Lud-in-the-Mist (18 page)

T
he clerk shut the great tome, bowed low, and withdrew to his place; and an ominous silence reigned in the hall.

Master Nathaniel sat watching the scene with an eye so cold and aloof that the Eye of the Law itself could surely not have been colder. What power had delusion or legal fictions against the mysterious impetus propelling him along the straight white road that led he knew not whither?

But Master Ambrose sprang up and demanded fiercely that the honorable Senator would oblige them by an explanation of his offensive insinuations.

Nothing loth, Master Polydore again rose to his feet, and, pointing a menacing finger at Master Nathaniel, he said: “His worship the Mayor has told us of a man stealthy, mocking, and subtle, who has brought this recent grief and shame upon us. That man is none other than his Worship the Mayor himself.”

Master Ambrose again sprung to his feet, and began angrily to protest, but Master Nathaniel, ex cathedra, sternly ordered him to be silent and to sit down.

Master Polydore continued: “He has been dumb, when it was the time to speak, feeble, when it was the time to act, treacherous, as the desolate homes of his friends can testify, and
given to vanities
. Aye,
given to vanities
, for what,” and he smiled ironically, “but vanity in a man is too great a love for grograines and tuftaffities and other costly silks? Therefore, I move that in the eye of the Law he be accounted dead.”

A low murmur of approval surged over the hall.

“Will he deny that he is over fond of
silk?”

Master Nathaniel bowed, in token that he did deny it.

Master Polydore asked if he would then be willing to have his house searched; again Master Nathaniel bowed.

There and then?

And Master Nathaniel bowed again.

So the Senate rose and twenty of the Senators, without removing their robes, filed out of the Guildhall and marched two and two towards Master Nathaniel’s house.

On the way who should tag himself on to the procession but Endymion Leer. At this, Master Ambrose completely lost his temper. He would like to know why this double-dyed villain, this shameless Son of a Fairy, was putting his rancid nose into the private concerns of the Senate! But Master Nathaniel cried impatiently, “Oh, let him come, Ambrose, if he wants to. The more the merrier!”

You can picture the consternation of Dame Marigold when, a few minutes later, her brother — with a crowd of Senators pressing up behind him — bade her, with a face of grave compassion, to bring him all the keys of the house.

They proceeded to make a thorough search, ransacking every cupboard, chest and bureau. But nowhere did they find so much as an incriminating pip, so much as a stain of dubious color.

“Well,” began Master Polydore, in a voice of mingled relief and disappointment, “it seems that our search has been a …”

“Fruitless
one, eh?” prompted Endymion Leer, rubbing his hands, and darting his bright eyes over the assembled faces. “Well, perhaps it has. Perhaps it has.”

They were standing in the hall, quite close to the grandfather’s clock, which was ticking away, as innocent and foolish-looking as a newly-born lamb.

Endymion Leer walked up to it and gazed at it quizzically, with his head on one side. Then he tapped its mahogany case — making Dame Marigold think of what the guardian at the Guildhall had said of his likeness to a woodpecker.

Then he stood back a few paces and wagged his finger at it in comic admonition (“Vulgar buffoon!” said Master Ambrose quite audibly), and then the wag turned to Master Polydore and said, “Just before we go, to make quite sure, what about having a peep inside this clock?”

Master Polydore had secretly sympathized with Master Ambrose’s ejaculation, and thought that the Doctor, by jesting at such a time, was showing a deplorable lack of good breeding.

All the same, the Law does not shrink from reducing thoroughness to absurdity, so he asked Master Nathaniel if he would kindly produce the key of the clock.

He did so, and the case was opened; Dame Marigold made a grimace and held her pomander to her nose, and to the general amazement that foolish, innocent-looking grandfather’s clock stood revealed as a veritable cornucopia of exotic, strangely colored, sinister-looking fruits.

Vine-like tendrils, studded with bright, menacing berries were twined round the pendulum and the chains of the two leaden weights; and at the bottom of the case stood a gourd of an unknown color, which had been scooped hollow and filled with what looked like crimson grapes, tawny figs, raspberries of an emerald green, and fruits even stranger than these, and of color and shape not found in any of the species of Dorimare.

A murmur of horror and surprise arose from the assembled company. And, was it from the clock, or down the chimney, or from the ivy peeping in at the window? — from somewhere quite close came the mocking sound of “Ho, ho, hoh!”

O
f course, before many hours were over the whole of Lud-in-the-Mist was laughing at the anti-climax to the Mayor’s high-falutin’ speech that morning in the Senate. And in the evening he was burned in effigy by the mob, and among those who danced round the bonfire were Bawdy Bess and Mother Tibbs. Though it was doubtful whether Mother Tibbs really understood what was happening. It was an excuse for dancing, and that was enough for
her
.

It was reported, too, that the Yeomanry and their Captain, though not actually taking part in these demonstrations, stood looking on with indulgent smiles.

Among the respectable tradesmen in the far from unsympathetic crowd of spectators was Ebeneezor Prim the clockmaker. He had, however, not allowed his two daughters to be there; and they were sitting dully at home, keeping the supper hot for their father and the black-wigged apprentice.

But Ebeneezor came back without him, and Rosie and Lettice were too much in awe of their father to ask any questions. The evening dragged wearily on — Ebeneezor sat reading
The Good Mayor’s Walk Through Lud-in-the-Mist
(a didactic and unspeakably dreary poem, dating from the early days of the Republic), and from time to time he would glance severely over the top of his spectacles at his daughters, who were whispering over their tatting, and looking frequently towards the door.

But when they finally went upstairs to bed the apprentice had not yet come in, and in the privacy of their bedroom the girls admitted to each other that it was the dullest evening they had spent since his arrival, early in spring. For it was wonderful what high spirits were concealed behind that young man’s prim exterior.

Why, it was sufficient to enliven even an evening spent in the society of papa to watch the comical grimaces he pulled behind that gentleman’s respectable back! And it was delicious when the shrill “Ho, ho,
hoh!”
would suddenly escape him, and he would instantly snap down on the top of it his most sanctimonious expression. And then, he seemed to possess and inexhaustible store of riddles and funny songs, and there was really no end to the invention and variety of his practical jokes.

The Misses Prim, since their earliest childhood, had craved for a monkey or a cockatoo, such as sailor brothers or cousins brought to their friends; their father, however, had always sternly refused to have any such creature in his house. But the new apprentice had been ten times more amusing than any monkey or cockatoo that had ever come from the Cinnamon Isles.

The next morning, as he did not come for his usual early roll and glass of home-made cordial, the two girls peeped into his room, and found that his bed had not been slept in; and lying neglected on the floor was the neat black wig. Nor did he ever come back to claim it. And when they timidly asked their father what had happened to him, he sternly forbade them ever again to mention his name, adding, with a mysterious shake of the head, “For some time I have had my suspicions that he was not what he appeared.”

And then he sighed regretfully, and murmured, “But never before have I had an apprentice with such wonderfully skillful fingers.

A
s for Master Nathaniel — while he was being burned in effigy in the market-place, he was sitting comfortably in his pipe-room, deep in an in-folio.

He had suddenly remembered that it was something in the widow Gibberty’s trial that was connected in his mind with Master Ambrose’s joke about the dead bleeding. And he was re-reading that trial — this time with absorption.

As he read, the colors of his mental landscape were gradually modified, as the colors of a real landscape are modified according to the position of the sun. But if a white road cuts through the landscape it still gleams white — even when the moon has taken the place of the sun. And a straight road still gleamed white across the landscape of Master Nathaniel’s mind.

T
he following day, with all the masquerading that the Law delights in, Master Nathaniel was pronounced in the Senate to be dead. His robes of office were taken off him, and they were donned by Master Polydore Vigil, the new Mayor. As for Master Nathaniel — was wrapped in a shroud, laid on a bier and carried to his home by four of the Senators, the populace lining the streets and greeting the mock obsequies with catcalls and shouts of triumph.

But the ceremony over, when Master Ambrose, boiling with indignation at the outrage, came to visit his friend, he found a very cheerful corpse who greeted him with a smack on the back and a cry of “Never say die, Brosie! I’ve something here that should interest you,” and he thrust into his hand an open in-folio.

“What’s this?” asked the bewildered Master Ambrose.

There was a certain solemnity in Master Nathaniel’s voice as he replied, “It’s the Law, Ambrose — the homoeopathic antidote that our forefathers discovered to delusion. Sit down this very minute and read that trial through.”

As Master Ambrose knew well, it was useless trying to talk to Nat about one thing when his mind was filled with another. Besides, his curiosity was aroused, for he had come to realize that Nat’s butterfly whims were sometimes the disguise of shrewd and useful intuitions. So, through force of long habit, growling out a protest about this being no time for tomfoolery and rubbish, he settled down to read the volume at the place where Master Nathaniel had opened it, namely, at the account of the trial of the widow Gibberty for the murder of her husband.

The plaintiff, as we have seen, was a laborer, Diggory Carp by name, who had been in the employ of the late farmer. He said he had been suddenly dismissed by the defendant just after harvest, when it was not easy to find another job.

No reason was given for his dismissal, so Diggory went to the farmer himself, who, he said, had always been a kind and just master, to beg that he might be kept on. The farmer practically admitted that there was no reason for his dismissal except that the mistress had taken a dislike to him. “Women are kittle cattle, Diggory,” he had said, with an apologetic laugh, “and it’s best humoring them. Though it’s hard on the folks they get their knife into. So I fear it will be best for every one concerned that you should leave my service, Diggory.”

But he gave him a handful of florins over and above his wages, and told him he might take a sack of lentils from the granary — if he were careful that the mistress did not get wind of it.

Now, Diggory had a shrewd suspicion as to why the defendant wanted to get rid of him. Though she was little more than a girl — she was the farmer’s second wife and more like his daughter’s elder sister than her stepdame — she had the reputation of being as staid and sensible as a woman of forty. But Diggory knew better. He had discovered that she had a lover. One evening he had come on her in the orchard, lying in the arms of a young foreigner, called Christopher Pugwalker, a herbalist, who had first appeared in the neighborhood just before the great drought.

“And from that time on,” said Diggory, “she had got her knife into me, and everything I did was wrong. And I believe she hadn’t a moment’s peace till she’d got rid of me. Though, if she’d only known, I was no blab, and not one for blaming young blood and a wife half the age of her husband.”

So he and his wife and his children were turned out on the world.

The first night they camped out in a field, and when they had lighted a fire Diggory opened the sack that, with the farmer’s permission, he had taken from the granary, in order that his wife might make them some lentil soup for supper. But lo and behold! instead of lentils the sack contained fruit — fruit that Diggory Carp, as a west countryman, born and bred near the Elfin Marches, recognized at the first glance to be of a kind that he would not dream of touching himself or of allowing his wife and children to touch … the sack, in fact, contained fairy fruit. So they buried it in the field, for, as Diggory said, “Though the stuff be poison for men, they do say as how it’s a mighty fine manure for the crops.”

For a week or so they tramped the country, living from hand to mouth. Sometimes Diggory would earn a little by doing odd jobs for the farmers, or by playing the fiddle at village weddings, for Diggory, it would seem, was a noted fiddler.

But with the coming of winter they began to feel the pinch of poverty, and his wife bethought her of the trade of basket-making she had learned in her youth; and, as they were were camping at the time at the place where grew the best osiers for the purpose, she determined to see if her fingers had retained their old cunning. As the sap of these particular osiers was a deadly poison, she would not allow the children to help her to gather them.

So she set to and make wicker urns in which the farmers’ wives could keep their grain in winter, and baskets of fancy shapes for lads to give to their sweethearts to hold their ribbands and fal-lals. The children peddled them about the countryside, and thus they managed to keep the pot boiling.

The following summer, shortly before harvest, Diggory’s eldest girl went to try and sell some baskets in the village of Swan. There she met the defendant, whom she asked to look at her wares, relying on not being recognized as a daughter of Diggory’s, through having been in service at another farm when her father was working at the Gibbertys’.

The defendant seemed pleased with the baskets, bought two or three, and got into talk with the girl about the basket-making industry, in the course of which she learned that the best osiers for the purpose were very poisonous. Finally she asked the girl to bring her a bundle of the osiers in question, as making baskets, she said, would make a pleasant variety, of an evening, from the eternal spinning; and in the course of a few days the girl brought her, as requested, a bundle of the osiers, and was well paid for them.

Not long afterwards came the news that the farmer Gibberty had died suddenly in the night, and with it was wafted the rumor of foul play. There was an old custom in that part of the country that whenever there was a death in the house all the inmates should march in procession past the corpse. It was really a sort of primitive inquest, for it was believed that in the case of foul play the corpse would bleed at the nose as the murderer passed it. This custom, said Diggory, was universally observed in that part of the country, even in cases as free from all suspicion as those of women dying in child-bed. And in all the taverns and farmhouses of the neighborhood it was being whispered that the corpse of the farmer Gibberty, on the defendant’s walking past it, had bled copiously, and when Christopher Pugwalker’s turn had come to pass it, it had bled a second time.

And knowing what he did, Diggory Carp came to feel that it was his duty to lodge an accusation against the widow.

His two reasons, then, for thinking her guilty were that the corpse had bled when she passed it, and that she had bought from his daughter osiers the sap of which was poisonous. The motive for the crime he found in her having a young lover, whom she wished should stand in her dead husband’s shoes. It was useless for the defendant to deny that Pugwalker was her lover — the fact had for months been the scandal of the neighborhood, and she had finally lost all sense of shame and had actually had him to lodge in the farm for several months before her husband’s death. This was proved beyond a shadow of a doubt by the witnesses summoned by Diggory.

As for the bleeding of the corpse: vulgar superstitions did not fall within the cognizance of the Law, and the widow ignored it in her defense. However, with regard to that other vulgar superstition to which the plaintiff had alluded, fairy fruit, she admitted, in passing, that very much against her wishes her late husband had sometimes used it as manure — though she had never discovered how he procured it.

As to the osiers — she allowed that she had bought a bundle from the plaintiff’s daughter; but that it was for no sinister purpose she was able conclusively to prove. For she summoned various witnesses — among others the midwife from the village, who was always called in in cases of sickness — who had been present during the last hours of the farmer, and who had been present during the last hours of the farmer, and who all of them swore that his death had been a painless one. And various physicians, who were summoned as expert witnesses, all maintained that the victim of the poisonous sap of osiers always died in agony.

Then she turned the tables on the plaintiff. She proved that Diggory’s dismissal had been neither sudden nor unjust; for, owing to his thieving propensities, he had often been threatened with it by her late husband, and several of the farm-servants testified to the truth of her words.

As to the handful of florins and the sack of lentils, all she could say was that it was not like the farmer to load a dishonest servant with presents. But nothing had been said about two sacks of corn, a pig, and a valuable hen and her brood, which had disappeared simultaneously with the departure of the plaintiff. Her husband, she said, had been very angry about it, and had wanted to have Diggory pursued and clapped into gaol; but she had persuaded him to be merciful.

The long and the short of it was that the widow left the court without a stain on her character, and that a ten years’ sentence for theft was passed on Diggory.

As for Christopher Pugwalker, he had disappeared shortly before the trial, and the widow denied all knowledge of his whereabouts.