"NEITHER TREES NOR MEN"
In view of the disturbance caused among the populace by the arrest
of Endymion Leer, the Senate deemed it advisable that his trial, and
that of the widow Gibberty, should take precedence of all other legal
business; so as soon as the two important witnesses, Peter Pease and
Marjory Beach, reached Lud-in-the-Mist, it was fixed for an early date.
Never, in all the annals of Dorimare, had a trial been looked forward
to with such eager curiosity. It was to begin at nine o'clock in the
morning, and by seven o'clock the hall of justice was already packed,
while a seething crowd thronged the courtyard and overflowed into the
High Street beyond.
On the front seats sat Dame Marigold, Dame Jessamine, Dame Dreamsweet
and the other wives of magistrates; the main body of the hall was
occupied by tradesmen and their wives, and other quiet, well-to-do
members of the community, and behind them seethed the noisy, impudent,
hawking, cat-calling riff-raff--'prentices, sailors, pedlars,
strumpets; showing clearly on what side were their sympathies by such
ribald remarks as, "My old granny's pet cockatoo is terrible fond of
cherries, I think we should tell the Town Yeomanry, and have it locked
up as a smuggler," or, "Where's Mumchance! Send for Mumchance and the
Mayor! Two hundred years ago an old gaffer ate a gallon of crab soup
and died the same night--arrest Dr. Leer and hang him for it."
But as the clocks struck nine and Master Polydore Vigil, in his
priestly-looking purple robes of office embroidered in gold with
the sun and the moon and the stars, and the other ten judges clad
in scarlet and ermine filed slowly in and, bowing gravely to the
assembly, took their seats on the dais, silence descended on the hall;
for the fear of the Law was inbred in every Dorimarite, even the most
disreputable.
Nevertheless, there was a low hum of excitement when Mumchance in his
green uniform, carrying an axe, and two or three others of the Town
Yeomanry, marched in with the two prisoners, who took their places in
the dock.
Though Endymion Leer had for long been one of the most familiar figures
in Lud, all eyes were turned on him with as eager a curiosity as if he
had been some savage from the Amber Desert, the first of his kind to be
seen in Dorimare; and such curious tricks can the limelight of the Law
play on reality that many there thought that they could see his evil
sinister life writ in clear characters on his familiar features.
To the less impressionable of the spectators, however, he looked very
much as usual, though perhaps a little pale and flabby about the gills.
And he swept the hall with his usual impudent appraising glance, as if
to say, "Linsey-woolsey, linsey-woolsey! But one must make the best of
a poor material."
"He's going to give the judges a run for their money!"
"If he's got to die, he'll die game!" gleefully whispered various of
his partisans.
As for the widow, her handsome passionate face was deadly pale and
emptied of all expression; this gave her a sort of tragic sinister
beauty, reminiscent of the faces of the funereal statues in the Fields
of Grammary.
"Not the sort of woman I'd like to meet in a lonely lane at night," was
the general comment she aroused.
Then the Clerk of Arraigns called out "Silence!" and in a solemn
voice, Master Polydore said, "Endymion Leer and Clementina Gibberty,
hold up your hands." They did so. Whereupon, Master Polydore read the
indictment, as follows: "Endymion Leer, and Clementina Gibberty, you
are accused of having poisoned the late Jeremiah Gibberty, farmer, and
law-man of the district of Swan-on-the-Dapple, thirty-six years ago,
with a fruit known as the berries of merciful death."
Then the plaintiff, a fresh-faced young girl (none other, of course,
than our old friend, Hazel) knelt at the foot of the dais and was given
the great seal to kiss; upon which the Clerk of Arraigns led her up
into a sort of carved pulpit, whence in a voice, low, but so clear
as to penetrate to the furthest corners of the hall she told, with
admirable lucidity, the story of the murder of her grandfather.
Next, Mistress Ivy, flustered and timid, told the Judges, in somewhat
rambling fashion, what she had already told Master Nathaniel.
Then came the testimony of Peter Pease and Marjory Beach, and, finally,
the document of the late farmer was handed round among the Judges.
"Endymion Leer!" called out Master Polydore, "the Law bids you speak,
or be silent, as your conscience prompts you."
And as Endymion Leer rose to make his defence, the silence of the hall
seemed to be trebled in intensity.
"My Lords Judges!" he began, "I take my stand, not high enough,
perhaps, to be out of reach of the gibbet, but well above the heads,
I fancy, of everybody here today. And, first of all, I would have you
bear in mind that my life has been spent in the service of Dorimare."
(Here there was a disturbance at the back of the hall and shouts
of "Down with the Senators!" "Long live the good Doctor!" But the
would-be rioters were cowed by the thunder of the Law, rumbling in the
"Silence!" of the Clerk of Arraigns.)
"I have healed and preserved your bodies--I have tried to do the same
for your souls. First, by writing a book--published anonymously some
years 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 partizans 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 bitter-sweet 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
market-place, 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
corn-fields 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 bitter-sweet 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 had sat taut with
attention--lips slightly parted, eyes dreamy, as if they were listening
to music. But the majority--even though many of them were partisans of
the Doctor--felt that they were being cheated. They had expected that
their hero, whether guilty or not, would in his defence quite bamboozle
the Judges by his juggling with the evidence and brilliant casuistry.
Instead of which his speech had been obscure, and, they dimly felt,
indecent; so the girls tittered, and the young men screwed their mouths
into those grimaces which are the comment of the vulgar on anything
they consider both ridiculous and obscene.
"Terribly bad taste, I call it," whispered Dame Dreamsweet to Dame
Marigold (the sisters-in-law had agreed to bury the hatchet) "you
always said that little man was a low vulgar fellow." But Dame
Marigold's only answer was a little shrug, and a tiny sigh.
Then came the turn of the widow Gibberty to mount the pulpit and make
her defence.
Before she began to speak, she fixed in turn the judges, plaintiff,
and public, with an insolent scornful stare. Then, in her deep, almost
masculine voice, she began: "You've asked me a question to which you
know the answer well enough, else I shouldn't be standing here now.
Yes, I murdered Gibberty--and a good riddance too. I was for killing
him with the sap of osiers, but the fellow you call Endymion Leer,
who was always a squeamish, tenderhearted, sort of chap (if there was
nothing to lose by it, that's to say) got me the death-berries and
made me give them to him in a jelly, instead of the osiers." (It was a
pity Master Nathaniel was not there to glory in his own acumen!) "And
it was not only because they caused a painless death that he preferred
the berries. He had never before seen them at their work, and he was
always a death-fancier--tasting, and smelling, and fingering death,
like a farmer does samples of grain at market. Though, to give him his
due, if it hadn't been for him, that girl over there who has just been
standing up to denounce him and me" (and she nodded in the direction of
the pale, trembling, Hazel) "and her father before her would long ago
have gone the way of the farmer. And this I say in the hope that the
wench's conscience may keep her awake sometimes in the nights to come,
remembering how she dealt with the man who had saved her life. It will
be but a small prick, doubtless; but it is the last that I can give her.
"And now, good people, here's a word of advice to you, before I go my
last ride, a pillion to my old friend Endymion Leer. Never you make
a pet of a dead man. For the dead are dirty curs and bite the hand
that has fed them;" and with an evil smile she climbed down from the
pulpit, while more than one person in the audience felt faint with
horror and would willingly have left the hall.
There was nothing left but for Master Polydore to pronounce the
sentence; and though the accused had stolen some of his thunder,
nevertheless the solemn time-honoured words did not fail to produce
their wonted thrill:
"Endymion Leer and Clementina Gibberty, I find you guilty of murder,
and I consign your bodies to the birds, and your souls to whence they
came. And may all here present take example from your fate, correcting
their conduct if it needs correction, or, if it be impeccable, keeping
it so. For every tree can be a gallows, and every man has a neck to
hang."
The widow received her sentence with complete stolidity; Endymion Leer
with a scornful smile. But as it was pronounced there was a stir and
confusion at the back of the hall, and a grotesque frenzied figure
broke loose from the detaining grip of her neighbours, and, struggling
up to the dais, flung herself at the feet of Master Polydore. It was
Miss Primrose Crabapple.
"Your Worship! Your Worship!" she cried, shrilly, "Hang me instead
of him! My life for his! Was it not I who gave your daughters fairy
fruit, with my eyes open! And I glory in the knowledge that I was made
a humble instrument of the same master whom he has served so well.
Dear Master Polydore, have mercy on your country, spare your country's
benefactor, and if the law must have a victim let it be me--a foolish
useless woman, whose only merit was that she believed in loveliness
though she had never seen it."
Weeping and struggling, her face twisted into a grotesque tragic mask,
they dragged her from the hall, amid the laughter and ironical cheers
of the public.
That afternoon Mumchance came to Master Polydore to inform him that a
young maid-servant from the Academy had just been to the guard-room to
say that Miss Primrose Crabapple had killed herself.
Master Polydore at once hurried off to the scene of the tragedy, and
there in the pleasant old garden where so many generations of Crabapple
Blossoms had romped, and giggled, and exchanged their naughty little
secrets, he found Miss Primrose, hanging stone-dead from one of her own
apple-trees.
"Well, as the old song has it, Mumchance," said Master Polydore--"'Here
hangs a maid who died for love.'"
Master Polydore was noted for his dry humour.
A gibbet had been set up in the great court of the Guildhall, and the
next day, at dawn, Endymion Leer and the widow Gibberty were hanged by
the neck till they died.
Rumour said that as the Doctor's face was contorted in its last grimace
strange silvery peals of laughter were heard proceeding from the room
where long ago Duke Aubrey's jester had killed himself.