Short enough was the relief which the spectacular death of the opposing leader afforded to the Palace, but a relief it was. For a full minute's space the shepherdless rabble recoiled, and the now decimated party of the Palace Guards, fighting their way towards the centre of the square, took heart of grace. Heavily they laid on around them, with much hacking and hewing at hands and heads and frequent hamstringing of their terrified adversaries. Blood rained down from their swords like heavy snow melting from the trees in early spring. But before they had made twenty yards of headway the courage and fanatic zeal of Father Algio had rendered even this great effort vain. Raising a silver cross on high he called "Vengeance for the King" with such fury that the whole crowd took up the shout and a deafening "Vengeance" boomed over the square like a blast of the North wind. Those who surrounded the fiery-eyed old priest made a dash at the ghastly barricade and began tearing it down. Then indeed Norman, thrice wounded, gasping, slipping on blood and tattered flesh, expected the sudden darkness; and in his extremity, as though to reply to, the crowd's yell for vengeance, he could not but cry aloud the name that for him evoked all the joy of living. Fiercely enough his followers took up the cry, shouting, with uplifted swords, "Ianthe and for Ianthe!" making the name of their Lady ring and ring out again with all the passion of men about to die.
Suddenly, at that very minute, with such weird effect that some of the little band dreamt they had died already, there pealed through the Castle square what seemed the enchanted answer of their shouting, not that savage cry of vengeance, but a yet stranger, a yet wilder tumult, – the blowing of a hundred horns with rattling hoof-beats to mark the measure. And forthwith from the great North Road poured into the square at full gallop, their horses foaming and steaming, a troop of cavalry in the radiant panoply of the Royal Alsandrian Frontier Guard. In the hush caused by their astounding entry their burly colonel put up a megaphone and bawled, "Cease fire in the name of the Princess! All fighting to cease!" However, without waiting for this command to take effect the troopers laid on with their long whips and drove back the rabble to one corner of the square, at the same time forming guard round Norman and their fellow soldiers of the Palace.
The Englishman and his followers leant back half dead against the blood-stained marble, stunned by this deliverance, too weak to ask one question of their rescuers. And then down into the midst of the square towards them, escorted by one whom many knew to be the old Count Arnolfo, on a great glistening black horse, rode the Princess Ianthe.
"And where," she cried, "is the King of Alsander?" and at the very moment of her asking her eyes lighted full on Norman.
She was bronze helmeted, a very Athena, and dressed in the gold and green uniform of the Alsandrian Riders, but it was Ianthe the woman who commanded the square, calling for her King. Her face indeed still looked boyish enough, with her hair half hidden by the flashing helmet; and her young body looked so slim in the handsome uniform that it might well have been a lad's. The large dark eyes, aglow with intelligence, had dominated the face of the boy; but as she caught sight of Norman she smiled gently: and it was the strange smiling of her perfect mouth that revealed Ianthe an enchantress among women. That smile, which da Vinci caught years ago and fixed in a picture whose destiny has proved as restless as its charm – the smile of the boy-like Renaissance women – of the women who knew art and history and secrets beautiful and tragic which have perished with their smiles – such a smile played over the face of Ianthe as she bent her eyes down to her wounded lover, leaning wearily on his dripping sword. And he, looking up, saw in amaze the new apparition of her splendour – that special and rare beauty of a woman whose life is ruled by passionate intelligence: and he cried out, "O Queen of Alsander!" and as she dismounted flung his sword on the ground before her.
Seeing this parley of the Princess and the Impostor some of the bewildered crowd murmured, and one man shouted, "The King of Alsander is lying dead at your feet!"
"Ah!" muttered Ianthe, shuddering as she looked at the staring head beneath her, "is that Andrea? That my kinsman?"
"He fought with the statue till it fell on him and slew him," explained Cassolis briefly. "Sforelli killed Vorza and himself perished, and your Majesty is now by undisputed title Queen of Alsander."
"If Vorza is dead who leads this mob?" inquired the grey old Count Arnolfo.
"A fanatic priest," some one replied.
"Bring him before us," the Count commanded.
He came before them, cross in hand, a black cowled, black frocked, frost bearded old monk with mad blue eyes, and before anyone had spoken, he flung himself on his knees before Ianthe.
"Queen of Alsander," he cried, pointing to Norman, "if this man was known to you, was crowned with your connivance, has been fighting in your name, why did you not tell your faithful people of Alsander?"
"And why," rejoined the Princess in clear tones that could be heard all over the square, "when you and your friends discovered that the King was not Andrea, did you send no word to me, but, without the authority of the Royal Family of Alsander, plotted by yourselves like anarchists?"
"And why," said Norman, "did you, again like anarchists, send no summons to the Palace, but, without formally demanding my abdication, set your rabble on me and my followers like a pack of starving curs? It had been arranged that on an emergency you should have been told the truth. But you gave us no chance, and the blood of my brave men and of those poor fools and of your King himself is on the heads of your conspirators."
"There is but one answer to your question and you know it," said old Count Arnolfo, "and that is that Vorza your dead leader was a traitor, an ambitious traitor, and a vile traitor!"
But the Princess cut them short. "Set me on the pedestal where stood the statue of my ancestor," she cried, "and the King beside me. Thence I will address Alsander!" And on to the pedestal she sprang with easy grace, but the King, for all that an old soldier had roughly staunched his wounds, had to be lifted, weak and fainting, to her side. "Courage, my lover," she whispered, as she bent to raise him. "Do I forget that you are wounded, that you are weary? But stand up now for the sake of Alsander, and for a moment face these simple folk with me."
Straight and stiff he stood and deadly pale, leaning on her arm while she in ringing tones spake to her people.
"I," she said, "since the King Andrea is dead, am by divine right and undisputed title Queen of Alsander. From you who, without deigning to consult me, have fought for the divine right of my house, utter obedience and submission I expect. I do as I choose, I say as I choose, I dispose of Alsander as I choose, and I make King thereof the man I choose, and that King is at my side. If he is a foreigner so was the great Kradenda: if he is of lowly birth, so, too, was that founder of all Alsander's fortune, in the place of whose monument, destroyed by and destroyer of my unhappy kinsmen, we now stand together. May the omen which was disastrous for him be propitious for us! Now you may know that this very night will be celebrated in the Castle privately, out of respect for my dead kinsman, my union with the already consecrated King whom you have tried so savagely to kill. And expect no further excuse or explanation from me; for you have behaved like fools, O people of Alsander, and had I not been warned just in time of what was brewing by the only loyal man in your conspiracy, irreparable disaster would have befallen the State. And now my soldiers will guard and prepare for interment with all honour the remains of King Andrea, of that good patriot Sforelli, and of those brave soldiers who have perished in this miserable tumult. Those of you who have your own dead on this square may remain to attend them unmolested; but the rest of you must disperse at once and quietly to your several homes."
The half understanding populace listened in sullen silence to these bitter and uncompromising words. But an old shoemaker who stood in the front rank of the crowd, his dim eyes enchanted and his aged heart fired by the beauty and fearlessness of the young Queen, cried out: "Treat us as you will, Queen Ianthe of Alsander, but do not be angry with your people: for we have been mightily deceived."
The Princess was moved. "You were led by an evil shepherd," she replied, "who forced me to deceive you. But love for the people of Alsander is branded on my heart – and on the King's."
"Then let us cheer," shouted the old shoemaker, shaking his grizzled locks toward the crowd, "for the Queen – and for the King of Alsander!"
We leave them there, the Mistress and the Captain of a little ship of State, and only ask, before we turn to the Epilogue in Blaindon – But what of Peronella? Did Cesano thrash the nonsense out of her in good Alsandrian fashion, wed her, and live happily ever after, peopling with troops of swarthy children some mountain cottage in a foreign land? Or did he quail before her flashing eyes, dismissed for ever, and is that darker fancy true that it is she whom men call the Blood-red Rose from the cabins of Moscow to the cabarets of Montmartre, she for whom many have died, she who they say has ordered the death of legions in her fierce hatred of Kings and the minions of Kings? Only this is certain, that neither she nor her lover were ever seen again in that fantastic town, Alsander.
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 ill. Now, you tell me my mother will die, and you tell me news about my friend too wild for a sober man to repeat; you have already shown me that which I feared to see, and now, as though it were not sufficient, you say the night is propitious for visions. I am so distressed in mind that I cannot talk properly; the words get inverted, the world reels like a decadent's dream, my head is turning with it, and I keep on feeling a sort of brook trickling. What are you doing in that white coat? Who are you? Tell me who you are."
John raised his voice to the pitch of anger at the end, wroth that this mysterious being should cross his path "fantasia, non homo."
"Be calm, my friend: all is well; you are not used to the extensions of Reality, that is all. I do not want to take advantage of the night. Behold we have arrived at the seashore. Leave me now, friend of Norman! Go on to that distant rock, and watch. You may see what is to be seen. But do not profane the silence of the moonlight."
And he waved his hands in front of John's bewildered eyes as he chanted low the injunction.
John obeyed him as by constraint, and watched from a rock some hundred yards away.
The old man made ablutions in the sea and began to intone his prayer.
"Thou who appearest in the waves of water, of wind and of fire, Queen who with special majesty dost sway the minds of men, the beasts and cattle and all the moving substance of the thundering world, appear to me, be mine, be myself: show the lucid sign upon thy brows: grant me the reward for faithful service: let me hear once again from those immortal lips thy ancient promise, that in the pit of Acheron, yea, even there, thou wilt be shining among the thoughtless dead. Thou art and art not the great Cytherean, mother of the world, thou art and art not Artemis, the virgin of the forests, the huntress, thou art and art not Pallas, to whom the snake has told his story, thou art and art not her to whom sailors pray in the still waters of the middle sea: it may be the Egyptians knew thee by thy name: it may be thou art the mother of Christians in the South. Thou art in me but thou art not what I am! I salute thee!"
John saw the old man fling off his white mantle: an instant after it was in flames: Then he thought he saw him rise naked among the flames and run toward the sea with a silver disc shining on his breast: and he began to swim out along the track of the moon. Then he saw the great full moon burst into a shower of stars and fall into the sea, and a white woman rose, huge and glorious, from the waves, with a horned helmet on her brow and spread over the sky like light till she filled the world. Then the treble octave was sounded all through the universe, and he fell senseless.
He awoke hours later, but saw nothing save a wet sea rolling in the dawn.