HEMPIE'S SONG
There were days, however, when even the silent things did not soothe
Master Nathaniel; when the condition described by Ranulph as the
imprisoning of all one's being into a space as narrow as a tooth,
whence it irradiates waves of agony, became so overwhelming, that he
was unconscious of the external world.
One late afternoon, a prey to this mood, he was mooning about the
Fields of Grammary.
In the epitaphs on the tombstone one could read the history of
Dorimarite sensibility from the quiet poignancy of those dating from
the days of the Dukes--"Eglantine mourns for Endymion, who was Alive
and now is Dead;" or "During her Life Ambrose often dreamed that
Forget-Me-Not was Dead. This Time he woke up and found that it was
True"--followed by the peaceful records of industry and prosperity of
the early days of the Republic, down to the cheap cynicism of recent
times--for instance, "Here lies Hyacinth Quirkscuttle, weaver, who
stretched his life as he was wont to do the list of his cloth far
beyond its natural limits, and, to the great regret of his family, died
at the age of XCIX."
But, that afternoon, even his favourite epitaph, the one about
the old baker, Ebeneezor Spike, who had provided the citizens of
Lud-in-the-Mist with fresh sweet loaves for sixty years, was powerless
to comfort Master Nathaniel.
Indeed, so strangled was he in the coils of his melancholy that the
curious fact of the door of his family chapel being ajar caused in him
nothing but a momentary, muffled surprise.
The chapel of the Chanticleers was one of the loveliest monuments of
Lud. It was built of rose-coloured marble, with delicately fluted
pillars, and worked in low relief with the flowers and panic stricken
fugitives, so common in the old art of Dorimare. Indeed, it looked like
an exquisite little pleasure-house; and tradition said that this it had
originally been--one of Duke Aubrey's, in fact. And it certainly was in
accordance with his legend to make a graveyard the scene of his revels.
No one ever entered except Master Nathaniel and his household to
fill it with flowers on the anniversaries of his parents' death.
Nevertheless, the door was certainly ajar.
The only comment he made to himself was to suppose that the pious
Hempie had been up that day to commemorate some anniversary,
remembered only by herself, in the lives of her dead master and
mistress, and had forgotten to lock it up again.
Drearily he wandered to the western wall and gazed down upon
Lud-in-the-Mist, and so drugged was he with despair that at first he
was incapable of reacting in the slightest degree to what his eyes were
seeing.
Then, just as sometimes the flowing of the Dapple was reflected in the
trunks of the beeches that grew on its banks, so that an element that
looked as if it were half water, half light, seemed rippling down them
in ceaseless zones--so did the objects he saw beneath him begin to be
reflected in fancies, rippling down the hard, unyielding fabric of his
woe; the red-roofed houses scattered about the side of the hill looked
as if they were crowding helter-skelter to the harbour, eager to turn
ships themselves and sail away--a flock of clumsy ducks on a lake of
swans; the houses beyond the harbour seemed to be preening themselves
preparatory to having their portrait taken. The chimneys were casting
becoming velvet shadows on the high-pitched slanting roofs. The
belfries seemed to be standing on tiptoe behind the houses--like tall
serving lads, who, unbeknown to their masters, have succeeded in
squeezing themselves into the family group.
Or, perhaps, the houses were more like a flock of barn-door fowls,
of different shapes and sizes, crowding up at the hen wife's "Chick!
chick! chick!" to be fed at sunset.
Anyhow, however innocent they might look, they were the repositories
of whatever dark secrets Lud might contain. Houses counted among the
Silent People. Walls have ears, but no tongue. Houses, trees, the
dead--they tell no tales.
His eye travelled beyond the town to the country that lay beyond,
and rested on the fields of poppies and golden stubble, the smoke of
distant hamlets, the great blue ribbon of the Dawl, the narrow one of
the Dapple--one coming from the north, one from the west, but, for
some miles beyond Lud-in-the-Mist, seeming to flow in parallel lines,
so that their convergence at the harbour struck one as a geometrical
miracle.
Once more he began to feel the balm of silent things, and seemed to
catch a glimpse of that still, quiet landscape the future, after he
himself had died.
And yet ... there was that old superstition of the thraldom in
Fairyland, the labour in the fields of gillyflowers.
No, no. Old Ebeneezor Spike was not a thrall in Fairyland.
* * * * *
He left the Fields of Grammary in a gentler mood of melancholy than the
frost-bound despair in which he had gone there.
When he got home he found Dame Marigold sitting dejectedly in the
parlour, her hands lying limply on her lap, and she had had the fire
already lighted although evening had not yet set in.
She was very white, and there were violet shadows under her eyes.
Master Nathaniel stood silently at the door for a few seconds watching
her.
There came into his head the lines of an old song of Dorimare:--
I'll weaver her a wreath of the flowers of grief
That her beauty may show the brighter.
And suddenly he saw her with the glamour on her that used to madden
him in the days of his courtship, the glamour of something that is
delicate, and shadowy, and far-away--the glamour that lets loose the
lust of the body of a man for the soul of a woman.
"Marigold," he said in a low voice.
Her lips curled in a little contemptuous smile: "Well, Nat, have you
been out baying the moon, and chasing your own shadow?"
"Marigold!" and he came and leaned over the back of her chair.
She started violently. Then she cried in a voice, half petulant, half
apologetic, "I'm sorry! But, you know, I can't bear having the back of
my neck touched! Oh, Nat, what a sentimental old thing you are!"
And then it all began over again--the vain repinings, the veiled
reproaches; while the desire to make him wince struggled for the
ascendancy with the habit of mercy, engendered by years of a mild,
slightly contemptuous tenderness.
Her attitude to the calamity was one of physical disgust, mingled with
petulance, a sense of ill-usage, and, incredible though it may seem, a
sense of its ridiculous aspect.
Occasionally she would stop shuddering, to make some such remark as:
"Oh, dear! I can't help wishing that old Primrose herself had gone off
with them, and that I could have seen her prancing to the fiddle and
screeching like an old love-sick tabby cat."
Finally Master Nathaniel could stand it no longer. He sprang to his
feet, exclaiming violently: "Marigold, you madden me! You're ... you're
not a woman. I believe what you need is some of that fruit yourself.
I've a good mind to get some, and force it down your throat!"
But it was an outrageous thing to have said. And no sooner were the
words out of his mouth than he would have given a hundred pounds to
have them unsaid.
What had taken his tongue! It was as if an old trusty watch-dog had
suddenly gone mad and bitten him.
But he could stay no longer in the parlour, and face her cold,
disgusted stare. So, sheepishly mumbling an apology, he left the room.
Where should he go? Not to the pipe-room. He could not face the
prospect of his own company. So he went upstairs and knocked at
Hempie's door.
However much in childhood a man may have loved his nurse, it is seldom
that, after he has grown up, he does not feel ill at ease and rather
bored when he is with her. A relationship that has become artificial,
and connected, on one side, with a sense of duty rather than with
spontaneous affection, is always an uncomfortable one.
And, for the nurse, it is particularly bitter when it is the
magnanimous enemy--the wife--who has to keep her "boy" up to his duty.
For years Dame Marigold had had to say at intervals, "Nat, have you
been up to see Hempie lately?" or "Nat, Hempie has lost one of her
brothers. Do go and tell her you're sorry."
So, when Master Nathaniel found himself in the gay little room, he felt
awkward and tongue-tied, and was too depressed to have recourse to
the somewhat laboured facetiousness with which he was in the habit of
greeting the old woman.
She was engaged in darning his stockings, and she indignantly showed
him a particularly big hole, shaking her head, and exclaiming, "There
never was a man so hard on his stockings as you, Master Nat! I'd very
much like to find out before I die what you do to them; and Master
Ranulph is every bit as bad."
"Well, Hempie, as I always say, you've no right to blame me if my
stockings go into holes, seeing that it's you who knitted them,"
retorted Master Nathaniel automatically.
For years Hempie's scolding about the condition in which she found his
stockings had elicited this reply. But, after these days of nightmare,
there was something reassuring in discovering that there were still
people in the world sane enough, and with quiet enough minds, to be put
out by the holes in a pair of worsted stockings.
Hempie had, indeed, taken the news of the Crabapple Blossoms very
calmly. It was true she had never cared very much for Prunella,
maintaining always that "she was just her mother over again." All the
same, Prunella remained Master Nathaniel's daughter and Ranulph's
sister, and hence had a certain borrowed preciousness in the eyes of
Hempie. Nevertheless she had refused to indulge in lamentations, and
had preserved on the subject a rather grim silence.
His eye roved restlessly over the familiar room. It was certainly
a pleasant one--fantastic and exquisitely neat. "Neat as a Fairy's
parlour"--the old Dorimarite expression came unbidden to his mind.
There was a bowl of autumn roses on the table, faintly scenting the air
with the hospitable, poetic perfume that is like a welcome to a little
house with green shutters and gay chintzes and lavender-scented sheets.
But the host who welcomes you is dead, the house itself no longer
stands except in your memory--it is the cry of the cock turned into
perfume. Are there bowls of roses in the Fairies' parlours?
"I say, Hempie, these are new, aren't they?" he said, pointing to a
case of shells on the chimney-piece--very strange shells, as thin as
butterfly's wings and as brightly coloured. And, as well, there were
porcelain pots, which looked as if they had been made out of the petals
of poppies and orchids, nor could their strange shapes ever have been
turned on a potter's wheel in Dorimare.
Then he gave a low whistle, and, pointing to a horse-shoe of pure gold,
nailed on to the wall, he added, "And that, too! I'll swear I've never
seen it before. Has your ship come in, Hempie?"
The old woman looked up placidly from her darning: "Oh! these came when
my poor brother died and the old home was broken up. I'm glad to have
them, as I never remember a time when they weren't in the old kitchen
at home. I often think it's strange how bits of chiney and brittle
stuff like that lives on, long after solid flesh and bone has turned
to dust. And it's a queer thing, Master Nat, as one gets old, how one
lives among the dumb. Bits of chiney ... and the Silent People," and
she wiped a couple of tears from her eyes.
Then she added, "Where these old bits of things came from I never
rightly knew. I suppose the horse-shoe's valuable, but even in bad
harvests my poor father would never turn it into money. He used to
say that it had been above our door in his father's time, and in his
grandfather's time, and it had best stay there. I shouldn't wonder if
he thought it had been dropped by Duke Aubrey's horse. And as for the
shells and pots ... when we were children, we used always to whisper
that they came from beyond the hills."
Master Nathaniel gave a start, and stared at her in amazement.
"From beyond the hills?" he repeated, in a low, horrified voice.
"Aye, and why not?" cried Hempie, undaunted. "I was country-bred,
Master Nat, and I learned not to mind the smell of a fox or of a civet
cat ... or of a Fairy. They're mischievous creatures, I daresay,
and best left alone. But though we can't always pick and choose our
neighbours, neighbourliness is a virtue all the same. For my part, I'd
never have chosen the Fairies for my neighbours--but they were chosen
for me. And we must just make the best of them."
"By the Sun, Moon, and Stars, Hempie!" cried Master Nathaniel in a
horrified voice, "you don't know what you're talking about, you...."
"Now, Master Nat, don't you try on your
hoighty-toighty-his-Worship-the-Mayor-of-Lud-in-the-Mist-knock-you-down-and-be-thankful-for-small-mercies
ways with me!" cried Hempie, shaking her fist at him. "I know very well
what I'm talking about. Long, long ago I made up my mind about certain
things. But a good nurse must keep her mind to herself--if it's not the
same as that of her master and mistress. So I never let on to you when
you were a little boy, nor to Master Ranulph neither, what I thought
about these things. But I've never held with fennel and such like. If
folks know they're not wanted, it just makes them all the more anxious
to come--be they Fairies or Dorimarites. It's just because we're all
so scared of our neighbours that we get bamboozled by them. And I've
always held that a healthy stomach could digest anything--even fairy
fruit. Look at my boy, now, at Ranulph--young Luke writes he's never
looked so bonny. No, fairy fruit nor nothing else can poison a clean
stomach."
"I see," said Master Nathaniel drily. He was fighting against the sense
of comfort that, in spite of himself, her words were giving him. "And
are you quite happy, too, about Prunella?"
"Well, and even if I'm not," retorted Hempie, "where's the good of
crying, and retching, and belching, all day long, like your lady
downstairs? Life has its sad side, and we must take the rough with the
smooth. Why, maids have died on their marriage eve, or, what's worse,
bringing their first baby into the world, and the world's wagged on all
the same. Life's sad enough, in all conscience, but there's nothing to
be frightened about in it or to turn one's stomach. I was country-bred,
and as my old granny used to say, 'There's no clock like the sun and
no calendar like the stars.' And why? Because it gets one used to the
look of Time. There's no bogey from over the hills that scares one like
Time. But when one's been used all one's life to seeing him naked, as
it were, instead of shut up in a clock, like he is in Lud, one learns
that he is as quiet and peaceful as an old ox dragging the plough. And
to watch Time teaches one to sing. They say the fruit from over the
hills makes one sing. I've never tasted so much as a sherd of it, but
for all that I can sing."
Suddenly, all the pent-up misery and fear of the last thirty years
seemed to be loosening in Master Nathaniel's heart--he was sobbing,
and Hempie, with triumphant tenderness, was stroking his hands and
murmuring soothing words, as she had done when he was a little boy.
When his sobs had spent themselves, he sat down on a stool at her feet,
and, leaning his head against her knees, said, "Sing to me, Hempie."
"Sing to you, my dear? And what shall I sing to you? My voice isn't
what it once was ... well, there's that old song--'Columbine,' I think
they call it--that they always seem singing in the streets these
days--that's got a pretty tune."
And in a voice, cracked and sweet, like an old spinet, she began to
sing:
"When Aubrey did live there lived no poor.
The lord and the beggar on roots did dine
With lily, germander, and sops in wine.
With sweet-brier,
And bon-fire,
And strawberry-wire,
And columbine."
As she sang, Master Nathaniel again heard the Note. But, strange to
say, this time it held no menace. It was as quiet as trees and pictures
and the past, as soothing as the drip of water, as peaceful as the
lowing of cows returning to the byre at sunset.