When they had left the village, they took a cart-track that branched off from the high-road to the right. It led into a valley, the gently sloping sides of which were covered with vine-yards and corn-fields. Sometimes their path led through a little wood of liege-oaks with trunks, where the bark had been stripped, showing as red as blood, and everywhere there were short, wiry, aromatic shrubs, beset by myriads of bees.
Every minute the hills seemed to be drawing nearer, and the pines with which they were covered began to stand out from the carpet of heath in a sort of coagulated relief, so that they looked like a thick green scum of watercress on a stagnant purple pond.
At last they reached the farm — a fine old manor-house, standing among a cluster of red-roofed barns, and supported, heraldically, on either side by two magnificent plane-trees, with dappled trunks of tremendous girth.
They were greeted by the barking of five or six dogs, and this brought the widow hurrying out accompanied by a pretty girl of about seventeen whom she introduced as her granddaughter Hazel.
Though she must have been at least sixty by then, the widow Gibberty was still a strikingly handsome woman — tall, imposing-looking, and with hair that must once have had as many shades of red and brown as a bed of wallflowers smoldering in the sun.
Then a couple of men came up and led away the horses, and the travelers were taken up to their rooms.
As befitted the son of the High Seneschal, the one given to Ranulph was evidently the best. It was large and beautifully proportioned, and in spite of its homely chintzes and the plain furniture of a farmhouse, in spite even of the dried rushes laid on the floor instead of a carpet, it bore unmistakable traces of the ancient magnificence when the house had belonged to nobles instead of farmers.
For instance, the ceiling was a fine specimen of the flat enameled ceilings that belonged to the Duke Aubrey period in domestic architecture. There was just such a ceiling in Dame Marigold’s bedroom in Lud. She had stared up at it when in travail with Ranulph — just as all the mothers of the Chanticleers had done in the same circumstances — and its colors and pattern had become inextricably confused with her pain and delirium.
Endymion Leer was put next to Ranulph, and Luke was given a large pleasant room in the attic.
Ranulph was not in the least tired by his long ride, he said. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright, and when the widow had left him alone with Luke, he gave two or three skips of glee, and cried, “I do love this place, Luke.”
At six o’clock a loud bell was rung outside the house, presumably to summon the laborers to supper; and, as the widow had told them it would be in the kitchen, Ranulph and Luke, both feeling very hungry, went hurrying down.
It was an enormous kitchen, running the whole length of the house; in the olden days it had been the banqueting hall. It was solidly stone-vaulted, and the great chimney place was also of stone, and decorated in high-relief with the skulls and flowers and arabesques of leaves ubiquitous in the art of Dorimare. It was flanked by giant fire-dogs of copper. The floor was tiled with a mosaic of brown and red and grey-blue flag-stones.
Down the center of the room ran a long narrow table laid with pewter plates and mugs, for the laborers and maid servants who came flocking in, their faces shining from recent soap and scrubbing, and stood about in groups at the lower end of the room, grinning and bashful from the presence of company. According to the good old yeoman custom they had their meals with their masters.
It was a most delicious supper — a great ham with the aromatic flavor of wood-smoke, eaten with pickled cowslips; brawn; a red-deer pie, and, in honor of the distinguished guests, a fat roast swan. The wine was from the widow’s own grapes and was flavored with honey and blackberries.
Most of the talking was done by the widow and Endymion Leer. He was asking her if many trout had been caught that summer in the Dapple, and what were their markings. And she told him that a salmon had recently been landed weighing ten pounds.
Ranulph, who had been munching away in silence, suddenly looked up at them, with that little smile of his that people always found a trifle disconcerting.
“That isn’t real talk,” he said. “That isn’t the way you really talk to each other. That’s only pretence talk.”
The widow looked very surprised and very much annoyed. But Endymion Leer laughed heartily and asked him what he meant by “real talk;” Ranulph, however, would not be drawn.
But Luke Hempen, in a dim inarticulate way, understood what he meant. The conversation between the widow and the doctor had not rung true; it was almost as if their words had a double meaning known only to themselves.
A few minutes later, a wizened old man with very bright eyes came into the room and sat down at the lower end of the table. And then Ranulph really did give everyone a fright, for he stopped eating, and for a few seconds stared at him in silence. Then he gave a piercing scream.
All eyes turned toward him in amazement. But he sat as if petrified, his eyes round and staring, pointing at the old man.
“Come, come, young fellow!” cried Endymion Leer, sharply; “what’s the meaning of this?”
“What ails you, little master?” cried the widow.
But he continued pointing in silence at the old man, who was leering and smirking and ogling, in evident delight at being the center of attention.
“He’s scared by Portunus, the weaver,” tittered the maids.
And the words “Portunus,” “old Portunus the weaver,” were bandied from mouth to mouth down the two sides of the table.
“Yes, Portunus, the weaver,” cried the widow, in a loud voice, a hint of menace in her eye. “And who, I should like to know, does not love Portunus, the weaver?”
The maids hung their heads, the men sniggered deprecatingly.
“Well?” challenged the widow.
Silence.
“And who,” she continued indignantly, “is the handiest most obliging fellow to be found within twenty miles?”
She glared down the table, and then repeated her question.
As if compelled by her eye, the company murmured “Portunus.”
“And if the cheeses won’t curdle, or the butter won’t come, or the wine in the vats won’t get a good head, who comes to the rescue?”
“Portunus,” murmured the company.
“And who is always ready to lend a helping hand to the maids — to break or bolt hemp, to dress flax, or to spin? And when their work is over to play them tunes on his fiddle?”
“Portunus,” murmured the company.
Suddenly Hazel raised her eyes from her plate and they were sparkling with defiance and anger.
“And who,” she cried shrilly, “sits by the fire when he thinks no one is watching him roasting little live frogs and eating them? Portunus.”
With each word her voice rose higher, like a soaring bird. But at the last word it was as if the bird when it had reached the ceiling suddenly fell down dead. And Luke saw her flinch under the cold indignant stare of the widow.
And he had noticed something else as well.
It was the custom in Dorimare, in the houses of the yeomanry and the peasantry, to hang a bunch of dried fennel over the door of every room; for fennel was supposed to have the power of keeping the Fairies. And when Ranulph had given his eerie scream, Luke had, as instinctively as in similar circumstances a mediaeval papist would have made the sign of the Cross, glanced towards the door to catch a reassuring glimpse of the familiar herb.
But there was no fennel hanging over the door of the widow Gibberty.
The men grinned, the maids tittered at Hazel’s outburst; and then there was an awkward silence.
In the meantime, Ranulph seemed to have recovered from his fright and was going on stolidly with his supper, while the widow was saying to him reassuringly, “Mark my words, little master, you’ll get to love Portunus as much as we all do. Trust Portunus for knowing where the trout rise and where all the birds’ nests are to be found … eh, Portunu
s?”
And Portunus chuckled with delight and his bright eyes twinkled.
“Why,” the widow continued, “I have known him these twenty years. He’s the weaver in these parts, and goes the round from farm to farm, and the room with the loom is always called ‘Portunus’ Parlor.’ And there isn’t a wedding or a merrymaking within twenty miles where he doesn’t play the fiddle.”
Luke, whose perceptions owing to the fright he had just had were unusually alert, noticed that Endymion Leer was very silent, and that his face as he watched Ranulph was puzzled and a little anxious.
When supper was over the maids and laborers vanished, and so did Portunus; but the three guests sat on, listening to the pleasant whirr of the widow’s and Hazel’s spinning-wheels, saying but little, for the long day in the open air had made all three of them sleepy.
At eight o’clock a little scrabbling noise was heard at the door. “That’s the children,” said Hazel, and she went and opened it, upon which three or four little boys came bashfully in from the dusk.
“Good evening, my lads,” said the widow, genially. “Come for your bread and cheese … eh?”
The children grinned and hung their heads, abashed by the sight of three strangers.
“The little lads of the village, Master Chanticleer, take it in turn to watch our cattle all night,” said the widow to Ranulph. “We keep them some miles away along the valley where there is good pasturage, and the herdsman likes to come back to his own home at night.”
“And these little boys are going to be out all night?” asked Ranulph in an awed voice.
“That they are! And a fine time they’ll have of it too. They build themselves little huts out of branches and light fires in them. Oh, they enjoy themselves.”
The children grinned from ear to ear; and when Hazel had provided each of them with some bread and cheese they scuttled off into the gathering dusk.
“I’d like to go some night, too,” said Ranulph.
The widow was beginning to expostulate against the idea of young Master Chanticleer’s spending the night out of doors with cows and village children, when Endymion Leer said, decidedly, “That’s all nonsense! I don’t want my patient coddled … eh! Ranulph? I see no reason why he shouldn’t go some night if it amuses him. But wait till the nights are warmer.”
He paused just a second, and added, “towards Midsummer, let us say.”
They sat on a little longer; saying but little, yawning a great deal. And then the widow suggested that they should all go off to bed.
There were home-made tallow candles provided for everyone, except Ranulph, whose social importance was emphasized by a wax one from Lud.
Endymion Leer lit it for him, and then held it at arm’s length and contemplated its flame, his head on one side, eyes twinkling.
“Thrice blessed little herb!” he began in a whimsical voice. “Herb o’ grease, with thy waxen stem and blossom of flame! Thou art more potent against spells and terrors and the invisible menace than fennel or dittany or rue. Hail! antidote to the deadly nightshade! Blossoming in the darkness, thy virtues are heartease and quiet sleep. Sick people bless thee, and women in travail, and people with haunted minds, and all children.”
“Don’t be a buffoon, Leer,” said the widow roughly; in quite a different voice from the one of bluff courtesy in which she had hitherto addressed him. To an acute observer it would have suggested that they were in reality more intimate than they cared to show.
For the first time in his life Luke Hempen had difficulty in getting off to sleep.
His great-aunt had dinned into him for the past week, with many a menacing shake of her old fist, that should anything happen to Master Ranulph she would hold him, Luke, responsible, and even before leaving Lud the honest, but by no means heroic, lad, had been in somewhat of a panic; and the various odd little incidents that had taken place that evening were not of a nature to reassure him.
Finally he could stand it no longer. So up he got, lit his candle, and crept down the attic stairs and along the corridor to Ranulph’s room.
Ranulph, too, was wide awake. He had not put out his candle, and was lying staring up at the fantastic ceiling.
“What do you want, Luke?” he cried peevishly. “Why won’t anyone ever leave me alone?”
“I was just wondering if you were all right, sir,” said Luke apologetically.
“Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I be?” and Ranulph gave an impatient little plunge in his bed.
“Well, I was just wondering, you know.”
Luke paused; and then said imploringly, “Please, Master Ranulph, be a good chap and tell me what took you at supper time when that doitered old weaver came in. You gave me quite a turn, screaming like that.”
“Ah, Luke! Wouldn’t you like to know!” teased Ranulph.
Finally he admitted that when he had been a small child he had frequently seen Portunus in his dreams, “And that’s rather frightening, you know, Luke.”
Luke, much relieved, admitted that he supposed it was. He himself was not given to dreaming; nor did he take seriously the dreams of others.
Ranulph noticed his relief; and rather an impish expression stole into his eyes.
“But there’s something else, Luke,” he said. “Old Portunus, you know, is a dead man.”
This time Luke was really alarmed. Was his charge going off his head?
“Get along with you, Master Ranulph!” he cried, in a voice that he tried to make jocose.
“All right, Luke, you needn’t believe it unless you like,” said Ranulph. “Good night, I’m off to sleep.”
And he blew out his candle and turned his back on Luke, who, thus dismissed, must needs return to his own bed, where he soon fell fast asleep.
Chapter VI
The Wind in the Crabapple Blossoms
About a week later, Mistress Hempen received the following letter from Luke:
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 colors 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 grandnephew,
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.