Lud-in-the-Mist

ago⁠—in which I tried to show the strange seeds that are sleeping in each of you. But the book hardly aroused the enthusiasm that it so justly deserved” (and he gave his old dry chuckle). “In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, the copies were burned by the common hangman⁠—and could you have found the author you would gladly have burned him too. I can tell you since writing it I have gone in fear of my life, and have hardly dared to look a red-haired man in the face⁠—still less a blue cow!” and here some of his partisans at the back of the hall laughed uproariously.

He paused, and then went on in a graver voice, “Why have I taken all this trouble with you? Why have I spent my erudition and my skill on you thus? To speak truth, I hardly know myself⁠ ⁠… perhaps because I like playing with fire; perhaps because I am relentlessly compassionate.

“My friends, you are outcasts, though you do not know it, and you have forfeited your place on earth. For there are two races⁠—trees and man; and for each there is a different dispensation. Trees are silent, motionless, serene. They live and die, but do not know the taste of either life or death; to them a secret has been entrusted but not revealed. But the other tribe⁠—the passionate, tragic, rootless tree⁠—man? Alas! he is a creature whose highest privileges are a curse. In his mouth is ever the bittersweet taste of life and death, unknown to the trees. Without respite he is dragged by the two wild horses, memory and hope; and he is tormented by a secret that he can never tell. For every man worthy of the name is an initiate; but each one into different Mysteries. And some walk among their fellows with the pitying, slightly scornful smile, of an adept among catechumens. And some are confiding and garrulous, and would so willingly communicate their own unique secret⁠—in vain! For though they shout it in the marketplace, or whisper it in music and poetry, what they say is never the same as what they know, and they are like ghosts charged with a message of tremendous import who can only trail their chains and gibber.

“Such then are the two tribes. Citizens of Lud-in-the-Mist, to which do you belong? To neither; for you are not serene, majestic, and silent, nor are you restless, passionate, and tragic.

“I could not turn you into trees; but I had hoped to turn you into men.

“I have fed and healed your bodies; and I would fain have done the same for your souls.” (He paused to mop his brow; clearly it was more of an effort for him to speak than one would have guessed. Then he went on, and his voice had in it a strange new thrill.) “There is a land where the sun and the moon do not shine; where the birds are dreams, the stars are visions, and the immortal flowers spring from the thoughts of death. In that land grow fruit, the juices of which sometimes cause madness, and sometimes manliness; for that fruit is flavoured with life and death, and it is the proper nourishment for the souls of man. You have recently discovered that for some years I have helped to smuggle that fruit into Dorimare. The farmer Gibberty would have deprived you of it⁠—and so I prescribed for him the berries of merciful death.” (This admission of guilt caused another disturbance at the back of the hall, and there were shouts of “Don’t you believe him!” “Never say die, Doctor!” and so on. The Yeomanry had to put out various rough-looking men, and Master Ambrose, sitting up on the dais, recognised among them the sailor, Sebastian Thug, whom he and Master Nathaniel had seen in the Fields of Grammary. When silence and order had been restored Endymion Leer went on.) “Yes, I prescribed for him the berries of merciful death. What could it matter to the world whether he reaped the cornfields of Dorimare, or the fields of gillyflowers beyond the hills?

“And now, my Lords Judges, I will forestall your sentence. I have pleaded guilty, and you will send me for a ride on what the common people call Duke Aubrey’s wooden horse; and you will think that you are sending me there because I helped to murder the farmer Gibberty. But, my Lords Judges, you are purblind, and, even in spectacles, you can only read a big coarse script. It is not you that are punishing me, but others for a spiritual sin. During these days of my imprisonment I have pondered much on my own life, and I have come to see that I have sinned. But how? I have prided myself on being a good chemist, and in my crucibles I can make the most subtle sauces yield up their secret⁠—whether it be white arsenic, rosalgar, mercury sublimate, or cantharides. But where is the crucible or the chemist that can analyse a spiritual sin?

“But I have not lived in vain. You will send me to ride on Duke Aubrey’s wooden horse, and, in time, the double-faced Doctor will be forgotten; and so will you, my Lords Judges. But Lud-in-the-Mist will stand, and the country of Dorimare, and the dreaded country beyond the hills. And the trees will continue to suck life from the earth and the clouds, and the winds will howl o’ nights, and men will dream dreams. And who knows? Some day, perhaps, my fickle bittersweet master, the lord of life and death, of laughter and tears, will come dancing at the head of his silent battalions to make wild music in Dorimare.

“This then, my Lords Judges, is my defence,” and he gave a little bow towards the dais.

While he had been speaking, the Judges had shown increasing symptoms of irritation and impatience. This was not the language of the Law.

As for the public⁠—it was divided. One part