“Very well; I won’t mention him to her … at present.” And he gave her rather a grim little smile.
Though the orchard had been stripped of its fruit, what with the red and yellow leaves, and the marvelous ruby-red of the lateral branches of the peach trees there was colour enough in the background of the old grey herm, and, in addition, there twisted around him the scarlet and gold of a vine.
“I often think he’s the spirit of the farm,” said Hazel shyly, looking to see if Master Nathaniel was admiring her old stone friend. To her amazement, however, as soon as his eyes fell on it he clapped his hand against his thigh, and burst out laughing.
“By the Sun, Moon and Stars!” he cried, “here’s the answer to Portunus’s riddle: ‘the tree yet not a tree, the man yet not a man,’ ” and he repeated to Hazel the one consecutive sentence that Portunus had managed to enunciate.
“ ‘Who has no arms and yet can strike, who is dumb and yet can tell secrets,’ ” she repeated after him. “Can you strike and tell secrets, old friend?” she asked whimsically, stroking the grey lichened stone. And then she blushed and laughed as if to apologize for this exhibition of childishness.
With country hospitality Hazel presumed that their uninvited guest had come to spend several days at the farm, and accordingly she had his horse taken to the stables and ordered the best room to be prepared for his use.
The widow, too, gave him a hearty welcome, when he came down to the midday meal in the big kitchen.
When they had been a few minutes at table, Hazel said, “Oh, granny, this gentleman has just come from the farm near Moongrass, where little Master Chanticleer and young Hempen have gone. And he says they were both of them blooming, and sent us kind messages.”
“Yes,” said Master Nathaniel cheerfully, ever ready to start romancing, “my old friend the farmer is delighted with them. The talk in Lud was that little Chanticleer had been ill, but all I can say is, you must have done wonders for him—his face is as round and plump as a Moongrass cheese.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re pleased with the young gentleman’s looks, sir,” said the widow in a gratified voice. But in her eyes there was the gleam of a rather disquieting smile.
Dinner over, the widow and Hazel had to go and attend to their various occupations, and Master Nathaniel went and paced up and down in front of the old house, thinking. Over and over again his thoughts returned to the odd old man, Portunus.
Was it possible that he had really once been Diggory Carp, and that he had returned to his old haunts to try and give a message?
It was characteristic of Master Nathaniel that the metaphysical possibilities of the situation occupied him before the practical ones. If Portunus were, indeed, Diggory Carp, then these stubble-fields and vineyards, these red and golden trees, would be robbed of their peace and stability. For he realized at last that the spiritual balm he had always found in silent things was simply the assurance that the passions and agonies of man were without meaning, roots, or duration—no more part of the permanent background of the world than the curls of blue smoke that from time to time were wafted through the valley from the autumn bonfires of weeds and rubbish, and that he could see winding like blue wraiths in and out of the foliage of the trees.
Yes, their message, though he had never till now heard it distinctly, had always been that Fairyland was nothing but delusion—there was life and death, and that was all. And yet, had their message always comforted him? There had been times when he had shuddered in the company of the silent things.
“Aye, aye,” he murmured dreamily to himself, and then he sighed.
But he had yielded long enough to vain speculations—there were things to be done. Whether Portunus were the ghost of Diggory Carp or merely a doited old weaver, he evidently knew something that he wanted to communicate—and it was connected with the orchard herm. Of course, it might have nothing whatever to do with the murder of the late farmer Gibberty, but with the memory of the embroidered slipper fresh in his mind, Master Nathaniel felt it would be rank folly to neglect a possible clue.
He went over in his mind all the old man’s words. “Dig, dig,” … that word had been the ever recurring burden.
Then he had a sudden flash of inspiration—why should not the word be taken in its primary meaning? Why, instead of the first syllable of Diggory Carp, should it not be merely and order to dig … with a spade or a shovel? In that case it was clear that the place to dig in was under the herm. And he decided that he would do so as soon as an opportunity presented itself.
XXIII
The Northern Firebox and Dead Men’s Tales
That night Hazel could not get to sleep. Perhaps this was due to having noticed something that afternoon that made her vaguely uneasy. The evenings were beginning to be chilly, and, shortly before supper, she had gone up to Master Nathaniel’s room to light his fire. She found the widow and one of the maidservants there before her, and, to her surprise, they had brought down from the attic an old charcoal stove that had lain there unused for years, for Dorimare was a land of open fires, and stoves were practically unknown. The widow had brought the stove to the farm on her marriage, for, on her mother’s side, she had belonged to a race from the far North.
On Hazel’s look of
