









                         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 colours 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.
   The summer was simmering comfortably by, in its usual
sleepy way, in the streets and gardens of Lud-in-the-Mist. 
The wives of Senators and burgesses were busy in still-room
and kitchen making cordials and jams; in the evening the
streets were lively with chattering voices and the sounds of
music, and 'prentices danced with their masters' daughters
in the public square, or outside taverns, till the grey
twilight began to turn black.  The Senators yawned their way
through each other's speeches, and made their own as short
as possible that they might hurry off to whip the Dapple for
trout or play at bowls on the Guild Hall's beautiful velvety
green.  And when one of their ships brought in a
particularly choice cargo of rare wine or exotic sweetmeats
they invited their friends to supper, and washed down the
dainties with the good old jokes.
   Mumchance looked glum, and would sometimes frighten his
wife by gloomy forebodings; but he had learned that it was
no use trying to arouse the Mayor and the Senate.
   Master Nathaniel was missing Ranulph very much; but as he
continued to get highly satisfactory reports of his health
he felt that it would be selfish not to let him stay on, at
any rate till the summer was over. 
   Then the trees, after their long silence, began to talk
again, in yellow and red.  And the days began to shrink
under one's very eyes.  And Master Nathaniel's pleached
alley was growing yellower and yellower, and on the days
when a thick white mist came rolling up from the Dapple it
would be the only object in his garden that was not blurred
and dimmed, and would look like a pair of gigantic golden
compasses with which a demiurge is measuring chaos.
   It was then that things began to happen; moreover, they
began at the least likely place in the whole of
Lud-in-the-Mist -- Miss Primrose Crabapple's Academy for
young ladies.
   Miss Primrose Crabapple had for some twenty years
"finished" the daughters of the leading citizens; teaching
them to sing, to dance, to play the spinet and the harp, to
preserve and candy fruit, to wash gauzes and lace, to bone
chickens without cutting the back, to model groups of still
life in every imaginable plastic material, edible and
non-edible -- wax, butter, sugar -- and to embroider in at
least a hundred different stitches -- preparing them, in
fact, to be one day useful and accomplished wives.
   When Dame Marigold Chanticleer and her contemporaries had
first been pupils at the Academy, Miss Primrose had only
been a young assistant governess, very sentimental and
affected, and full of nonsensical ideas.  But nonsensical
ideas and great practical gifts are sometimes found side by
side, and sentimentality is a quality that rarely has the
slightest influence on action.
   Anyhow, the ridiculous gushing assistant managed bit by
bit to get the whole direction of the establishment into her
own hands, while the old dame to whom the school belonged
became as plastic to her will as were butter, sugar or wax
to her clever fingers; and when the old lady died she left
her the school.
   It was an old rambling red-brick house with a large
pleasant garden, and stood a little back from the high-road,
about half a mile beyond the west gate of Lud-in-the-Mist.
   The Academy represented to the ladies of Lud all that
they knew of romance.  They remembered the jokes they had
laughed at within its walls, the secrets they had exchanged
walking up and down its pleached alleys, far more vividly
than anything that had afterwards happened to them.
   Do not for a moment imagine that they were sentimental
about it.  The ladies of Lud were never sentimental.  It was
as an old comic song that they remembered their
school-days.  Perhaps it is always with a touch of
wistfulness that we remember old comic songs.  It was at any
rate as near as the ladies of Lud could get to the poetry of
the past.  And whenever Dame Marigold Chanticleer and Dame
Dreamsweet Vigil and the rest of the old pupils of the
Academy foregathered to eat syllabub and marzipan and
exchange new stitches for their samplers, they would be sure
sooner or later to start bandying memories about these funny
old days and the ridiculous doings of Miss Primrose
Crabapple. 
   "Oh, *do* you remember," Dame Marigold would cry, "how
she wanted to start what she called a `Mother's Day', when
we were all to dress up in white and green, and pretend to
be lilies standing on our mothers' graves?"
   "Oh, yes!" Dame Dreamsweet would gurgle, "And mother was
so angry when she found out about it.  `How dare the
ghoulish creature bury me alive like this?' she used to
say."
   And then they would laugh till the tears ran down their
cheeks.
   Each generation had its own jokes and its own secrets;
but they were always on the same pattern; just as when one
of the china cups got broken, it was replaced by another
exactly like it, with the same painted border of squills and
ivy.
   There were squills and ivy all over the Academy,
embroidered on the curtains in each bedroom, and on all the
cushions and screens, painted in a frieze around the wall of
the parlour, and even stamped on the pats of butter.  For
one of Miss Primrose Crabapple's follies was a romantic
passion for Duke Aubrey -- a passion similar to that
cherished by high-church spinsters of the last century for
the memory of Charles I.  Over her bed hung a little
reproduction in water-colours of his portrait in the
Guildhall.  And on the anniversary of his fall, which was
kept in Dorimare as a holiday, she always appeared in deep
mourning.
   She knew perfectly well that she was an object of
ridicule to her pupils and their mothers.  But her manner to
them was not a whit less gushing in consequence; for she was
much too practical to allow her feelings to interfere with
her bread and butter.
   However, on the occasions when her temper got the better
of her prudence she would show them clearly her contempt for
their pedigree, sneering at them as commercial upstarts and
interlopers.  She seemed to forget that she herself was only
the daughter of a Lud grocer, and at times to imagine that
the Crabapples had belonged to the vanished aristocracy.
   She was grotesque, too, in appearance, with a round moon
face, tiny eyes, and an enormous mouth that was generally
stretched into an ingratiating smile.  She always wore a
green turban and gown cut in the style of the days of Duke
Aubrey.  Sitting in her garden among her pretty little
pupils she was like a brightly-painted Aunt Sally, placed
there by a gardener with a taste for the baroque to frighten
away the birds from his cherries and greengages.
   Though it was flowers that her pupils resembled more than
fruit -- sweetpeas, perhaps, when fragrant, gay, and demure,
in muslin frocks cut to a pattern, but in various colours,
and in little poke-bonnets with white frills, they took
their walk, two and two, through the streets of
Lud-in-the-Mist.
   At any rate it was something sweet and fresh that they
suggested, and in the town they were always known as the
"Crabapple Blossoms." 
   Recently they had been in a state of gleeful ecstasy. 
They had reason to believe that Miss Primrose was being
courted, and by no less a person than Endymion Leer.
   He was the school physician, and hence to them all a
familiar figure.  But, until quite lately, Miss Primrose had
been a frequent victim of his relentless tongue, and many a
time a little patient had been forced to stuff the sheet
into her mouth to stifle her laughter, so quaint and pungent
were the snubs he administered to their unfortunate school
marm.
   But nearly every evening this summer his familiar cane
and bottle-green hat had been seen in the hall.  And his
visits they had learned from the servants were not
professional; unless it be part of a doctor's duties to drop
in of an evening to play a game of cribbage with his
patients, and sample their cakes and cowslip wine.
   Moreover, never before had Miss Primrose appeared so
frequently in new gowns.
   "Perhaps she's preparing her bridal chest!" tittered
Prunella Chanticleer.  And the very idea sent them all into
convulsions of mirth.
   "But do you *really* think he'll marry her?  How *could*
he!" said Penstemmon Fliperarde.  "She's such an old fright,
and such an old goose, too.  And they say *he's* so clever."
   "Why, then they'll be the goose and the sage!" laughed
Prunella.
   "I expect he wants her savings," said Viola Vigil, with a
wise little nod.
   "Or perhaps he wants to add her to his collection of
antiques," tittered Ambrosine Pyepowders.
   "Or to stick her up like an old sign over his
dispensary!" suggested Prunella Chanticleer.
   "But it's hard on Duke Aubrey," laughed Moonlove
Honeysuckle, "to be cut out like this by a snuffy old
doctor."
   "Yes," said Viola Vigil.  "My father says it's a great
pity she doesn't take rooms in the Duke Aubrey's Arms,
because," and Viola giggled and blushed a little, "it would
be as near as *she'd* ever get to his arms, or to anybody
else's!"
   But the laughter that greeted this last sally was just a
trifle shame-faced; for the Crabapple Blossoms found it a
little too daring.
   At the beginning of autumn, Miss Primrose suddenly sent
all the servants back to their homes in distant villages;
and, to the indignation of the Crabapple Blossoms, their
places were filled (only temporarily, Miss Primrose
maintained) by the crazy washerwoman, Mother Tibbs, and a
handsome, painted, deaf-mute, with bold black eyes.  Mother
Tibbs made but an indifferent housemaid, for she spent most
of her time at the garden gate, waving her handkerchief to
the passers-by.  And if, when at her work, she heard the
sound of a fiddle or flute, however distant, she would
instantly stop whatever she was doing and start dancing,
brandishing wildly in the air broom, or warming-pan, or
whatever domestic implement she may have been holding in her
hands at the time. 
   As for the deaf-mute -- she was quite a good cook, but
was, perhaps, scarcely suited to employment in a young
ladies's academy, as she was known in the town as "Bawdy
Bess."
   One morning Miss Primrose announced that she had found
them a new dancing master (the last one had been suddenly
dismissed, no one knew for what reason), and that when they
had finished their seams they were to come up to the loft
for a lesson.
   So they tripped up to the cool, dark, pleasant loft,
which smelt of apples, and had bunches of drying grapes
suspended from its rafters.  Long ago the Academy had been a
farm-house, and on the loft's oak panelled walls were carved
the interlaced initials of many rustic lovers, dead hundreds
of years ago.  To these Prunella Chanticleer and Moonlove
Honeysuckle had recently added a monogram formed of the
letters P. C. and E. L.
   Their new dancing-master was a tall, red-haired youth,
with a white pointed face and very bright eyes.  Miss
Primrose, who always implied that it was at great personal
inconvenience and from purely philanthropic motives that
their teachers gave them their lessons, introduced him as
"Professor Wisp, who had *very* kindly consented to teach
them dancing," and the young man made his new pupils a low
bow, and turning to Miss Primrose, he said, "I've got you a
fiddler, ma'am.  Oh, a rare fiddler!  It's your needlework
that has brought him.  He's a weaver by trade, and he dearly
loves pictures in silk.  And he can give you some pretty
patterns to work from -- can't you Portunus?" and he clapped
his hands twice.
   Whereupon, "like a bat dropped from the rafters," as
Prunella, with an inexplicable shudder, whispered to
Moonlove, a queer wizened old man, with eyes as bright as
Professor Wisp's, all mopping and mowing, with a fiddle and
a bow under his arm, sprang suddenly out of the shadows.
   "Young ladies!" cried Professor Wisp, gleefully, "this is
Master Portunus, fiddler to his Majesty the Emperor of the
Moon, jester-in-chief to the Lord of Ghosts and Shadows...
though his jests are apt to be silent ones.  And he has come
a long long way, young ladies, to set your feet a dancing. 
*Ho, ho, hoh*!"
   And the professor sprang up at least three feet in the
air, and landed on the tips of his toes, as light as a ball
of thistledown, while Master Portunus stood rubbing his
hands, and chuckling with senile glee.
   "What a *vulgar* young man!  Just like a cheap Jack on
market-day," whispered Viola Vigil to Prunella Chanticleer.
   But Prunella, who had been looking at him intently,
whispered back, "I'm sure at one time he was one of our
grooms.  I only saw him once, but I'm sure it's he.  What
*can* Miss Primrose be thinking of to engage such low people
as teachers?"
   Prunella had, of course, not been told any details as to
Ranulph's illness. 
   Even Miss Primrose seemed somewhat disconcerted.  She
stood there, mouthing and blinking, evidently at a loss what
to say.  Then she turned to the old man, and, in her best
company manner, said she was delighted to meet another
needle-work enthusiast; and, turning to Professor Wisp,
added in her most cooing treacley voice, "I must embroider a
pair of slippers for the dear doctor's birthday, and I want
the design to be very ori-i-ginal, so perhaps this,
gentleman would kindly lend me his sampler."
   At this the professor made another wild pirouette, and,
clapping his hands with glee, cried, "Yes, yes, Portunus is
your man.  Portunus will set your stitches dancing to his
tunes, *ho, ho, hoh!*"
   And he and Portunus dug each other in the ribs and
laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks.
   At last, pulling himself together, the Professor bade
Portunus tune up his fiddle, and requested that the young
ladies should form up into two lines for the first dance.
   "We'll begin with `Columbine,'" he said.
   "But that's nothing but a country dance for farm
servants," pouted Moonlove Honeysuckle.
   And Prunella Chanticleer boldly went up to Miss Primrose,
and said, "Please, mayn't we go on with the jigs and
quadrilles we've always learned?  I don't think mother would
like me learning new things.  And `Columbine's so vulgar."
   "Vulgar! New!" cried Professor Wisp, shrilly.  "Why, my
pretty Miss, `Columbine' was danced in the moonlight when
Lud-in-the-Mist was nothing but a beech wood between two
rivers.  It is the dance that the Silent People dance along
the Milky Way.  It's the dance of laughter and tears."
   "Professor Wisp is going to teach you very old and
aristocratic dances, my dear," said Miss Primrose
reprovingly.  "Dances such as were danced at the court of
Duke Aubrey -- were they not, Professor Wisp?"
   But the queer old fiddler had begun to tune up, and
Professor Wisp, evidently thinking that they had, already,
wasted enough time, ordered his pupils to stand up and be in
readiness to begin.
   Very sulkily it was that the Crabapple Blossoms obeyed,
for they were all feeling as cross as two sticks at having
such a vulgar buffoon for their master, and at being forced
to learn silly old-fashioned dances that would be of no use
to them when they were grown-up.
   But, surely, there was magic in the bow of that old
fiddler!  And, surely, no other tune in the world was so
lonely, so light-footed, so beckoning!  Do what one would
one must needs up and follow it.
   Without quite knowing how it came about, they were soon
all tripping and bobbing and gliding and tossing, with their
minds on fire, while Miss Primrose wagged her head in time
to the measure, and Professor Wisp, shouting directions the
while, wound himself in and out among them, as if they were
so many beads, and he the string on which they were
threaded. 
   Suddenly the music stopped, and flushed, laughing, and
fanning themselves with their pocket handkerchiefs, the
Crabapple Blossoms flung themselves down on the floor,
against a pile of bulging sacks in one of the corners,
indifferent for probably the first time in their lives to
possible damage to their frocks.
   But Miss Primrose cried out sharply, "Not there, dears! 
Not there!"
   In some surprise they were about to move, when Professor
Wisp whispered something in her ear, and, with a little
meaning nod to him, she said, "Very well, dears, stay where
you are.  It was only that I thought the floor would be
dirty for you."
   "Well, it wasn't such bad fun after all," said Moonlove
Honeysuckle.
   "No," admitted Prunella Chanticleer reluctantly.  "That
old man *can* play!"
   "I wonder what's in these sacks; it feels too soft for
apples," said Ambrosine Pyepowders, prodding in idle
curiosity the one against which she was leaning.
   "There's rather a queer smell coming from them," said
Moonlove.
   "Horrid!" said Prunella, wrinkling up her little nose.
   And then, with a giggle, she whispered, "We've had the
goose and the sage, so perhaps these are the onions!"
   At that moment Portunus began to tune his fiddle again,
and Professor Wisp called out to them to form up again in
two rows.
   "This time, my little misses," he said, "it's to be a sad
solemn dance, so Miss Primrose must foot it with you -- `a
very aristocratic dance, such as was danced at the court of
Duke Aubrey'!" and he gave them a roguish wink.
   So admirable had been his imitation of Miss Primrose's
voice that, for all he was such a vulgar buffoon, the
Crabapple Blossoms could not help giggling.
   "But I'll ask you to listen to the tune before you begin
to dance it," he went on.  "Now then, Portunus!"
   "Why! It's just `Columbine' over again..." began Prunella
scornfully.
   But the words froze on her lips, and she stood spellbound
and frightened.
   It was `Columbine,' but with a difference.  For, since
they had last heard it, the tune might have died, and
wandered in strange places, to come back to earth, an angry
ghost.
   "Now, then, *dance*!" cried Professor Wisp, in harsh,
peremptory tones.
   And it was in sheer self-defence that they obeyed -- as
if by dancing they somehow or other escaped from that tune,
which seemed to be themselves. 
   
       "Within and out, in and out, round as a ball,
        With hither and thither, as straight as a line,
        With lily, germander, and sops in wine.
                   With sweet-brier
                      And bon-fire
                   And strawberry-wire
                      And columbine,"
                   
sang Professor Wisp.  And in and out, in and out of a
labyrinth of dreams wound the Crabapple Blossoms.
   But now the tune had changed its key.  It was getting gay
once more -- gay, but strange, and very terrifying.
   
       "Any lass for a Duke, a Duke who wears green,
        In lands where the sun and the moon do not shine,
         With lily, germander, and sops in wine.
                   With sweet-brier
                      And bon-fire
                   And strawberry-wire
                      And columbine."
   
sang Professor Wisp, and in and out he wound between his
pupils -- or, rather, not *wound*, but dived, darted,
flashed, while every moment his singing grew shriller, his
laughter more wild.
   And then -- whence and how they could not say -- a new
person had joined the dance.
   He was dressed in green and he wore a black mask.  And
the curious thing was that, in spite of all the crossings
and recrossings and runs down the middle, and the endless
shuffling in the positions of the dancers, demanded by the
intricate figures of this dance, the newcomer was never
beside you -- it was always with somebody else that he was
dancing.  *You* never felt the touch of his hand.  This was
the experience of each individual Crabapple Blossom.
   But Moonlove Honeysuckle caught a glimpse of his back;
and on it there was a hump.
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