Lud-in-the-Mist

by Hope Mirrlees

There were days, however, when even the silent things did not soothe Master Nathaniel; when the condition described by Ranulph as the imprisoning of all one's being into a space as narrow as a tooth, whence it irradiates waves of agony, became so overwhelming, that he was unconscious of the external world.

One late afternoon, a prey to this mood, he was mooning about the Fields of Grammary.

In the epitaphs on the tombstone one could read the history of Dorimarite sensibility from the quiet poignancy of those dating from the days of the Dukes—"Eglantine mourns for Endymion, who was Alive and now is Dead;" or "During her Life Ambrose often dreamed that Forget-Me-Not was Dead. This Time he woke up and found that it was True"—followed by the peaceful records of industry and prosperity of the early days of the Republic, down to the cheap cynicism of recent times—for instance, "Here lies Hyacinth Quirkscuttle, weaver, who stretched his life as he was wont to do the list of his cloth far beyond its natural limits, and, to the great regret of his family, died at the age of XCIX."

But, that afternoon, even his favourite epitaph, the one about the old baker, Ebeneezor Spike, who had provided the citizens of Lud-in-the-Mist with fresh sweet loaves for sixty years, was powerless to comfort Master Nathaniel.

Indeed, so strangled was he in the coils of his melancholy that the curious fact of the door of his family chapel being ajar caused in him nothing but a momentary, muffled surprise.

The chapel of the Chanticleers was one of the loveliest monuments of Lud. It was built of rose-coloured marble, with delicately fluted pillars, and worked in low relief with the flowers and panic stricken fugitives, so common in the old art of Dorimare. Indeed, it looked like an exquisite little pleasure-house; and tradition said that this it had originally been—one of Duke Aubrey's, in fact. And it certainly was in accordance with his legend to make a graveyard the scene of his revels.

No one ever entered except Master Nathaniel and his household to fill it with flowers on the anniversaries of his parents' death. Nevertheless, the door was certainly ajar.

The only comment he made to himself was to suppose that the pious Hempie had been up that day to commemorate some anniversary, remembered only by herself, in the lives of her dead master and mistress, and had forgotten to lock it up again.

Drearily he wandered to the western wall and gazed down upon Lud-in-the-Mist, and so drugged was he with despair that at first he was incapable of reacting in the slightest degree to what his eyes were seeing.

Then, just as sometimes the flowing of the Dapple was reflected in the trunks of the beeches that grew on its banks, so that an element that looked as if it were half water, half light, seemed rippling down them in ceaseless zones—so did the objects he saw beneath him begin to be reflected in fancies, rippling down the hard, unyielding fabric of his woe; the red-roofed houses scattered about the side of the hill looked as if they were crowding helter-skelter to the harbour, eager to turn ships themselves and sail away—a flock of clumsy ducks on a lake of swans; the houses beyond the harbour seemed to be preening themselves preparatory to having their portrait taken. The chimneys were casting becoming velvet shadows on the high-pitched slanting roofs. The belfries seemed to be standing on tiptoe behind the houses—like tall serving lads, who, unbeknown to their masters, have succeeded in squeezing themselves into the family group.