FullReads

We waited two, three, five minutes. In that silence, of which the boom of the tide was an orderly part, I caught the clear “kiss–kiss–kiss” of the halliards on the roof, as they were blown against the installation- pole.

“Poole is not ready. I’ll stay here and call you when he is.”

I returned to the shop, and set down my glass on a marble slab with a careless clink. As I did so, Shaynor rose to his feet, his eyes fixed once more on the advertisement, where the young woman bathed in the light from the red jar simpered pinkly over her pearls. His lips moved without cessation. I stepped nearer to listen. “And threw–and threw–and threw,” he repeated, his face all sharp with some inexplicable agony.

I moved forward astonished. But it was then he found words–delivered roundly and clearly. These:–

And threw warm gules on Madeleine’s young breast.

The trouble passed off his countenance, and he returned lightly to his place, rubbing his hands.

It had never occurred to me, though we had many times discussed reading and prize-competitions as a diversion, that Mr. Shaynor ever read Keats, or could quote him at all appositely. There was, after all, a certain stained-glass effect of light on the high bosom of the highly-polished picture which might, by stretch of fancy, suggest, as a vile chromo recalls some incomparable canvas, the line he had spoken. Night, my drink, and solitude were evidently turning Mr. Shaynor into a poet. He sat down again and wrote swiftly on his villainous note-paper, his lips quivering.

I shut the door into the inner office and moved up behind him. He made no sign that he saw or heard. I looked over his shoulder, and read, amid half-formed words, sentences, and wild scratches:–

–Very cold it was. Very cold
The hare–the hare–the hare–
The birds—-

He raised his head sharply, and frowned toward the blank shutters of the poulterer’s shop where they jutted out against our window. Then one clear line came:–

The hare, in spite of fur, was very cold.

The head, moving machine-like, turned right to the advertisement where the Blaudett’s Cathedral pastille reeked abominably. He grunted, and went on:–

Incense in a censer–
Before her darling picture framed in gold–
Maiden’s picture–angel’s portrait–

“Hsh!” said Mr. Cashell guardedly from the inner office, as though in the presence of spirits. “There’s something coming through from somewhere; but it isn’t Poole.” I heard the crackle of sparks as he depressed the keys of the transmitter. In my own brain, too, something crackled, or it might have been the hair on my head. Then I heard my own voice, in a harsh whisper: “Mr. Cashell, there is something coming through here, too. Leave me alone till I tell you.”

“But I thought you’d come to see this wonderful thing–Sir,” indignantly at the end.

“Leave me alone till I tell you. Be quiet.”

I watched–I waited. Under the blue-veined hand–the dry hand of the consumptive–came away clear, without erasure:

And my weak spirit fails To think how the dead must freeze– he shivered as he wrote–

Beneath the churchyard mould.

Then he stopped, laid the pen down, and leaned back.

For an instant, that was half an eternity, the shop spun before me in a rainbow-tinted whirl, in and through which my own soul most dispassionately considered my own soul as that fought with an over- mastering fear. Then I smelt the strong smell of cigarettes from Mr. Shaynor’s clothing, and heard, as though it had been the rending of trumpets, the rattle of his breathing. I was still in my place of observation, much as one would watch a rifle-shot at the butts, half-bent, hands on my knees, and head within a few inches of the black, red, and yellow blanket of his shoulder. I was whispering encouragement, evidently to my other self, sounding sentences, such as men pronounce in dreams.

“If he has read Keats, it proves nothing. If he hasn’t–like causes must beget like effects. There is no escape from this law. You ought to be grateful that you know ‘St. Agnes Eve’ without the book; because, given the circumstances, such as Fanny Brand, who is the key of the enigma, and approximately represents the latitude and longitude of Fanny Brawne; allowing also for the bright red colour of the arterial blood upon the handkerchief, which was just what you were puzzling over in the shop just now; and counting the effect of the professional environment, here almost perfectly duplicated–the result is logical and inevitable. As inevitable as induction.”