm, and, in addition, there twisted around him the scarlet and gold of a vine.
"I often think he's the spirit of the farm," said Hazel shyly, looking to see if Master Nathaniel was admiring her old stone friend. To her amazement, however, as soon as his eyes fell on it he clapped his hand against his thigh, and burst out laughing.
"By the Sun, Moon and Stars!" he cried, "here's the answer to Portunus's riddle: 'the tree yet not a tree, the man yet not a man,'" and he repeated to Hazel the one consecutive sentence that Portunus had managed to enunciate.
"'Who has no arms and yet can strike, who is dumb and yet can tell secrets,'" she repeated after him. "Can you strike and tell secrets, old friend?" she asked whimsically, stroking the grey lichened stone. And then she blushed and laughed as if to apologize for this exhibition of childishness.
With country hospitality Hazel presumed that their uninvited guest had come to spend several days at the farm, and accordingly she had his horse taken to the stables and ordered the best room to be prepared for his use.
The widow, too, gave him a hearty welcome, when he came down to the midday meal in the big kitchen.
When they had been a few minutes at table, Hazel said, "Oh, granny, this gentleman has just come from the farm near Moongrass, where little Master Chanticleer and young Hempen have gone. And he says they were both of them blooming, and sent us kind messages."
"Yes," said Master Nathaniel cheerfully, ever ready to start romancing, "my old friend the farmer is delighted with them. The talk in Lud was that little Chanticleer had been ill, but all I can say is, you must have done wonders for him—his face is as round and plump as a Moongrass cheese."
"Well, I'm glad you're pleased with the young gentleman's looks, sir," said the widow in a gratified voice. But in her eyes there was the gleam of a rather disquieting smile.
Dinner over, the widow and Hazel had to go and attend to their various occupations, and Master Nathaniel went and paced up and down in front of the old house, thinking. Over and over again his thoughts returned to the odd old man, Portunus.
Was it possible that he had really once been Diggory Carp, and that he had returned to his old haunts to try and give a message?
It was characteristic of Master Nathaniel that the metaphysical possibilities of the situation occupied him before the practical ones. If Portunus were, indeed, Diggory Carp, then these stubble-fields and vineyards, these red and golden trees, would be robbed of their peace and stability. For he realized at last that the spiritual balm he had always found in silent things was simply the assurance that the passions and agonies of man were without meaning, roots, or duration—no more part of the permanent background of the world than the curls of blue smoke that from time to time were wafted through the valley from the autumn bonfires of weeds and rubbish, and that he could see winding like blue wraiths in and out of the foliage of the trees.
Yes, their message, though he had never till now heard it distinctly, had always been that Fairyland was nothing but delusion—there was life and death, and that was all. And yet, had their message always comforted him? There had been times when he had shuddered in the company of the silent things.
"Aye, aye," he murmured dreamily to himself, and then he sighed.
But he had yielded long enough to vain speculations—there were things to be done. Whether Portunus were the ghost of Diggory Carp or merely a doited old weaver, he evidently knew something that he wanted to communicate—and it was connected with the orchard herm. Of course, it might have nothing whatever to do with the murder of the late farmer Gibberty, but with the memory of the embroidered slipper fresh in his mind, Master Nathaniel felt it would be rank folly to neglect a possible clue.
He went over in his mind all the old man's words. "Dig, dig," ... that word had been the ever recurring burden.
Then he had a sudden flash of inspiration—why should not the word be taken in its primary meaning? Why, instead of the first syllable of Diggory Carp, should it not be merely and order to dig ... with a spade or a shovel? In that case it was clear that the place to dig in was under the herm. And he decided that he would do so as soon as an opportunity presented itself.
That night Hazel could not get to sleep. Perhaps this was due to having noticed something that afternoon that made her vaguely uneasy. The evenings were beginning to be chilly, and, shortly before supper, she had gone up to Master Nathaniel's room to light his fire. She found the widow and one of the maidservants there before her, and, to her surprise, they had brought down from the attic an old charcoal stove that had lain there unused for years, for Dorimare was a land of open fires, and stoves were practically unknown. The widow had brought the stove to the farm on her marriage, for, on her mother's side, she had belonged to a race from the far North.
On Hazel's look of surprise, she had said casually, "The logs are dampish today, and I thought this would make our guest cozier."
Now Hazel knew that the wood was not in the least damp; how could it be, as it had not rained for days? But that this should have made her uneasy was a sign of her deep instinctive distrust of her grandfather's widow.
Perhaps the strongest instinct in Hazel was that of hospitality—that all should be well, physically and morally, with the guests under the roof that she never forgot was hers, was a need in her much more pressing than any welfare of her own.
Meanwhile, Master Nathaniel, somewhat puzzled by the outlandish apparatus that was warming his room, had got into bed. He did not immediately put out his candle; he wished to think. For being much given to reverie, when he wanted to follow the sterner path of consecutive thought, he liked to have some tangible object on which to focus his eye, a visible goal, as it were, to keep his feet from straying down the shadowy paths that he so much preferred.
Tonight it was the fine embossed ceiling on which he fixed his eye—the same ceiling at which Ranulph used to gaze when he had slept in this room. On a ground of a rich claret colour patterned with azure arabesques, knobs of a dull gold were embossed, and at the four corners clustered bunches of grapes and scarlet berries in stucco. And though time had dulled their colour and robbed the clusters of many of their berries, they remained, nevertheless, pretty and realistic objects.
But, in spite of the light, the focus, and his desire for hard thinking, Master Nathaniel found his thoughts drifting down the most fantastic paths. And, besides, he was so drowsy and his limbs felt so strangely heavy. The colours on the ceiling were getting all blurred, and the old knobs were detaching themselves from their background and shining in space like suns, moons, and stars—or was it like apples—the golden apples of the West? And now the claret-coloured background was turning into a red field—a field of red flowers, from which leered Portunus, and among which wept Ranulph. But the straight road, which for the last few months had been the projection of his unknown, buried purpose, even through this confused landscape glimmered white ... yet, it looked different from usual ... why, of course, it was the Milky Way! And then he knew no more.
In the meantime Hazel had been growing more and more restless, and, though she scolded herself for foolishness, more and more anxious. Finally, she could stand it no more: "I think I'll just creep up to the gentleman's door and listen if I can hear him snoring," she said to herself. Hazel believed that it was a masculine peculiarity not to be able to sleep without snoring.
But though she kept her ear to the keyhole for a full two minutes, not a sound proceeded from Master Nathaniel's room. Then she softly opened the door. A lighted candle was guttering to its end, and her guest was lying, to all appearance, dead, whilst a suffocating atmosphere pervaded the room. Hazel felt almost sick with terror, but she flung open the casement window as wide as it would go, poured half the water from the ewer into the stove to extinguish its fire, and the remainder over Master Nathaniel himself. To her unspeakable relief he opened his eyes, groaned, and muttered something inaudible.
"Oh, sir, you're not dead then!" almost sobbed Hazel. "I'll just go and fetch you a cup of cordial and get you some hartshorn."
When she returned with the two restoratives, she found Master Nathaniel sitting up in bed, and, though he looked a little fuddled, his natural colour was creeping back, and the cordial restored him to almost his normal condition.
When Hazel saw that he was really himself again, she sank down on the floor and, spent with terror, began to sob bitterly.
"Come, my child!" said Master Nathaniel kindly, "there's nothing to cry about. I'm feeling as well as ever I did in my life ... though, by the Harvest of Souls, I can't imagine what can have taken me. I never remember to have swooned before in all my born days."
But Hazel would not be comforted: "That it should have happened, here, in my house," she sobbed. "We who have always stood by the laws of hospitality ... and not a young gentleman, either ... oh, dearie me; oh, dearie me!"
"What do you blame to yourself, my child?" asked Master Nathaniel. "Your hospitality is in no sense to blame if, owing perhaps to recent fatigues and anxieties, I should have turned faint. No, it is not you that are the bad host, but I that am the bad guest to have given so much trouble."
But Hazel's sobs only grew wilder. "I didn't like her bringing in that fire-box—no I didn't! An evil outlandish thing that it is! That it should have happened under my roof! For it is my roof ... and she'll not pass another night under it!" and she sprang to her feet, with clenched fists and blazing eyes.
Master Nathaniel was becoming interested. "Are you alluding to your grandfather's widow?" he asked quietly.
"Yes, I am!" cried Hazel indignantly. "Oh! she's up to strange tricks, always ... and none of her ways are those of honest farmers—no fennel over our doors, unholy fodder in our granary ... and in her heart, thoughts as unholy. I saw the smile with which she looked at you at dinner."
"Are you accusing this woman of actually having made an attempt on my life?" he asked slowly.
But Hazel flinched before this point-blank question, and her only answer was to begin again to cry. For a few minutes Master Nathaniel allowed her to do so unmolested, and then he said gently, "I think you have cried enough for tonight, my child. You have been kindness itself, but it is evident that I am not very welcome to your grandfather's widow, so I must not inflict myself longer upon her. But before I leave her roof there is something I want to do, and I shall need your help."
Then he told her who he was and how he wanted to prove something against a certain enemy of his, and had come here hoping to find a missing clue.
He paused, and looked at her meditatively. "I think I ought to tell you, my child," he went on, "that if I can prove what I want, your grandmother may also be involved. Did you know she had once been tried for the murder of your grandfather?"
"Yes," she faltered. "I've heard that there was a trial. But I thought she was proved innocent."
"Yes. But there is such a thing as a miscarriage of justice. I believe that your grandfather was murdered, and that my enemy—whose name I don't care to mention till I have more to go upon—had a hand in the matter. And I have a shrewd suspicion that the widow was his accomplice. Under these circumstances, will you still be willing to help me?"
Hazel first turned red, and then she turned white, and her lower lip began to tremble. She disliked the widow, but had to admit that she had never been unkindly treated by her, and, though not her own kith and kin, she was the nearest approach to a relative she could remember. But, on the other hand, Hazel belonged by tradition and breed to the votaries of the grim cult of the Law. Crime must not go unpunished; moreover (and here Hazel subscribed to a still more venerable code) one's own kith and kin must not go unavenged.
But the very vehemence with which she longed to be rid of the widow's control had bred a curious irrational sense of guilt with regard to her; and, into the bargain, she was terrified of her.
Supposing this clue should lead to nothing, and the widow discover that they had been imagining? How, in that case, should she dare to face her, to go on living under the same roof with her?
And yet ... she was certain she had tried to murder their guest that night. How dared she? How dared she?
Hazel clenched her fists, and in a little gasping voice said, "Yes, sir, I'll help you."
"Good!" said Master Nathaniel briskly. "I want to take old Portunus's advice—and dig under that herm in the orchard, this very night. Though, mind you, it's just as likely as not to prove nothing but the ravings of a crazy mind; or else it may concern some buried treasure, or something else that has nothing to do with your grandfather's murder. But, in the case of our finding a valuable bit of evidence, we must have witnesses. And I think we should have the law-man of the district with us; who is he?"
"It's the Swan blacksmith, Peter Pease."
"Is there any servant you trust whom you could send for him? Someone more attached to you than to the widow?"
"I can trust them all, and they all like me best," she answered.
"Good. Go and wake a servant and send him off at once for the blacksmith. Tell him not to bring him up to the house, but to take him straight to the orchard ... we don't want to wake the widow before need be. And the servant can stay and help us with the job—the more witnesses the better."
Hazel felt as if she was in a strange, rather terrible dream. But she crept up to the attic and aroused one of the unmarried labourers—who, according to the old custom, slept in their master's house—and bade him ride into Swan and bring the blacksmith back with him on important business concerning the law.
Hazel calculated that he should get to Swan and back in less than an hour, and she and Master Nathaniel crept out of the house to wait for them in the orchard, each provided with a spade.
The moon was on the wane, but still sufficiently full to give a good light. She was, indeed, an orchard thief, for no fruit being left to rob, she had robbed the leaves of all their colour.
"Poor old moon!" chuckled Master Nathaniel, who was now in the highest of spirits, "always filching colours with which to paint her own pale face, and all in vain! But just look at your friend, at Master Herm. He does look knowing!"
For in the moonlight the old herm had found his element, and under her rays his stone flickered and glimmered into living silver flesh, while his archaic smile had gained a new significance.
"Excuse, me, sir," said Hazel timidly, "but I couldn't help wondering if the gentleman you suspected was ... Dr. Leer."
"What makes you think so?" asked Master Nathaniel sharply.
"I don't quite know," faltered Hazel. "I just—wondered."
Before long they were joined by the labourer and the law-man blacksmith—a burly, jovial, red-haired rustic of about fifty.
"Good evening," cried Master Nathaniel briskly, "I am Nathaniel Chanticleer" (he was sure that the news of his deposition could not yet have had time to travel to Swan) "and if my business were not very pressing and secret I would not, you may be sure, have had you roused from your bed at this ungodly hour. I have reason to think that something of great importance may be hidden under this herm, and I wanted you to be there to see that our proceedings are all in order," and he laughed genially. "And here's the guarantee that I'm no masquerader," and he removed his signet ring and held it out to the blacksmith. It was engraved with his well-known crest, and with six chevrons, in token that six of his ancestors had been High Seneschals of Dorimare.
Both the blacksmith and the labourer were at first quite overwhelmed by learning his identity, but he pressed a spade into the hand of each and begged them to begin digging without further delay.
For some time they toiled away in silence, and then one of the spades came against something hard.
It proved to be a small iron box with a key attached to it.
"Out with it! out with it!" cried Master Nathaniel excitedly. "I wonder if it contains a halter! By the Sun, Moon and Stars, I wonder!"
But he was sobered by a glimpse of poor Hazel's scared face.
"Forgive me, my child," he said gently, "my thirst for revenge has made me forget both decency and manners. And, as like as not, there will be nothing in it but a handful of Duke Aubrey crowns—the nest-egg of one of your ancestors."
They unlocked the box and found that it contained nothing but a sealed parchment package, addressed thus:
"To the First Who Finds Me."
"I think, Miss Hazel, it should be you who opens it. Don't you agree, Master Law-man?" said Master Nathaniel. So, with trembling fingers, Hazel broke the seal, tore open the wrapper, and drew out a sheet of writing.
By the light of the blacksmith's lanthorn they read as follows:
I, Jeremiah Gibberty, farmer and law-man of the district of Swan-on-the-Dapple, having ever been a merry man who loved his joke, do herein crack my last, this side of the Debatable Hills, in the hopes that it will not lie so long in the damp earth as to prove but a lame rocket when the time comes to fire it off. And this is my last joke, and may all who hear it hold their sides, and may the tears run down their cheeks. I, Jeremiah Gibberty, was wilfully murdered by my second wife, Clementina, daughter of Ralph Baldbreeches, sailor, and an outlandish woman from the far North. In the which crime she was aided by her lover, Christopher Pugwalker, a foreigner who called himself an herbalist. And I know by sundry itchings of my skin which torment me as I write and by my spotted tongue that I have been given what the folks who know them call death-berries. And they were boiled down to look like mulberry jelly, offered to me by my dear wife, and of which I ate in my innocence. And I bid him who finds this writing to search for a little lad, by name Peter Pease, the son of a tipsy tinker. For this little lad, having an empty stomach and being greedy for pence, came to me but an hour ago with a basket full of these same death-berries and asked me if I should like to buy them. And I, to test him, asked him if he thought there was a blight in my orchard that I should be so hard put to it for fruit. And he said he thought we must like them up at Gibberty's for he had seen the gentleman who lived with us (Christopher Pugwalker) but a week since, gathering them. And if Christopher Pugwalker should leave these parts, then let the law search for a dumpy fellow, with nut-brown hair, a pug-nose freckled like a robin's egg, and one eye brown, the other blue. And in order that my last joke may be a well-built one, I have tested the berries I bought from the little lad, though it wrung my heart to do so, on one of the rabbits of a certain little maid, by name, Marjory Beach, the daughter of my carter. And I have done so because she, being seven years old and a healthy lass, runs a good chance of being still this side of the hills when someone digs up this buried jest. And if she be alive she will not have forgotten how one of her rabbits took to scratching itself, and how its tongue was spotted like a snake, and how she found it lying dead. And I humbly beg her pardon for having played such a cruel trick on a little maid, and I ask my heirs (if so be any of them still alive) to send her a fine buck rabbit, a ham, and ten gold pieces. And, though I am law-man and could put them under arrest before I die, yet, for a time, I hold my hand. Partly because I have been a hunter all my life, and as the hare and deer are given their chance to escape, so shall they have theirs; and partly because I should like to be very far on my wanderings down the Milky Way before Clementina mounts Duke Aubrey's wooden horse; because I think the sound of her strangling would hurt my ears; and, last of all, because I am very weary. And here I sign my name for the last time.
I, Jeremiah Gibberty, farmer and law-man of the district of Swan-on-the-Dapple, having ever been a merry man who loved his joke, do herein crack my last, this side of the Debatable Hills, in the hopes that it will not lie so long in the damp earth as to prove but a lame rocket when the time comes to fire it off. And this is my last joke, and may all who hear it hold their sides, and may the tears run down their cheeks. I, Jeremiah Gibberty, was wilfully murdered by my second wife, Clementina, daughter of Ralph Baldbreeches, sailor, and an outlandish woman from the far North. In the which crime she was aided by her lover, Christopher Pugwalker, a foreigner who called himself an herbalist. And I know by sundry itchings of my skin which torment me as I write and by my spotted tongue that I have been given what the folks who know them call death-berries. And they were boiled down to look like mulberry jelly, offered to me by my dear wife, and of which I ate in my innocence. And I bid him who finds this writing to search for a little lad, by name Peter Pease, the son of a tipsy tinker. For this little lad, having an empty stomach and being greedy for pence, came to me but an hour ago with a basket full of these same death-berries and asked me if I should like to buy them. And I, to test him, asked him if he thought there was a blight in my orchard that I should be so hard put to it for fruit. And he said he thought we must like them up at Gibberty's for he had seen the gentleman who lived with us (Christopher Pugwalker) but a week since, gathering them. And if Christopher Pugwalker should leave these parts, then let the law search for a dumpy fellow, with nut-brown hair, a pug-nose freckled like a robin's egg, and one eye brown, the other blue. And in order that my last joke may be a well-built one, I have tested the berries I bought from the little lad, though it wrung my heart to do so, on one of the rabbits of a certain little maid, by name, Marjory Beach, the daughter of my carter. And I have done so because she, being seven years old and a healthy lass, runs a good chance of being still this side of the hills when someone digs up this buried jest. And if she be alive she will not have forgotten how one of her rabbits took to scratching itself, and how its tongue was spotted like a snake, and how she found it lying dead. And I humbly beg her pardon for having played such a cruel trick on a little maid, and I ask my heirs (if so be any of them still alive) to send her a fine buck rabbit, a ham, and ten gold pieces. And, though I am law-man and could put them under arrest before I die, yet, for a time, I hold my hand. Partly because I have been a hunter all my life, and as the hare and deer are given their chance to escape, so shall they have theirs; and partly because I should like to be very far on my wanderings down the Milky Way before Clementina mounts Duke Aubrey's wooden horse; because I think the sound of her strangling would hurt my ears; and, last of all, because I am very weary. And here I sign my name for the last time.
When they had finished reading, Hazel burst into hysterical sobs, crying alternately, "Poor grandfather!" and "Will they hang her for it?" Master Nathaniel soothed her as best he could, and, when she had dried her eyes, she said, "Poor Marjory Beach! She must have that ham and that buck rabbit."
"She's still alive, then?" asked Master Nathaniel eagerly. Hazel nodded: "She is poor, and still a maid, and lives in Swan."
"And what about Peter Pease, the tinker's smart little lad? Is there nothing for him, Miss Hazel?" cried the blacksmith with a twinkle.
Hazel stared at him in bewilderment, and Master Nathaniel cried gleefully, "Why, it's the same name, by the Harvest of Souls! Were you, then, the little chap who saw Pugwalker picking the berries?"
And Hazel said in slow amazement, "You were the little boy who spoke to my grandfather ... that night? I never thought...."
"That I'd begun so humbly, eh? Yes, I was the son of a tinker, or, as they liked to be called, of a whitesmith. And now I'm a blacksmith, and as white is better than black I suppose I've come down in the world." And he winked merrily.
"And you remember the circumstances alluded to by the late farmer?" asked Master Nathaniel eagerly.
"That I do, my lord Seneschal. As well if they had happened yesterday. I won't easily forget the farmer's face that night when I offered him my basketful—but though the death-berries are rare enough I found them in those days commoner to pick up than ha'pence. And I won't easily forget Master Pugwalker's face, either, while he was plucking them. And little did he know there was a squirrel watching him with a good Dorimare tongue in his head!"
"Have you ever seen him since?"
The blacksmith winked.
"Come, come!" cried Master Nathaniel impatiently. "Have you seen him since? This is no time for beating about the bush."
"Well, perhaps I have," said the blacksmith slowly, "trotting about Swan, as brisk and as pleased with himself as a fox with a goose in his mouth. And I've often wondered whether it wasn't my duty as law-man to speak out ... but, after all, it was very long ago, and his life seemed to be of better value than his death, for he was a wonderfully clever doctor and did a powerful lot of good."
"It—it was Dr. Leer, then?" asked Hazel in a low voice; and the blacksmith winked.
"Well, I think we should be getting back to the house," said Master Nathaniel, "there's still some business before us." And, lowering his voice, he added, "Not very pleasant business, I fear."
"I suppose your Honour means belling the cat?" said the blacksmith, adding with a rueful laugh, "I can't imagine a nastier job. She's a cat with claws."
As they walked up to the house, the labourer whispered to Hazel, "Please, missy, does it mean that the mistress killed her husband? They always say so in the village, but...."
"Don't, Ben; don't! I can't bear talking about it," cried Hazel with a shudder. And when they reached the house, she ran up to her own bedroom and locked herself in.
Ben was despatched to get a stout coil of rope, and Master Nathaniel and the blacksmith, whom the recent excitement had made hungry, began to forage around for something to eat.
Suddenly a voice at the door said, "And what, may I ask, are you looking for in my larder, gentlemen?"
It was the widow. First she scrutinized Master Nathaniel—a little pale and hollow-eyed, perhaps, but alive and kicking, for all that. Then her eyes travelled to Peter Pease. At that moment, Ben entered with the rope, and Master Nathaniel nudged the law-man, who, clearing his throat, cried in the expressionless falsetto of the Law, "Clementina Gibberty! In the name of the country of Dorimare, and to the end that the dead, the living, and those not yet born, may rest quietly in their graves, their bed, and the womb, I arrest you for the murder of your late husband, Jeremiah Gibberty."
She turned deadly pale, and, for a few seconds, stood glaring at him in deadly silence. Then she gave a scornful laugh. "What new joke of yours is this, Peter Pease? I was accused of this before, as you know well, and acquitted with the judge's compliments, and as good as an apology. Law business must be very slack in Swan that you've nothing better to do than to come and frighten a poor woman in her own house with old spiteful tales that were silenced once and for all nearly forty years ago. My late husband died quietly in his bed, and I only hope you may have as peaceful an end. And you must know very little of the law, Peter Pease, if you don't know that a person can't be tried twice for the same crime."
Then Master Nathaniel stepped forward. "You were tried before," he said quietly, "for poisoning your husband with the sap of osiers. This time it will be for poisoning him with the berries of merciful death. Tonight the dead have found their tongues."
She gave a wild shriek, which reached upstairs to Hazel's room and caused her to spring into bed and pull the blankets over her ears, as if it had been a thunderstorm.
Master Nathaniel signed to Ben, who, grinning from ear to ear, as is the way of rustics when witnessing a painful and embarrassing scene, came up to his mistress with the coil of rope. But to bind her, he needed the aid of both the blacksmith and Master Nathaniel, for, like a veritable wild cat, she struggled and scratched and bit.
When her arms were tightly bound, Master Nathaniel said, "And now I will read you the words of the dead."
She was, for the time, worn out by her struggles, and her only answer was an insolent stare, and he produced the farmer's document and read it through to her.
"And now," he said, eyeing her curiously, "shall I tell you who gave me the clue without which I should never have found that letter? It was a certain old man, whom I think you know, by name Portunus."
Her face turned as pale as death, and in a low voice of horror she cried, "Long ago I guessed who he was, and feared that he might prove my undoing." Then her voice grew shrill with terror and her eyes became fixed, as if seeing some hideous vision, "The Silent People!" she screamed. "The dumb who speak! The bound who strike! I cherished and fed old Portunus like a tame bird. But what do the dead know of kindness?"
"If old Portunus is he whom you take him to be, I fail to see that he has much cause for gratitude," said Master Nathaniel drily. "Well, he has taken his revenge, on you—and your accomplice."
"My accomplice?"
"Aye, on Endymion Leer."
"Oh, Leer!" And she laughed scornfully. "It was a greater than Endymion Leer who ordered the death of farmer Gibberty."
"Indeed?"
"Yes. One who cares not for good and evil, and sows his commands like grain."
"Whom do you mean?"
Again she laughed scornfully. "Not one whom I would name to you. But set your mind at rest, he cannot be summoned in a court of law."
She gave him a searching look, and said abruptly, "Who are you?"
"My name is Nathaniel Chanticleer."
"I thought as much!" she cried triumphantly. "I wasn't sure, but I thought I'd take no risks. However, you seem to bear a charmed life."
"I suppose you are alluding to your kind thought for my comfort—putting that nice little death-box in my room to keep me warm, eh?"
"Yes, that's it," she answered brazenly.
Then a look of indescribable malice came into her face, and, with an evil smile, she said, "You see, you gave yourself away—without knowing it—at dinner."
"Indeed? And how, may I ask?"
At first she did not answer, but eyed him gloatingly as a cat might eye a mouse. And then she said slowly, "It was that pack of lies you told me about the doings of the lads at Moongrass. Your son isn't at Moongrass—nor ever has been, nor ever will be."
"What do you mean?" he cried hoarsely.
"Mean?" she said with a shrill, triumphant laugh. "I mean this—on the night of the thirty-first of October, when the Silent People are abroad, he heard Duke Aubrey's summons, and followed it across the hills."
"Woman ... what ... what ... speak ... or ..." and the veins in Master Nathaniel's temples were swelling, and a fire seemed to have been lighted in his brain.
Her laughter redoubled. "You'll never see your son again!" she jeered. "Young Ranulph Chanticleer has gone to the land whence none returns."
Not for a moment did he doubt the truth of her words. Before his inward eye there flashed the picture he had seen in the pattern on the ceiling, just before losing consciousness—Ranulph weeping among the fields of gillyflowers.
A horror of impotent tenderness swept over him. While, with the surface of his mind, he supposed that this was IT springing out at him at last. And parallel with the agony, and in no way mitigating it, was a sense of relief—the relaxing of tension, when one can say, "Well, it has come at last."
He turned a dull eye on the widow, and said, a little thickly, "The land from which no one returns ... but I can go there, too."
"Follow him across the hills?" she cried scornfully. "No; you are not made of that sort of stuff."
He beckoned to Peter Pease, and they went out together to the front of the house. The cocks were crowing, and there was a feeling of dawn in the air.
"I want my horse," he said dully. "And can you find Miss Hazel for me?"
But as he spoke she joined them—pale and wild-eyed.
"From my room I heard you coming out," she said. "Is it—is it over?"
Master Nathaniel nodded. And then, in a quiet voice emptied of all emotion, he told her what he had just learned from the widow. She went still paler than before, and her eyes filled with tears.
Then, turning to Peter Pease, he said, "You will immediately get out a warrant for the apprehension of Endymion Leer and send it into Lud to the new Mayor, Master Polydore Vigil. And you, Miss Hazel, you'd better leave this place at once—you will have to be plaintiff in the trial. Go to your aunt, Mistress Ivy Peppercorn, who keeps the village shop at Mothgreen. And remember, you must say nothing whatever about the part I've played in this business—that is essential. I am not popular at present in Lud. And, now, would you kindly order my horse saddled and brought round."
There was something so colourless, so dead, in his voice, that both Hazel and the smith stood, for a few seconds, in awed and sympathetic silence, and then Hazel went off slowly to order his horse.
"You ... you didn't mean what you said to the widow, sir, about ... about going ... yonder?" asked Peter Pease in an awed voice.
Suddenly the fire was rekindled in Master Nathaniel's eyes, and he cried fiercely, "Aye, yonder, and beyond yonder, if need be ... till I find my son."
It did not take long for his horse to be saddled and led to the door.
"Good-bye, my child," he said to Hazel, taking her hand, and then he added, with a smile, "You dragged me back last night from the Milky Way ... and now I am going by the earthly one."
She and Peter stood watching him, riding along the valley towards the Debatable Hills, till he and his horse were just a speck in the distance.
"Well, well," said Peter Pease, "I warrant it'll be the first time in the history of Dorimare that a man has loved his son well enough to follow him yonder."
Literally, Master Polydore Vigil received the severest shock of his life, when a few days after the events recorded in the last chapter there reached him the warrant against Endymion Leer, duly signed and sealed by the law-man of the district of Swan-on-the-Dapple.
Dame Marigold had been right in saying that her brother was now completely under the dominion of the doctor. Master Polydore was a weak, idle man, who, nevertheless, dearly loved the insignia of authority. Hence, his present position was for him an ideal one—he had all the glory due to the first citizen, who has, moreover, effected a coup d'etat, and none of the real responsibility that such a situation entails.
And now, this terrible document had arrived—it was like an attempt to cut off his right hand. His first instinct on receiving it was to rush off and take counsel with Endymion Leer himself—surely the omniscient resourceful doctor would be able to reduce to wind and thistledown even a thing as solid as a warrant. But respect for the Law, and the belief that though everything else may turn out vanity and delusion, the Law has the terrifying solidity of Reality itself, were deep-rooted in Master Polydore. If there was a warrant out against Endymion Leer—well, then, he must bend his neck to the yoke like any other citizen and stand his trial.
Again he read through the warrant, in the hopes that on a second it would lose its reality—prove to be a forgery, or a hoax. Alas! Its genuineness was but too unmistakable—the Law had spoken.
Master Polydore let his hands fall to his sides in an attitude of limp dismay; then he sighed heavily; then he rose slowly to his feet—there was nothing for it but to summon Mumchance, and let the warrant instantly be put into effect. As it was possible, nay, almost certain, that the Doctor would be able to clear himself triumphantly in Court, the quicker the business was put through, the sooner Master Polydore would recover his right hand.
When Mumchance arrived, Master Polydore said, in a voice as casual as he could make it, "Oh! yes, Mumchance, yes ... I asked you to come, because," and he gave a little laugh, "a warrant has actually arrived—of course, there must be some gross misunderstanding behind it, and there will be no difficulty in getting it cleared up in Court—but, as a matter of fact, a warrant has arrived from the law-man of Swan-on-the-Dapple, against ... well, against none other than Dr. Endymion Leer!" and again he laughed.
"Yes, your Worship," said Mumchance; and, not only did his face express no surprise, but into the bargain it looked distinctly grim.
"Absurd, isn't it?" said Master Polydore, "and most inconvenient."
Mumchance cleared his throat: "A murderer's a murderer, your Worship," he said. "Me and my wife, we were spending last evening at Mothgreen—my wife's cousin keeps the tavern there, and he was celebrating his silver wedding—if your Worship will excuse me mentioning such things—and among the friends he'd asked in was the plaintiff and her aunt ... and, well ... there be some things that be just too big for any defendant to dodge. But I'll say no more, your Worship."
"I should hope not, Mumchance; you have already strangely forgotten yourself," and Master Polydore glared fiercely at the unrepentant Mumchance. All the same, he could not help feeling a little disquieted by the attitude adopted by that worthy.
Two hours later after a busy morning devoted to professional visits—and, perhaps, some unprofessional ones too—Endymion Leer sat down to his midday dinner. There was not a happier man in Lud than he—he was the most influential man in the town, deep in the counsels of the magistrates; and as for the dreaded Chanticleers—well, he had successively robbed them of their sting. Life being one and indivisible, when one has a sense that it is good its humblest manifestations are transfigured, and that morning the Doctor would have found a meal of baked haws sweet to his palate—how much more so the succulent meal that was actually awaiting him. But it was not fated that Endymion Leer should eat that dinner. There came a loud double knock at the door, and then the voice of Captain Mumchance, demanding instantly to be shown in to the Doctor. It was in vain that the housekeeper protested, saying that the Doctor had given strict orders that he was never to be disturbed at his meals, for the Captain roughly brushed her aside with an aphorism worthy of that eminent jurist, the late Master Josiah Chanticleer. "The Law, my good lady, is no respector of a gentleman's stomach, so I'll trouble you to stand out of the way," and he stumped resolutely into the parlour.
"Morning, Mumchance!" cried the Doctor cheerily, "come to share this excellent-looking pigeon-pie?"
For a second or two the Captain surveyed him rather ghoulishly. It must be remembered that not only had the Captain identified himself with the Law to such a degree that he looked upon any breach of it as a personal insult, but that also he had been deeply wounded in his professional pride in that he had not immediately recognised a murderer by his smell.
Captain Mumchance was not exactly an imaginative man, but as he stood there contemplating the Doctor he could almost have believed that his features and expression had suffered a subtle and most unbecoming change since he had last seen them. It was as if he was sitting in a ghastly green light—the most disfiguring and sinister of all the effects of light with which the Law cunningly plays with appearances—the light that emanates from the word murder.
"No, thank you," he said gruffly, "I don't sit down to table with the likes of you."
The Doctor gave him a very sharp look, and then he raised his eyebrows and said drily, "It seems to me that recently you have more than once honoured my humble board."
The Captain snorted, and then in a stentorian and unnatural voice, he shouted, "Endymion Leer! I arrest you in the name of the country of Dorimare, and to the end that the dead, the living, and those not yet born, may rest quietly in their graves, their bed, and the womb."
"Gammon and spinnage!" cried the Doctor, testily, "what's your little game, Mumchance?"
"Is murder, game?" said the Captain; and at that word the Doctor blanched, and then Mumchance added, "You're accused of the murder of the late Farmer Gibberty."
The words acted like a spell. It was as if Endymion Leer's previous sly, ironical, bird-like personality slipped from him like a mask, revealing another soul, at once more formidable and more tragic. For a few seconds he stood white and silent, and then he cried out in a terrible voice: "Treachery! Treachery! The Silent People have betrayed me! It is ill serving a perfidious master!"
The news of the arrest of Endymion Leer on a charge of murder flew like wildfire through Lud.
At all the street corners, little groups of tradesmen, 'prentices, sailors, were to be seen engaged in excited conversation, and from one to the other group flitted the deaf-mute harlot, Bawdy Bess, inciting them in her strange uncontrolled speech, while dogging her footsteps with her dance-like tread went old Mother Tibbs, alternately laughing in crazy glee and weeping and wringing her hands and crying out that she had not yet brought back the Doctor's last washing, and it was a sad thing that he should go for his last ride in foul linen. "For he'll mount Duke Aubrey's wooden horse—the Gentlemen have told me so," she added with mysterious nods.
In the meantime, Luke Hempen had reported to Mumchance what he had learned from the little herdsmen about the "fish" caught by the widow and the Doctor. The Yeomanry stationed on the border were instantly notified and ordered to drag the Dapple near the spot where it bubbled out after its subterranean passage through the Debatable Hills. They did so, and discovered wicker frails of fairy fruit, so cunningly weighted that they were able to float under the surface of the water.
This discovery considerably altered Master Polydore's attitude to Endymion Leer.
In view of the disturbance caused among the populace by the arrest of Endymion Leer, the Senate deemed it advisable that his trial, and that of the widow Gibberty, should take precedence of all other legal business; so as soon as the two important witnesses, Peter Pease and Marjory Beach, reached Lud-in-the-Mist, it was fixed for an early date.
Never, in all the annals of Dorimare, had a trial been looked forward to with such eager curiosity. It was to begin at nine o'clock in the morning, and by seven o'clock the hall of justice was already packed, while a seething crowd thronged the courtyard and overflowed into the High Street beyond.
On the front seats sat Dame Marigold, Dame Jessamine, Dame Dreamsweet and the other wives of magistrates; the main body of the hall was occupied by tradesmen and their wives, and other quiet, well-to-do members of the community, and behind them seethed the noisy, impudent, hawking, cat-calling riff-raff—'prentices, sailors, pedlars, strumpets; showing clearly on what side were their sympathies by such ribald remarks as, "My old granny's pet cockatoo is terrible fond of cherries, I think we should tell the Town Yeomanry, and have it locked up as a smuggler," or, "Where's Mumchance! Send for Mumchance and the Mayor! Two hundred years ago an old gaffer ate a gallon of crab soup and died the same night—arrest Dr. Leer and hang him for it."
But as the clocks struck nine and Master Polydore Vigil, in his priestly-looking purple robes of office embroidered in gold with the sun and the moon and the stars, and the other ten judges clad in scarlet and ermine filed slowly in and, bowing gravely to the assembly, took their seats on the dais, silence descended on the hall; for the fear of the Law was inbred in every Dorimarite, even the most disreputable.
Nevertheless, there was a low hum of excitement when Mumchance in his green uniform, carrying an axe, and two or three others of the Town Yeomanry, marched in with the two prisoners, who took their places in the dock.
Though Endymion Leer had for long been one of the most familiar figures in Lud, all eyes were turned on him with as eager a curiosity as if he had been some savage from the Amber Desert, the first of his kind to be seen in Dorimare; and such curious tricks can the limelight of the Law play on reality that many there thought that they could see his evil sinister life writ in clear characters on his familiar features.
To the less impressionable of the spectators, however, he looked very much as usual, though perhaps a little pale and flabby about the gills. And he swept the hall with his usual impudent appraising glance, as if to say, "Linsey-woolsey, linsey-woolsey! But one must make the best of a poor material."
"He's going to give the judges a run for their money!"
"If he's got to die, he'll die game!" gleefully whispered various of his partisans.
As for the widow, her handsome passionate face was deadly pale and emptied of all expression; this gave her a sort of tragic sinister beauty, reminiscent of the faces of the funereal statues in the Fields of Grammary.
"Not the sort of woman I'd like to meet in a lonely lane at night," was the general comment she aroused.
Then the Clerk of Arraigns called out "Silence!" and in a solemn voice, Master Polydore said, "Endymion Leer and Clementina Gibberty, hold up your hands." They did so. Whereupon, Master Polydore read the indictment, as follows: "Endymion Leer, and Clementina Gibberty, you are accused of having poisoned the late Jeremiah Gibberty, farmer, and law-man of the district of Swan-on-the-Dapple, thirty-six years ago, with a fruit known as the berries of merciful death."
Then the plaintiff, a fresh-faced young girl (none other, of course, than our old friend, Hazel) knelt at the foot of the dais and was given the great seal to kiss; upon which the Clerk of Arraigns led her up into a sort of carved pulpit, whence in a voice, low, but so clear as to penetrate to the furthest corners of the hall she told, with admirable lucidity, the story of the murder of her grandfather.
Next, Mistress Ivy, flustered and timid, told the Judges, in somewhat rambling fashion, what she had already told Master Nathaniel.
Then came the testimony of Peter Pease and Marjory Beach, and, finally, the document of the late farmer was handed round among the Judges.
"Endymion Leer!" called out Master Polydore, "the Law bids you speak, or be silent, as your conscience prompts you."
And as Endymion Leer rose to make his defence, the silence of the hall seemed to be trebled in intensity.
"My Lords Judges!" he began, "I take my stand, not high enough, perhaps, to be out of reach of the gibbet, but well above the heads, I fancy, of everybody here today. And, first of all, I would have you bear in mind that my life has been spent in the service of Dorimare." (Here there was a disturbance at the back of the hall and shouts of "Down with the Senators!" "Long live the good Doctor!" But the would-be rioters were cowed by the thunder of the Law, rumbling in the "Silence!" of the Clerk of Arraigns.)
"I have healed and preserved your bodies—I have tried to do the same for your souls. First, by writing a book—published anonymously some years ago—in which I tried to show the strange seeds that are sleeping in each of you. But the book hardly aroused the enthusiasm that it so justly deserved" (and he gave his old dry chuckle). "In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, the copies were burned by the common hangman—and could you have found the author you would gladly have burned him too. I can tell you since writing it I have gone in fear of my life, and have hardly dared to look a red-haired man in the face—still less a blue cow!" and here some of his partizans at the back of the hall laughed uproariously.
He paused, and then went on in a graver voice, "Why have I taken all this trouble with you? Why have I spent my erudition and my skill on you thus? To speak truth, I hardly know myself ... perhaps because I like playing with fire; perhaps because I am relentlessly compassionate.
"My friends, you are outcasts, though you do not know it, and you have forfeited your place on earth. For there are two races—trees and man; and for each there is a different dispensation. Trees are silent, motionless, serene. They live and die, but do not know the taste of either life or death; to them a secret has been entrusted but not revealed. But the other tribe—the passionate, tragic, rootless tree—man? Alas! he is a creature whose highest privileges are a curse. In his mouth is ever the bitter-sweet taste of life and death, unknown to the trees. Without respite he is dragged by the two wild horses, memory and hope; and he is tormented by a secret that he can never tell. For every man worthy of the name is an initiate; but each one into different Mysteries. And some walk among their fellows with the pitying, slightly scornful smile, of an adept among catechumens. And some are confiding and garrulous, and would so willingly communicate their own unique secret—in vain! For though they shout it in the market-place, or whisper it in music and poetry, what they say is never the same as what they know, and they are like ghosts charged with a message of tremendous import who can only trail their chains and gibber.
"Such then are the two tribes. Citizens of Lud-in-the-Mist, to which do you belong? To neither; for you are not serene, majestic, and silent, nor are you restless, passionate, and tragic.
"I could not turn you into trees; but I had hoped to turn you into men.
"I have fed and healed your bodies; and I would fain have done the same for your souls." (He paused to mop his brow; clearly it was more of an effort for him to speak than one would have guessed. Then he went on, and his voice had in it a strange new thrill.) "There is a land where the sun and the moon do not shine; where the birds are dreams, the stars are visions, and the immortal flowers spring from the thoughts of death. In that land grow fruit, the juices of which sometimes cause madness, and sometimes manliness; for that fruit is flavoured with life and death, and it is the proper nourishment for the souls of man. You have recently discovered that for some years I have helped to smuggle that fruit into Dorimare. The farmer Gibberty would have deprived you of it—and so I prescribed for him the berries of merciful death." (This admission of guilt caused another disturbance at the back of the hall, and there were shouts of "Don't you believe him!" "Never say die, Doctor!" and so on. The Yeomanry had to put out various rough-looking men, and Master Ambrose, sitting up on the dais, recognised among them the sailor, Sebastian Thug, whom he and Master Nathaniel had seen in the Fields of Grammary. When silence and order had been restored Endymion Leer went on.) "Yes, I prescribed for him the berries of merciful death. What could it matter to the world whether he reaped the corn-fields of Dorimare, or the fields of gillyflowers beyond the hills?
"And now, my Lords Judges, I will forestall your sentence. I have pleaded guilty, and you will send me for a ride on what the common people call Duke Aubrey's wooden horse; and you will think that you are sending me there because I helped to murder the farmer Gibberty. But, my Lords Judges, you are purblind, and, even in spectacles, you can only read a big coarse script. It is not you that are punishing me, but others for a spiritual sin. During these days of my imprisonment I have pondered much on my own life, and I have come to see that I have sinned. But how? I have prided myself on being a good chemist, and in my crucibles I can make the most subtle sauces yield up their secret—whether it be white arsenic, rosalgar, mercury sublimate, or cantharides. But where is the crucible or the chemist that can analyse a spiritual sin?
"But I have not lived in vain. You will send me to ride on Duke Aubrey's wooden horse, and, in time, the double-faced Doctor will be forgotten; and so will you, my Lords Judges. But Lud-in-the-Mist will stand, and the country of Dorimare, and the dreaded country beyond the hills. And the trees will continue to suck life from the earth and the clouds, and the winds will howl o' nights, and men will dream dreams. And who knows? Some day, perhaps, my fickle bitter-sweet master, the lord of life and death, of laughter and tears, will come dancing at the head of his silent battalions to make wild music in Dorimare.
"This then, my Lords Judges, is my defence," and he gave a little bow towards the dais.
While he had been speaking, the Judges had shown increasing symptoms of irritation and impatience. This was not the language of the Law.
As for the public—it was divided. One part had sat taut with attention—lips slightly parted, eyes dreamy, as if they were listening to music. But the majority—even though many of them were partisans of the Doctor—felt that they were being cheated. They had expected that their hero, whether guilty or not, would in his defence quite bamboozle the Judges by his juggling with the evidence and brilliant casuistry. Instead of which his speech had been obscure, and, they dimly felt, indecent; so the girls tittered, and the young men screwed their mouths into those grimaces which are the comment of the vulgar on anything they consider both ridiculous and obscene.
"Terribly bad taste, I call it," whispered Dame Dreamsweet to Dame Marigold (the sisters-in-law had agreed to bury the hatchet) "you always said that little man was a low vulgar fellow." But Dame Marigold's only answer was a little shrug, and a tiny sigh.
Then came the turn of the widow Gibberty to mount the pulpit and make her defence.
Before she began to speak, she fixed in turn the judges, plaintiff, and public, with an insolent scornful stare. Then, in her deep, almost masculine voice, she began: "You've asked me a question to which you know the answer well enough, else I shouldn't be standing here now. Yes, I murdered Gibberty—and a good riddance too. I was for killing him with the sap of osiers, but the fellow you call Endymion Leer, who was always a squeamish, tenderhearted, sort of chap (if there was nothing to lose by it, that's to say) got me the death-berries and made me give them to him in a jelly, instead of the osiers." (It was a pity Master Nathaniel was not there to glory in his own acumen!) "And it was not only because they caused a painless death that he preferred the berries. He had never before seen them at their work, and he was always a death-fancier—tasting, and smelling, and fingering death, like a farmer does samples of grain at market. Though, to give him his due, if it hadn't been for him, that girl over there who has just been standing up to denounce him and me" (and she nodded in the direction of the pale, trembling, Hazel) "and her father before her would long ago have gone the way of the farmer. And this I say in the hope that the wench's conscience may keep her awake sometimes in the nights to come, remembering how she dealt with the man who had saved her life. It will be but a small prick, doubtless; but it is the last that I can give her.