Lud-in-the-Mist (22 page)

But on one thing he was resolved — for once he would assert himself, and Ranulph should not spend another night at the widow Gibberty’s farm.

Toby won the toss and pocketed the knife with a grin of satisfaction, and by degrees the talk became as flickering and intermittent as the light of the dying fire, which they were too idle to feed with sticks; and finally it was quenched to silence, and they yielded to the curious drugged sensation that comes from being out of doors and wide-awake at night.

It was as if the earth had been transported to the sky, and they had been left behind in chaos, and were gazing up at its towns and beasts and heroes flattened out in constellations and looking like the stippled pictures in a Neolithic cave. And the Milky Way was the only road visible in the universe.

Now and then a toad harped on its one silvery note, and from time to time a little breeze would spring up and then die down.

Suddenly Ranulph broke the silence with the startling question, “How far is it from here to Fairyland?”

The little boys nudged one another and again began to snigger behind their hands.

“For shame, Master Ranulph!” cried Luke indignantly, “talking like that before youngsters!”

“But I want to
know!”
said Ranulph petulantly.

“Tell what your old granny used to say, Dorian,” giggled Toby.

And Dorian was finally persuaded to repeat the old saying: “A thousand leagues by the great West Road and ten by the Milky Way.”

Ranulph sprang to his feet, and with rather a wild laugh, he cried, “Let’s have a race to Fairyland. I bet it will be me that gets there first. One, two, three — and
away!”

And he would actually have plunged off into the darkness, had not the little boys, half shocked, half admiring, flung themselves on him and dragged him back.

“There’s an imp of mischief got into you tonight, Master Ranulph,” growled Luke.

“You shouldn’t joke about things like that … specially tonight, Master Chanticleer,” said Toby gravely.

“You’re right there, young Toby,” said Luke, “I only wish he had half your sense.”

“It was just a bit of fun, wasn’t it, Master Chanticleer? You didn’t
really
want us to race to … yonder?” asked little Peter, peering through the darkness at Ranulph with scared eyes.

“Of course it was only fun,” said Luke.

But Ranulph said nothing.

Again they lapsed into silence. And all round them, subject to blind taciturn laws, and heedless of man, myriads of things were happening, in the grass, in the trees, in the sky.

Luke yawned and stretched himself. “It must be getting near dawn,” he said.

They had successfully doubled the dangerous cape of midnight, and he began to feel secure of safely weathering what remained of their dark voyage.

It was the hour when night-watchers begin to idealize their bed, and, with Sancho Panza, to bless the man who invented it. They shuddered, and drew their cloaks closer round their shoulders.

Then, something happened. It was not so much a modification of the darkness, as a sigh of relief, a slight relaxing of tension, so that one
felt
, rather than saw, that the night had suddenly lost a shade of its density … ah! yes; there! between these two shoulders of the hills she is bleeding to death.

At first the spot was merely a degree less black than the rest of the sky. Then it turned grey, then yellow, then red. And the earth was undergoing the same transformation. Here and there patches of greyness broke out in the blackness of the grass, and after a few seconds one saw that they were clumps of flowers. Then the greyness became filtered with a delicate sea-green; and next, one realized that the grey-green belonged to the foliage, against which the petals were beginning to show white — and then pink, or yellow, or blue; but a yellow like that of primroses, a blue like that of certain wild periwinkles, colors so elusive that one suspects them to be due to some passing accident of light, and that, were one to pick the flower, it would prove to be pure white.

Ah, there can be no doubt of it now! The blues and yellows are real and perdurable. Color is steadily flowing through the veins of the earth, and we may take heart, for she will soon be restored to life again. But had we kept one eye on the sky we should have noticed that a star was quenched with every flower that reappeared on earth.

And now the valley is again red and gold with vineyards, the hills are clothed with pines, and the Dapple is rosy.

Then a cock crowed, and another answered it, and then another — a ghostly sound, which, surely, did not belong to the smiling, triumphant earth, but rather to one of those distant dying stars.

But what had taken Ranulph? He had sprung to his feet and was standing motionless, a strange light in his eyes.

And then again, from a still more distant star, it seemed, another cock crowed, and another answered it.

“The piper! the piper!” cried Ranulph in a loud triumphant voice. And, before his astonished companions could get to their feet, he was dashing up one of the bridle-paths towards the Debatable Hills.

F
or a few seconds they stood petrified, and then Luke was seized with panic, and, calling to the little boys to stay where they were, dashed off in pursuit.

Up the path he pounded, from time to time shouting angrily to Ranulph to come back, but the distance between them grew ever wider.

Luke’s ears began to sing and his brain to turn to fire, and he seemed to lose all sense of reality — it was not on the earth that he was running, but through the airless deserts of space.

He could not have said how long he struggled on, for he who runs hard leaves time behind as well as space. But finally his strength gave way, and he fell, breathless and exhausted, to the ground.

When he had sufficiently recovered to think of starting again the diminishing speck that had been Ranulph had completely vanished.

Poor Luke began to swear — at both Ranulph and himself.

Just then he heard a tinkle of bells, and down the bridle-path came a herd of goats and a very ancient herdsman — to judge, at least, from his bowed walk, for his face was hidden by a hood.

When he had got up to Luke, he stood still, leaning heavily on his stick, and peered down at him from underneath the overhanging flap of his hood with a pair of very bright eyes.

“You’ve been running hard, young master, by the looks of ye,” he said, in a quavering voice. “You be the second young fellow as what I’ve seen running this morning.”

“The second?” cried Luke eagerly. “Was the other a little lad of about twelve years old with red hair, in a green leathern jerkin embroidered in gold?”

“Well, his hair was red and no mistake, though as to the jerkin …” And here he was seized with a violent attack of coughing, and it took all Luke’s patience not to grab him by the shoulders and shake the words out of him.

“Though as to the jerkin — my eyes not being as sharp as they once were …”

“Oh! never mind about the jerkin,” cried Luke. “Did you stop and speak to him?”

“But about that jerkin — you do cut an old man short, you do … it might have been green, but then again it might have been yellow. But the young gentleman what I saw was not the one a
s you’re
after.”

“How do you know?”

“Why, because he was the Seneschal’s son — the one I saw,” said the old man proudly, as if the fact put him at once into a superior position to Luke.

“But it’s the Seneschal’s son — Master Ranulph Chanticleer, that I’m after, too!” cried Luke, eagerly. “How long is it since you saw him? I
must
catch up with him.”

“You’ll not do that, on your two feet,” said the goatherd calmly. “That young gentleman, and his yellow jerkin and his red hair, must be well on the way to Moongrass by now.”

“To Moongrass?” And Luke stared at him in amazement.

“Aye, to Moongrass, where the cheeses come from. You see it was this way. I’m goatherd to the Lud yeomanry what the Seneschal has sent to watch the border to keep out you know what. And who should come running into their camp about half an hour ago with his red jerkin and his green hair but your young gentleman. ‘Halt!’ cries the Yeoman on guard. ‘Let me pass. I’m young Master Chanticleer,’ cries he. ‘And where are you bound for?’ cries the Yeoman on guard. ‘For Fairyland,’ says he. And then didn’t they all laugh! And the little chap flew into quite a rage, and said he was off to Fairyland, and no one should stop him. And, of course, that just made them laugh all the more. But though they wouldn’t let him go to Fairyland, the young rascal …” And here the old man was seized with a paroxysm of wheezy laughter which brought on another bout of coughing.

“Well, as I was saying,” he went on, when he had recovered, “they wouldn’t let him through to Fairyland, but they said they would ride back with him where he came from. ‘No, you won’t,’ says he; ‘my dad,’ says he, ‘don’t want me to go back there, never any more.’ And he whisks out a letter signed by the Seneschal, bidding him leave the widow Gibberty’s farm, where he was staying, and go straight off to Farmer Jelly-green’s at Moongrass. So one of the Yeomen saddled his horse, and the youngster got up behind him, and they set off for Moongrass by one of the cattle-paths running northeast, which comes out at about the middle of the road between Swan and Moongrass. So that’s that, my young fellow.”

In his relief Luke tossed his cap into the air. “The young rascal!” he cried joyfully; “fancy his never having told me he’d got a letter from his Worship, and me expecting that letter for the last three days, and getting stomach-ache with worry at its not coming! And saying he was off to a certain place, too! A nice fright he’s given me. But thank’ee, gaffer, thank’ee kindly. And here’s something for you to drink the health of Master Ranulph Chanticleer,” and with a heart as light as a bird’s, he began to retrace his steps down the valley.

But what was that faint sound behind him? It sounded suspiciously like the
Ho, ho, hoh!
of that impudent Willy Wisp, who for a short time, had been one of his Worship’s grooms.

He stopped, and looked round. No one was visible except the old goatherd in the distance, leaning on his stick. What he had heard could have been nothing but the distant tinkle of the goat bells.

When he reached the farm, he found it in a tumult. The little boys had frightened Hazel out of her wits, and confirmed her worst fears by the news that “Master Ranulph had run away towards the hills, and that Master Hempen had run after him.”

“Granny!” cried Hazel, wringing her hands, “a messenger must be sent off post-haste to the Seneschal!”

“Stuff and nonsense!” cried the widow, angrily. “You mind your own business, miss! Long before any messenger could reach Lud, the lads will be back safe and sound. Towards the hills, indeed! That Luke Hempen is a regular old woman. It’s just a bit of Master Ranulph’s fun. He’s hiding behind a tree, and will jump out on them with a ‘Boo!’ Never in my life have I heard so much fuss about nothing.” And then, turning to the farm-servants, who were clustering round the children with scared, excited eyes, she bade them go about their business, and let her hear no more nonsense.

Her words sounded like good sense, but, for all that, they did not convince Hazel. Her deep distrust of the widow was almost as old as herself, and her instinct had told her for some time that the widow was hostile to Ranulph.

Never for a moment did Hazel forget that
she
, not the widow, was the rightful owner of the farm. Should she for once assert her position, and, in direct defiance of the widow, report what had happened to the lawman of the district and sent a messenger to Master Nathaniel?

But, as everybody knows, legal rights can be but weaklings — puny little child princes, cowed by their bastard uncles, Precedent and Seniority.

No, she must wait till she was of age, or married, or … was there
any
change of condition that could alter her relations with the widow, and destroy the parasite growth of sullen docility which, for as long as she could remember, had rotted her volition and warped her actions?

Hazel clenched her fists and set her teeth …
She would assert herself!—she would!
… Now, at once? Why not give them, say, till noon, to come back? Yes, she would give them till noon.

But before then, a rather shamefaced Luke arrived with his confession that Master Ranulph had made proper fools of them.

“So, Miss Hazel, if you’ll give me a bite of something, and lend me a horse, I’ll go after the young scamp to Moongrass. To think of his giving us the slip like that and never having told me he’d heard from his father! And there was me expecting a letter from his Worship every day, telling us to leave at once, and …”

Hazel raised her eyebrows. “You were expecting a letter ordering you to leave us? How was that?”

Luke turned red, and mumbled something inaudible. Hazel stared at him for a few seconds in silence, and then she said quietly, “I’m afraid you were wise if you asked the Seneschal to remove Master Ranulph.”

He gave her a shrewd glance. “Yes … I fear this is no place for Master Ranulph. But if you’d excuse me for being so bold, miss, I’d like to give you a word of warning — don’t you trust that Endymion Leer further than you can see him, and don’t you ever let your Granny take you out
fishing!”

“Thank you, Master Hempen, but I am quite able to look after myself,” said Hazel haughtily. And then an anxious look came into her eyes. “I hope — oh! I hope that you’ll find Master Ranulph safe and sound at Moongrass! It’s all so … well, so very strange. That old goatherd, who do you suppose he was? One meets strange people near the Elfin Marches. You’ll let me know if all is well … won’t you?”

Luke promised. Hazel’s words had dampened his spirits and brought back all his anxiety, and the fifteen miles to Moongrass, in spite of a good horse, seemed interminable.

Alas! there was no Ranulph at the Jellygreens’ farm; but, to Luke’s bewilderment, it turned out that the farmer had been expecting him, as he had, a few days previously, received a letter from Master Nathaniel, from which it was clear that he imagined his son was already at Moongrass. So there was nothing for Luke but, with a heavy heart, to start off the next morning for Lud, where, as we have seen, he arrived a few hours after Master Nathaniel had left it.