Lud-in-the-Mist

The Free State of Dorimare was a very small country, but, seeing that it was bounded on the south by the sea and on the north and east by mountains, while its centre consisted of a rich plain, watered by two rivers, a considerable variety of scenery and vegetation was to be found within its borders. Indeed, towards the west, in striking contrast with the pastoral sobriety of the central plain, the aspect of the country became, if not tropical, at any rate distinctly exotic. Nor was this to be wondered at, perhaps; for beyond the Debatable Hills (the boundary of Dorimare in the west) lay Fairyland. There had, however, been no intercourse between the two countries for many centuries.

The social and commercial centre of Dorimare was its capital, Lud-in-the-Mist, which was situated at the confluence of two rivers about ten miles from the sea and fifty from the Elfin Hills.

Lud-in-the-Mist had all the things that make an old town pleasant. It had an ancient Guild Hall, built of mellow golden bricks and covered with ivy and, when the sun shone on it, it looked like a rotten apricot; it had a harbour in which rode vessels with white and red and tawny sails; it had flat brick houses⁠—not the mere carapace of human beings, but ancient living creatures, renewing and modifying themselves with each generation under their changeless antique roofs.

“And now!” cried Master Nathaniel gleefully, “here comes the turn of our old friend! Fill your glasses, and drink to the King of Moongrass Cheeses!”

“To the King of Moongrass Cheeses!” echoed the guests, stamping with their feet and banging on the table. Whereupon Master Nathaniel seized a knife, and was about to plunge it into the magnificent cheese, when suddenly Ranulph rushed round to his side and, with tears in his eyes, implored him, in a shrill terrified voice, not to cut the cheese. The guests, thinking it must be some obscure joke, tittered encouragingly, and Master Nathaniel, after staring at him in amazement for a few seconds, said testily, “What’s taken the boy? Hands off, Ranulph, I say! Have you gone mad?” But Ranulph’s eyes were now starting out of his head in fury, and, hanging on to his father’s arm, he screamed in his shrill, childish voice, “No, you won’t! you won’t, you won’t! I won’t let you!”

“That’s right, Ranulph!” laughed one of the guests. “You stand up to your father!”

“By the Milky Way! Marigold,” roared Master Nathaniel, beginning to lose his temper, “what’s taken the boy, I ask?”

Dame Marigold was looking nervous. “Ranulph! Ranulph!” she cried reproachfully, “go back to your place, and don’t tease your father.”

“No! No! No!” shrieked Ranulph still more shrilly, “he shall not kill the moon⁠ ⁠… he shall not, I say. If he does, all the flowers will wither in Fairyland.”

How am I to convey to you the effect that these words produced on the company? It would not be adequate to ask you to imagine your own feelings were your host’s small son suddenly, in a mixed company, to pour forth a stream of

A few minutes later, a wizened old man with very bright eyes came into the room and sat down at the lower end of the table. And then Ranulph really did give everyone a fright, for he stopped eating, and for a few seconds stared at him in silence. Then he gave a piercing scream.

All eyes turned toward him in amazement. But he sat as if petrified, his eyes round and staring, pointing at the old man. “Come, come, young fellow!” cried Endymion Leer, sharply; “what’s the meaning of this?”

“What ails you, little master?” cried the widow.

But he continued pointing in silence at the old man, who was leering and smirking and ogling, in evident delight at being the centre of attention.

“He’s scared by Portunus, the weaver,” tittered the maids.

And the words “Portunus,” “old Portunus the weaver,” were bandied from mouth to mouth down the two sides of the table.

“Yes, Portunus, the weaver,” cried the widow, in a loud voice, a hint of menace in her eye. “And who, I should like to know, does not love Portunus, the weaver?”

The maids hung their heads, the men sniggered deprecatingly.

“Well?” challenged the widow.

Silence.

“And who,” she continued indignantly, “is the handiest most obliging fellow to be found within twenty miles?”

She glared down the table, and then repeated her question.

As if compelled by her eye, the company murmured “Portunus.”

But, surely, there was magic in the bow of that old fiddler! And, surely, no other tune in the world was so lonely, so light-footed, so beckoning! Do what one would one must needs up and follow it.

Without quite knowing how it came about, they were soon all tripping and bobbing and gliding and tossing, with their minds on fire, while Miss Primrose wagged her head in time to the measure, and Professor Wisp, shouting directions the while, wound himself in and out among them, as if they were so many beads, and he the string on which they were threaded.

Suddenly the music stopped, and flushed, laughing, and fanning themselves with their pocket-handkerchiefs, the Crabapple Blossoms flung themselves down on the floor, against a pile of bulging sacks in one of the corners, indifferent for probably the first time in their lives to possible damage to their frocks.

But Miss Primrose cried out sharply, “Not there, dears! Not there!”

In some surprise they were about to move, when Professor Wisp whispered something in her ear, and, with a little meaning nod to him, she said, “Very well, dears, stay where you are. It was only that I thought the floor would be dirty for you.”

“Well, it wasn’t such bad fun after all,” said Moonlove Honeysuckle.

“No,” admitted Prunella Chanticleer reluctantly. “That old man can play!”

“I wonder what’s in these sacks; it feels too soft for apples,” said Ambrosine Pyepowders, prodding in idle curiosity the one against which she was leaning.

“There’s rather a queer smell coming from them,” said Moonlove.

And, beside himself with irritation at this unlooked-for obstacle, he began to batter and kick at the door, like one demented.

He paused a minute for breath, and from the inside could be heard a shrill female voice demanding the password.

“Password?” bellowed back Master Nathaniel, “by the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West, what⁠ ⁠…”

But before he could finish his sentence, the door was opened from the other side, and they marched into a low, square room, which was lit by one lamp swinging by a chain from the ceiling⁠—for which there seemed but little need, for a light more brilliant than that of any lamp, and yet as soft as moonlight, seemed to issue from the marvelous tapestries that hung on the walls.

They were dumb with amazement. This was as different from all the other tapestry they had ever seen as is an apple-tree in full blossom against a turquoise sky in May to the same tree in November, when only a few red leaves still cling to its branches, and the sky is leaden. Oh, those blues, and pinks, and brilliant greens! In what miraculous dyes had the silks been dipped?

As to the subjects, they were those familiar to every Dorimarite⁠—hunting scenes, fugitives chased by the moon, shepherds and shepherdesses tending their azure sheep. But, depicted in these brilliant hues, they were like the ashes of the past, suddenly, under one’s very eyes, breaking into flame. Heigh-presto!