Lud-In-The-Mist

Again Master Nathaniel frowned, and very stiffly he murmured "Thank you."

"Well," went on the doctor in a matter-of-fact voice, "I should like to have a little private talk with you about this young gentleman. May I?"

"Of course, of course, Dr. Leer," cried Dame Marigold hastily, for she saw that her husband was hesitating. "He will be delighted, I am sure. Though I think you're a very brave man to trust yourself to such a monster. Nat, take Dr. Leer into the pipe-room."

And Master Nathaniel did so.

Once there the doctor's first words made him so happy as instantly to drive away all traces of his recent fright and to make him even forget to be ashamed of his abominable behaviour.

What the doctor said was, "Cheer up, your Worship! I don't for a moment believe that boy of yours has eaten -what one mustn't mention."

"What? What?" cried Master Nathaniel joyfully. "By the Golden Apples of the West! It's been a storm in a tea-cup then? The little rascal, what a fright he gave us!"

Of course, he had known all the time that it could not be true! Facts could never be as stubborn as that, and as cruel.

And this incorrigible optimist about facts was the same man who walked in daily terror of the unknown. But perhaps the one state of mind was the outcome of the other.

Then, as he remembered the poignancy of the scene between himself and Ranulph last night and, as well, the convincingness of Ranulph's story, his heart once more grew heavy.

"But� but," he faltered, "what was the good of this cock and bull story, then? What purpose did it serve? There's no doubt the boy's ill in both mind and body, and why, in the name of the Milky Way, should he go to the trouble of inventing a story about Willy Wisp's giving him a tasted of that damned stuff?" and he looked at Endymion Leer appealingly, as much as to say, "Here are the facts. I give them to you. Be merciful and give them a less ugly shape."

This Endymion Leer proceeded to do.

"How do we know it was� `that damned stuff'?" he asked. "We have only Willy Wisp's word for it, and from what I know of that gentleman, his word is about as reliable as� as the wind in a frolic. All Lud knows of his practical jokes� he'd say anything to give one a fright. No, no, believe me, he was just playing off one of his pranks on Master Ranulph. I've had some experience in the real thing - I've an extensive practice, you know, down at the wharf - and your son's symptoms aren't the same. No, no, your son is no more likely to have eaten fairy fruit -than you are."

Master Nathaniel smiled, and stretched his arms in an ecstasy of relief. "Thank you, Leer, thank you," he said huskily. "The whole thing was appalling that really I believe it almost turned my head. And you are a very kind fellow not to bear me a grudge for my monstrous mishandling of you in the parlour just now."

For the moment Master Nathaniel felt as if he really loved the queer, sharp-tongued, little upstart.

"And now," he went on gleefully, "to show me that it is really forgotten and forgiven, we must pledge each other in some wild-thyme gin� my cellar is rather noted for it, you know," and from a corner cupboard he brought out two glasses and a decanter of the fragrant green cordial, left over from the supper party of the previous night.

For a few minutes they sat sipping in silent contentment.

Then Endymion Leer, as if speaking to himself, said dreamily, "Yes, this is perhaps the solution. Why should we look for any other cure when we have the wild-thyme distilled by our ancestors? Wild time? No, time isn't wild� time-gin, sloe-gin. It is very soothing."

Master Nathaniel grunted. He understood perfectly what Endymion Leer meant, but he did not choose to show that he did. Any remark verging on the poetical or philosophical always embarrassed him. Fortunately, such remarks were rare in Lud-in-the-Mist.

So he put down his glass and said briskly, "Now then, Leer, let's go to business. You've removed an enormous load from my mind, but, all the same, the boy's not himself. What's the matter with him?"

Endymion Leer gave an odd little smile. And then he said, slowly and deliberately, "Master Nathaniel, what is the matter with you?"

Master Nathaniel started violently.

"The matter with me?" he said coldly. "I have not asked you in to consult you about my own health. We will, if you please, keep to that of my son."

But he rather spoiled the dignified effect his words might have had by gobbling like a turkey cock, and muttering under his breath, "Damn the fellow and his impudence!" Endymion Leer chuckled.

"Well, I may have been mistaken," he said, "but I have sometimes had the impression that our Worship the Mayor was well, a whimsical fellow, given to queer fancies. Do you know my name for your house? I call it the Mayor's Nest. The Mayor's Nest!"

And he flung back his head and laughed heartily at his own joke, while Master Nathaniel glared at him, speechless with rage.

"Now, your Worship," he went on in a more serious voice. "If I have been indiscreet you must forgive me� as I forgave you in the parlour. You see, a doctor is obliged to keep his eyes open� it is not from what his patients tell him that he prescribes for them, but from what he notices himself. To a doctor everything is a symptom� the way a man lights his pipe even. For instance, I once had the honour of having your Worship as my partner at a game of cards. You've forgotten probably - it was years ago at the Pyepowders. We lost that game. Why? Because each time that you held the most valuable card in the pack - the Lyre of Bones - you discarded it as if it had burnt your fingers. Things like that set a doctor wondering, Master Nathaniel. You are a man who is frightened about something."

Master Nathaniel slowly turned crimson. Now that the doctor mentioned it, he remembered quite well that at one time he objected to holding the Lyre of Bones. Its name caused him to connect it with the Note. As we have seen, he was apt to regard innocent things as taboo. But to think that somebody should have noticed it!

"This is a necessary preface to what I have got to say with regard to your son," went on Endymion Leer. "You see, I want to make it clear that, though one has never come within a mile of fairy fruit, one can have all the symptoms of being an habitual consumer of it. Wait! Wait! Hear me out!"

For Master Nathaniel, with a smothered exclamation, had sprung from his chair.

"I am not saying that you have all these symptoms� far from it. But you know that there are spurious imitations of many diseases of the body - conditions that imitate exactly all the symptoms of the disease, and the doctors themselves are often taken in by them. You wish me to confine my remarks to your son� well, I consider that he is suffering from a spurious surfeit of fairy fruit."

Though still angry, Master Nathaniel was feeling wonderfully relieved. This explanation of his own condition that robbed it of all mystery and, somehow, made it rational, seemed almost as good as a cure. So he let the doctor go on with his disquisition without any further interruption except the purely rhetorical once of an occasional protesting grunt.

"Now, I have studied somewhat closely the effects of fairy fruit," the doctor was saying. "These effects we regard as a malady. But, in reality, they are more like a melody - a tune that one can't get out of one's head," and he shot a very sly little look at Master Nathaniel, out of his bright bird-like eyes.

"Yes," he went on in a thoughtful voice, "its effects, I think, can best be described as a changing of the inner rhythm by which we live. Have you ever noticed a little child of three or four walking hand in hand with its father through the streets? It is almost as if the two were walking in time to perfectly different tunes. Indeed, though they hold each other's hand, they might be walking on different planets� each seeing and hearing entirely different things. And while the father marches steadily on towards some predetermined goal, the child pulls against his hand, laughs without cause, makes little bird-like swoops at invisible objects. Now, anyone who has tasted fairy fruit (your Worship will excuse my calling a spade a spade in this way, but in my profession one can't be mealy-mouthed) - anyone,then, who has tasted fairy fruit walks through life beside other people to a different tune from theirs� just like the little child beside its father. But one can be born to a different tune� and that, I believe, is the case with Master Ranulph. Now, if he is ever to become a useful citizen, though he need not lose his own tune, he must learn to walk in time to other people's. He will not learn to do that here - at present. Master Nathaniel, you are not good for your son."