CHAPTER XVIII

THE POET VISITS BLAINDON ONCE MORE, AND TAKES JOHN GAFFEKIN TO THE SEASHORE WHERE A MIRACLE OCCURS

... les hommes aux yeux verts ... ceux-là qui aiment la mer, la mer immense, tumultueuse et verte, l'eau informe et multiforme. _Baudelaire._

Vives autem beautus, vives in mea tutela gloriosus, et cum spatium saeculi tui permensus ad inferos demearis ibi quoque in ipso subterraneo semirutundo me ... videbis Acherontis tenebris interlucentum, Stygiisque penetralibus regnantem. _Isis to Lucius in the "Golden Ass."_

John Gaffekin, weary of this world, left his invalid mother asleep, in charge of the nurse, and walked down into Blaindon after a miserable meal. His mother's health was worse, his prospects gloomy; his life had become very friendless since Norman went abroad. From the latter, moreover, he had had no news for months.

The night was clear and pleasant, but to a lonely man the far-shining brilliance of the Blaindon Arms appeared more pleasant still: and so he turned on his heel and swung in through the unaccustomed door.

"Why, bless me, Mr Gaffekin," said Nancy, "it's a long time since you've been in."

"It is, indeed, Nancy. How's life?"

"Oh, just as usual, Mr Gaffekin, thank you. Have you heard from Mr Price again?"

"Not a word," said John. "Not a single word since last summer."

"Now, that's odd, sir," said Peter Smith, "very odd."

"I tell you what," said Thomas Bodkin, the sexton, with prodigious wisdom, "he's fallen in love."

"He wasn't much that sort, Mr Bodkin," said Nancy, with a little sigh. It pleased her to imagine that her heart was broken.

"Damned silly," said old Canthrop. "Damned silly. Never tould his feyther."

"And the old man so cut up about it," said Peter Smith.

"Yes," said John. "Didn't get back to business for nearly a week."

"Ah, it's curious to think of him so far away," said Nancy. "Out there in Aljanda. That is, if he wasn't killed in the row."

"Ah, if...." said the sexton ominously.

The _Daily Mail_ had contained one day a few months ago a small paragraph which had caused quite an excitement in the village of Blaindon, reporting "considerable fermentation in the little State of Alsander." But the succeeding numbers had no further information on the subject, being well stocked with letters answering the grave question "Is the stage immoral?" which the great paper had proposed to itself with typical earnestness and audacity. The inhabitants of Blaindon, however, were not deterred by the meagreness of the data from an almost daily discussion as to whether their fellow townsman had perished.

"You cheer up, Nancy," said John Oggs, who was the sexton's opponent in the controversy. "Price is all right, and he'll turn up again one of these days, all boiled yellow by the sun."

"What a strange thing Life is," said Nancy.

"A strange thing indeed," said old Canthrop. "A strange thing."

"The sun makes one red, not yellow," said the sexton. "But it's small colour he's showing now, poor boy, I can tell you. In them furrin parts knives aint reserved for cheese. And he'd have written for sure."

"Ah, sexton," said John to escape the perpetual topic, "I can see you're a man of ideas."

"Well, Mr Gaffekin, I may not have been to Oxford, as I say, but I does think. As I said to Parson once before a burial. 'You and I, sir,' I said, 'are thinking men.' It goes with the business."

"It must be dreadful work," said John Oggs. "Digging holes for dead men. Well, we must all go under."

"Ay, indeed," said old Canthrop.

"Don't speak from the bottom of your throat like that," said Peter Smith. "It gives me the horrors, with all this talk about death and all."

"Death should not give anyone the horrors," said the sexton, who attended church regularly. "It is but the Portal, Of a better life beyond."

"But it's rather nice to have the horrors sometimes," came Nancy's voice from behind the bar. "I wonder why!"

"Not but what," continued the sexton, "it is not excusable now for me. For my work is very sad and awesome indeed."

The sexton had never before been so impressed with the conversational advantage of his lugubrious occupation, and he determined to make up for lost opportunities.

"I believe you, sexton," said Peter Smith,

"Some of them as I've buried was all young and blooming, and others were ever so old, nearly as old as Canthrop yonder."

"Don't talk like that," said the patriarch, hoarsely. "Ye make me afeard."

"I wonder what it is to-night," said a labourer in the corner who had hitherto drunk in silence, "that makes you all talk as if you couldn't say what you meant."

"Perhaps a man is being hanged," said the sexton.

"Poor fellow!" said Nancy.

"I feel queer to-night," drawled old Canthrop. "But I don't know why that is. What is it makes it so?"

"The moon, old man, the moon."

The company started with fear at the sound of this strange voice, turned round, and with blanched faces beheld the figure of an old man framed in the doorway, with the silver light creeping along his hoary beard, and over his unprecedented clothes. For the stranger was clothed in what appeared to be a white woollen dressing-gown, with a purple border, and he had sandals on his feet. He wore no hat, and his snowy hair waved gently in the radiance of the gaslight. He walked forward amid a dead silence, and laid his hand on old Canthrop's shoulder.

"Yes, old comrade in a life of folly," he cried. "The moon is full to-night, and you know it is her fault. Hers are the fiery drops that make your eyes water and my eyes shine. I, to whom she has revealed her secret springs of knowledge and beauty, you, who have not fifty words to your tongue--I, who feel her gentle influence pervading forest and meadow, tower and town, you, who feel only the terror of her nocturnal power that brings you to your fellows, you, the village dotard, I, the king of the world; we have one mother, old man, and that's the Moon! You see and fear the great white spaces that flit before your eyes; I know and love her cloudy caverns of mystery and wonder."

"Who are you?" whispered old Canthrop. "Go away!"

"A minute, a minute. I am what you will, Death, Destiny, a Poet. Is John Gaffekin here?"

"Are you...." began John.

"I am the same. Ask nothing more. My dear--a drink round to all, for our farewell."

The Poet looked round, smiling at the solemn and pale faces, at the trembling hands of those that proposed his health. Then, linking his arm through John's, he took him out into the street.

"Come with me," said the Poet, "we will go to old William Price's shop."

After five minutes' walk in a silence which John Gaffekin somehow did not wish to break they arrived outside the little square brick house which was dark, silent and shuttered fast. In front of it the last gas-lamp in Blaindon glimmered in the wind-driven moon-rays.

"Call the old man," ordered the Poet.

John Gaffekin banged violently at the door and shouted: "Mr Price! Mr Price!"

"Eh, what's up the deuce and all?" came a loud but sleepy voice from the first floor. A match was struck, a light glimmered through the bars, the shutters creaked open and old Mr Price popped his nightcap out of the window.

"News from your son," cried the Poet cheerfully.

"Eh, is that anything to jump a man up for in the dead o' night?" retorted the old man, cursing under his breath. "I was feared of a smoky black beggaring fire at the least, I was. What the devil do I care about the young rip? He owes me a hundred pound, he do, and I wrote him, but he never sent back a penny nor a post-card."

"You're a nice, pretty father," exclaimed the Poet. "I've got your hundred in my pocket."

"I'll come down to you and Mr Gaffekin," said William Price very civilly.

"No you won't," retorted the Poet, "you should have come down before. You'll stay right where you are and answer me some questions I have in my head to ask you. And if you budge from that window you sha'n't have a groat nor a tizzy of all your hundred pounds."

"It's cold-here," grumbled Mr Price, churlishly, flapping his arms across his chest. "What d'yer want to know?"

"Why, first of all, tell me why you never go out of nights?" cried the Poet.

"What's that to you?" bawled back the old man.

"And tell me, tell me, William Price, who was the mother of your son?" the Poet shouted.

"What in Hell or under it is that to you?" came in very full-throated accents from the open window.

"Why is your bedstead all made of wood?" thundered the relentless Poet in stentorian tones.

"Hey, stop that!" cried the voice from the window.

But the Poet continued his questions unperturbed.

"Why have you half forgotten your own son, William Price? Why do you sleep all day, Father William, and pretend to be more stupid than the grave? Do you think a Poet cannot see through the film you cast over your happy eyes?"

"Eh, what are you driving at?" exclaimed Sir Price in a voice no longer angry but rather tremulous.

"Who are your guests to-night, old man, who are your guests to-night?" yelled the Poet, positively dancing with malicious satisfaction.

"Why, be you one of them that know?" cried the old man in a new tone of something like awe and something like fellowship.

"I am one of the chief of those that know," replied the Poet; "for me shutters unbar, for me the music pipes, and even my companion for all he can wrap his soul up in the wisdom of Oxford town shall see the fairies haunting.

"_What_!" said John.

But the Poet urbanely continued: "I'm forgetting those hundred pounds," and taking out a sheaf of banknotes from a vast white pocket like a snow-cavern he crumpled them into a ball and hurled them at one of the barred shutters.

The shutter opened to let the packet pass.

"Money, my friend," observed the Poet tranquilly, "opens all doors."

A soft peal of very quiet laughter filled the little house and all the other shutters opened to a thin music: room after room flashed into light as though so many plays were starting on so many miniature stages with all the shadows flying to the roof: and one by one the half naked little women of the wild crept out of hiding and began their dance. And through it all as though it meant nothing for him, though his room was flashing from hue to hue like a transformation scene and an enchanting person had her arms around his neck, old Price bawled down: "Well, what of Norman?"

"He has become King of that country and wedded to its Queen," roared the Poet.

"I always said he was a sound practical fellow without an idea in his head," remarked William Price with serene philosophy.

"Like most of the Half-Race," assented the Poet.

"But we filled his bottle with luck," trilled the silvery lady upstairs.

"And his countenance with beauty," replied the Poet. "Well, we really must be off now. Good-bye to you all, and a pleasant evening!"

Laughing good-byes rippled back at him from all over the house like the jingling of toy harness bells.

"Let us walk down to the sea," said the Poet, turning to go. "How far is it to the sea, John?"

"Ten miles."

"And by which road?"

"Straight on."

"Ah, yes," said the Poet, setting off at a swinging pace, "it is the road by which first I came to Blaindon."

But before they had gone many yards John heard his name called and stood still. Down through the moonlight glided as it might be a wingless angel and by his side there stood the fairy of the upper window.

"John," she said, "when you see my son again give him this kiss."

And kissing him she floated away.

The Poet who had gone ahead, waited for John to come up.

"But I must go back to my mother," the young man protested, as though a glimpse of the unmagical past had driven a sword through his mind. "She is very ill."

"I fear she will die within the week," replied the Poet, "but I inquired at your house on the way to the Blaindon Arms and learnt that to-night she is happily asleep and will not need you. When you are alone in the world, John, you must go to Norman to give him his mother's kiss and help him through days of trouble. It's no easy game even in a little country, even with a born Queen, even with the Immortals helping--the game of King."

He said no more. The two went on together on the road leading to the sea, without another word, for miles. John dared not speak; he was half delirious with the silence; the dread prediction of his mother's death, the wild story about his friend, rang in his ears; the house of the Fairies danced before his eyes; and he feared his fateful companion. The wizard forms of the hedges threatened John Gaffekin, the harvest moon, golden and vast, seemed to shine hot upon his hatless brow. He kept comparing the trickling of the roadside brook to the trickling of the little thoughts in his head; he could not get rid of this grotesque comparison, and grew more afraid. At last the poet broke the silence.

"Are you lonely, John?" he said. "Or have you found women after your desire?"

"Women?" said John. "I never cared for any woman but for my mother. I have one friend far away of whom you tell me news I cannot understand. I have known many men at Oxford--good athletes or great wits. But I shall never make another friend like him. I shall certainly seek him out if what you predict falls true. I am indeed lonely."

They were silent again. They had now come to brackish marshes, and to a land of dizzy vapours. The wind blew harder from the sea, singing like a hero, bringing with it a salt and pungent odour. The poet linked his arm with the young man's as though to protect him from the evil spells of night.

"Take heart, my friend," said he. "You have years of glorious life before you, and it is a splendid night for visions."

John suddenly stopped, swung round to face the old man, and began speaking hurriedly, gasping for breath before each phrase.

"What has happened?" he cried. "Why am I here? Who are you? An hour or two ago I was just an unhappy man, rather lonely, with a mother lying