They were playing hide-and-seek with bicycle lamps after tea. Dan had
hung his lamp on the apple tree at the end of the hellebore bed in the
walled garden, and was crouched by the gooseberry bushes ready to dash
off when Una should spy him. He saw her lamp come into the garden and
disappear as she hid it under her cloak. While he listened for her
footsteps, somebody (they both thought it was Phillips the gardener)
coughed in the corner of the herb-beds.
'All right,' Una shouted across the asparagus; 'we aren't hurting your
old beds, Phippsey!'
She flashed her lantern towards the spot, and in its circle of light
they saw a Guy Fawkes-looking man in a black cloak and a steeple-crowned
hat, walking down the path beside Puck. They ran to meet him, and the
man said something to them about _rooms_ in their head. After a time
they understood he was warning them not to catch colds.
'You've a bit of a cold yourself, haven't you?' said Una, for he ended
all his sentences with a consequential cough. Puck laughed.
'Child,' the man answered, 'if it hath pleased Heaven to afflict me with
an infirmity----'
'Nay, nay,' Puck struck in, 'the maid spoke out of kindness. _I_ know
that half your cough is but a catch to trick the vulgar; and that's a
pity. There's honesty enough in you, Nick, without rasping and hawking.'
'Good people'--the man shrugged his lean shoulders--'the vulgar crowd
love not truth unadorned. Wherefore we philosophers must needs dress her
to catch their eye or--ahem!--their ear.'
'And what d'you think of _that_?' said Puck solemnly to Dan.
'I don't know,' he answered. 'It sounds like lessons.'
'Ah--well! There have been worse men than Nick Culpeper to take lessons
from. Now, where can we sit that's not indoors?'
'In the hay-mow, next to old Middenboro,' Dan suggested. '_He_ doesn't
mind.'
'Eh?' Mr. Culpeper was stooping over the pale hellebore blooms by the
light of Una's lamp. 'Does Master Middenboro need my poor services,
then?'
'Save him, no!' said Puck. 'He is but a horse--next door to an ass, as
you'll see presently. Come!'
Their shadows jumped and slid on the fruit-tree walls. They filed out of
the garden by the snoring pig-pound and the crooning hen-house, to the
shed where Middenboro the old lawn-mower pony lives. His friendly eyes
showed green in the light as they set their lamps down on the chickens'
drinking-trough outside, and pushed past to the hay-mow. Mr. Culpeper
stooped at the door.
'Mind where you lie,' said Dan. 'This hay's full of hedge-brishings.'
'In! in!' said Puck. 'You've lain in fouler places than this, Nick. Ah!
Let us keep touch with the stars!' He kicked open the top of the half
door, and pointed to the clear sky. 'There be the planets you conjure
with! What does your wisdom make of that wandering and variable star
behind those apple boughs?'
The children smiled. A bicycle that they knew well was being walked down
the steep lane.
'Where?' Mr. Culpeper leaned forward quickly. 'That? Some countryman's
lantern.'
'Wrong, Nick,' said Puck. ''Tis a singular bright star in Virgo,
declining towards the house of Aquarius the water-carrier, who hath
lately been afflicted by Gemini. Aren't I right, Una?'
Mr. Culpeper snorted contemptuously.
'No. It's the village nurse going down to the Mill about some fresh
twins that came there last week. Nurse,' Una called, as the light
stopped on the flat, 'when can I see the Morris twins? And how are
they?'
'Next Sunday, perhaps. Doing beautifully,' the Nurse called back, and
with a _ping-ping-ping_ of the bell brushed round the corner.
'Her Uncle's a vetinary surgeon near Banbury,' Una explained, 'and if
you ring her bell at night, it rings right beside her bed--not
downstairs at all. Then she jumps up--she always keeps a pair of dry
boots in the fender, you know--and goes anywhere she's wanted. We help
her bicycle through gaps sometimes. Most of her babies do beautifully.
She told us so herself.'
'I doubt not, then, that she reads in my books,' said Mr. Culpeper
quietly. 'Twins at the Mill!' he muttered half aloud. '"And again He
sayeth, Return, ye children of men."'
'Are you a doctor or a rector?' Una asked, and Puck with a shout turned
head over heels in the hay. But Mr. Culpeper was quite serious. He told
them that he was a physician-astrologer--a doctor who knew all about the
stars as well as all about herbs for medicine. He said that the sun, the
moon, and five Planets, called Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, and
Venus, governed everybody and everything in the world. They all lived in
Houses--he mapped out some of them against the dark with a busy
forefinger--and they moved from House to House like pieces at draughts;
and they went loving and hating each other all over the skies. If you
knew their likes and dislikes, he said, you could make them cure your
patient and hurt your enemy, and find out the secret causes of things.
He talked of these five Planets as though they belonged to him, or as
though he were playing long games against them. The children burrowed in
the hay up to their chins, and looked out over the half door at the
solemn, star-powdered sky till they seemed to be falling upside down
into it, while Mr. Culpeper talked about 'trines' and 'oppositions' and
'conjunctions' and 'sympathies' and 'antipathies' in a tone that just
matched things.
A rat ran between Middenboro's feet, and the old pony stamped.
'Mid hates rats,' said Dan, and passed him over a lock of hay. 'I wonder
why.'
'Divine Astrology tells us,' said Mr. Culpeper. 'The horse, being a
martial beast that beareth man to battle, belongs naturally to the red
planet Mars--the Lord of War. I would show you him, but he's too near
his setting. Rats and mice, doing their businesses by night, come under
the dominion of our Lady the Moon. Now between Mars and Luna, the one
red, t'other white, the one hot, t'other cold and so forth, stands, as I
have told you, a natural antipathy, or, as you say, hatred. Which
antipathy their creatures do inherit. Whence, good people, you may both
see and hear your cattle stamp in their stalls for the self-same causes
as decree the passages of the stars across the unalterable face of
Heaven! Ahem!'
Puck lay along chewing a leaf. They felt him shake with laughter, and
Mr. Culpeper sat up stiffly.
'I myself,' said he, 'have saved men's lives, and not a few neither, by
observing at the proper time--there is a time, mark you, for all things
under the sun--by observing, I say, so small a beast as a rat in
conjunction with so great a matter as this dread arch above us.' He
swept his hand across the sky. 'Yet there are those,' he went on sourly,
'who have years without knowledge.'
'Right,' said Puck. 'No fool like an old fool.'
Mr. Culpeper wrapped his cloak round him and sat still while the
children stared at the Great Bear on the hill-top.
'Give him time,' Puck whispered behind his hand. 'He turns like a
timber-tug--all of a piece.'
'Ahem!' Mr. Culpeper said suddenly. 'I'll prove it to you. When I was
physician to Saye's Horse, and fought the King--or rather the man
Charles Stuart--in Oxfordshire (I had _my_ learning at Cambridge), the
plague was very hot all around us. I saw it at close hands. He who says
I am ignorant of the plague, for example, is altogether beside the
bridge.'
'We grant it,' said Puck solemnly. 'But why talk of the plague this rare
night?'
'To prove my argument. This Oxfordshire plague, good people, being
generated among rivers and ditches, was of a werish, watery nature.
Therefore it was curable by drenching the patient in cold water, and
laying him in wet cloths; or at least, so I cured some of them. Mark
this. It bears on what shall come after.'
'Mark also, Nick,' said Puck, 'that we are not your College of
Physicians, but only a lad and a lass and a poor lubberkin. Therefore be
plain, old Hyssop on the Wall!'
'To be plain and in order with you, I was shot in the chest while
gathering of betony from a brookside near Thame, and was took by the
King's men before their Colonel, one Blagg or Bragge, whom I warned
honestly that I had spent the week past among our plague-stricken. He
flung me off into a cowshed, much like this here, to die, as I
supposed; but one of their priests crept in by night and dressed my
wound. He was a Sussex man like myself.'
'Who was that?' said Puck suddenly. 'Zack Tutshom?'
'No, Jack Marget,' said Mr. Culpeper.
'Jack Marget of New College? The little merry man that stammered so? Why
a plague was stuttering Jack at Oxford then?' said Puck.
'He had come out of Sussex in hope of being made a Bishop when the King
should have conquered the rebels, as he styled us Parliament men. His
College had lent the King some monies too, which they never got again,
no more than simple Jack got his bishopric. When we met he had had a
bitter bellyful of King's promises, and wished to return to his wife and
babes. This came about beyond expectation, for, so soon as I could stand
of my wound the man Blagge made excuse that I had been among the plague,
and Jack had been tending me, to thrust us both out from their camp. The
King had done with Jack now that Jack's College had lent the money, and
Blagge's physician could not abide me because I would not sit silent and
see him butcher the sick. (He was a College of Physicians man!) So
Blagge, I say, thrust us both out, with many vile words, for a pair of
pestilent, prating, pragmatical rascals.'
'Ha! Called _you_ pragmatical, Nick?' Puck started up. 'High time Oliver
came to purge the land! How did you and honest Jack fare next?'
'We were in some sort constrained to each other's company. I was for
going to my house in Spitalfields, he would go to his parish in Sussex;
but the plague was broke out and spreading through Wiltshire, Berkshire,
and Hampshire, and he was so mad distracted to think that it might even
then be among his folks at home that I bore him company. He had
comforted me in my distress. I could not have done less; and I
remembered that I had a cousin at Great Wigsell, near by Jack's parish.
Thus we footed it from Oxford, cassock and buff coat together, resolute
to leave wars on the left side henceforth; and either through our mean
appearances, or the plague making men less cruel, we were not hindered.
To be sure they put us in the stocks one half-day for rogues and
vagabonds at a village under St. Leonard's forest, where, as I have
heard, nightingales never sing; but the constable very honestly gave me
back my Astrological Almanac, which I carry with me.' Mr. Culpeper
tapped his thin chest. 'I dressed a whitlow on his thumb. So we went
forward.
'Not to trouble you with impertinences, we fetched over against Jack
Marget's parish in a storm of rain about the day's end. Here our roads
divided, for I would have gone on to my cousin at Great Wigsell, but
while Jack was pointing me out his steeple, we saw a man lying drunk, as
he conceived, athwart the road. He said it would be one Hebden, a
parishioner, and till then a man of good life; and he accused himself
bitterly for an unfaithful shepherd, that had left his flock to follow
princes. But I saw it was the plague, and not the beginnings of it
neither. They had set out the plague-stone, and the man's head lay on
it.'
'What's a plague-stone?' Dan whispered.
'When the plague is so hot in a village that the neighbours shut the
roads against 'em, people set a hollowed stone, pot, or pan, where such
as would purchase victual from outside may lay money and the paper of
their wants, and depart. Those that would sell come later--what will a
man not do for gain?--snatch the money forth, and leave in exchange such
goods as their conscience reckons fair value. I saw a silver groat in
the water, and the man's list of what he would buy was rain-pulped in
his wet hand.
'"My wife! Oh, my wife and babes!" says Jack of a sudden, and makes
up-hill--I with him.
'A woman peers out from behind a barn, crying out that the village is
stricken with the plague, and that for our lives' sake we must avoid it.
'"Sweetheart!" says Jack. "Must I avoid thee?" and she leaps at him and
says the babes are safe. She was his wife.
'When he had thanked God, even to tears, he tells me this was not the
welcome he had intended, and presses me to flee the place while I was
clean.
'"Nay! The Lord do so to me and more also if I desert thee now," I said.
"These affairs are, under God's leave, in some fashion my strength."
'"Oh, sir," she says, "are you a physician? We have none."
'"Then, good people," said I, "I must e'en justify myself to you by my
works."
'"Look--look ye," stammers Jack, "I took you all this time for a crazy
Roundhead preacher." He laughs, and she, and then I--all three together
in the rain are overtook by an unreasonable gust or clap of laughter,
which none the less eased us. We call it in medicine the Hysterical
Passion. So I went home with 'em.'
'Why did you not go on to your cousin at Great Wigsell, Nick?' Puck
suggested. ''Tis barely seven mile up the road.'
'But the plague was here,' Mr. Culpeper answered, and pointed up the
hill. 'What else could I have done?'
'What were the parson's children called?' said Una.
'Elizabeth, Alison, Stephen, and Charles--a babe. I scarce saw them at
first, for I separated to live with their father in a cart-lodge. The
mother we put--forced--into the house with her babes. She had done
enough.
'And now, good people, give me leave to be particular in this case. The
plague was worst on the north side of the street, for lack, as I showed
'em, of sunshine; which, proceeding from the _primum mobile_, or source
of life (I speak astrologically), is cleansing and purifying in the
highest degree. The plague was hot too by the corn-chandler's, where
they sell forage to the carters; extreme hot in both Mills along the
river, and scatteringly in other places, _except_, mark you, at the
smithy. Mark here, that all forges and smith-shops belong to Mars, even
as corn and meat and wine-shops acknowledge Venus for their mistress.
There was no plague in the smithy at Munday's Lane----'
'Munday's Lane? You mean our village? I thought so when you talked about
the two Mills,' cried Dan. 'Where did we put the plague-stone? I'd like
to have seen it.'
'Then look at it now,' said Puck, and pointed to the chickens'
drinking-trough where they had set their bicycle lamps. It was a rough,
oblong stone pan, rather like a small kitchen sink, which Phillips, who
never wastes anything, had found in a ditch and had used for his
precious hens.
'That?' said Dan and Una, and stared, and stared, and stared.
Mr. Culpeper made impatient noises in his throat and went on.
'I am at these pains to be particular, good people, because I would have
you follow, so far as you may, the operations of my mind. That plague
which I told you I had handled outside Wallingford in Oxfordshire was of
a watery nature, conformable to the brookish riverine country it bred
in, and curable, as I have said, by drenching in water. This plague of
ours here, for all that it flourished along watercourses--every soul at
both Mills died of it,--could not be so handled. Which brought me to a
stand. Ahem!'
'And your sick people in the meantime?' Puck demanded.
'We persuaded them on the north side of the street to lie out in
Hitheram's field. Where the plague had taken one, or at most two, in a
house, folk would not shift for fear of thieves in their absence. They
cast away their lives to die among their goods.'
'Human nature,' said Puck. 'I've seen it time and again. How did your
sick do in the fields?'
'They died not near so thick as those that kept within doors, and even
then they died more out of distraction and melancholy than plague. But I
confess, good people, I could not in any sort master the sickness, or
come at a glimmer of its nature or governance. To be brief, I was flat
bewildered at the brute malignity of the disease, and so--did what I
should have done before--dismissed all conjectures and apprehensions
that had grown up within me, chose a good hour by my Almanac, clapped my
vinegar-cloth to my face, and entered some empty houses, resigned to
wait upon the stars for guidance.'
'At night? Were you not horribly frightened?' said Puck.
'I dared to hope that the God who hath made man so nobly curious to
search out His mysteries might not destroy a devout seeker. In due
time--there is a time, as I have said, for everything under the sun--I
spied a whitish rat, very puffed and scabby, which sat beneath the
dormer of an attic through which shined our Lady the Moon. Whilst I
looked on him--and her--she was moving towards old cold Saturn, her
ancient ally--the rat creeped languishingly into her light, and there,
before my eyes, died. Presently his mate or companion came out, laid him
down beside there, and in like fashion died too. Later--an hour or less
to midnight--a third rat did e'en the same; always choosing the
moonlight to die in. This threw me into an amaze, since, as we know, the
moonlight is favourable, not hurtful, to the creatures of the Moon; and
Saturn, being friends with her, as you would say, was hourly
strengthening her evil influence. Yet these three rats had been stricken
dead in very moonlight. I leaned out of the window to see which of
Heaven's host might be on our side, and there beheld I good trusty Mars,
very red and heated, bustling about his setting. I straddled the roof to
see better.
'Jack Marget came up street going to comfort our sick in Hitheram's
field. A tile slipped under my foot.
'Says he heavily enough, "Watchman, what of the night?"
"Heart up, Jack," says I. "Methinks there's one fighting for us that,
like a fool, I've forgot all this summer." My meaning was naturally the
planet Mars.
'"Pray to Him then," says he. "I forgot Him too this summer."
'He meant God, whom he always bitterly accused himself of having
forgotten up in Oxfordshire, among the King's men. I called down that he
had made amends enough for his sin by his work among the sick, but he
said he would not believe so till the plague was lifted from 'em. He was
at his strength's end--more from melancholy than any just cause. I have
seen this before among priests and over-cheerful men. I drenched him
then and there with a half cup of waters, which I do not say cure the
plague, but are excellent against heaviness of the spirits.'
'What were they?' said Dan.
'White brandy rectified, camphor, cardamoms, ginger, two sorts of
pepper, and aniseed.'
'Whew!' said Puck. 'Waters you call 'em!'
'Jack coughed on it valiantly, and went down hill with me. I was for the
Lower Mill in the valley, to note the aspect of the Heavens. My mind had
already shadowed forth the reason, if not the remedy, for our troubles,
but I would not impart it to the vulgar till I was satisfied. That
practice may be perfect, judgment ought to be sound, and to make
judgment sound is required an exquisite knowledge. Ahem! I left Jack and
his lantern among the sick in Hitheram's field. He still maintained the
prayers of the so-called Church, which were rightly forbidden by
Cromwell.'
'You should have told your cousin at Wigsell,' said Puck, 'and Jack
would have been fined for it, and you'd have had half the money. How did
you come so to fail in your duty, Nick?'
Mr. Culpeper laughed--his only laugh that evening--and the children
jumped at the loud neigh of it.
'We were not fearful of _men's_ judgment in those days,' he answered.
'Now mark me closely, good people, for what follows will be to you,
though not to me, remarkable. When I reached the empty Mill, old Saturn,
low down in the House of the Fishes, threatened the Sun's rising-place.
Our Lady the Moon was moving towards the help of him (understand, I
speak astrologically). I looked abroad upon the high Heavens, and I
prayed the Maker of 'em for guidance. Now Mars sparklingly withdrew
himself below the sky. On the instant of his departure, which I noted, a
bright star or vapour leaped forth above his head (as though he had
heaved up his sword), and broke all about in fire. The cocks crowed
midnight through the valley, and I sat me down by the mill-wheel,
chewing spearmint (though that's a herb of Venus), and calling myself
all the asses' heads in the world! 'Twas plain enough _now_!'
'What was plain?' said Una.
'The true cause and cure of the plague. Mars, good fellow, had fought
for us to the uttermost. Faint though he had been in the Heavens, and
this had made me overlook him in my computations, he more than any of
the other planets had kept the Heavens--which is to say, had been
visible some part of each night wellnigh throughout the year. Therefore
his fierce and cleansing influence, warring against the Moon, had
stretched out to kill those three rats under my nose, and under the nose
of their natural mistress, the Moon. I had known Mars lean half across
Heaven to deal our Lady the Moon some shrewd blow from under his shield,
but I had never before seen his strength displayed so effectual.'
'I don't understand a bit. Do you mean Mars killed the rats because he
hated the Moon?' said Una.
'_That_ is as plain as the pikestaff with which Blagge's men pushed me
forth,' Mr. Culpeper answered. 'I'll prove it. Why had the plague not
broken out at the blacksmith's shop in Munday's Lane? Because, as I've
shown you, forges and smithies belong naturally to Mars, and, for his
honour's sake, Mars 'ud keep 'em clean from the creatures of the Moon.
But was it like, think you, that he'd come down and rat-catch in general
for lazy, ungrateful mankind? That were working a willing horse to
death. So then you can see that the meaning of the blazing star above
him when he set was simply this: "Destroy and burn the creatures of the
Moon, for they are at the root of your trouble. And thus, having shown
you a taste of my power, good people, adieu."'
'Did Mars really say all that?' Una whispered.
'Yes, and twice so much as that to any one who had ears to hear.
Briefly, he enlightened me that the plague was spread by the creatures
of the Moon. The Moon, our Lady of Ill-aspect, was the offender. My own
poor wits showed me that I, Nick Culpeper, had the people in my charge,
God's good providence aiding me, and no time to lose neither.
'I posted up the hill, and broke into Hitheram's field amongst 'em all
at prayers.
'"Eureka, good people!" I cried, and cast down a dead mill-rat which I'd
found. "Here's your true enemy, revealed at last by the stars."
'"Nay, but I'm praying," says Jack. His face was as white as washed
silver.
'"There's a time for everything under the sun," says I. "If you would
stay the plague, take and kill your rats."
'"Oh, mad, stark mad!" says he, and wrings his hands.
'A fellow lay in the ditch beside him, who bellows that he'd as soon die
mad hunting rats as be preached to death on a cold fallow. They laughed
round him at this, but Jack Marget falls on his knees, and very
presumptuously petitions that he may be appointed to die to save the
rest of his people. This was enough to thrust 'em back into their
melancholy.
'"You are an unfaithful shepherd, Jack," I says. "Take a bat" (which we
call a stick in Sussex) "and kill a rat if you die before sunrise.
'Twill save your people."
'"Aye, aye. Take a bat and kill a rat," he says ten times over, like a
child, which moved 'em to ungovernable motions of that hysterical
passion before mentioned, so that they laughed all, and at least warmed
their chill bloods at that very hour--one o'clock or a little
after--when the fires of life burn lowest. Truly there is a time for
everything; and the physician must work with it--ahem!--or miss his
cure. To be brief with you, I persuaded 'em, sick or sound, to have at
the whole generation of rats throughout the village. And there's a
reason for all things too, though the wise physician need not blab 'em
all. _Imprimis_, or firstly, the mere sport of it, which lasted ten
days, drew 'em most markedly out of their melancholy. I'd defy sorrowful
Job himself to lament or scratch while he's routing rats from a rick.
_Secundo_, or secondly, the vehement act and operation of this chase or
war opened their skins to generous transpiration--more vulgarly,
sweated 'em handsomely; and this further drew off their black bile--the
mother of sickness. Thirdly, when we came to burn the bodies of the
rats, I sprinkled sulphur on the faggots, whereby the onlookers were as
handsomely suffumigated. This I could not have compassed if I had made
it a mere physician's business; they'd have thought it some conjuration.
Yet more, we cleansed, limed, and burned out a hundred foul poke-holes,
sinks, slews, and corners of unvisited filth in and about the houses in
the village, and by good fortune (mark here that Mars was in opposition
to Venus) burned the corn-chandler's shop to the ground. Mars loves not
Venus. Will Noakes the saddler dropped his lantern on a truss of straw
while he was rat-hunting there.'
'Had ye given Will any of that gentle cordial of yours, Nick, by any
chance?' said Puck.
'A glass--or two glasses--not more. But as I would say, in fine, when we
had killed the rats, I took ash, slag, and charcoal from the smithy, and
burnt earth from the brickyard (I reason that a brickyard belongs to
Mars), and rammed it with iron crowbars into the rat-runs and buries,
and beneath all the house floors. The Creatures of the Moon hate all
that Mars hath used for his own clean ends. For example--rats bite not
iron.'
'And how did poor stuttering Jack endure it?' said Puck.
'He sweated out his melancholy through his skin, and catched a loose
cough, which I cured with electuaries, according to art. It is
noteworthy, were I speaking among my equals, that the venom of the
plague translated, or turned itself into, and evaporated, or went away
as, a very heavy hoarseness and thickness of the head, throat, and
chest. (Observe from my books which planets govern these portions of
man's body, and your darkness, good people, shall be illuminated--ahem!)
None the less, the plague, _qua_ plague, ceased and took off (for we
only lost three more, and two of 'em had it already on 'em) from the
morning of the day that Mars enlightened me by the Lower Mill.' He
coughed--almost trumpeted--triumphantly.
'It is proved,' he jerked out. 'I say I have proved my contention, which
is, that by Divine Astrology and humble search into the veritable causes
of things--at the proper time--the sons of wisdom may combat even the
plague.'
'H'm!' Puck replied. 'For my own part I hold that a simple soul----'
'Mine?--simple, forsooth?' said Mr. Culpeper.
'A very simple soul, a high courage tempered with sound and stubborn
conceit, is stronger than all the stars in their courses. So I confess
truly that you saved the village, Nick.'
'I stubborn? I stiff-necked? I ascribed all my poor success, under God's
good providence, to Divine Astrology. Not to me the glory! You talk as
that dear weeping ass Jack Marget preached before I went back to my work
in Red Lion House, Spitalfields.
'Oh! Stammering Jack preached, did he? They say he loses his stammer in
the pulpit.'
'And his wits with it. He delivered a most idolatrous discourse when the
plague was stayed. He took for his text: "The wise man that delivered
the city." I could have given him a better, such as: "There is a time
for----"'
'But what made you go to church to hear him?' Puck interrupted. 'Wail
Attersole was your lawfully appointed preacher, and a dull dog he was!'
Mr. Culpeper wriggled uneasily.
'The vulgar,' said he, 'the old crones and--ahem--the children, Alison
and the others, they dragged me to the House of Rimmon by the hand. I
was in two minds to inform on Jack for maintaining the mummeries of the
falsely called Church, which, I'll prove to you, are founded merely on
ancient fables----'
'Stick to your herbs and planets,' said Puck, laughing. 'You should have
told the magistrates, Nick, and had Jack fined. Again, why did you
neglect your plain duty?'
'Because--because I was kneeling, and praying, and weeping with the rest
of 'em at the altar rails. In medicine this is called the Hysterical
Passion. It may be--it may be.'
'That's as may be,' said Puck. They heard him turn the hay. 'Why, your
hay is half hedge-brishings,' he said. 'You don't expect a horse to
thrive on oak and ash and thorn leaves, do you?'
* * * * *
_Ping-ping-ping_ went the bicycle bell round the corner. Nurse was
coming back from the Mill.
'Is it all right?' Una called.
'All quite right,' Nurse called back. 'They're to be christened next
Sunday.'
'What? What?' They both leaned forward across the half-door. It could
not have been properly fastened, for it opened, and tilted them out with
hay and leaves sticking all over them.
'Come on! We must get those two twins' names,' said Una, and they
charged up-hill shouting over the hedge, till Nurse slowed up and told
them.
When they returned, old Middenboro had got out of his stall, and they
spent a lively ten minutes chasing him in again by starlight.
'OUR FATHERS OF OLD'
Excellent herbs had our fathers of old--
Excellent herbs to ease their pain--
Alexanders and Marigold,
Eyebright, Orris, and Elecampane,
Basil, Rocket, Valerian, Rue,
(Almost singing themselves they run)
Vervain, Dittany, Call-me-to-you--
Cowslip, Melilot, Rose of the Sun.
Anything green that grew out of the mould
Was an excellent herb to our fathers of old.
Wonderful tales had our fathers of old--
Wonderful tales of the herbs and the stars--
The Sun was Lord of the Marigold,
Basil and Rocket belonged to Mars.
Pat as a sum in division it goes--
(Every plant had a star bespoke)--
Who but Venus should govern the Rose?
Who but Jupiter own the Oak?
Simply and gravely the facts are told
In the wonderful books of our fathers of old.
Wonderful little, when all is said,
Wonderful little our fathers knew.
Half their remedies cured you dead--
Most of their teaching was quite untrue--
'Look at the stars when a patient is ill,
(Dirt has nothing to do with disease,)
Bleed and blister as much as you will,
Blister and bleed him as oft as you please.'
Whence enormous and manifold
Errors were made by our fathers of old.
Yet when the sickness was sore in the land,
And neither planet nor herb assuaged,
They took their lives in their lancet-hand
And, oh, what a wonderful war they waged!
Yes, when the crosses were chalked on the door--
Yes, when the terrible dead-cart rolled,
Excellent courage our fathers bore--
Excellent heart had our fathers of old.
None too learned, but nobly bold
Into the fight went our fathers of old.
If it be certain, as Galen says,
And sage Hippocrates holds as much--
'That those afflicted by doubts and dismays
Are mightily helped by a dead man's touch,'
Then, be good to us, stars above!
Then, be good to us, herbs below!
We are afflicted by what we can prove;
We are distracted by what we know--
So--ah so!
Down from your heaven or up from your mould,
Send us the hearts of our fathers of old!