









                          Chapter X

                        Hempie's Song


There were days, however, when even the silent things did
not sooth 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.
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