Standing there, the bishop could not but listen to Keith, who had raised his voice in emphasis and was saying to the Count, in his best Keithean manner:
"I am just coming to that point. A spring-board is what humanity needs. What better one can be contrived than this pure unadulterated Byzantianism. Cretinism, I call it. Look at the Orthodox Church. A repository of apocalyptic nonsense such as no sane man can take seriously. Nonsense of the right kind, the uncompromising kind. That is my point. The paralysing, sterilizing cult of these people offers a far better spring-board into a clean element of thought than our English Church, whose DEMI-VIERGE concessions to common sense afford seductive resting-places to the intellectually weak-knee'd. Do I make myself clear? I'm getting infernally thirsty."
"I quite agree with you, my friend. The Russians have got a better spring-board than the English. The queer thing is, that the Russians won't jump, whereas the Englishman often does. Well, well! We cannot live without fools."
Mr. Heard was slightly perturbed by these words. A good fellow like Keith! "DEMI-VIERGE concessions to common sense"; what did he mean by that? Did his church really make such concessions?
"I'll think about it to-morrow," he decided.
The Master, when they returned to him, had not budged from his resting-place. The fingers still lay, starfish-wise, upon the folds of that soiled homespun; his eyes still stared out of the leafy bower; his face still wore its mask of placid imbecility.
The glass was empty.
Slowly, as on a pivot, his head turned in the direction of the bodyguard.
Forthwith some favourite disciple—not Krasnojabkin, who happened to be escorting Madame Steynlin to her villa just then—darted to his side; with the help of two lady-apostles known, respectively, as the "goldfinch" and the "red apple," they conveyed him out of that shelter into the deserted, moonlit garden. He leaned heavily on the arm of the youth; peevish sounds, quasi-human, proceeded from his colourless lips. And now he was almost speaking; desirous, it seemed, of formulating some truth too deep for human utterance.
"I bet I know what he is saying," whispered Keith. "It's something about the Man-God."
The Russian Government is notoriously tender-hearted. But even the worm will turn….
Scholars who have treated the life of the ex-monk Bazhakuloff divide it into five clearly marked periods: the probationary, dialectical, political, illumined and expiatory.
The first began in youth when, being driven from his father's house by reason of his vagrant habits and other incorrigible vices, he entered a monastery near Kasan. Despite occasional lapses prompted by the hot blood of his years and punished with harsh disciplinary measures, he seems to have performed his monkish duties with sufficient zeal. It was observed, however, that with increasing years he became unduly interested in questions of dogma. He talked too freely; he was always arguing. Being unable to read or write, he developed an astonishing memory for things he had heard and faces he had seen; he brought them up at inconvenient moments. He grew factious, obstreperous, declaring that there was much in the constitution of the Holy Russian Church which ought to be amended and brought up to date. What people wanted, he said, was a New Jerusalem. A violent altercation with his Superior touching the attributes of the Holy Ghost ended in a broken jaw-bone on the part of the older man, and the expulsion of the younger. The dialectical period had set in. The convent inmates, on the whole, were glad to see the last of him—particularly the Father Superior.
We next find him living in a large barn about fifteen miles from Moscow. The Superior being unwilling to publish the true facts of the broken jaw-bone, a certain fame, the fame of an earnest but misunderstood religious innovator, had preceded him. Adherents, barely twenty at first, gathered to his side. These disciples, humble analphabetics like himself, have left us no word of what passed at those long discussions. Certain it is that he now began to formulate the rules of his Revised Church. They were to live on charity, to go bare-headed, and to wear red blouses—like the Christians of old. The charm of these simple regulations spread abroad, and gained him fresh recruits. There were now some cultured folk among them, who collected his saying into the GOLDEN BOOK. He decided to limit his disciples to the "Sacred Number 63," and to call them "Little White Cows." Asked why he chose this title, he answered that cows were pure and useful animals without which humanity could not live; even so were his disciples. The innate good sense of this speech increased his reputation. About this time, too, he would sometimes prophesy, and undergo long periods of motionless self-abstraction. At the end of one of these latter, after tasting no food or drink for three and a half hours, he gave utterance to what was afterwards known as the First Revelation. It ran to this effect: "The Man-God is the Man-God, and not the God-Man." Asked how he arrived at so stupendous an aphorism, he answered that it just came to him. There were troubles in the neighbourhood over the audacity of this utterance; some called it a divine inspiration, to the majority it was known as the Unnamable Heresy. For a brief while the town was formed into two camps, and the Chief of Police, a prudent official, was at his wit's end what to do with these inflammable elements, seeing that the ex-monk's followers had now swelled to several hundreds and contained not a few of the more influential aristocrats of the city. In this dilemma, he applied for instruction to the Procurator of the Holy Synod. That gentleman, having considered the case, rashly decided that a visionary of this stamp might be useful for furthering certain projects of his own. He hoped, by placing under an obligation, to fashion out of the young reformer an amenable instrument—a miscalculation which he lived (though not for long) to repent. Under the Procurator's aegis, Bazhakuloff was summoned to the Capital. The political period was beginning. Moscow, on the whole, was glad to see the last of him—particularly the Chief of Police.
There began the most brilliant epoch of his life. By steps which it is needless to trace, he fought and wormed his way into the favour of the Court. A good deal of his worldly success may well have been due, as his enemies assert, to an incredible mixture of cringing, astuteness, and impudence. It stands to reason, however, that a man of this type must have possessed sterling qualities of his own to be found occupying—all this was years and years ago—a suite of apartments in the Palace, where he lived in splendour, a Power behind the Throne, the Confidental Adviser of the Highest Circles. His monkish garb was soon encrusted with orders and decorations, no State function was complete without his presence, no official appointment, from the highest and lowest sphere of government, was held to be valid without his sanction. Red blouses, one of several keys to his favour, could be counted by thousands. He crushed opposition with an iron hand. He wrought a miracle or two; but what chiefly accounted for the almost divine veneration in which he was held was a succession of lucky prophecies—none luckier than that wherein, during one of his moments of inspired self-abstraction, he foretold the early and violent death of the former protector, the man to whom he owed this rise to the pinnacles of fame. For even so it fell out. Not many days later the Procurator of the Holy Synod was found murdered in bed by an unknown hand. A certain journalist, writing from Switzerland, boldly states that the Procurator was murdered at the instigation of Bazhakuloff and claims to have heard, from an eye-witness whom he does not name, of a bitter quarrel between the two on the subject of a certain lady as to whose identity we are also left in doubt. It may be true; such things have happened ere now. This particular writer's credibility, however, is none of the best; he has been convicted over and over again of forcing the note in his diatribes against what he calls "retrogression into idolatry." There was certainly a good deal of unrest in the country during the period of the ex-monk's ascendency; no less than 13,783 persons had been banished to Siberia, and 3,756 executed at his orders. Yet nothing, it seemed, could shatter his position when, with appalling suddenness, a thunderbolt descended. Nobody knows to this day what took place. It was something Russian; some scandal in the Highest Spheres which may see the light of day, centuries hence, when the Imperial Archives are disclosed as musty court history to the eyes of students curious in such matters. At this crisis, when 44,323 persons, mostly liberals, were awaiting trial in the prisons of the Capital, the ex-monk would doubtless have been quietly removed after the fashion of court favourites, not by his adherents, now numbering many hundred thousands, threatened a revolution. A secret compromise was effected. He was banished, with every outward mark of disgrace, to a monastery in the remote and inhospitable region of Viatka, there to meditate upon the instability of human affairs. The illumined period was drawing nigh. The Capital, on the whole, was glad to see the last of him—particuarly the prisoners awaiting trial.
The diet and discipline nearly killed him at first. He was consoled by knowing that his fame had spread far and wide. The Court being unwilling to publish the true facts of his disgrace, he was regarded as a martyr, a victim of political intrigue, an injured saint. Disciples multiplied. The GOLDEN BOOK was filled with priceless sayings—wise and salutary maxims which echoed from end to end of the country. The New Jerusalem took on a definite shape; the nucleus of the movement, the initiated among his followers, were retained as the "Sacred 63"; he called them his apostles and himself their Messiah, which some people thought rather presumptuous of him. His reputation for sanctity became such that he was once more a power to be reckoned with; the Court, in fact, was on the verge of receiving him into favour again, when the Second Revelation was announced. It ran to this effect: Flesh and blood of warm-blooded beasts is Abomination to the Little White Cows. Asked how he contrived to formulate so novel and tremendous a proposition, he answered that it just came to him. His followers—there were about three million of them now—instantly refused to touch the Unclean Thing, and all would have gone well but for the fact that the Army was tinctured with the New Faith, and that the Grand Dukes had recently become involved in extensive and lucrative contracts for supplying the troops with mean. The soldiery refusing to eat either beef or mutton or pork, percentages declined. These leaders took up a firm patriotic attitude. The health and morale of the entire Army, they declared, was dependent upon a sound nutritive diet obtainable only through the operation of certain radioactive oxydised magneto-carbon-hydrates which exist nowhere save in the muscular tissue of animals. This new heresy endangered the very foundations of Empire! They were not people to compromise where questions of national prosperity were concerned. They suggested, privately, that he should cancel his Revelation. He refused. They then sent him a confidential messenger offering the choice of assassination or deportation within the space of three hours. He inclined to the latter alternative, and was straightway conveyed to the frontier by special train with as many rouble notes in his pocket as he had been able to scrape together in the flurry of departure. Some disturbances broke out when the news of his banishment became known; a few whiffs of grape-shot worked wonders. The majority of his adherents abjured their error; the rest of them, aided by charitable contributions from a secret committee of enthusiasts, found their way abroad to dwell under the shadow of the banished Messiah. The expiatory period was approaching. Russia, on the whole, was glad to see the last of him—particularly the Grand Ducal party.
A broken man, he decided to establish himself on Nepenthe, drawn thither partly on account of the climate but chiefly by the report of its abounding lobsters and fishes, an article of diet of which he was inordinately fond. Disciples followed singly, and in batches. Their scarlet blouses became a familiar object in the streets of the place; good-natured and harmless folks for the most part who, if they ran up bills with the local trades-people which they failed to pay, did so not out of natural dishonesty but because they had no money. They used to bathe, in summertime, at a certain little cove near the foot of the promontory on which Madame Steynlin's villa was situated. She watched their naked antics at first with disapproval—what could you expect, she would say, from Russians? Then she observed them eating raw crabs and things. It struck her that they must be hungry. Being a lady of the sentimental type, childless, and never so happy as when feeding or mothering somebody, she took to sending them down baskets of food, or carrying it herself. They were so poor, so far from their homes, so picturesque in those red shirts and leathern belts!
Of late years Madame Steynlin had given up marrying, having at last, after many broken hopes, definitely convinced herself that husbands were only after her money. Rightly or wrongly, she wanted to be loved for herself; loved, she insisted, body and soul. Even as the fires of Erebus slumber beneath their mantle of ice, she concealed, under a varnish of conventionality—the crust was not so thick in her case—a nature throbbing with passion. She was everlastingly unappeased, because incurably romantic. All life, she truly declared, is a search for a friend. Unfortunately she sought with her eyes open, having never grasped the elementary truth that to find a friend one must close one eye: to keep him—two. She always attributed to men qualities which, she afterwards discovered, they did not possess. Her life since the marrying period had been a breathless succession of love affairs, each more eternal than the last.
In matters such as these, Madame Steynlin was the reverse of the Duchess. True to her ideal of La Pompadour, that lady did not mind how many men danced attendance on her—the more the merrier. Nor did she bother about their ages; for all she cared, they might be, and often were, the veriest crocks. She was rather particular, however, about stiff collars and things; the appearance and conversation of her retinue, she avowed, should be of the kind to pass muster in good society. Madame Steynlin liked to have not more than one man escorting her at a time, and he should be young, healthy-looking, and full of life. In regard to minor matters she preferred, if anything, Byronic collars to starched ones; troubling little, for the rest, what costume her cavalier was wearing or what opinions he expressed. In fact, she liked youngsters to be frank, impetuous, extravagant in their views and out of the common rut. The two ladies had been likened to Divine and Earthly Love, or to Venus Urania and Venus Pandemos—a comparison which was manifestly unfair to both of them.
It was during this summer bathing that Madame Steynlin had made acquaintance of what was, at the time, the Master's favourite disciple. His name happened to be Peter—Peter Arsenievitch Krasnojabkin. He was a fine son of earth—a strapping young giant who threw himself into eating, drinking, and other joys of life with enviable barbaric zest. There was not an ounce of piety in his composition. He had donned the scarlet blouse because he wanted to see Nepenthe and, like the Christians of old, had no money. Driven by that roving spirit which is the Muscovite's heritage and by the desire of all sensible men to taste new lands, new wine, new women, he professed himself a Little White Cow. It was quite the regular thing to do. It brought you to the notice of that secret committee of enthusiasts who paid your travel expenses; it gave you a free trip to the sunny south. Everyone wondered how he had managed to rise so rapidly in the Master's graces. Madame Steynlin now stepped between them. She grew fond of Peter, and marked him for her own. He fulfilled every one of her conditions as to age, costume and opinions. Besides, he was always so gloriously hungry! She invited him to take luncheon once or twice and then began to take Russian lessons from him. "He is only a boy," she would say.
Conversing, as best she could, with this child of nature, it dawned upon her that she had hitherto been mistaken in her estimate of the Russian character. She began to understand the inward sense of that brotherly love, that apostolic spirit, which binds together every class of the immense Empire—to revere their simplicity of soul and calm god-like faith. She revised her former narrow Lutheran views and openly confessed that she was quite wrong in declaring, as she once did, that what the Little White Cows needed was "more soap and less salvation." The magic of love! It softened, not for the first time, her heart towards all humanity and in particular, on this occasion, towards the rest of the saintly band; were they not her brothers and sisters? She even knitted six pairs of warm woollen socks and sent them with a polite message to the Master—a message which was left unanswered, though the socks were never returned. As to Peter—she called him her Little Peter or, in his more expansive moments, Peter the Great. Soon he was always coming to the villa at meal-times and staying for hours afterwards, while they wrestled with the complexities of Russian genders. He made no secret of the pleasure he derived from filling his healthy young stomach at her expense; everything supplementary to that prime condition he took as a gift from the gods. If he had not been so simple-minded he could have wheedled any amount of money out of her. The affair had now been going on for four month—quite a long while, as such affairs went.
Not for the first time did Madame Steynlin experience the drawbacks of her house, as regards natural situation. It was, as Don Francesco often pointed out, "the most unstrategic villa on Nepenthe." Ah, that peninsula, that isthmus, or whatever you called the thing—what on earth had attracted her to the place? What demon had tempted her to buy it? How she envied the other people—Keith, for example, who, if he had been a man of that kind, could have allowed any visitor, in the broadest daylight, to creep in or out of his mouldy old gateway in the wall without a soul being any the wiser! High-priced horticultural experts had been consulted as to the best means of thickening the vegetation and screening the approaches to the house. They had met with scanty success. The soil was of the most sterile, intractable rock; those few wind-blown olives were dreadfully diaphanous, and Peter's blouse visible from afar—even from the market-place. Everything got about on Nepenthe. People began to twit her about the progress of those "Russian lessons." It became quite a scandal. Signor Malipizzo was more annoyed than any one else. He hated the whole brood of Russians, and had formed various projects for uprooting the association from the island. His friend the Commissioner thoroughly endorsed these views. Often he declared that something must be done about it.
The Master, despite his seclusion, had heard of the affair. He was grieved, but not unduly so; he had other disciples to choose from. Every new arrival from Holy Russia, regardless of sex or age, spent some hours or days, as the case might be, alone with the Master in his apartment, in order to be initiated into the Law and impregnated with its full signification: such was the way of the New Jerusalem. By this system of spiritual control he could be sure of finding a successor sooner or later. Besides, the defection of this favourite disciple was only a drop in the ocean of his griefs. What secretly preyed upon his mind was that, on the verge of returning to his former state of worldly prosperity, he had been inspired to issue that Second Revelation regarding warm-blooded beasts. He ought to have known about the Grand Dukes, and what a sacrilegious hot-tempered clique they were! "This comes," he would say, "of placing the service of God above that of my earthly masters." It kept him in exile on this island—the deadlock in the matter of that Second Revelation. The expiatory period was not yet over, though Nepenthe, on the whole, would have been glad to see the last of him—particularly Signor Malipizzo.
Meanwhile, the Little White Cows lived on: the richer in houses, sleeping fifteen or twenty in one room after the happy style of patriarchal Russia—the humbler folk in old ruins, sheds, cellars, or even caverns of the rock. You could do that sort of thing in a climate like Nepenthe, if you were not fastidious in the matter of owls, bats, lizards, toads, earwigs, centipedes, and an occasional scorpion.
No Russians dwelt within the Cave of Mercury. It was inconveniently remote; it was difficult of approach; moreover, it was haunted. Dreadful rites had been performed there, in olden times. The walls had dripped with human gore. Death-groans of victims slain by the priestly knife resounded in its hollow entrails. Such had been the legend in the days of those monkish chroniclers in whose credulous pages Monsignor Perrelli, incredulous himself, had discovered a mine of curious information.
Then came the Good Duke Alfred. His Highness posed as a conservative in some matters; it pleased him to revive memories of the long-buried past. He cared little about ghosts. He liked to take things in hand. After remarking in his brisk epigrammatic fashion that "not everything old is putrid," he devoted his attention to the Cave of Mercury and caused a flight of convenient stairs to be built, wide enough to admit the passage of two of his fattest Privy Councillors walking abreast, and leading down to this particular grotto through a cleft in the rock. Nobody knew what happened there under his superintendence. Mankind being ever prone to believe the worst of every great man, all kinds of stupid and even wicked things were said, though not during his lifetime. People vowed that he carried on the old traditions, the tortures and human sacrifices, and even improved upon them in his blithe Renaissance manner. They were ready to supply circumstantial and excruciating details of how, disguised, down to the minutest details of costume, in the semblance of the Evil One, he had sought to prolong his life and invigorate his declining health with the blood of innocent children, artfully done to death after fiendish, lingering agonies. Father Capocchio, needless to say, has some shocking pages on this subject.
Mr. Eames, who had made a careful study of Duke Alfred's reign, came to the conclusion that such excesses were incompatible with the character of a ruler whose love of children was one of his most salient traits. In regard to those other and vaguer accusations, he contended that the Duke was too jovial by nature to have tortured any save those who, in his opinion, thoroughly deserved it. Indeed, he was sceptical about the whole thing. Monsignor Perrelli might have told us the truth, had he cared to do so. But, for reasons which will appear anon, he is remarkably silent on all that concerns the reign of his great contemporary. He says nothing more than this:
"His Highness deigned, during the same year, to restore, and put into its old working order, the decayed heathen rock-chapel vulgarly known as the Cave of Mercury."
To put into ITS OLD WORKING ORDER; that would sound rather suspicious, as though to contain a veiled accusation. We must remember, however, that the historian of Nepenthe bore a grudge against his Prince (of which likewise more anon), a grudge which he was far too prudent to vent openly; so bitter and personal a grudge that he may have felt himself justified in making a covert innuendo of this kind whenever he could safely risk it.
Meanwhile, everything remained as before—shrouded in mystery. Being doubly haunted now, by the Duke's victims and by those earlier ones, the cave fell into greater neglect than ever. Simple folk avoided speaking of the place save in a hushed whisper. It became a proverb among the islanders when speaking of something outrageously improbable: "Don't tell me! Such things only happen in the Cave of Mercury." When someone disappeared from his house or hotel without leaving any trace behind—it happened now and then—or when anything disreputable happened to anyone, they always said "Try the Cave," or simply "Try Mercury." The path had crumbled away long ago. Nobody went there, except in broad daylight. It was as safe a place as you could desire, at night-time, for a murder or a love-affair. Such was the Cave of Mercury.
Denis had gone to the spot one morning not long after his arrival. He had climbed down the slippery stairs through that dank couloir or funnel in the rock overhung with drooping maidenhair and ivy and umbrageous carobs. He had rested on the little platform outside the cavern's vineyard far below, and upwards, at the narrow ribbon of sky overhead. Then he had gone within, to examine what was left of the old masonry, the phallic column and other relics of the past. That was ten days ago. Now he meant to follow Keith's advice and go there at midnight. The moon was full.
"This very night I'll go," he thought.
All was not well with Denis. And the worst of it was, he had no clear notion of what was the matter. He was changing. The world was changing too. It had suddenly expanded. He felt that he, also, ought to expand. There was so much to learn, to see, to know—so much, that it seemed to paralyse his initiative. Could he absorb all this? Would he ever get things in order once more, and recapture his self-possession? Would he ever again be satisfied with himself? It was an invasion of his tranquillity, from within and without. He was restless. Bright ideas never came to him, as of old; or else they were the ideas of other people. A miserable state of affairs! He was becoming an automaton—an echo.
An echo…. How right Keith had been!
"It's rotten," he concluded. "I'm a ludicrous figure, a pathetic idiot."
The novel impressions of Florence had helped in the disintegration. Nepenthe—it's sunshine, its relentless paganism—had done the rest. It shattered his earlier outlook and gave him nothing in exchange. Nothing, and yet everything. That vision of Angelina! It filled his inner being with luxurious content; content and uncertainty. It was there, at the back of every dream, of every intimate thought and every little worldly phrase that he uttered. He was like a man who, looking long at the sun, sees its image floating in heaven, on earth—wherever he casts his eye. Angelina! Nothing else was of any account. How would it all end? He drifted along in blissful apprehension of what the next day might bring. She seemed to have become genuinely well-disposed towards him of late, though in rather a mocking, maternal sort of fashion.
The poetic vein had definitely run dry. Impossible to make things rhyme, somehow. Perhaps his passion was too strong for technical restraints. He tried his hand at prose:
"Your eyes bewilder me. I would liken you to a shaft of sunlight, a withering flame—a black flame, if such there be—for your grace and ardour is even as a flame. Your step is laughter and song. Your hair is a torrent of starless night. The sun is your lover, you god. He takes joy in your perfection. Your slender body palpitates with his imprisoned beams. He has moulded your limbs and kissed your smooth skin in the days when you … nevermore will you whiten those kisses…."
"It won't do," he sadly reflected, laying down the pen. "The adaptation is too palpable. Why does everybody anticipate my ideas? The fact is, I have nothing to say. I can only feel. Everything went right, so long as I was in love with myself. Now everything goes wrong."
Then he remembered Keith's pompous exhortation.
"Find yourself! You know the Cave of Mercury! Climb down, one night of full moon—"
"There is something in what he says. This very night I'll go."
It was particularly hard for him that evening. The Duchess was dining with a party at Madame Steynlin's; it was an open secret that the entertainment would end in a moonlight excursion on the water; she would not return till very late. Angelina would be alone, accessible. It was her duty to guard the house in the absence of its mistress. He might have gone there on some pretext and talked awhile, and looked into her elvish eyes and listened to that Southern voice, rich and clear as a bell. Almost he yielded. He thought of the ineptitude of the whole undertaking and, in particular, of those slippery stairs; one might break one's neck there at such an hour of the night. Unless one wore tennis shoes—
Well, he would wear them. He would resist the temptation and approve himself a man. Everybody, even the Duchess, was always telling him to be a man. He would find himself. Keith was right.
The night came.
He descended noiselessly into the cool and dark chasm, resting awhile on a ledge about half-way down, to drink in the spirit of the place. All was silent. Dim masses towered overhead; through rifts in the rocky fabric he caught glimmerings, strange and yet familiar, of the landscape down below. It swam in the milky radiance of a full moon whose light streamed down from some undiscoverable source behind the mountain, suffusing the distant vineyards and trees with a ghostly tinge of green. Like looking into another world, he though; a poet's world. Calmly it lay there, full of splendour. How well one could understand, in such a place, the glamour, the romance, of night! Romance…. What was left of life without romance? He remembered his talk with Marten; he thought of the scientists crude notions of romance. He pitied the materialism which denied him joys like these. This moonlit landscape—how full of suggestion! That grotto down below—what tales it could unfold!
The Cave of Mercury….
How had Mercury, the arch-thief, come to be presiding genius here? Denis knew; his friend Eames had explained everything to him. Mercury had nothing whatever to do with the site. That name had been proved by the bibliographer to be the invention of some pedantic monk who liked to display his learning to a generation avid of antiquities, a generation which insisted on attaching a Roman deity to every cavern. It was a wilful fabrication, made in the infancy of archaeology when historical criticism was non-existent. And the same with all those stories about human sacrifices and tortures. There was not a word of truth in them. So Mr. Eames had decided, after a systematic investigation of both of the older authorities and of the grotto itself. The legends, too, were simply invented to give a zest to a locality whose original antique name had apparently been lost, though he had not yet abandoned all hope of stumbling across it by one of those lucky accidents which reward the lover of old parchments and title-deeds. A pure invention. It was plain the Mr. Eames from what remained of ancient symbols on the spot, that the cave had been consecrated to older and worthier rites—to some mysterious, primeval, fecund Mother of Earth. Her name, like that of her habitation, had lapsed into oblivion.
"There is something grand in this old animistic conception," Eames had said. "Later on, under the Romans, the place seems to have been dedicated to Priapic rites. That is rather a depreciation, isn't it? It brings us down from fruitfulness to mere lasciviousness. But where are you going to draw the line? Everything tends to lose its hallowed meaning; it becomes degraded, bestialized. Still, the roots of the idea are sound. In giving sensual attributes to a garden god the ancients had in mind the recklessness, the spendthrift abundance, of all nature—not excluding our own. They tried to explain how it came about that the sanest man is liable, under the stress of desire, to acts of which he vainly repents at leisure. I don't suppose they meant to justify those acts. If they had, they would have given a less equivocal position to Priapus in their celestial hierarchy. Priapus, you know, was not wholly divine. I think they only wanted to make it quite clear that we cannot drive out nature with a fork. I wish we could," he added.
And then he sighed. The poor fellow was thinking at that moment, of balloons.
Denis remembered this conversation. Earth-worship: the cult of those generative forces which weld together in one mighty instinct the highest and lowliest of terrestrial creatures…. The unalienable right of man and beast to enact that which shall confound death, and replenish the land with youth, and joy, and teeming life. The right which priestly castes of every age have striven to repress, which triumphs over every obstacle and sanctifies, by its fruits, the wildest impulses of man. The right to love!
Musing thus, he began to understand why men of old, who looked things squarely in the face, should have deified this friendly, all-compelling passion. He reverenced the fierce necessity which drives the living world to its fairest and sole enduring effort. Be fruitful and multiply. He recognized for the firs ttime that he was not a lonely figure on earth, but absorbed into a solemn and eternal movement; bound close to the throbbing heart of the Universe. There was grandeur, there was repose, in being able to regard himself as an integral part of nature, destined to create and leave his mark. He felt that he was growing into harmony with permanent things—finding himself. He realized now what Keith had meant.
It cost him quite an effort to tear himself away from that ledge. He began to descend once more.
Near the entrance of the Cave he paused abruptly. It seemed as if a sound had issued from the interior of the rock. He listened. It came again—a human sound, unquestionably, and within a few yards of his face. A whisper. There was something going on—Earth-worship….
Suddenly a succession of words broke upon the stillness—breathless words, spoken in a language which not everybody could have translated. He recognized the voice. It said:
"EGO TE AMARE TANTUM! NON VOLERE? NON PIACERE? NON CAPIRE? O Lord, can't you understand?"
It was Mr. Marten's voice. Mr. Marten was being romantic. No answer came to his fervent pleadings. Perhaps they were not coherent enough. He began again, TREMOLO AGITATO, CON MOLTO SENTIMENTO:
"O EGO TE AMARE TANTUM! NEMO SAPIT NIHIL. DUCHESSA IN BARCA AQUATICACUM MAGNA COMPANIA. REDIBIT TARDISSIMO. NIENTE TIMOR. AMARE MULTISSIMO!EGO MORIRE FINE TE. MORIRE. MORITURUS. CAPITO? NON CAPIRE? Oh, CAPIREbe blowed!"
There was a short pause. The language seems to have been understood this time. For, amid a ripple of laughter, a rich Southern voice was heard to say with a sigh of mock resignation:
Then silence….
Denis turned. He walked up the steps as in a dream, neither slowly nor fast. No one was ever more unhappy, though he scarcely felt as yet the depths of his own humiliation. It was more like a stab—a numbing assassin-like stab. He could hear the beatings of his heart.
He reached the upper level of the town, he knew not how.
All lay quiet as he found his way among the familiar buildings. It was after midnight; most of the lamps had been extinguished. The streets were deserted. He heard, in the distance, the song of a drunken wayfarer reeling homewards from a tavern or from the Club.
In one of the little roadways that converge upon the market-place something was astir. It was a dim phantom of willowy outline, swaying capriciously to and fro, like a black feather tossed by the wind. Miss Wilberforce! She fluttered down a doorstep and began crooning a vulgar song about "Billy had a letter for to go on board a ship." Denis moved to the other side of the narrow path, hoping to escape unobserved. The light was too strong.
"My young friend," she cried in quite a hoarse and altered tone of voice, "we should know each other! We've had the pleasure haven't we? Been down to the sea, have you? And what are the wild waves saying?"
Denis stood there, petrified with disgust. Was it possible? Was this the lady who had charmed him the other day? Who had spoken of England and conjured up the memories of his own home in the Midlands? With a playful gesture, she sent her hat careering across the street and began to fumble at her breast, unlacing or unbuttoning something. It was horrible, in the moonlight.
A boot, flying merrily over his head, recalled him to his senses. He turned to go, and had already made a few paces when the voice croaked after him:
"Does your mother know you're out?"
Some good genius took him by the hand next day and led him to the house of Count Caloveglia, in response to that friendly twice-repeated invitation. The old man saw at a glance that something serious was amiss. He plunged at once, with quick insight, into what he took to be extraneous topics of conversation.
"I am glad you like my fig tree! It gives a distinctive tone to this quiet courtyard, don't you think? I could not have wished for anything more appropriate. Its shape, its associations, are alike pleasing. The fig is a legendary tree; a volume could be written about the stories and superstitions which have twined themselves around it. Some think it was the Biblical Tree of Knowledge. Judas Iscariot, they say, hanged himself on a fig tree. It came from the East-Bacchus brought it on his journey as a gift to mortal men. How much we owe to those of the Greek gods who were yet not wholly divine! The Romans, too, held it in veneration. You have doubtless heard about the FICUS RUMINALIS, at hose feet the cradle of Romulus and Remus was stranded? Among many nations it became the outward symbol of generative forces. The Egyptians consecrated the fig to Isis, that fecund Mother of Earth. Statues of Priapus were carved out of its wood in allusion, possibly, to its reckless fertility or for some analogous reason; it was also held to be sacred, I know not why, to Mercury—"
Denis, during this little speech, had begun to look more troubled than ever. The other continued:
"There is something in the very twistings of that smooth trunk and those heavy-laden branches that suggests fruitfulness, How voluptuously they writhe! A kindly growth, lover of men, their dwellings and ordered ways. That is why we foster it. We are all utilitarians here, Mr. Denis; we think of the main purposes of life. Besides food, it gives us welcome shade at this season; the leaves fall off in winter and allow the sunlight to percolate into our rooms. You will not find evergreen trees planted near our windows. We know the value of sunshine; where the sun enters, we say, the physician does not enter. In England the light is feebler and yet they made this mistake, during the Georgian period of architecture. They thought that houses were invented to be looked at, not to be lived in. Determined to be faithful to the tradition and regardless of the difference in climate, they planted the ilex about those mansions which must be dank and gloomy in wintertime, however charming, externally, to those who relish the chill Palladian outlines. You have lately been to Florence, I hear? Come! Let us sit indoors. The courtyard is rather too sultry to-day, in spite of the shade. My old servant will bring some tea, presently. Or perhaps you would prefer some wine and a biscuit? Or a glass of liqueur?… Well? And Florence?"
"It has left me rather confused, so far," replied Denis. "Some of the things are overwhelming."
"Overwhelming? That is perhaps because you do not see the movement in its continuity, because you have not traced the stream to its source. I can understand your feelings. But one need not be overwhelmed by these men. They were lovable folks, who played with their art like some child that has discovered a long-lost toy. It is a pity that their activities were so hampered by the conventions of religious dogma. Viewed by itself, the Renaissance may seem overwhelming; it shoots up like a portentous lily out of the blood-drenched soil of a thousand battlefields. Let me take you to its real source."
He showed him that little statuette, the Locri Faun. Denis was enchanted by it.
"You have heard of Sir Herbert Street? He also thinks highly of this thing. He is now adviser in art matters to Mr. van Koppen who is a patron of mine and who, I hear, will arrive to-morrow or the day after."
"Street? I met him at my mother's house. Wasn't he at South Kensington? A great man for dining out. You cannot pick up an evening paper without reading something about him. That kind of man! All the same, he wrote a good book on the Siena School. I liked it, didn't you?"
"It is a fair appreciation, from the collector's point of view. He has stayed with me here once or twice, and given me reason to form a high opinion of his capacities. Now if you will compare this Faun with your Florentine art, you will see what I mean by going to the fountain. There is a difference not only in technique, but in outlook. The man who wrought this did not trouble about you, or me, or himself. He had not moods. His art is purely intellectual; he stands aloof, like a glacier. Here the spring issued, crystal-clear. As the river swells in size it grows turbid and discoloured with alien elements—personality, emotions."
"I have noticed that," said Denis. "It is what we call the malady of thought. This Faun, you say, was found on the mainland yonder?"
"Near the site of old Locri, on a piece of ground which still belongs to me. I suspect there are still a good many Greek relics to be excavated on the site. We have discovered a Demeter some years ago; a mutilated head in marble; it is now in Paris. You can see the very place from my roof here, on bright days. These men, Mr. Denis, were our masters. Do not be misled by what you are told of the wanton luxury of those shores; do not forget that your view of that age has filtered through Roman stoicism and English puritanism which speak with envy lurking at their hearts—the envy of the incomplete creature for him who dares express himself. A plague has infected the world—the plague of repression. Don't you think that the man who made this Faun was entitled to dine well?"
"I cannot quite make it out," said Denis, still examining the statuette.
"Ah! How does it make you feel?"
"Uneasy."
"You are unaware of a struggle between your own mind and that of the artist? I am glad. It is the test of beauty and vitality that a beholder refuses to acquiesce at first glance. There is a conflict to be undergone. This thing thrusts itself upon us; it makes no concessions, does it? And yet one cannot but admire! You will seldom encounter that sensation among the masterpieces of the Renaissance. They welcome you with open arms. That is because we know what the creators were thinking about. They are quite personal and familiar; they had as many moods, one suspects, as a fashionable prima donna. They give pleasure. This Faun gives pleasure and something more—a sense of disquieting intimacy. While intruding upon your reserve with his solemn, stark and almost hostile novelty, he makes at the same time a strange appeal—he touches upon chords in our nature of which we ourselves were barely cognisant. You must yield, Mr. Denis, to this stranger who seems to know so much about you. When you have done so, you will make a surprising discovery. You have gained a friend—one of those who never change."
"I am trying to," replied Denis. "But it is difficult. We are not brought up that way, nowadays."
"No. Men have lost their frankness, their self-assurance. Whoever yields, must be confident of his own strength. Our contemporaries have lost that feeling. They dare not be themselves. They eke out lack of sincerity by profusion of commonplace. Unlike the heroes of Homer, they repress their fears—they repress everything, save their irrepressible flatulence of mind. They are expansive in unimportant matters and at wrong moments—blown about in a whirl of fatuous extremes. The impersonal note has vanished. Why has it gone, Mr. Denis?" he suddenly asked. "And when did it go?"
The other was rather puzzled what to reply.
"I suppose you could trace its disappearance to the days of which you spoke, when artists began to display their moods to the world. Perhaps further still. Some Roman writers were fond of talking about their own affairs. If they do, the public naturally becomes interested. People like Byron must have had a good deal to do with it. He was always harping on his private life."
He paused, but the Count merely asked:
"No further back than that?"
"I don't know. Christianity made us interested in other people's feelings. Brotherliness, you know. That must have helped. So did Socrates, by the way. Of course it lowers the general standard. Where everybody can read and write, there's an end of good taste. No, I don't mean that exactly," he added, feeling that he was expressing himself very stupidly.
"Well?"
"Oh, everything! The telegraph and society papers and interviewing and America and yellow journalism … and all those family memoirs and diaries and autobiographies and Court scandals…. They produce a new kind of public, a public which craves for personalities rather than information. They want to learn about our clothes and incomes and habits. Not a questioning public, I mean; a prying public—"
"A cannibalistic public," said the Count, quietly. "Men cannot live, it seems, save by feeding on their neighbour's life-blood. They prey on each other's nerve-tissues and personal sensations. Everything must be shared. It gives them a feeling of solidarity, I suppose, in a world where they have lost the courage to stand alone. Woe to him who dwells apart! Great things are no longer contemplated with reverence. They are hauled down from their pedestals in order to be rendered accessible to a generation of pigmies; their dignity is soiled by vulgar contact. This lust of handling—what is its ordinary name? Democracy. It has abraded the edge of that keen anthropocentric outlook of the Greeks which exalted whatever was distinctively human. Men have learnt to see beauty here, there, and everywhere—a little beauty, mark you, not much! They fail to realize that in widening their capacity of appreciation they dilute its intensity. They have watered their wine. There is more to drink. The draught is poorer."
It seemed to Denis that the Count's wine had not been watered.
"Let me show you one or two other things," said the old man.
They wandered about the premises awhile, looking at marbles, prints, intaglios, coins, till a serving man entered—a clean-shaven and rather bony old creature whom the Count called Andrea—to announce tea. Denis was feeling calmer; he had fallen under the beguiling influence of this place. He realized that his host was different from the artist type he had hitherto encountered; more profound, more veracious. Already he formed the project of returning to listen to his melodious voice, and learn some more about that Hellenic life which had hitherto been a sealed book to him. Nobody every spoke to him after the Count's fashion. He contrasted his address with the bantering, half-apologetic, supercilious tone of those other elderly persons who had heretofore deigned to enlightened him. He was flattered and pleased at being taken seriously and bidden to think in this straightforward, manly fashion; it unstrung his reserve and medicined to his wounded self-respect.
"So your mother would like to see you in Parliament?" asked the Count. "Politics are apt to be a dirty game. One cannot touch dirt without soiling one's hands. We have a deputy here, the Commendator Morena—well, one does not like to speak about him. Let me ask you a question, Mr. Denis. Why do politicians exist?"
"I suppose the answer would be that is profitable to mankind to be run by somebody."
"Profitable, at all events, to those who do the running. Your good Sir Herbert Street has lately sent me a batch of books about the ideal public life of the future. Socialistic forecasts, and that kind of literature. He is a world-improver, you know, among other things. They have amused me more than I thought they would. That venerable blunder: to think that in changing the form of government you change the heart of man. And in other respects, too, these dreamers are at sea. For surely we should aim at simplification of machinery. Conceive, now, the state of affairs where everybody is more or less employed by the community—the community, that comfortable word!—in some patriotic business or other. Everybody an official, all controlling each other! It would be worse than the Spanish Inquisition. A man could live at Toledo by subscribing to certain fixed opinions; he could be assured of a reasonable degree of privacy. Nothing could save him, under socialism. An insupportable world! When people cease to reflect they become idealists."
"I suppose they do," replied Denis, rather dubiously. Then it struck him that this might account for his own hazy state of mind—this lack of occupation or guiding principle. For the rest, he had not given much thought to such questions. To be a politician—it was one of the few projects which had never seriously entered his head. After a pause, he remarked:
"I can't help noticing that portrait over there. It's a very pretty thing."
"The little pastel? It is a sketch of my daughter Matilda. I did it myself when she was here last Christmas. Poor child, she can only come for the holidays; there is no chance of a respectable education o this island. But I can run over to see her every now and then. You will observe I am not much of a colourist!"
"You have been parsimonious with the tints. It reminds me of some ofLenbach's work which I saw at Florence; it is in the same manner."
"It appears you like art," said the Count. "Why not devote yourself to it? But perhaps your English social conditions are not propitious. Here is a letter from a friend of mind which arrived this morning; you know his name—I will not mention it! A well-known Academician, whose life is typical of your attitude towards art. Such a good fellow. He likes shooting and fishing; he is a favourite at Court, and quite an authority on dress-reform. He now writes to ask me about some detail of Greek costume which he requires for one of his lectures to a Ladies' Guild. Art, to him, is not a jealous mistress; she is an indulgent companion, who will amiably close an eye and permit a few wayside flirtations to her lover—enthusiasms for quite other ideals, and for the joys of good society in general. That is the way to live a happy life. It is not the way to create masterpieces."
"I would take myself seriously, I think," said Denis. "I would not dissipate my energies."
He meant it. To be an artist—it dawned upon him that this was his true vocation. To renounce pleasure and discipline the mind; to live a life of self-denial, submitting himself humbly to the inspiration of the great masters…. To be serene, like this old man; to avoid that facile, glib, composite note—those monkey-tricks of cleverness….
Then, after this vision had passed before his eyes like a flash, he remembered his grief. The notion of becoming a world-famous artist lost all meaning for him. Everything was blighted. There was not a grain of solace to be found on earth.
The Count, meanwhile, was looking with concern upon his companion's grave face, whose flawless profile might have emerged into life under the thought-laden chisel of Lysippus. He wondered what he could say or do to drive away this melancholy. The youth had been so bright that day at the entertainment of the Duchess; he seemed to have stepped straight out of a sunny dialogue of Plato. Serious trouble now shone out of his eyes. Something had happened. Something was wrong with him; wrong, too—he reflected—with a world which could find no better occupation for such a person than to hand round buttered tea-cakes at an old woman's party to a crowd of cosmopolitan scandalmongers.
Denis rose, remarking:
"I wish I could stay a little longer! But it is getting so late. I'm afraid I must be going."
He held out his hand.
"You have caught me in a somewhat sad and depressed mood, I fear," replied the other, heaving a most artistic sigh. And his features suddenly looked quite careworn. As a matter of fact, he had not been so joyous for many long years—that news of Mr. van Koppen's proximate arrival having made him feel fifty years younger and, but for his ingrained sense of Hellenic moderation, almost ready to dance with delight.
"I am sorry I have been so despondent," he went on. "Sometimes one cannot help oneself. It shall not occur again! I will try to be more amusing next time you come. If I thought it would help, I would communicate my sorrows and claim your sympathy. But what does it avail to unburden oneself? Friends will share our joys, but every man is a solitary in his griefs. One soon finds that out! One soon realizes the vanity of all those talks about the consolations of philosophy and the comforts of religion, doesn't one? I suppose even you have your moments of dejection?"
"One worries about things now and then. It is perfectly natural, I daresay."
"Perfectly. We are not stones—least of all persons like yourself. I would not be at your age again, not for the wealth of Croesus! I suffered too much. All young people suffer too much; they bear it silently, like heroes. The eye of youth dilates and distorts the images. The focussing process is painful. Youth has no norm. It was in one of my worst fits of despondency, I remember, that my old teacher gave me certain advice, after I had puzzled it out, did me some good. In fact, I have acted upon it to this very day; I recall it as plainly as if he were speaking now. Well, I am sorry you are leaving. I would keep you hear if I could. But I hope you will not forget to come another day. You have cheered me up wonderfully! Shall Andrea find you a carriage?"
"What did he say?" asked Denis.
"The old teacher? Let me see…. He said: do not be discomposed by the opinions of inept persons. Do not swim with the crowd. They who are all things to their neighbours, cease to be anything to themselves. Even a diamond can have too many facets. Avoid the attrition of vulgar minds; keep your edges intact. He also said: A man can protect himself with fists or sword but his best weapon is his intellect. A weapon must be forged in the fire. The fire, in our case, is tribulation. It must also be kept untarnished. If the mind is clean, the body can take care of itself. He said: delve deeply; not too deeply into the past, for it may make you derivative; nor yet into yourself—it will make you introspective. Delve into the living world and strive to bind yourself to its movement by a chain of your own welding. Once that contact is established, you are unassailable. Externalize yourself! He told me many things of this kind. You think I was consoled by his words? Not in the slightest degree. I was annoyed. In fact, I thought him rather a hypocrite; anybody could have spoken as he did! I was so disappointed that I went to him next day and told him frankly what I thought of his counsel. He said—do you know what he said?"
"I cannot even guess."
"He said: 'What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings—they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong. How easy that seems! Has any one ever done so? Never. Has any man ever attained to inner harmony by pondering the experiences of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire.'"
"I had no teacher like that," observed Denis. "He must have been a man of the right kind."
"Oh, he meant well, the old rascal," replied the Count with a curious little smile.