Lud-In-The-Mist

Chapter XV
"Ho, Ho, Hoh!"

The 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 honourable 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 colour.

"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 sympathised 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 coloured, 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 colour, 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 colour 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!"

Of 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.

As 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 colours of his mental landscape were gradually modified, as the colours 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.