V
Ranulph Goes to the Widow Gibberty’s Farm
But Endymion Leer was right. Reason is only a drug, and its effects cannot be permanent. Master Nathaniel was soon suffering from life-sickness as much as ever.
For one thing, there was no denying that in the voice of Endymion Leer singing to Ranulph, he had once again heard the Note; and the fact tormented him, reason with himself as he might.
But it was not sufficient to make him distrust Endymion Leer—one might hear the Note, he was convinced, in the voices of the most innocent; just as the mocking cry of the cuckoo can rise from the nest of the lark or the hedge sparrow. But he was certainly not going to let him take Ranulph away to that western farm.
And yet the boy was longing, nay craving to go, for Endymion Leer, when he had been left alone with him in the parlour that morning, had fired his imagination with its delights.
When Master Nathaniel questioned him as to what other things Endymion Leer had talked about, he said that he had asked him a great many questions about the stranger in green he had seen dancing, and had made him repeat to him several times what exactly he had said to him.
“Then,” said Ranulph, “he said he would sing me well and happy. And I was just beginning to feel so wonderful, when you came bursting in, father.”
“I’m sorry, my boy,” said Master Nathaniel. “But why did you first of all scream so and beg not to be left alone with him?”
Ranulph wriggled and hung his head. “I suppose it was like the cheese,” he said sheepishly. “But, father, I want to go to that farm. Please let me go.”
For several weeks Master Nathaniel steadily refused his consent. He kept the boy with him as much as his business and his official duties would permit, trying to find for him occupations and amusements that would teach him a “different tune.” For Endymion Leer’s words, in spite of their having had so little effect on his spiritual condition, had genuinely and permanently impressed him. However, he could not but see that Ranulph was daily wilting and that his talk was steadily becoming more fantastic; and he began to fear that his own objection to letting him go to the farm sprang merely from a selfish desire to keep him with him.
Hempie, oddly enough, was in favour of his going. The old woman’s attitude to the whole affair was a curious one. Nothing would make her believe that it was not fairy fruit that Willy Wisp had given him. She said she had suspected it from the first, but to have mentioned it would have done no good to anyone.
“If it wasn’t that what was it then?” she would ask scornfully. “For what is Willy Wisp himself? He left his place—and his wages not paid, too, during the twelve nights of Yuletide. And when dog or servant leaves, sudden like, at that time, we all know what to think.”
“And what are we to think, Hempie?” enquired Master Nathaniel.
At first the old woman would only shake her head and look mysterious. But finally she told him that it was believed in the country districts that, should there be a fairy among the servants, he was bound to return to his own land on one of the twelve nights after the winter solstice; and should there be among the dogs one that belonged to Duke Aubrey’s pack, during these nights he would howl and howl, till he was let out of his kennel, and then vanish into the darkness and never be seen again.
Master Nathaniel grunted with impatience.
“Well, it was you dragged the words from my lips, and though you are the Mayor and the Lord High Seneschal, you can’t come lording it over my thoughts … I’ve a right to them!” cried Hempie, indignantly.
“My good Hempie, if you really believe the boy has eaten … a certain thing, all I can say is you seem very cheerful about it,” growled Master Nathaniel.
“And what good would it do my pulling a long face and looking like one of the old statues in the fields of Grammary I should like to know?” flashed back Hempie. And then she added, with a meaning nod, “Besides, whatever happens, no harm can ever come to a Chanticleer. While Lud stands the Chanticleers will thrive. So come rough, come smooth, you won’t find me worrying. But if I was you, Master Nat, I’d give the boy his way. There’s nothing like his own way for a sick person—be he child or grown man. His own way to a sick man is what grass is to a sick dog.”
Hempie’s opinion influenced Master Nathaniel more than he would like to admit; but it was a talk he had with Mumchance, the captain of the Lud Yeomanry, that finally induced him to let Ranulph have his way.
The Yeomanry combined the duties of a garrison with those of a police corps, and Master Nathaniel had charged their captain to try and find the whereabouts of Willy Wisp.
It turned out that the rogue was quite familiar to the Yeomanry, and Mumchance confirmed what Endymion Leer had said about his having turned the town upside down with his pranks during the few months he had been in Master Nathaniel’s service. But since his disappearance at Yuletide, nothing had been seen or heard of him in Lud-in-the-Mist, and Mumchance could find no traces of him.
Master Nathaniel fumed and grumbled a little at the inefficiency of the Yeomanry; but, at the bottom of his heart he was relieved. He had a lurking fear that Hempie was right and Endymion Leer was wrong, and that it had really been fairy fruit after all that Ranulph had eaten. But it is best to let sleeping facts lie. And he feared that if confronted with Willy Wisp the facts
