MASTER AMBROSE CHASES A WILD GOOSE AND HAS A VISION
Master Ambrose Honeysuckle had finished his midday meal, and was
smoking his churchwarden on his daisy-powdered lawn, under the branches
of a great, cool, yellowing lime; and beside him sat his stout
comfortable wife, Dame Jessamine, placidly fanning herself to sleep,
with her pink-tongued mushroom-coloured pug snoring and choking in her
lap.
Master Ambrose was ruminating on the consignment he was daily expecting
of flowers-in-amber--a golden eastern wine, for the import of which his
house had the monopoly in Dorimare.
But he was suddenly roused from his pleasant reverie by the sound of
loud excited voices proceeding from the house, and turning heavily in
his chair, he saw his daughter, Moonlove, wild-eyed and dishevelled,
rushing towards him across the lawn, followed by a crowd of servants
with scared faces and all chattering at once.
"My dear child, what's this? What's this?" he cried testily.
But her only answer was to look at him in agonized terror, and then to
moan, "The horror of midday!"
Dame Jessamine sat up with a start and rubbing her eyes exclaimed,
"Dear me, I believe I was napping. But ... Moonlove! Ambrose! What's
happening?"
But before Master Ambrose could answer, Moonlove gave three
blood-curdling screams, and shrieked out, "Horror! Horror! The tune
that never stops! Break the fiddle! Break the fiddle! Oh, Father,
quietly, on tiptoe behind him, cut the strings. Cut the strings and let
me out, I want the dark."
For an instant, she stood quite still, head thrown back, eyes alert
and frightened, like a beast at bay. Then, swift as a hare, she tore
across the lawn, with glances over her shoulder as if something were
pursuing her, and, rushing through the garden gate, vanished from their
astonished view.
The servants, who till now had kept at a respectful distance, came
crowding up, their talk a jumble of such exclamations and statements
as "Poor young lady!" "It's a sunstroke, sure as my name's Fishbones!"
"Oh, my! it quite gave me the palpitations to hear her shriek!"
And the pug yapped with such energy that he nearly burst his mushroom
sides, and Dame Jessamine began to have hysterics.
For a few seconds Master Ambrose stood bewildered, then, setting his
jaw, he pounded across the lawn, with as much speed as was left him by
nearly fifty years of very soft living, out at the garden gate, down
the lane, and into the High Street.
Here he joined the tail of a running crowd that, in obedience to the
law that compels man to give chase to a fugitive, was trying hard to
catch up with Moonlove.
The blood was throbbing violently in Master Ambrose's temples, and his
brains seemed congested. All that he was conscious of, on the surface
of his mind, was a sense of great irritation against Master Nathaniel
Chanticleer for not having had the cobbles on the High Street recently
renewed--they were so damnably slippery.
But, underneath this surface irritation, a nameless anxiety was buzzing
like a hornet.
On he pounded at the tail end of the hunt, blowing, puffing, panting,
slipping on the cobbles, stumbling across the old bridge that spanned
the Dapple. Vaguely, as in delirium, he knew that windows were flung
open, heads stuck out, shrill voices enquiring what was the matter,
and that from mouth to mouth were bandied the words, "It's little Miss
Honeysuckle running away from her papa."
But when they reached the town walls and the west gate, they had to
call a sudden halt, for a funeral procession, that of a neighbouring
farmer, to judge from the appearance of the mourners, was winding its
way into the town, bound for the Fields of Grammary, and the pursuers
had perforce to stand in respectful silence while it passed, and allow
their quarry to disappear down a bend of the high road.
Master Ambrose was too impatient and too much out of breath consciously
to register impressions of what was going on round him. But in the
automatic unquestioning way in which at such moments the senses do
their work, he saw through the windows of the hearse that a red liquid
was trickling from the coffin.
This enforced delay broke the spell of blind purpose that had hitherto
united the pursuers into one. They now ceased to be a pack, and broke
up again into separate individuals, each with his own business to
attend to.
"The little lass is too nimble-heeled for us," they said, grinning
ruefully.
"Yes, she's a wild goose, that's what she is, and I fear she has led us
a wild goose chase," said Master Ambrose with a short embarrassed laugh.
He was beginning to be acutely conscious of the unseemliness of the
situation--he, an ex-Mayor, a Senator and judge, and, what was more,
head of the ancient and honourable family of Honeysuckle, to be
pounding through the streets of Lud-in-the-Mist at the tail end of a
crowd of 'prentices and artisans, in pursuit of his naughty, crazy
wild goose of a little daughter!
"Pity it isn't Nat instead of me!" he thought to himself. "I believe
he'd rather enjoy it."
Just then, a farmer came along in his gig, and seeing the hot
breathless company standing puffing and mopping their brows, he asked
them if they were seeking a little lass, for, if so, he had passed her
a quarter of an hour ago beyond the turnpike, running like a hare, and
he'd called out to her to stop, but she would not heed him.
By this time Master Ambrose was once more in complete possession of his
wits and his breath.
He noticed one of his own clerks among the late pursuers, and bade
him run back to his stables and order three of his grooms to ride off
instantly in pursuit of his daughter.
Then he himself, his face very stern, started off for the Academy.
It was just as well that he did not hear the remarks of his late
companions as they made their way back to town; for he would have found
them neither sympathetic nor respectful. The Senators were certainly
not loved by the rabble. However, not having heard Moonlove's eldritch
shrieks nor her wild remarks, they supposed that her father had been
bullying her for some mild offence, and that, in consequence, she had
taken to her heels.
"And if all these fat pigs of Senators," they said, "were set running
like that a little oftener, why, then, they'd make better bacon!"
Master Ambrose had to work the knocker of the Academy door very hard
before it was finally opened by Miss Primrose herself.
She looked flustered, and, as it seemed to Master Ambrose, a little
dissipated, her face was so pasty and her eyelids so very red.
"Now, Miss Crabapple!" he cried in a voice of thunder, "What, by the
Harvest of Souls, have you been doing to my daughter, Moonlove? And if
she's been ill, why have we not been told, I should like to know? I've
come here for an explanation, and I mean to get it."
Miss Primrose, mopping and mowing, and garrulously inarticulate, took
the fuming gentleman into the parlour. But he could get nothing out
of her further than disjointed murmurs about the need for cooling
draughts, and the child's being rather headstrong, and a possible touch
of the sun. It was clear that she was scared out of her wits, and,
moreover, there was something she wished to conceal.
Master Ambrose, from his experience on the Bench, soon realized that
this was a type of witness upon whom it was useless to waste his time;
so he said sternly, "You are evidently unable to talk sense yourself,
but perhaps some of your pupils possess that useful accomplishment.
But I warn you if ... if anything happens to my daughter it is you that
will be held responsible. And now, send ... let me see ... send me down
Prunella Chanticleer, she's always been a sensible girl with a head on
her shoulders. She'll be able to tell me what exactly is the matter
with Moonlove--which is more than you seem able to do."
Miss Primrose, now almost gibbering with terror, stammered out
something about "study hours," and "regularity being so desirable," and
"dear Prunella's having been a little out of sorts herself recently."
But Master Ambrose repeated in a voice of thunder, "Send me Prunella
Chanticleer, at once."
And standing there, stern and square, he was a rather formidable figure.
So Miss Primrose could only gibber and blink her acquiescence and
promise him that "dear Prunella" should instantly be sent to him.
When she had left him, Master Ambrose paced impatiently up and down,
frowning heavily, and occasionally shaking his head.
Then he stood stock-still, in deep thought. Absently, he picked up from
the work-table a canvas shoe, in process of being embroidered with
wools of various brilliant shades.
At first, he stared at it with unseeing eyes.
Then, the surface of his mind began to take stock of the object. Its
half finished design consisted of what looked like wild strawberries,
only the berries were purple instead of red.
It was certainly very well done. There was no doubt but that Miss
Primrose was a most accomplished needle-woman.
"But what's the good of needlework? It doesn't teach one common sense,"
he muttered impatiently.
"And how like a woman!" he added with a contemptuous little snort,
"Aren't red strawberries good enough for her? Trying to improve on
nature with her stupid fancies and her purple strawberries!"
But he was in no mood for wasting his time and attention on a
half-embroidered slipper, and tossing it impatiently away he was about
to march out of the room and call loudly for Prunella Chanticleer, when
the door opened and in she came.
Had a stranger wanted to see an upper class maiden of Lud-in-the-Mist,
he would have found a typical specimen in Prunella Chanticleer.
She was fair, and plump, and dimpled; and, as in the case of her
mother, the ruthless common sense of her ancestors of the revolution
had been trivialized, though not softened, into an equally ruthless
sense of humour.
Such had been Prunella Chanticleer.
But, as she now walked into the room, Master Ambrose exclaimed to
himself, "Toasted cheese! How plain the girl has grown!"
But that was a mere matter of taste; some people might have thought her
much prettier than she had ever been before. She was certainly less
plump than she used to be, and paler. But it was the change in the
expression of her eyes that was most noticeable.
Hitherto, they had been as busy and restless (and, in justice to the
charms of Prunella let it be added, as golden brown) as a couple of
bees in summer--darting incessantly from one small object to another,
and distilling from each what it held of least essential, so that
in time they would have fashioned from a thousand trivialities that
inferior honey that is apt to be labeled "feminine wisdom."
But, now, these eyes were idle.
Or, rather, her memory seemed to be providing them with a vision so
absorbing that nothing else could arrest their gaze.
In spite of himself, Master Ambrose felt a little uneasy in her
presence. However, he tried to greet her in the tone of patronizing
banter that he always used when addressing his daughter or her friends.
But his voice had an unnatural sound as he cried, "Well, Prunella, and
what have you all been doing to my Moonlove, eh? She came running home
after dinner, and if it hadn't been broad daylight, I should have said
that she had seen a ghost. And then off she dashed, up hill and down
dale, like a paper chaser without any paper. What have you all been
doing to her, eh?"
"I don't think we've been doing anything to her, Cousin Ambrose,"
Prunella answered in a low, curiously toneless voice.
Ever since the scene with Moonlove that afternoon, Master Ambrose had
had an odd feeling that facts were losing their solidity; and he had
entered this house with the express purpose of bullying and hectoring
that solidity back to them. Instead of which they were rapidly
vanishing, becoming attenuated to a sort of nebulous atmosphere.
But Master Ambrose had stronger nerves and a more decided mind than
Master Nathaniel. Two facts remained solid, namely that his daughter
had run away, and that for this Miss Crabapple's establishment was
responsible. These he grasped firmly as if they had been dumb-bells
that, by their weight, kept him from floating up to the ceiling.
"Now, Prunella," he said sternly, "there's something very queer about
all this, and I believe you can explain it. Well? I'm waiting."
Prunella gave a little enigmatical smile.
"What did she say when you saw her?" she asked.
"Say? Why, she was evidently scared out of her wits, and didn't
know what she was saying. She babbled something about the sun being
too hot--though it seems to me very ordinary autumn weather that
we're having. And then she went on about cutting somebody's fiddle
strings ... oh, I don't know what!"
Prunella gave a low cry of horror.
"Cut the fiddle strings!" she repeated incredulously. And then she
added with a triumphant laugh, "she can't do that!"
"Now, young lady," he cried roughly, "no more of this rubbish! Do you
or do you not know what has taken Moonlove?"
For a second or two she gazed at him in silence, and then she said
slowly, "Nobody ever knows what happens to other people. But,
supposing ... supposing she has eaten fairy fruit?" and she gave a
little mocking smile.
Silent with horror, Master Ambrose stared at her.
Then he burst out furiously, "You foul-mouthed little hussy! Do you
dare to insinuate...."
But Prunella's eyes were fixed on the window that opened on to the
garden, and instinctively he looked in that direction too.
For a second he supposed that the portrait of Duke Aubrey that hung
in the Senate Room of the Guildhall had been moved to the wall of
Miss Primrose's parlour. Framed in the window, against the leafy
background of the garden stood, quite motionless, a young man in
antique dress. The face, the auburn ringlets, the suit of green, the
rustic background--everything, down to the hunting horn entwined with
flowers that he held in one hand, and the human skull that he held in
the other, were identical with those depicted in the famous portrait.
"By the White Ladies of the Fields!" muttered Master Ambrose, rubbing
his eyes.
But when he looked again the figure had vanished.
For a few seconds he stood gaping and bewildered, and Prunella seized
the opportunity of slipping unnoticed from the room.
Then he came to his senses, on a wave of berserk rage. They had been
playing tricks, foul, vulgar tricks, on him, on Ambrose Honeysuckle,
Senator and ex-Mayor. But they should pay for it, by the Sun, Moon and
Stars, they should pay for it! And he shook his fist at the ivy and
squill bedecked walls.
But, in the meantime, it was he himself who was paying for it. An
appalling accusation had been made against his only child; and,
perhaps, the accusation was true.
Well, things must be faced. He was now quite calm, and, with his stern
set face, a much more formidable person than the raging spluttering
creature of a few seconds ago. He was determined to get to the bottom
of this affair, and either to vindicate his daughter from the foul
insinuation made by Prunella Chanticleer, or else, if the horrible
thing were true (and a voice inside him that would not be silenced kept
saying that it was true) to face the situation squarely, and, for the
good of the town, find out who was responsible for what had happened
and bring them to the punishment they merited.
There was probably no one in all Lud-in-the-Mist who would suffer
in the same degree from such a scandal in his family as Master
Ambrose Honeysuckle. And there was something fine in the way he thus
unflinchingly faced the possibility. Not for a moment did he think of
hushing the matter up to shield his daughter's reputation.
No, justice should run its course even if the whole town had to know
that Ambrose Honeysuckle's only child--and she a girl, which seemed,
somehow, to make it more horrible--had eaten fairy fruit.
As to his vision of Duke Aubrey, that he dismissed as an hallucination
due to his excited condition and perhaps, as well, to the hysterical
atmosphere that seemed to lie like a thick fog over the Academy.
Before he left Miss Primrose's parlour his eyes fell on the half
embroidered slipper he had impatiently tossed away on the entrance of
Prunella Chanticleer.
He smiled grimly; perhaps, after all, it had not been due to mere
foolish feminine fancy that the strawberries were purple instead of
red. She may have had real models for her embroidery.
He put the slipper in his pocket. It might prove of value in the law
courts.
But Master Ambrose was mistaken in supposing that the berries
embroidered on the slipper were fairy fruit.