"Sanidin?" queried Denis almost flippantly, as he held up a fragment of rock.
He was not particularly eager to hear Marten's answer. He had thought, only a few days ago, that he would like to be a geologist; Marten had inspired him with a fancy for that science. The fit was already passing.
How quickly this geological mood had evaporated. How quickly everything evaporated, nowadays.
All was not well with Denis. Early that morning he had tried his hand at poetry once more, after a long interval. Four words—that was all the inspiration which had come to him.
"Or vine-wreathed Tuscany…."
A pretty turn, in the earlier manner of Keats. It looked well on the snowy paper. "Or vine-wreathed Tuscany." He was content with that phrase, so far as it went. But where was the rest of the stanza?
How easily, a year or two ago, could he have fashioned the whole verse. How easily everything was accomplished in those days. To be a poet: that was a fixed point on his horizon. Any number of joyous lyrics, as well as three plays not intended for the stage, had already dropped from his pen. He was an extraordinary success among his college friends; everybody liked him; he could say and do what he pleased. Was he not the idol of a select group who admired not only one another but also the satanism of Baudelaire, the hieratic obscenities of Beardsley, the mustiest Persian sage, the modernest American ballad-monger? He was full of gay irresponsibility. Ever since, on returning to his rooms after some tedious lecture, he announced to his friends that he had lost an umbrella but preserved, thank God, his honour, they augured a brilliant future for him. So, for other but no less cogent reasons, did his doting, misguided mother.
Both were disappointed. Those sprightly sallies became rarer; epigrams died, still-born, on his lips. He lost his sense of humour; grew mirthless, fretful, self-conscious. He suddenly realized the existence of a world beyond his college walls; it made him feel like a hot-house flower exposed to the blustering winds of March. Life was no longer a hurdle in a steeple-chase to be taken at a gallop; it was a tangle of beastly facts that stared you in the face and refused to get out of the way. With growing years, during vacation, he came in contact with a new set of people; men who smiled indulgently at mention of all he held most sacred—art, classics, literature; men who were plainly not insane and yet took up incomprehensible professions of one kind or another—took them up with open eyes and unfeigned zest, and actually prospered at them in a crude worldly fashion.
He shrank at first from their society, consoling himself with the reflection that, being bounders, it did not matter whether they succeeded or not. But this explanation did not hold good for long. They were not bounders—not all of them. People not only dined with them: they asked them to dinner. Quite decent fellows, in fact. Nothing was wrong with them, save that they held a point of view which was at variance with his own.
It was a rude awakening. Every moment he was up against something new. There were quite a lot of things, he discovered, which a fellow ought to know, and doesn't. Too many of them to assimilate with comfort. They crowded in upon him and unsettled his mind. He kept up a brave exterior, but his inner core was suffering; he was no longer certain of himself. He became easily swayed and changeful in his moods. That sure touch in lyrics, as in daily life, was deserting him. His dreams were not coming true. He was not going to set the Thames on fire with poetry or anything else. He would probably be a failure. Aware of this weakness, he looked up to what was strong. Everything was different from himself, everything forceful, emphatic and clear-cut, exercised a fascination upon him. He tried in an honest, groping fashion, to learn what it was all about. That was why he had taken to Edgar Marten, the antithesis of himself, bright but dogmatic, a slovenly little plebeian but a man who after all had a determined, definite point of view.
Denis repeated:
"Sanidin?"
"Let's have a look at it then," said Marten condescendingly, "though I can't say I'm in a geological temper this morning. The south wind seems to rot one's intelligence somehow. Hand it here. Sanidin be blowed! It's specular iron. Now I wonder why you should hit upon sanidin? Why?"
He, too, did not pause for a reply. He turned his glance once more down the steep hill-side which they had climbed with a view to exploring some instructive exposure of the rock. Marten intended to utilize the site as a text for a lay sermon. Arrived on the spot they had sat down. As if by common consent, geology was forgotten. To outward appearances they were absorbed in the beauties of nature. Sirocco mists rose upwards, clustering thickly overhead and rolling in billowy formations among the dales. Sometimes a breath of wind would convulse their ranks, causing them to trail in long silvery pennants across the sky and, opening a rift in their gossamer texture, would reveal, far down below, a glimmer of olives shining in the sunlight or a patch of blue sea, framed in an aureole of peacock hues. Stones and grass were clammy with warm moisture.
"It's a funny thing," said Marten, after a long pause. "I've often noticed it. When I'm not actually at work, I'm always thinking about girls. I wish I could talk better Latin, or Italian. Not that I should be running after them all day long. I've got other fish to fry. I've got to catalogue my minerals, and I'm only half-way through. For the matter of that, I haven't come across half as many nice ones here as I thought I would."
"Minerals?"
"Girls. I don't seem to take to these foreigners. But there's one—"
"Go on."
"You're a queer fellow, Phipps. Don't you ever look at women? I believe you have the making of a saint in you. Fight against it. A fellow can't live without vices. Here you are, with lots of money, stewing in a back bedroom of a second-class hotel and getting up every morning at five o'clock because you like lying in bed late. Is that your way of mortifying the flesh? Got a soul, eh? Get rid of it. The soul! That unhappy word has been the refuge of empty minds ever since the world began. You're just like a man I used to know at Newcastle. You can't think what an ass he was. A sort of eugenical crank, who talked about the City Beautiful where everybody would lead regenerated lives like a flock of prize sheep. Everything sanitary and soulful; nothing but pure men and pure women. An addle-headed theorist, he was, till a woman got hold of him—one of the other kind, you know—and gave him something practical to think about. That's what will happen to you, Phipps. I can see it coming."
"I've been analysing myself lately. I find I have too much romance in my composition, as it is."
"What do you call romance?"
Denis thought awhile. Then he said:
"When a man invests ordinary people or objects or occurrences with an extraordinary interest. When he reads attributes into them which they don't possess, or exaggerates those which they do possess. When he looks at a person and can't help thinking that there is nobody on earth quite like her."
"Too celestial for me, on the whole. But I'm glad you said that last part. Glad for your sake, I mean. It shows that you've perhaps got something better than a soul, after all."
"What is that?"
"A body. Look here, Phipps. I also have my romantic moments, though you wouldn't believe it. I can be as romantic as ever you please. But not when I'm alone."
"I should like to see you in that condition. And talking Latin, no doubt?" he added with a laugh.
"I daresay you would," replied the scientist. "Given the circumstances under which I become romantic, you'll find it a little difficult. But there's no knowing. Funny things happen sometimes!"
Denis had picked up another stone. He scrutinized it with close attention, and then began to turn it round and round in his hand in an absent-minded fashion. At last he remarked:
"We are not doing much mineralogy, are we? What do you think of chastity, Marten?"
"Chastity be blowed. It's an unclean state of affairs, and dangerous to the community. You can't call yourself a good citizen till you have learnt to despise it from the bottom of your heart. It's an insult to the Creator and an abomination to man and beast."
"Perhaps you never gave it a fair trial," suggested Denis.
"Perhaps I'm not quite such a damned fool as all that. A man needn't handle everything dirty in order to be doubly sure about it. If you tell me that a dead donkey smells bad, I'm quite prepared to believe you without poking my nose into it. Chastity is a dead donkey. No beating will bring it to life again. Who killed it? The experience of every sane man and woman on earth. It's decayed; it ought to be buried. You ask me to give it a trial. Perhaps I will, when I'm in the same mellow condition myself. Everything in its proper season. Don't let us reverse the natural order of things. When we cease to practise, then is the time to preach. A fellow of your size! And with your good looks, too. Who knows how many golden opportunities you've missed. Try to make up for lost time, Phipps. Get rid of conventional notions, if you value your health."
"I will, when I find them wrong. What do you think of women—generally speaking, I mean?"
Marten replied, without a moment's hesitation:
"Thank God I'm a Jew. You must take that into consideration. I think the Mormons have made a good shot at solving the woman question, if the question exists at all. Mormonism is a protest against monogamy. And please observe that it's a protest not on the part of man alone. It's a protest on the part of woman. Never forget that. In fact, I don't believe any woman would ever bind herself to one fool of a man if she had her own way. She wouldn't marry at all. She needn't, nowadays. She won't, very soon. A man who marries—well, there may be some excuse for him, though a love-match is generally a failure and a money-match always a mistake. The heroes, the saints and sages—they are those who face the world alone. A married man is half a man."
"Ahem!"
Marten was silent.
"I did not ask you to stop," said Denis. "You've got it very pat!"
"Plain sailing, my boy. It's the social reformers and novelists who create these artificial conundrums; they want to sell their rotten literature; they want to make us forget that the only interesting and important part of the business is what nobody talks or writes about. What does it all amount to? Man creates intellectually and physically. He classifies minerals or blasts out a tunnel. Woman creates physiologically; she supplies the essential, the raw material; her noblest product is a child. I get on splendidly with women, because we both realize the stupidity of the average sex-twaddle. We have no illusions about each other. We know exactly what we are after. We know exactly how to attain it. I tell you what, Phipps, Female Emancipation is going to do away with a lot of cant and idealism. Knock the silly male on the head. There'll be an end of your chastity-worship, once women are fairly started on the game. They won't put up with it."
"Disgusting," said Denis. "Go on."
"I'm done. What, sanidin again?"
Denis still held the stone in his hand. He was thinking, however, of other things. He liked to collect fresh ideas, to be impregnated with the mentality of other people—he knew how much he had to learn. But he would have preferred his mind to be moulded gently, in artistic fashion. Marten's style was more like random blows from a sledge-hammer, half of them wide of the mark. It was not very edifying, or even instructive. Keith was the same. Why was everybody so violent, so extreme in their views?
Marten repeated:
"Sanidin?"
"It might be sanidin in places," replied Denis. "I do know a little something about crystals, Marten. I have read Ruskin's ETHICS OF THE DUST."
"Ruskin. Good god! He's not a man; he's an emetic. But you never answered my first question. You always hit upon sanidin. Why?"
"Oh, I don't know. It's rather a pretty word, don't you think? It would do for a Christian name. Girls' names are so terribly commonplace. They are always Marjorie, or something. If I had a daughter, I should call her Sanidin."
"You're not likely to find yourself in that position at this rate. If I had a daughter, I know perfectly well what I should call her."
"What?"
"Angelina."
"You would?" asked Denis slowly. "And why?"
"Oh, it's rather a pretty name, don't you think?"
"Not a bad name at all, now I come to think of it. But it sounds foreign. I thought you did not care about foreigners."
"I don't. But there's one—"
"Go on," said Denis.
Mr. Marten winked.
The mists had fled from the hilltops; rocks and vineyards, and the sea at their foot, lay flooded in sunshine. With one accord, the two young men rose from the ground and turned their steps homewards. The mineralogical lesson was over.
"Coming to Keith's to-night?" enquired Marten with a fine show of nonchalance.
"I don't know."
"I would if I were you. They say he does things properly. There'll be an awful crowd—a regular bust-up. He only gives one of these entertainments a year. Dancing and Chinese lanterns and champagne in torrents. Won't you go?"
"Perhaps later in the evening."
Denis was perturbed. He scented a rival in this brutalitarian, though it seemed hardly possible that Angelina should take much notice of him. Meanwhile, he felt in need of some gentlemanly and soothing influence, after such an outpouring of vulgarity. He thought of the bibliographer. He liked Eames; he admired that scholarly detachment. He, too, might end in annotating some masterpiece—who knows? To be a bibliographer—what a calm, studious life!
"I think I'll go to Eames," he remarked.
"Really? A colourless creature, that Eames. As dry as a stick; a typical Don. I promised him a mineralogical map, by the way. You might tell him I haven't forgotten, will you? I wonder what you can see in the man?"
"I rather like him," said Denis. "He knows what he wants."
"That is not enough, my young friend!" replied Marten with decision. "A fellow must want something sensible."
"What do you call sensible?"
"Sanidin, and things like that. Things with pretty names. Eh, Phipps?"
Denis said nothing.
His friend continued jovially:
"The tavern mood is upon me. I am going to Luisella's to get a drink. One gets sick of that Club. Besides, I've taken rather a fancy to that younger sister. The second youngest, I mean; the one with the curly hair—you know! I only wish I knew a bit more Latin."
Luisella's grotto-tavern had become quite a famous rendezvous. You could drop in there at any hour and always find company to your liking. Don Francesco had a good deal to do with its discovery; he discovered, at all events, the second eldest of the four orphan sisters who managed the house. After a time, having convinced himself that they were all good penitents and being a kindly sort of man, he thought that other people might like to share in the seductions which the place afforded. He took foreign friends there from time to time, and none were disappointed. The wine was excellent. Russians, excluded from the Club by Mr. Parker's severity, frequented the spot in considerable numbers. They were nicely treated there. Not many nights previously one of the Master's disciples, the athletic young Peter Krasnojabkin, who was credited with being a protege of Madame Steynlin's, had distinguished himself by drinking sixteen bottles at a sitting. He afterwards smashed a few chairs and things, for which he apologized so prettily next morning that the girls would not hear of his paying for the damage.
"It's all in the family," they said. "Come and break some more!"
That was the way they ran the place, as regards drinks. The quality of the refreshments, too, was quite out of the common. As for the girls themselves—their admirers were legion. They could have married anyone they pleased, had it not been more in accordance with the interests of their business, to say nothing of the personal inclinations, to have only lovers.
As Marten disappeared under that hospitable doorway, I flashed through the mind of Denis that Eames was a confirmed recluse; he might not like being disturbed in the morning.
Besides, he was probably at work.
He thought of going to see the bishop. There was a glamour in the name. To be a bishop! His mother had sometimes suggested the Church, or at least politics as a career for him, if poetry should fail. But this one was so matter-of-fact and unpretentious in his clothing, his opinions. A broken-down matrimonial agent, Don Francesco had called him. Mr. Heard was not his idea of a shepherd of souls; he was only a colonial, anyhow. A grey type of man—nothing purple about him, nothing glowing or ornate. He did not get on particularly well with him either.
Besides, he hardly knew him sufficiently to intrude at this hour of the day.
One thing was certain. He would go to the Cave of Mercury that very evening. Keith was right. He must try to "find himself." He wanted to be alone, to think things out. Or perhaps—no. He did not want to be alone with his thoughts. They were too oppressive just then. He required some kind of company.
Besides, Keith had said "full moon." The moon was not yet quite full.
No!
He would see what the Duchess was doing, and perhaps stay to luncheon. Eames could wait. So could the bishop. So could the cave. He was fond of the Duchess.
Besides, it was such a quaint place—that austere old convent, built by the Good Duke Alfred.
"That is the worst of dining with a man. You have to be civil next morning. But surely, Eames, we two need not stand on ceremony? I am particularly anxious for you to come to-night. Can't you really manage it? I want you to meet Malipizzo and say a few nice words to him. You are too aloof with that man. There is nothing like keeping on the right side of the law."
"What do you mean by that?"
"The right side of the judge," said Keith. "It is so easy to be polite to people, and so advisable in some cases. How would you like to spend a week or two in gaol? He will have you there one of these days, unless you have placed him under some kind of obligation. He represents justice here. I know you don't like him. But what would it cost you—just a friendly handshake?"
"He cannot touch me. I have nothing on my conscience."
"Conscience, my dear fellow, is a good servant but a bad master. Your sentiments are English. They will never do in a country where the personal element still counts for something."
"The personal element signifying favouritism and venality?" askedEames. "A pretty state of affairs!"
"The philosopher can only live under a venal government."
"I disagree with you altogether."
"You always disagree with me," answered Keith. "And you always find yourself in the wrong. You remember how I warned you about that little affair of yours? You remember what an ass you made of yourself?"
"What little affair?" enquired Eames, with a tinge of resignation in his voice.
The other did not reply. Mr. Keith could be tactful, on occasions. He pretended to be absorbed in cutting a cigar.
"What little affair?" insisted the bibliographer, fearful of what was coming next.
It came.
"Oh, that balloon business…."
It was not true to say of Mr. Eames that he lived on Nepenthe because he was wanted by the London police for something that happened in Richmond Park, that his real name was not Eames at all but Daniels—the notorious Hodgson Daniels, you know, who was mixed up in the Lotus Club scandal, that he was the local representative of an international gang of white-slave traffickers who had affiliated offices in every part of the world, that he was not a man at all but an old boarding-house keeper who had very good reasons for assuming the male disguise, that he was a morphinomaniac, a disfrocked Baptist minister, a pawnbroker out of work, a fire-worshipper, a Transylvanian, a bank clerk who had had a fall, a decayed jockey who disgraced himself at a subsequent period in connection with some East-End mission for reforming the boys of Bermondsey and then, after pawning his mother's jewelry, writing anonymous threatening letters to society ladies about their husbands and vice-versa, trying to blackmail three Cabinet Ministers and tricking poor servant-girls out of their hard-earned wages by the sale of sham Bibles, was luckily run to earth in Piccadilly Circus, after an exciting chase, with a forty-pound salmon under his arm which he had been seen to lift from the window of a Bond Street fishmonger.
All these things, and a good many more, had been said. Eames knew it.Kind friends had seen to that.
To contrive such stories was a certain lady's method of asserting her personality on the island. She seldom went into society owing to some physical defect in her structure; she could only sit at home, like Penelope, weaving these and other bright tapestries—odds and ends of servants' gossip, patched together by the virulent industry of her own disordered imagination. It consoled Mr. Eames slightly to reflect that he was not the only resident singled out for such aspersions; that the more harmless a man's life, the more fearsome the legends. He suffered, none the less. This was why he seldom entered the premises of the Alpha and Omega Club where, quite apart from his objection to Parker's poison and the loose and rowdy talk of the place, he was liable to encounter the lady's stepbrother. Of course he knew perfectly well what he ought to have done. He ought to have imitated the example of other people who behaved like scoundrels and openly gloried in it. That was the only way to be even with her; it took the wind out of her sails. Keith often put the matter into a nutshell:
"The practical advantages of doing something outrageous must be clear to you. It is the only way of stopping her mouth, unless you like to have her poisoned, which might be rather expensive even down here, though you may be sure I would do my best to smooth things over with Malipizzo. But I am afraid you don't realize the advantages of ruffianism as a mode of art, and a mode of life. Only think: a thousand wrongs to every right! What an opening for a man of talent, especially in a country like this, where frank and independent action still counts its admirers. You have done nothing, of late, worthy to be recorded in the CHRONIQUE SCANDALEUSE of Nepenthe. Twelve years ago, wasn't it, that little affair of yours? Time is slipping by, and here you muddle along with your old Perrelli, in a fog of moral stagnation. It is not fair to the rest of us. We all contribute our mites to the gaiety of nations. Bethink yourself. Bestir yourself. Man! Do something to show us you are alive."
To such speeches Mr. Eames would listen with a smile of amused indignation. He was incapable of living up to the ideals of a man like Keith whose sympathy with every form of wrong-doing would have rendered him positively unfit for decent society but for his flagrant good nature and good luncheons. He suffered in silence.
He had good reason for suffering. That "little affair" of twelve years ago was a ghost which refused to be laid. Every one on the island knew the story; it was handed down from one batch of visitors to the next. He knew that whenever his name was mentioned this unique indiscretion of his, this toothsome morsel, would likewise be dished up. It would never grow stale, though atoned for by twelve years of exemplary conduct. He felt guilty. There was a skeleton in his cupboard. He realized what people were saying.
"Know Eames? Oh, yes. That quiet man, who writes. One can't swallow half those yarns about him; quite impossible to believe, of course. She overdoes things, the good woman. All the same, there's no smoke without fire. You know what actually did happen, don't you? Well; one really doesn't quite know what to make of a fellow like that, does one?"
What had happened?
The bibliographer had fallen in love, after the fashion of a pure-minded, gallant gentleman. It was his first and only experience of this kind—an all-consuming passion which did much credit to his heart but little to his head. So deeply were his feelings involved that during those brief months of infatuation he neglected, he despised, he derided his idol Perrelli. He put on a new character. While the dust was accumulating on those piles of footnotes, Mr. Eames astonished people by becoming a society man. It was a transfiguration. He appeared in fancy ties and spats, fluttered about at boating parties and picnics, dined at restaurants, perpetrated one or two classic jokes about the sirocco. Nepenthe opened its eyes wide till the truth was made manifest. After that, everybody said he might have discovered a worthier object for his affection than the "BALLOON CAPTIF."
She was a native of the mainland to whose credit it must be said that she did not pretend to be anything but what she was—an exuberant, gluttonous dame, with volcanic eyes, heavy golden bracelets, the soupcon of a moustache, and arms as thick as other people's thighs; an altogether impossible person. Nobody but a man of genuine refinement, scrupulous rectitude, delicate sense of honour and kindly disposition would have risked being seen in the same street with such a horror; nobody but a real gentleman could have fallen in love with her. Mr. Eames ran after her like a dog. He made a perfect ass of himself, heedless of what anybody though or said of him. The men declared he was going mad—breaking up—sickening for an attack of G.P. "Miracles will never cease," charitably observed the Duchess. Alone of all his lady acquaintances, Madame Steynlin liked him all the better for this gaucherie. She was a true woman-friend of all lovers; she knew the human heart and its queer little vagaries. She received the couple with open arms and entertained them royally, after her manner; gave them a kind of social status. Under this friendly treatment Mr. Eames grew thinner from day to day; he was visibly losing flesh. The dame prospered. Piloted by the love-sick bibliographer she gradually waddled her way—it was uphill work, for both of them—into the uppermost strata of local society where, owing to the rarefied atmosphere, her appetite, to say nothing of her person, soon gained notoriety. She was known, in briefest space of time, as "the cormorant," as "prime streaky," as "Jumbo," as "the phenomenon" and, by those who understood the French language, as the "BALLON CAPTIF."
The "BALLON CAPTIF." …
How things got about, on Nepenthe! Somehow or other, this odious nickname reached her lover's ears. It embittered his existence to such an extent that, long after the idyll was over, he had serious thoughts of leaving the island and would doubtless have done so, but for his re-kindled enthusiasm for Monsignor Perrelli. So sensitive did he remain on this point that the mere mention of balloons, or even aeroplanes, would make him wince and feel desirous of leaving the room; he always thought that people introduced the subject with malicious purpose, in order to remind him of this unforgettable peccadillo, the "balloon business," his one lapse from perfect propriety. Mr. Keith, who confessed to a vein of coarseness in his nature—prided himself upon it and, in fact, cultivated insensitiveness as other people cultivate orchids, pronouncing it to be the best method of self-protection in a world infested with fools—Mr. Keith sometimes could not resist the temptation of raking up the ashes surreptitiously, after an elaborate, misleading preamble. He loved to watch his friend's meekly perplexed face on such occasions.
Heaven knows how long the affair might have lasted but for the fact that a husband, or somebody, unexpectedly turned up—a husky little man with a cast in one eye, who looked uxorious to an alarming degree. He carried her off in the nick of time to save Mr. Eames from social ostracism, mental dotage, and financial ruin. Her mere appearance had made him the laughing-stock of the place; her appetite had led him into outlays altogether incompatible with his income, chiefly in the matter of pastries, macaroons, fondants, ices, caramels, chocolates, jam tartlets and, above all, meringues, to which she was fabulously destructive.
It took some living down, that episode. He feared people would talk of it to his dying day; he knew they would! He wished balloons had never been invented. None the less he stuck it out bravely, threw himself with redoubled zeal into Monsignor Perrelli and, incidentally, became more of a recluse than ever.
"It has been a lesson," he reflected. "SEMPER ALIQUID HAEREBIT, I am afraid…."
Ernest Eames was the ideal annotator. He was neither inductive nor deductive; he had no axe to grind. His talent consisted in an ant—like hiving faculty. He was acquisitive of information for a set purpose—to bring the ANTIQUITIES up to date. Whatever failed to fit in with this programme, however novel, however interesting—it was ruthlessly discarded. In this and other matters he was the reverse of Keith, who collected information for its own sake. Keith was a pertinacious and omnivorous student; he sought knowledge not for a set purpose but because nothing was without interest for him. He took all learning to his province. He read for the pleasure of knowing what he did not know before; his mind was unusually receptive because, he said, he respected the laws which governed his body. Facts were his prey. He threw himself into them with a kind of piratical ardour; took them by the throat, wallowed in them, worried them like a terrier, and finally assimilated them. They gave him food for what he liked best on earth: "disinterested thought." They "formed a rich loam." He had an encyclopaeic turn of mind; his head, as somebody once remarked, was a lumber-room of useless information. He could tell you how many public baths exited in Geneva in pre-Reformation days, what was the colour of Mehemet Ali's whiskers, why the manuscript of Virgil's friend Gallius had not been handed down to posterity, and in what year, and what month, the decimal system was introduced into Finland. Such aimless incursions into knowledge were a puzzle to his friends, but not to himself. They helped him to build up a harmonious scheme of life—to round himself off.
He had lately attacked, in Corsair fashion, the Greek philosophers and had disembowelled Plato, Aristotle and the rest of them, to his complete satisfaction, in a couple of months; at present he was up to the ears in psychology, and his talk bristled with phrases about the "function of the real," about reactions, reflexes, adjustments and stimuli. For all his complexity there was something so childlike in his nature that he never realized what an infliction he was, nor how tiresome his conversation could become to people who were not quite so avid of "disinterested thought." Living alone and spending too much time in unprofitable studies, his language was apt to be professionally devoid of humour—a defect he made heroic efforts to remedy by what he called the "Falernian system." It was the fault of his mother, he said; she was a painfully conscientious woman. A man's worst enemies are his parents, he would add.
So far as was known, Mr. Keith had never written a book, a pamphlet, or even a letter to the newspapers. He maintained a good deal of correspondence, however, in different parts of the world, and the wiser of those who were favoured with his epistles preserved them as literary curiosities, under lock and key, by reason of the writer's rare faculty of expressing the most atrocious things in correct and even admirable English. Chaster than snow as a conversationalist, he prostituted his mother-tongue, in letter-writing, to the vilest of uses. Friends of long standing called him an obscene old man. When taxed with this failing—by Mr. Eames, for instance, who shivered at what he called PRAETEXTATA VERBA—he would hint that he could afford to pay for his little whims, meaning, presumably, that a rich man is not to be judged by common standards of propriety. Such language was particularly galling to Mr. Eames, who held that the possession of wealth entails not only privileges but obligations, and that the rich man should set the example of purity in words and deeds, etc., etc., etc.
They were always disagreeing, anyhow.
"You exalt purity to a bad eminence," Keith would remark. "What did you say about the book I lent you the other day? You said it was morbid and indecent; you said that no clean-minded person would car to read it. And yet, after an unnecessary amount of arguing, you were forced to admit that the subject was interesting and that the writer dealt with it in an interesting manner. What more can you expect from an author? Believe me, this hankering after purity, this hypersensitiveness as to what is morbid or immoral, is by no means a good sign. A healthy man refuses to be hampered by preconceived notions of what is wrong or ugly. When he reads a book like that the either yawns or laughs. That is because he is sure of himself. I could give you a long list of celebrated statesmen, princes, philosophers and prelates of the Church who take pleasure, in their moments of relaxation, in what you would call improper conversation, literature or correspondence. They feel the strain of being continually pure; they realize that all strains are pernicious, and that there is no action without its reaction. They unbend. Only inveterate folks do not unbend. They dare not, because they have no backbone. They know that if they once unbent, they could not straighten themselves out again. They make a virtue of their own organic defect. They explain their natural imperfection by calling themselves pure. If you had a little money—"
"You are always harking back to that point. What has money to do with it?"
"Poverty is like rain. It drops down ceaselessly, disintegrating the finer tissues of a man, his recent, delicate adjustments, and leaving nothing but the bleak and gaunt framework. A poor man is a wintry tree—alive, but stripped of its shining splendour. He is always denying himself this or that. One by one, his humane instincts, his elegant desires, are starved away by stress of circumstances. The charming diversity of life ceases to have any meaning for him. To console himself, he sets up perverse canons of right and wrong. What the rich do, that is wrong. Why? Because he does not do it. Why not? Because he has no money. A poor man is forced into a hypocritical attitude towards life—debarred from being intellectually honest. He cannot pay for the necessary experience."
"There is something in what you say," Eames would assent. "But I fear you are overstating your case."
"So did Demosthenes and Jesus Christ, and likewise Cicero and Julius Caesar. Everybody overstates his case, particularly when he is anxious to do something which he considers useful. I regard it as a real grievance, Eames, not to be allowed to assist you financially. Having never done a stroke of work in my life, I can talk freely about my money. My grandfather was a pirate and slave-dealer. To my certain knowledge, not a penny of his wealth was honestly come by. That ought to allay your scruples about accepting it. NON OLET, you know. Let me write you out a cheque for five hundred, there's a good fellow. Solely as a means of smoothing over the anfractuosities of life and squeezing all the possible pleasure out of it! What else is money made for? They say you live on milk and salad. Why the Hell—"
"Thanks! I have all I want; sufficient to pay for the minor pleasures of life."
"Such as?"
"A clean handkerchief now and then. I see no harm in dying poor."
"Where would I be, if my grandfather had seen no harm in it? Don't you really believe that money sweetens all things, as Pepys says?"
The diarist was one of Keith's favourite authors. He called him a representative Englishman and regretted that the type was becoming extinct. Eames would reply:
"Your Pepys was a disgusting climber. He makes me ill with his snobbishness and silver plate and monthly gloatings over his gains. I wonder you can read the man. He may have been a capable official, but he was not a gentleman."
"Have you ever seen a gentleman, except on a tailor's fashion-plate?"
"Yes. One, at all events; my father. However, we won't labour that point; we have discussed it before, haven't we? Your money would sweeten nothing for me. It would procure me neither health of body nor peace of mind. Thanks all the same."
Mr. Keith, true to his ancestral tenacity, was not easily put off. He would begin again:
"George Gissing was a scholar and a man of refinement, like yourself. You know what he says? 'Put money in thy purse, for to lack the current coin of the realm is to lack the privileges of humanity.' The privileges of humanity: you understand, Eames?"
"Does he say that? Well, I am not surprised. I have sometimes noticed gross, unhealthy streaks in Gissing."
"I will tell you what is unhealthy, Eames. Your own state of mind. You derive a morbid pleasure from denying yourself the common emoluments of life. It's a form of self-indulgence. I wish you would open your windows and let the sun in. You are living by candlelight. If you analysed yourself closely—"
"I don't analyse myself closely. I call it a mistake. I try to see soberly. I try to think logically. I try to live becomingly."
"I am glad you don't always succeed," Keith would reply, with a horrible accent on the word "always." "Heaven shield me from a clean-minded man!"
"We have touched on that subject once or twice already, have we not? Your arguments will never entangle me, though I think I can be fair to them. Money enables you to multiply your sensations—to travel about, and so forth. In doing so, you multiply your personality, as it were; you lengthen your days, figuratively speaking; you come in contact with more diversified aspects of life than a person of my limited means can afford to do. The body, you say, is a subtle instrument to be played upon in every variety of manner and rendered above all things as sensitive as possible to pleasurable impressions. In fact, you want to be a kind of Aeolian harp. I admit that this is more than a string of sophisms; you may call it a philosophy of life. But it is not my philosophy. It does not appeal to me in the least. You will get no satisfaction out of me, Keith, with your hedonism. You are up against a brick wall. You speak of my deliberately closing up avenues of pleasure. They ought to be closed up, I say, if a man is to respect himself. I do not call my body a subtle instrument; I call it a damned nuisance. I don't want to be an Aeolian harp. I don't want my sensations multiplied; I don't want my personality extended; I don't want my outlook widened; I don't want money; I don't want aspects of life. I'm positive, I'm literal. I know exactly what I want. I want to concern myself with what lies under my hand. I want to be allowed to get on with my work. I want to bring old Perrelli up to date."
"My dear fellow! We all love you for that. And I am delighted to think you are not really clean-minded, in spite of all these lofty protestations. Because you aren't, are you?"
If, after such discourse, the bibliographer still remained mulishly clean-minded, Keith would return to the psychological necessity of "appropriate reaction" and cite an endless list of sovereigns, popes, and other heroes who, in their moments of leisure, were wise enough to react against the persistent strain of purity. Then, via Alexander of Macedon, "one of the greatest sons of earth," as Bishop Thirlwall had called him—Alexander, with whose deplorable capacity for "unbending" a scholar like Eames was perfectly familiar—he would switch the conversation into realms of military science, and begin to expatiate upon the wonderful advance which has been made since those days in the arts of defensive and offensive warfare—the decline of the phalanx, the rise of artillery, the changed system of fortifications, those modern inventions in the department of land defences, sea defences and, above all, aerial defences, parachutes, hydroplanes….
Whereupon a curious change would creep over the bibliographer's honest face. He knew what this talk portended. His features would assume an air of strained but polite attention, and he generally broke off the conversation and took his departure at the earliest moment consistent with ordinary civility. On such occasions he was wont to think his friend Keith an offensive cad. Sadly shaking his head, he would say to himself:
Mr. Keith was apt to be a bore, but he could do things properly when he wanted, as for example on the occasion of his annual bean-feast. There were no two opinions about that. The trees, arbours, and winding ways of his garden were festooned that evening with hundreds of Chinese lamps whose multi-coloured light mingled pleasantly with the purer radiance of the moon, shining directly overhead. It was like fairyland, the Duchess was wont to declare, year after year. And Don Francesco who, on this particular night, clung closely to her skirts in view of that impending conversion to the Roman Church, replied laughingly:
"If fairyland is anything like this, I would not object to living there. Provided always, dear lady, that you are to be found somewhere on the premises. What do you say, Mr. Heard?"
"I will gladly join your party, if you will allow me," replied the bishop. "This aspic could not be better. It seems to open up a new world of delights. Dear me. I fear I am becoming a gourmand, like Lucullus. Though Lucullus, to be sure, was a temperate man. No, thank you, Don Francesco; not a drop more! My liver, you know. I declare it's making me feel quite dizzy."
As Marten had foretold, the wine flowed in torrents. There was a bewildering display of cool dishes, too, prepared under the personal supervision of the chef—that celebrated artist whom Keith had inveigled out of the service of a life-loving old Ambassador by the threat of disclosing to the police some hideously disreputable action in the man's past life which His Excellently had artlessly confided to him, under the seal of secrecy.
Mr. Samuel, a commercial gentleman who had got stuck somehow or other at the Alpha and Omega Club, cast a practised eye over the wines, chaud-froids, fruits, salads, ices, the lanterns and other joys of the evening and announced, after a rough computation, that Keith's outlay for that little show must have run well into three figures. Mr. White agreed, adding that it did one good to get a mouthful of drinkable fizz after Parker's poison.
"Ah, but you ought to try the punch."
"Come on then," said White.
They moved away and soon stumbled upon a cluster of bibulous mortals in their element. Miss Wilberforce was there. She liked to linger near the fountain-head; the fountain-head, on this occasion, being a cyclopean bowl of iced punch. The lady was in grand condition; festive, playful, positively flirtatious. She nibbled, between her libations, at a savoury biscuit (she hated solid food, as a rule) in order, she said, to staunch her thirst; she told everybody that it was her birthday. Yes, her birthday! In fact, she was quite a different creature from the bashful visitor at the Duchess's entertainment; she was hardly shy at all.
"Punch and moonlight!" she was saying. "It's all as right as rain—birthday or no birthday."
Miss Wilberforce had about forty birthdays in the year, each of them due to be worthily celebrated like this one.
It was a sad and scandalous business. Better things might have been expected of her. She was so obviously a lady. She had been so nicely brought up. While there was still an English Church on the island, she never failed to attend Divine Service, despite her Sunday headache. She was often the only member of the congregation—she and Mr. Freddy Parker, whose official dignity and English origin, however questionable his Christianity, constrained him to put in an appearance. Mortal enemies, they used to sit on opposite pews, glaring across the vacant building to see if they could catch each other asleep, responding at irregular intervals out of sheer cussedness, and trying vainly to feel more charitable during those moments when the scraggy young curate—generally some social failure who raked together a few pounds from these hazardous continental engagements—recited the Gospel according to Saint John. Those days were over. She was definitely on the downward grade. Three members of the Club and two Russian apostles were even then engaged in tossing up who should have the privilege of seeing her home. The lot fell to Mr. Richards, the excellent Vice-President, an elderly gentleman whose carefully parted hair and flowing beard made him the very picture of respectability. To look at him, one would have said that the dear lady could not be in better hands.
Mr. Keith was a perfect host. He had the right word for everybody; his infectious conviviality made them all straightway at their ease. The overdressed native ladies, the priests and officials moving about in prim little circles, were charmed with his affable manner "so different from most Englishmen"; likewise that flock of gleeful tourists who had suddenly turned up, craving for admission without a single letter of introduction between them, and were forthwith welcomed on the strength of the fact that one of their party had been to Easter Island. Even the PARROCO could not help laughing as Keith, with irresistible good nature, seized him by the arm and thrust a MARRON GLACE between his lips. An ideal host! The "Falernian system" was in abeyance that day. It was the one evening in the year when, in the interests of his guests, he could be relied upon to remain absolutely sober to the last moment; a state of affairs which doubtless had its drawbacks, seeing that it made him, in longer conversational efforts, rather more abstruse and unintelligible than usual—"blind sober," as Don Francesco once said. Even sobriety was forgiven him. He took the precaution, of course, to keep the house locked and to replace his ordinary services of plate by Elkington; people being pardonably fond of carrying away memories of so enjoyable an evening. Bottles, plates, and glasses were smashed by the dozen. He liked to see them smashed. It proved that everybody was having a good time.
A person unacquainted with Keith's nature could never have guessed what a sacrifice this entertainment was to him. He was an egoist, a solitary, in his pleasures; he used to contend that no garden on earth, however spacious, was large enough for more than one man. And this little Nepenthe domain, though he saw it for only a few weeks in the year, was the apple of his eye. He guarded it jealously, troubled at the thought that its chaste recesses might be profaned, if but for one day, by the presence of a motley assemblage of nonentities. But a man of his income is expected to do something to amuse his fellow-creatures. One owes certain duties to society. Hence this gathering, which had become a regular feature in the spring calendar of the island. Having once decided on the step, he did not propose to be bound by conventionalities which were the poison of rational human intercourse. Unlike the Duchess and Mr. Parker, he refused to draw the line at Russians; the Club, too, was represented by some of its most characteristic members. He often descanted on the social intolerance of men, their lack of graciousness and generous instincts; he would have made room for the Devil himself—at all events in his "outer circle." Such being the case, it stands to reason that he did not draw the line at freethinkers. It was sometimes rather hard to know where he did draw the line.
The red-haired judge, with straw hat and Mephistophelean limp, was there, looking like an Offenbach villain out for a spree. After being effusively greeted by the host—they understood one another perfectly—and forced to eat a quantity of some pink-looking stuff which he could not resist although knowing it would disagree with him, His Worship, left to his own devices, hobbled along in pursuit of his new friend Muhlen. He found him, and was soon relating succulent anecdotes of his summer holidays—anecdotes, all about women, which Muhlen tried to cap with experiences of his own. The judge always went to the same place—Salsomaggiore, a thermal station whose waters were good for his sore legs. He described to Muhlen how, in jaunty clothes and shining shoes, he pottered about its trim gardens, ogling the ladies who always ogled back; it was the best fun in the world, and sometimes—! Mr. Malipizzo, for all his incredible repulsiveness, posed as an ardent and successful lover of women. No doubt it cost money. But he was never at a loss for that commodity; he had other sources of revenue, he hinted, besides his wretched official salary.
Wandering along arm in arm, they passed various contingents of the Russians, male and female, whose scarlet blouses shone brightly under the variegated globes of light. These exotics were happy as children, full of fun and laughter; none more so than the young giant Krasnojabkin, whose name had been coupled by scandalmongers with that of Madame Steynlin. An admiring audience had gathered around him while he performed a frenzied cancan in an open moonlit space; he always danced when he had enough to drink. The judge looked on with envy. It sickened him to realize that those far-famed luncheons and dinners of Madame Steynlin were being devoured by a savage like this. And the money he doubtless extracted from her! Presently a loud guffaw from some bosky thicket announced that the friends had been joined by the Financial Commissioner for Nicaragua. The Trinity was complete. They were always together, those three, playing cards at the Club or sipping lemonade and vermouth on the terrace.
"Oh, Mr. Keith," said the Duchess in her sweetest accents, "do you know of what this entertainment makes me think?"
"Shall I guess?"
"Nothing of the kind! It makes me think that it is very, very wrong of a man like you to be a bachelor. You want a wife."
"To want a wife, Duchess, is better than to need one. Especially if it happens to be only your neighbour's."
"I am sure that means something dreadful!"
Don Francesco broke in:
"Tell me, Keith, how about your wives? What have you done with them? Is it true that you sold them at various Oriental ports?"
"They got mislaid somehow. All that was before my Great Renunciation."
"Is it true that you kept them locked up in different parts of London?"
"I made it a rule never to introduce my lady-friends to one another. They are so fond of comparing notes. Novelists try to make us believe that women delight in men's society. Rubbish! They prefer that of their own sex. But please didn't refer to the same painful period of my life."
The priest insisted:
"Is it true that you gave the plumpest of them to the Sultan of Colambang in exchange for the recipe of some wonderful sauce? Is it true that you used to be known as the Lightning Lover? Is it true that you used to say, in your London days, that no season was complete without a ruined home?"
"She exaggerates a good deal, that lady."
"Is it true that you once got so drunk that you mistook one of those red-coated Chelsea pensioners for a pillar-box and tried to post a letter in his stomach?"
"I'm very short-sighted, Don Francesco. Besides, all that was in a previous incarnation. Do come and listen to the music! May I offer you my arm, Duchess? I have a surprise for you."
"You have a surprise for us every year, you bad man," she said. "Now do try and see if you can't get married. It makes one feel so good."
Keith had a peculiar habit of vanishing for a day or two to the mainland, and returning with some rare orchid from the hills, a piece of Greek statuary, a new gardener, or something. Sowing his wild oats, he called it. During this last visit he had come across the tracks of an almost extinct tribe of gipsies that roamed up and down the glens of those mysterious mountains whose purple summits were visible, on clear days, from his own windows. After complex and costly negotiations they had allowed themselves to be embarked, for this one night only, in a capacious sailing boat to Nepenthe, in order to pleasure Mr. Keith's guests. And here they sat, huddled together in dignified repose and abashed, as it seemed, by the strangeness of their surroundings; a bizarre group stained to an almost negro tint by exposure to sun and winds and rain.
Here they sat—gnarled old men and sinewy fathers of families, with streaming black hair, golden earrings, hooded cloaks of wood and sandals bound with leathern thongs. Mothers were there, shapeless bundles of rags, nursing infants at the breast. The girls were draped in gaudy hues, and ablaze with metal charms and ornaments on forehead and arms and ankles. They showed their flashing teeth and smiled from time to time in frank wonder, whereas the boys, superbly savage, like young panthers caught in a trap, kept their eyes downcast or threw distrustful, defiant glances round them. Here they sat in silence, smoking tobacco and taking deep draughts out of a pitcher of milk which was handed round from one to the other. Occasionally the older people would pick up their instruments—bagpipes of sheepskin, small drums and gourd-like mandolines—and draw from them strange dronings, gurglings, thrummings, twangings; soon a group of youngsters would rise gravely from the ground and, without any preconcerted signal, begin to move in a dance—a formal and intricate measure, such as had never yet been witnessed on Nepenthe.
Something inhuman and yet troublingly personal lay in the performance; it invaded the onlookers with a sense of disquietude. There was primeval ecstasy in those strains and gestures. Giant moths, meanwhile, fluttered overhead, rattling their frail wings against the framework of the paper lanterns; the south wind passed through the garden like the breath of a friend, bearing the aromatic burden of a thousand night-blooming shrubs and flowers. Young people, meeting here, would greet one another shyly, with unfamiliar ceremoniousness, and then, after listening awhile to the music and exchanging a few awkward phrases, wander away as if by common consent—further away from this crowd and garish brilliance, far away, into some fragrant cell, where the light was dim.
"What do you make of it?" asked Keith of Madame Steynlin, who was listening intently. "Is this music? If so, I begin to understand its laws. They are physical. I seem to feel the effect of it in the lower part of my chest. Perhaps that is the region which musical people call their ear. Tell me, Madame Steynlin, what is music?"
"That's a puzzle," said the bishop, greatly interested.
"How can I explain it to you? It is so complicated, and you have so many guests this evening. You are coming to my picnic after the festival of Saint Eulalia? Yes? Well, I will try to explain it then"—and her eye turned, with a kind of maternal solicitude, down the pathway to where, in that patch of bright moonshine, her young friend Krasnojabkin, gloriously indifferent to gipsies and everything else, was astounding people by the audacity of his terpsichorean antics.
"Let that be a promise," Keith replied. "Ah, Count Caloveglia! How good of you to come. I would not have asked you to such a worldly function had I not thought that this dancing might interest you."
"It does, it does!" said the old aristocrat, thoughtfully sipping champagne out of an enormous goblet which he carried in his hand. "It makes me dream of that East which it has never been my fortune, alas, to behold. What a flawless group! There is something archaic, Oriental, in their attitudes; they seem to be fraught with all the mystery, the sadness, of life that is past—of things remote from ourselves."
"My gipsies," said Keith, "are not everybody's gipsies."
"I think they despise us! And this austere regularity in the steps of the dancers, this vibrating accompaniment that dwells persistently on one note—how primitive, how scornfully unintellectual! It is like a passionate lover knocking to gain an entrance into our hearts. And he succeeds. He breaks down the barrier by the oldest and best of lovers' expedients—sheer reiteration of monotony. A lover who reasons is no lover."
"How true that is," remarked Madame Steynlin.
"Sheer monotony," repeated the Count. "And it is the same with their pictorial art. We blame the Orientals for their chill cult of geometric designs, their purely stylistic decoration, their endless repetitions, as opposed to our variety and love of floral, human, or other naturalistic motives. But by this simple means they attain their end—a direct appeal. Their art, like their music, goes straight to the senses; it is not deflected or disturbed by any intervening medium. Colour plays its part; the sombre, throbbing sounds of these instruments—the glowing tints of their carpets and tapestries. Talking of gipsies, do you know whether our friend van Koppen has arrived?"
"Koppen? A very up-to-date nomad, who takes the whole world for his camping-ground. No, not yet. But he'll turn up in a day or two."
Count Caloveglia was concerned, just then, about Mr. van Koppen. He had a little business to transact with him—he fervently hoped that the millionaire would not forgo his annual visit to Nepenthe.
"I shall be glad to meet him again," he remarked carelessly. Then looking up he saw Denis, who moved under the trees alone. Observing that he seemed rather disconsolate, he walked up to him and said in a fatherly tone: "Will you confer a favour, Mr. Denis, on an old man who lives much alone? Will you come and see me, as you promised? My daughter is away just now and will not be back till midsummer. I wish you could have met her. Meanwhile, I am a little solitary. I have also a few antiquities that might interest you."
While Denis, slightly embarrassed, was uttering some appropriate words, the bishop suddenly asked:
"Where is Mrs. Meadows? Wasn't she coming down to-night?"
"Of course she was," said Keith. "Isn't she here? What can this mean? Your cousin is a particular friend of mine, Heard, though I have not seen her for the last six days or so. Something must be wrong. That baby, I expect."
"I missed her once already," said Heard. "I'll write and make an appointment, or go up again. By the way, Count—you remember our conversation? Wel, I have thought of an insuperable objection to your Mediterranean theory. The sirocco. You will never change the sirocco. The Elect of the Earth will never endure it all their lives."
"I think we can change the sirocco," replied the Count, meditatively. "We can tame it, at all events. I do not know much about its history; you must ask Mr. Eames—"
"Who is at home," interrupted Keith, "closeted with his Perrelli."
"What has been, may be," continued the old man, oracularly. "I question whether the sirocco was as obnoxious in olden days as now, otherwise the ancients, who had absurdly sensitive skins, would have complained of it more frequently. The deforestation of Northern Africa, I suspect, has much to do with it. Frenchmen are now trying to revive those prosperous conditions which Mohammedanism has destroyed. Oh, yes! I don't despair of muzzling the sirocco, even as we are muzzling that often Mediterranean pest, the malaria."
Keith observed:
"Petronius, I remember, speaks of the North wind being the mistress of the Tyrrhenian. He would not use such language nowadays, unless alluding to its violence rather than its prevalence. Once I thought of translating Petronius. But I discovered certain passages in the book which are almost improper. I don't think the public ought to be put into possession of such stuff. I am rather sorry; I like Petronius—the poetical fragments, I mean; they make me regret that I was not born under the Roman Empire. People are leaving," he added. "I have said good-bye to about fifty. I shall be able to get a drink soon."
"So you were born out of time and out of place, like many of us," laughed the Bishop.
Count Caloveglia said:
"It is an academic problem, and therefore a problem which does not exist for me, and therefore a problem dear to your own metaphysical heart, to enquire whether a man is ever born at an inopportune moment. We use the phrase. If we took thought we would discard it. For what is the truth of the matter? The truth is that a man, of whom we say this, is born at exactly the right moment; that those with whose customs and aspirations he seems to be in discord have urgent need of him at that particular time. No great man is ever born too soon or too late. When we say that the time is not ripe for this or that celebrity, we confess by implication that this very man, and no other, is required. Was Giordano Bruno, or Edgar Poe, born out of time? Surely no generation needed them more imperiously than their own. Only fools are born out of time. And yet—no; not even they. For where should we be without them?"
He smiles suavely, as though some pleasant thought was passing through his mind.
"At any rate a good many people die too soon or too late," said Mr. Edgar Marten who, after doing full justice to the food and drinks, had suddenly appeared on the scene. "Often too late," he added.
Keith, despite his professions of sanity and reason, had an inexplicable, invincible horror of death; he quailed at the mere mention of the black phantom. The subject being not at all to his taste, he promptly remarked:
"The scholar Grosseteste was unquestionably born too soon. And I know one man who is born too late. Who? Yourself, Count. You were made for the Periclean epoch."
"Thank you," said that gentleman with a gracious wave of his hand. "But forgive me for disagreeing with you. Had I lived in that age, I should be lacking in reverence for what it accomplished. I should be too near to its life; unable, as you say, to see the forest for the trees. I should be like Thucydides, a most sensible person who, if I recollect aright, barely mentions Ictinus and the rest of them. How came it about? This admirable writer imagined they were building a temple for Greece; he lacked the interval of centuries which has allowed mankind to see their work in its true perspective. He possessed traditional moral standards whereby to judge the actions of historical contemporaries; he could praise or blame his politicians with a good conscience. For the Parthenon creators he had no sure norm. The standards were not yet evolved. Pheidias was a talented fellow-citizen—a hewer in stone by profession: what could he know of the relations of Pheidias to posterity? Great things can only be seen at a proper distance. Pheidias, to him, may have been little more than an amateur, struggling with brute material in the infancy of his trade or calling. No, my friend! I am glad not to be coeval with Pericles. I am glad to recognize Hellenic achievements at their true worth. I am glad to profit by that wedge of time which has enabled me to reverence things fair and eternal."
"Things fair and eternal," echoed Keith, who was getting too thirsty and restless to discuss art-matters. "Come with me! I will show you things fair and eternal."
He led the way to a distant arbour, overhung with a canopy of blood-red passion-flowers and girt about by design dangled from the clustering foliage in its roof. Within, directly under the beams, all by itself, on an upright chair beside a small table, sat an incongruous, startling, awe-inspiring apparition—a grimy old man of Mongolian aspect. He might have been frozen to stone, so immobile, so lifeless were his features. Belated visitors passed near the entrance of the shrine, peered within as at some outlandish and sinister freak of nature, and moved on with jocular words. Nobody ventured to overstep the threshold, whether from religious fear or because of something repellent, something almost putrescent, which radiated from his person. A contingent of Little White Cows, a kind of bodyguard, stood at a respectful distance beyond, intent upon his every movement. The Master never stirred. He sat there to be looked at—accustomed to homage almost divine; beatifically inane. Like the Christians of old, he wore no hat. The head was nearly bald. A long cloak, glistening with grease stains, swathed his limbs and portly belly, on which one suspected multitudinous wrinkles of fat. Two filmy lidless eyes, bulging on a level with his forehead, stared into vacuity; his snub nose grew out of a flattened face whose pallor was accentuated by the reflection of the glittering leaves—it looked faded and sodden, like blotting-paper that has been left out all night in the rain. Sporadic greenish-grey hairs were scattered about his chin. The mouth was agape.
On Mr. Keith's appearance he made no sign of recognition. Presently, however, his lips seemed to get out of control. They moved; they began to chatter and to mumble, in childish fashion, the inarticulate yearnings of eld. Keith said, as though displaying some museum curiosity:
"Mine is the only house on Nepenthe which the Master still deigns to enter. I'm afraid he has grown very groggy on his pins of late; if he sat on any by a straight-backed chair they would never get him up again. To think that was once a pretty little boy…. Poor old fellow! I know what he wants. They've been neglecting him, those young idiots."
He departed, and soon returned with a tumbler full of raw whisky which he placed on the table within reach of the arm. A flaccid, unwholesome-looking hand was raised slowly, in a kind of deprecatory gesture; then allowed to fall again upon the belly where it lay, with the five fingers, round and chalky-white, extended like the rays of a starfish. Nothing more happened.
"We must go away for a while," said Keith, "or else he won't touch it.He does not object to alcohol, you know. Whisky has not come out of awarm-blooded beast. But it's going into one. A kind of AsiaticSocrates, don't you think?"
"A Buddha," suggested the Count. "A Buddha in second-rate alabaster. AChinese Buddha of a bad, realistic period."
"It's odd," remarked Mr. Heard. "He reminds me of a dead fish.Something ancient and fishlike—it's that mouth—"
"He's a beauty!" interrupted Edgar Marten, sniffing with disgust. "Eyes like a boiled haddock. And that thing has the cheek to call itself a Messiah. Thank God I'm a Jew; it's not business of mine. But if I were a Christian, I'd bash his blooming head in. Damned if I wouldn't. The frowsy, fetid, flow-blown fraud. Or what's the matter with the Dog's Home?"
"Come, come," said Mr. Heard, who had taken rather a liking to this violent youngster and was feeling more than usually indulgent that evening. "Come! He can't help his face, I fancy. Have you no room in your heart for an original? And don't you think—quite apart from questions of religion—that we tourists ought to be grateful to these people for diversifying the landscape with their picturesque red blouses and things?"
"I have no eye for landscape, Mr. Heard, save in so far as it indicates strata and faults and other geological points. The picturesque don't interest me. I am full of Old Testamentary strains; I can't help looking at men from the ethical point of view. And what have people's clothes to do with their religion? He can't help his face, you say. Well, if he can't help that greasy old mackintosh, I'll eat my hat. Can't a fellow be a Messiah without sporting a pink shirt or fancy dressing-gown or blue pyjamas or something? But there you are! I defy you to name me a single-barrelled crank. If a man is a religious lunatic, or a vegetarian, he is sure to be touched in some other department as well; he will be an anti-vivisectionist, a nutfooder, costume-maniac, stamp-collector, or a spiritualist into the bargain. Haven't you ever noticed that? And isn't he dirty? Where is the connection between piety and dirt? I suggest they are both relapses into ancestral channels and the one drags the other along with it. When I see a thing like this, I want to hew it in pieces. Agag, Mr. Heard; Agag. I must have another look at this specimen; one does not see such a sight every day. He is a living fossil—post-pleistocene."
He drew off; Keith and the Count, engaged in some deep conversation, had also moved a few paces away.
Mr. Heard stood alone, his back turned to the Master. Moonlight still flooded the earth, the lanterns were flickering and sputtering. Some had gone out, leaving gaps of darkness in the lighted walls. Many of the guests retired without bidding farewell to their host; he liked them to feel at their ease, to take "French leave" whenever so disposed—to depart "A L'ANGLAISE," as the French say. The garden was nearly empty. A great quietude had fallen upon its path and thickets. From afar resounded the boisterous chorus of a party of revellers loth to quit the scene; it was suddenly broken by a terrific crash and bursts of laughter. Some table had been knocked over.