Decidedly, things were happening, as Mr. Heard would have said.
Strange to say that gentleman himself was probably the only person on Nepenthe who still remained in ignorance of all these praeternatural occurrences. In the early morning, after admiring the sea overhung by a cloudless sky and once more thanking the Duchess in his heart for such a delightful residence when he might have been boxed up in some stuffy hotel bedroom, he descended to the beach for his morning bathe. Such was his custom. The swim did him good, it freshened him up.
Then back to breakfast and a busy morning's work, to settle up arrears of correspondence. He wrote to various friends in England; he wrote a long letter—the third since his arrival—to his mother, telling her of all such things as might interest her; a nice gossipy letter, full of information about the entertainments of the foreigners on Nepenthe, about the obliging natives, the Russian colony, the persistent sirocco, his own domestic life, his improved health. Much as he liked the place and people, he said, he expected to be leaving in a week or so. He concluded with two pages describing his last visit to his cousin. She was rather poorly or troubled in mind, he thought; he would see her again ere long.
And that reminded him—he would write to Mrs. Meadows as well. He did so, enquiring after her health, asking whether he could be of any assistance, and promising to call again shortly. "Rather a formal epistle," he concluded, on reading it through. He was unable to force the note: he could never write or talk otherwise than he felt, and this cousin, after all, was rather remote, self-centred, and difficult of comprehension. "It must go as it is," he decided. "To be quite frank, she's not exactly encouraging either. Asks such queer questions. What on earth did she mean by that conundrum about illegitimacy, I wonder?"
Then luncheon; then a long sleep till tea-time. Everyone slept at this hour during the days of sirocco-heat. What else was there to do? He had already learned to look forward to that calm post-prandial hour of slumber. One owes something to oneself, N'EST CE PAS? as Muhlen had said.
On waking he bethought him of an invitation to tea with Madame Steynlin. He would have listened gladly to her music and her instructive and charitable talk about Nepenthe and its inhabitants. But he was afraid of meeting Russians there. The lady seemed to be specializing in Muscovites just then, and Mr. Heard was not in the Russian mood. He would take what he called "a day off" from social duties.
Slipping his field glasses into his pocket, he rambled upwards by now familiar paths, past white farmhouses nestling in a riot of greenery; till he reached the barer regions. The vines were more sparsely cultivated here, and soon all trace of human handcraft was at an end. He found himself on a little plateau of volcanic cinders and lava-blocks. The spare grasses and flowers that grew between fuliginous masses of stone were already losing their bright enamel under the withering heat; a peculiar odour, acrid but stimulating to the nostrils, rose from the parched ground. Here he rested awhile. He scanned the landscape through his glasses—a wine-coloured sea at his feet, flecked with sailing boats innumerable; confronting him from the volcano whose playful antics were even then attracting the attention of a crowded Piazza. And his eye roved along the serrated contours of the mainland, its undulating shore-line, its distant peaks throbbing in the sunset glow; they rested upon many villages, coral-tinted specks of light, so far away they seemed to belong to another world. It was a pleasure to breathe on these aerial heights, surrounded by sky and sea; to survey the world as a bird might survey it. Like floating in air….
He sat and smoked and pondered. He tried to get himself into perspective. "I must straighten myself out," he thought. Assuredly it was a restful place, this Nepenthe, abounding in kindly people; his affection for it grew with every day. Rest without; but where was that old rest within, that sense of plain tasks plainly to be performed, of tangible duty? Whither had it gone? Alien influences were at work upon him. Something new had insinuated itself into his blood, some demon of doubt and disquiet which threatened his old-established conceptions. Whence came it? The effect of changed environment—new friends, new food, new habits? The unaccustomed leisure which gave him, for the first time, a chance of thinking about non-professional matters? The south wind acting on his still weakened health? All these together? Or had he reached an epoch in his development, the termination of one of those definite life—periods when all men worthy of the name pass through some cleansing process of spiritual desquamation, and slip their outworn weeds of thought and feeling?
Whatever it was he seemed to be no longer his own master, as in former days. Fate had caused his feet to stray towards something new—something alarming. He was poised, as it were, on the brink of a gulf. Or rather, it was as if that old mind of his, like a boat sailing hitherto briskly before the wind, had suddenly encountered a bank of calm, of utter and ominous calm; it was a thing spell-bound; a toy of circumstances beyond human control. The canvas hung in the stagnant air. From which quarter would the quickening breeze arrive? Whither would it bring him?
And his glance fell upon a slender coquettish vessel, a new-comer, lying in the sunny harbour under the cliff. He knew it from hearsay. It was the FLUTTERBY, van Koppen's yacht. He recollected all he had ever heard about the millionaire; he tried to conjure up some idea of his features and habits from gossip overheard at odd moments.
This man, he concluded, must be intelligent beyond ordinary standards. It would be worth while making his acquaintance. America is notoriously the land of youthful precocity. But it is not every American who, as a stripling of fourteen summers, puzzling in callow boyish perplexity upon the thousand ills that afflict mankind and burning with desire for their betterment, makes a discovery in Malthusian methods destined to convulse the trade and the social life of a continent. Not everybody is like young Koppen—he attached a van to his name on reaching his seventy-fifth million—who, possessed at that time of barely three dollars in the world and not even the shadow of a moustache, had both the wit to realize the hygienic importance of a certain type of goods and the pertinacity to insist on cheapening their price, in the interest of public health, to such an extent that—to quote from subsequent advertisements—they should be "within reach of the humblest home." It is not everybody—no, not every American—who, after revolutionizing the technique of manufacture and shattering the Paris monopoly, dares boldly to advertise the improved article across the length and breadth of the land, and to thrust his commodity upon a reluctant market in the teeth of popular prejudice and commercial rivalry. Van Koppen had done all this. And it was noted that he had done it without ever for a moment losing sight of his dual aim—mercantile and philanthropic; for if he was a humanitarian by natural disposition, he became what he called "a tradesman by force of circumstance"—and not a bad tradesman, either. He had done all this and more. Unlike most self-made men who remain yoked like oxen to their sordid affairs (in harness, they aptly call it) he had been shrewd enough to retire from business in the heyday of his age, on a relatively modest competence of fifteen million dollars a year. He was spending his time at present in the gratification of personal whims, and leaving the remaining millions to be picked up by whoever cared to take the trouble. Manifestly an unusual type of millionaire—this man who had lived down half a century of obloquy and was now hailed, in well-informed circles, as the saviour of his country.
Nor was this all. Van Koppen was described as a brisk, genial, talkative old fellow, rather fat, with a clear complexion, sound teeth, shrubby grey beard, a twang barely sufficient to authenticate his transatlantic descent, and the digestion of a boa-constrictor. He was tremendously fond of buttered tea-cakes—so the Duchess said; a man who, in the words of Madame Steynlin, "really appreciated good music" and who, as the PARROCO never ceased to declare, could be relied on to give a handsome contribution towards the funds for supporting the poor and repairing a decrepit parish organ. (The parish poor were never in such dire distress, the parish organ never so hopelessly deranged, as during that annual week when the FLUTTERBY rode at anchor.)
In fact there was no doubt about it: van Koppen had the gifts of making himself beloved. But nobody's company was more markedly to his taste than that of Count Caloveglia. The two old men spent hours together in Caloveglia's shady courtyard, eating candied fruits, sipping home-made liqueurs of peaches or mountain-herbs and talking—ever talking. Between them there existed some strong and strange bond of friendship or interest. Speculation was rife as to its origin, its meaning, its end.
What was all the talk about?
Andrea, the devoted retainer, however artfully approached on the subject, was ambiguous to a distressing degree. It was understood, none the less, that Count Caloveglia was perhaps of use to the other in the accumulation of classical relics which—the Italian Government forbidding the export of antique works of art—were smuggled at night-time on board the FLUTTERBY to be incorporated in a magnificent museum somewhere out West, a museum which was destined to be presented by van Koppen as a gift to the great American people. Again, it might be inferred that these two elderly gentlemen, choice representatives of two conflicting civilizations, widely experienced and profoundly versed, each in his own way, in the knowledge of mankind, took a sincere and childlike pleasure in one another's society, going over past times and anxious, to the very end of life, to add something fresh to their store of learning.
Both these explanations were sufficiently plausible to be straightway dismissed by the majority as inadequate to account for the phenomenon. They inclined, rather, to adopt an alternative and alluring theory propounded by the Commissioner's lady. This theory laid it down that the American was bargaining for the Count's daughter, a pretty girl whom the old ruffian had shut up in a convent somewhere in anticipation of the day when a purchaser, rich enough to content his inordinate lust for gold, should present himself. Van Koppen was that purchaser. They had now been haggling, she said, for two or three years; a DENOUEMENT might be expected at any moment. If the Count's avarice could be appeased the unhappy child might expect to find herself, with as little delay as possible, an inmate of the floating harem on board the FLUTTERBY.
No visitor was safe from her lively tongue, and alas, certain little details, insignificant in themselves, gave ground for the ungenerous hypothesis that van Koppen, like all the rest of them, had a cloven hoof. There was the usual "dark side" to this otherwise charming and profitable stranger, the usual mystery, the usual fly in the ointment. In the first place it was a singular fact, much commented on, that nobody had ever been invited on board the yacht. That alone was suspicious. IF YOU WANT TO GET ANYTHING OUT OF OLD KOPPEN—so ran a local saying—DON'T PROPOSE A VISIT TO THE FLUTTERBY. More curious still was the circumstance that nobody, save the owner and certain bearded venerables of the crew, had ever been known to land on the island. How about the other passengers? Who were they? The millionaire never so much as mentioned their existence. It was surmised, accordingly, that he voyaged over the seas with a bevy of light-hearted nymphs; a disreputable mode of conduct for a man of his advanced years, and all the more aggravating to other people since, like a crafty and jealous old sultan, he screened them from public view. Impropriety could be overlooked—it could pass, where a millionaire was concerned, under the heading of unconventionality; but such glaring selfishness might end in being fatal to his reputation.
Confirmatory evidence of this scandalous state of affairs was obtained, one sunny morning, in the most unexpected fashion. A fisherman named Luigi, paddling about the stern of the FLUTTERBY where, in consequence of the kitchen refuse thrown overboard, marine beasts of every shape and kind were wont to congregate, cast down his spear at what looked like a splendid caerulean flat-fish of uncommon size and brilliance. The creature shivered and collapsed at that contact in the most unnatural, unfishlike manner; and Luigi drew up, to his amazement, a fragment of a lady's dress—to wit, a short length of sky-blue CREPE DE CHINE. Bitterly disappointed, he nevertheless took the matter with the characteristic Southern philosophy. "This will do for my little Annarella," he decided. And doubtless the child, arrayed in these celestial tints, would have been the envy of all her girl companions at the next festival of the patron saint b for the fact that Mr. Freddy Parker was strolling on the beach at the very moment of the man's return to land. By a rare piece of good luck, as he himself phrased it, his eye fell upon the dripping fabric; by a stroke of intuition not rare but unique, he divined its worth as a sociological document. Promising the man a reasonable sum of money (the Commissioner happened to have no loose change in his pocket just then) he carried the incrimination morsel in triumph to the Residency, where it was displayed by his lady, to all and sundry, in corroboration of her theory.
"That settles it," she used to say. "Unless indeed he dresses up his cabin-boy as a girl, and in that case…."
Mr. Heard, reposing on the rough pumiceous ground with his eye fixed upon the naughty FLUTTERBY whose virginal whiteness, with declining day, had assumed a tell-tale crimson blush, pieced together these and sundry other little bits of information. They made him more than usually thoughtful; they chimed in with his momentary mood of self-analysis.
One thing was dead certain. To circumnavigate the globe in the arms of a dozen chorus-girls was not his ideal. He was not built on those lines. He purposed, God Willing, to spend the evening of his days in another and more respectable manner. A vision arose before his imagination—a vision of a peaceful homestead among the green lanes of England, where he would lead a life of study and of kindly, unostentatious acts, with family and friends; old friends of College days, and London days, and African days; new friends from among the rising generation—straightforward and decent-minded youngsters, whom he would take to his heart like a father.
Why could not van Koppen see the beauty of such dreamings?
And yet, he argued, if the man does seclude them in this fashion—supposing they really exist—who can blame him? No woman is safe on Nepenthe with persons like Muhlen about. From chance meetings in the street, from stray conversations overheard, he had been led to take an unreasoning dislike to this foreigner, whose attitude towards the gentle sex struck him as that of a cur. Muhlen, if the yacht were his, would flaunt these ladies about the streets. The American, in keeping them secluded on board, betrayed a sense of shame, almost of delicacy; a sense of his obligations towards society which, so far as it went, was rather a laudable trait of character than otherwise.
And then—the difference between himself and the millionaire in life, training, antecedents! A career such as van Koppen's called for qualities different, often actually antagonistic, to his own. You could not possibly expect to find in a successful American merchant those features which go to form a successful English ecclesiastic. Certain human attributes were mutually exclusive—avarice and generosity, for instance; others no doubt mysteriously but inextricably intertwined. A man was an individual; he could not be divided or taken to pieces; he could not be expected to possess virtues incompatible with the rest of his mental equipment, however desirable such virtues might be. Who knows? Van Koppen's doubtful acts might be an unavoidable expression of his personality, an integral part of that nature under whose ferocious stimulus he had climbed to his present enviable position. And Mr. Heard was both shocked and amused to reflect that but for the co-operation of certain coarse organic impulses to which these Nepenthe legends testified, the millionaire might never have been able to acquire the proud title of "Saviour of his Country."
"That's queer," he mused. "It never struck me before. Shows how careful one must be. Dear me! Perhaps the ladies have inevitable organic impulses of a corresponding kind. Decidedly queer. H'm. Ha. Now I wonder…. And perhaps, if the truth were known, these young persons are having quite a good time of it—"
He paused abruptly in his reflections. He had caught himself in the act; in the very act of condoning vice. Mr. Thomas Heard was seriously concerned.
Something was wrong, he concluded. He would never have argued on similar lines a short time ago. This downright sympathy with sinners, what did it portend? Did it betray a lapse from his old-established principles, a waning of his respect for traditional morality? Was he becoming a sinner himself?
Thomas—the doubting apostle. He wondered whether there was anything in a name.
Then he called to mind how he had approved—yes, almost approved—of Don Francesco's deplorable act of familiarity towards the little serving maid. An absurdly small matter, but symptomatic. Things like that had happened in Africa lately. He remembered various instances where he had intervened on behalf of the natives, despite the murmured protests of the missionaries. They were such laughing, good-natured animals—so fine and healthy! What was it, this excessive love of erring humanity, and whither trending? Mr. Heard began to vex his soul to stray about in a maze of doubts. It was so miserably complex, this old, old problem of right and wrong; so unreasonably many-sided. Anon, he pulled himself together with characteristic bluntness.
"The whole question," he concluded, "is plain as a pikestaff. Am I becoming more of a Christian, or less?"
As though to learn an answer to his riddle he gazed fro he eyrie over the wide horizon, upon leagues of sea rising upward to blend their essence, under the magic touch of evening, with the purple dome overhead.
The elements, as is their wont upon such occasions, gave forth no clear reply.
None the less, while the moist south wind, shorn of the sting of midday, relaxed his pores and passed over his cheek like a warm caress, there exhaled from those limitless spaces a sense of joyous amplitude—of freedom and exhilaration.
And now, in the sunlit hour of dawn, he was bathing again. An excellent habit. It did him good, this physical contact with nature. Africa had weakened his constitution. Nepenthe made him feel younger once more—capable of fun and mischief. The muscles were acquiring a fresh tone, that old zest of life was coming back to him. His health, without a shadow of doubt, had greatly improved.
While disporting himself in amphibious joy among the tepid waves he seemed to cast off that sense of unease which had pursued him of late. It was good to inhale the harsh salty savour—to submit himself to these calming voices—to float, like a careless Leviathan, in the blue immensity; good to be alive, simply alive.
Another hot and clammy day was in store for the island. No matter. This sirocco, of which older inhabitants might well complain, had so far exerted no baleful influence upon him. Quite the reverse. Under its tender moistening touch his frame, desiccated in the tropics, seemed to open out, even as a withered flower uncloses its petals in water. In Africa all this thoughts and energies had been concentrated upon a single point. Here he expanded. New interests, new sensations, seemed to lie in wait for him. Never had he felt so alert, so responsive to spiritual impressions, so appreciative of natural beauty.
Lying in motionless ecstasy on the buoyant element he watched the mists of morning as they soared into the air. Reluctantly, with imperceptible movement, they detached themselves from their watery home; they clambered aloft in spectral companies, drawn skyward, as by some beckoning hand, under the stealthy compulsion of the sun. They crept against the tawny precipices, clinging to their pinnacles like shreds of pallid gauze, and nestling demurely among dank clefts where something of the mystery of night still lingered. It was a procession of dainty shapes wreathing themselves into gracious attitudes; mounting—ever mounting. As he beheld their filmy draperies that swayed phantom-like among the crags overhead, he understood those pagan minds of olden days for whom such wavering exhalations were none other than sea-nymphs, Atlantides, offspring of some mild-eyed god of Ocean rising to greet their playfellows, the Oreads, on the hills.
The wildest stretch of Nepenthe coast-line lay before him. Its profile suggested not so much the operation of terrestrial forces as a convulses and calcined lunar landscape—the handiwork of some demon in delirium. Gazing landwards, nothing met his eye save jagged precipices of fearful height, tormented rifts and gulleys scorched by fires of old into fantastic shapes, and descending confusedly to where the water slept in monster-haunted caverns.
Not a sign of humanity was visible save one white villa, far away. It was perched on a promontory of heliotrope-tinted trachyte; struck by the morning beams it flashed and glowed like a jewel in the sunshine. He knew the place: Madame Steynlin's abode. The sight of it reminded him of a promise to attend her picnic next week; all Nepenthe would be invited, after the feast of Saint Eulalia. And hard by the shore, at its foot, he discerned certain minute scarlet specks.
What could they be?
Why, of course! They were recognizable, even at this distance, as the blouses of the Sacred Sixty-three, who frequented this somewhat public spot for bathing purposes, blandly indifferent, or resigned, to the gaze of inquisitive onlookers. Mr. Heard, among others, had witnessed their aquatic diversions.
The Messiah was hindered by age and growing infirmities from taking part in the proceedings; moreover, he had been sickening lately, it was said, for some new Revelation—a Revelation of which the island was to become cognizant that very morning. But others of the Muscovite band were fond of congregating at this spot and hour for their lustral summer rites—white-skinned lads and lasses, matrons and reverent elders, all in a state of Adamitic nudity, splashing about the water of this sunny cover, devouring raw fish and crabs after the manner of the fabled Ichthyophagi, laughing, kissing, saying nice things about God, and combing out each other's long tow-coloured hair. Madame Steynlin, a spectator by necessity if not deliberate choice of these patriarchal frolics, disdained to controvert certain frivolous folk who resorted to the same beach to gratify a morbid curiosity, under the pretext that it was a delectable entertainment and one of the sights of Nepenthe. She disdained, nowadays. It had not ever been thus. Things were different before Peter the Great came upon the scene. In those unregenerate times her Lutheran upbringing condemned, in no measured terms, this frank exhibition of animal nature. A warm friendship with the good-looking apostle had now opened her eyes to the mystic sense of what went on. Earthly love had given an unearthly tinge to her mind. The veil had fallen; she saw through external appearances into the Symbolic Beyond. Deeply penetrated of its inner meaning, she would say that the spectacle called up visions of the Age of Innocence, when the world was young….
An elegant rowing-boat suddenly swept into Mr. Heard's field of vision. It had approached from round the entrance of the small bay and was already within a few yards ere he caught sight of it. He dived skilfully, and on returning to the surface beheld Mr. Keith smiling upon him, with owlish benevolence, through his spectacles.
"How pretty you look," he said. "Just like a mermaid that's lost its tail."
"You flatter me!"
"Not at all. Climb in and I'll take you for a row."
"Hadn't I better get some clothes on?"
"As you please. We can take you off that boulder if you want to dress."
"You're very kind."
Kind indeed. To admit a friend into one of his yachts or rowing-boats was an act of rare self-sacrifice on the part of Mr. Keith, who maintained that no vessel, not even an Atlantic liner, was large enough for more than one passenger.
"You are comfortable in here," the bishop remarked, as he presently stepped on board and looked around him. "Cleopatra's barge must have been something like this."
"There will be no breeze worth talking about all day. We must row."
An awning of red silk screened off the rays of the sun; the appointments of the small boat—the polished wood of rare texture, morocco leather cushions, and elaborate fittings—bespoke the taste or at least the income of a Sybarite. A grizzly brown sailor and his curly-pated son were the oarsmen; in the stern sat a couple of Keith's attendants, whom Mr. Heard might have mistaken for two Green genii but for the fact that between them lay an enormous and hideously modern receptacle of wicker-work which impaired the illusion. It troubled the bishop, both by reason of its incongruity and because he could not divine what its purpose might be, till Keith solved the mystery by saying:
"I thought I would like to see for myself about this fountain of Saint Elias and, incidentally, enjoy a little al fresco luncheon by the shore. Now I wonder whether there will be enough food for both of us in the basket?"
"That thing? Dear me. I thought it might contain a cottage piano. What fountain?"
"You haven't heard anything? Nothing at all?"
He outlined the events of the preceding day.
"What?" he continued. "They didn't even tell you about Miss Wilberforce? Well, whether she thought it was her birthday, or whether all these omens upset her nerves—Oh, the usual thing, only rather more so. Decidedly more so. It was late at night, you see, and she insisted on singing 'Auld Lang Syne,' and even on translating it, for the benefit of the constable who arrested her, into her own particular brand of Italian. In fact, there was a good deal of trouble, till somebody let down a blanket from a window. It happened to be a new policeman unaccustomed to her ways, and he has had a bad shock. His wife complained to the judge, who set round word to me this morning that she was in the lock-up."
"In prison. An English lady!"
"It is not the first time by any means. But I feel exactly as you do about it. I've bailed her out, and stopped his mouth with a fifty-franc note. Please keep this between ourselves."
Mr. Heard was not pleased to learn this incident. It seemed a discordant note on Nepenthe. He observed:
"Miss Wilberforce apparently can be relied upon to create a diversion of a scandalous nature. I wish I could do something to help such a poor creature."
"The dear lady! I don't know what we should do without her. By the way,have you seen Denis lately? We must be friendly to that young fellow,Heard. I don't think he is altogether happy in this clear pagan light.He seems to be oppressed about something. What do you make of him?"
"Of Denis? Nothing at all."
"You interest me."
"How so?"
"Because your values appear to be perverted. Your heart remains dead to Denis, but goes out to a worthless and incurable drunkard. The one is supremely happy. The other plainly troubled in mind. It leaves you cold. How do you explain it?"
Mr. Heard began to wonder. Were his values really vitiated? Had he done anything to justify self-reproach? He remembered meeting Denis lately, in a fit of dejection, as it seemed; they had passed each other with a few words of greeting. Perhaps he might have been a little more friendly. Well, he would atone for it on the next occasion. He asked:
"Has he no relations?"
"A mother, at present in Florence. There have been misunderstandings, I suspect. He has probably found her out, like he found out our Duchess; like he will find out both you and me, if we give him the chance. Meanwhile he gropes about in a wistful fashion, trying to carve out a scheme of life for himself and to learn something from al lof us. What can a person of that kind have in common with a mother of any kind?"
"Everything," said Mr. Heard enthusiastically.
"Nothing at all. You are thinking of your own mother. You forget that you never see her. Any son can live with any mother under those conditions. The fact remains: nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother. Look around you, and see if it is not true! Honour thy father and thy mother. Perhaps. But we must civilize our mothers before we can expect any rational companionship between them and their sons. Girls are different. They are more cynical and less idealistic, they can put up with mothers, they can laugh at them. I am speaking in a general way. Of course there are shining exceptions. Mothers at present can bring children into the world, but this performance is apt to mark the end of their capacities. They can't even attend to the elementary animal requirements of their offspring. It is quite surprising how many children survive in spite of their mothers. Ask any doctor."
"If that is the case there must be something wrong with our social system. You may be sure that the female cat or canary bird is just as efficient in her department as the male in his. Speaking from my own experience among the London poor, I should say that the father is often a mere parasite on his wifo and children—"
"We may both of us be right. But I wish you would take Denis in hand a little. Will you? Perhaps you misread his character. He may be afraid of you."
"Have you any particular reason—?"
"I don't like his looks. There is something tragic about him lately."
Mr. Heard was slightly nettled. After all, he was not on Nepenthe for the purpose of doling out consolations to melancholy undergraduates.
"I should be sorry to think myself singled out for his distrust," he replied. "At the same time, I don't notice that he has much to say to certain other people—to the Commissioner, for instance, or to Mr. Muhlen."
"Muhlen? He is quite right to leave Muhlen alone. Quite right. It proves his intuition. I have learnt all about that man. A beastly character. He has a bad record. Lives on blackmail and women. His real name is Retlow."
And Mr. Keith lit a cigar, as though to dismiss the subject.
"Retlow, you say? That's queer."
The name sounded familiar to the bishop. Where had he heard it before? He racked his memory. Where could it have been? Retlow…. It was not a common name. Long ago, obviously. Where?
In African days, or earlier?
His searchings were interrupted by the voice of the old boatman who, relinquishing an oar, pointed to a swart precipice near at hand and said in tolerable English (the older generation of natives all spoke English—their children were learning Russian):
"The suicides' rock, gentlemens. Ah! Many is the poor Christian I havepick up there. He throw down hisself. Him dead. Often in small pieces.Here blood. Here brain. Here leg and boot. Here finger. Ah! The poorChiristian. That so, gentlemens."
The bishop scanned with a shudder this frowning cliff of basalt, and turned to address his companion.
"Do people really throw themselves over here?"
"Very few. Not more than three or four in a season, I'm told. The local suicides, as a rule, are not as spectacular as they might be considering the landscape. They shoot themselves or take poison, which shows a certain consideration for other people. It is not a pleasant job, you know, to row to this remote spot and scramble about the cliff at the risk of a broken neck, collecting shattered fragments of humanity into a potato sack."
"Not at all pleasant!"
"As compared with England," Keith pursued, "life here is intense, palpitating, dramatic—a kind of blood-curdling farce full of irresponsible crimes and improbable consequences. The soil is saturated with blood. People are always killing themselves or each other for motives which, to an Englishman, are altogether outside the range of comprehensibility. Shall I tell you about one of our most interesting cases? I happen to be on the island at the time. There was a young fellow here—an agreeable young fellow—an artist; he was rich; he took a villa, and painted. We all liked him. Then, by degrees, he became secretive and moody. Said he was studying mechanics. He told me himself that much as he liked landscape painting he thought an artist—a real artist, he said—ought to be versed in ancillary sciences; in fortification, wood-carving, architecture, and so on. Leonardo da Vinci, you know. Well, one day they could not get into his bedroom. They broke open his door and discovered that he had constructed a perfectly-formed guillotine; the knife had fallen; his head lay on one side and his body on the other. You may well be surprised. I went carefully into that case. He was in the best of health, with a creditable artistic record behind him. He had no troubles, financial or domestic."
"Then what on earth—?"
"The scenery of Nepenthe. It got on his nerves; it unstrung him. Does that surprise you too? Don't you feel its effect upon yourself? The bland winds, the sea shining in velvety depths as though filled with some electric fluid, the riot of vegetation, these extravagant cliffs that change colour with every hour of the day? Look at that peak yonder—is it not almost transparent, like some crystal of amethyst? This coast-line alone—the sheer effrontery of its mineral charm—might affect some natures to such an extent as to dislocate their stability. Northern minds seem to become fluid here, impressionable, unstable, unbalanced—what you please. THere is something in the brightness of this spot which decomposes their old particles and arranges them into fresh and unexpected patterns. That is what people mean when they say that they 'diswcover' themselves here. You discover a mechanism, you know, when you take it to pieces. You catch my meaning?"
"I catch it."
He nodded. He understood perfectly. Some analogous process was going on within him at that moment. He, too, was discovering himself.
"Have you discovered yourself, Keith?"
"Yes, by other methods, elsewhere. I am only here for a short time in the Spring and another ten days in September. That is hardly enough, even supposing I were the sort of person to be accessible to these externals. I have passed that stage. I am too old, too unemotional. I prefer devouring a partridge EN CASSEROLE or listening to your conversation ("listening to my conversation!" thought Mr. Heard) to all the scenery in the world But I watch other people; I make it my business to study their condition; I put myself in their places. JE CONSTATE, as the French say. To them, the landscape of Nepenthe is alive, often malignantly alive. They do what you cannot so effectually do in the North; they humanize it, identifying its various aspects with their own moods, its features with their own traditions."
Mr. Heard thought of those tremendous mists he had seen only an hour ago—the daughters of old Ocean.
"They humanize it," he echoed. "The mythopoetic faculty!"
"Perhaps this capacity of Southern scenery to bear a mortal interpretation accounts for the anthropomorphic deities of classical days. I often think it does. Even we moderns are unaccountably moved by its varying facets which act sometimes as an aphrodisiac, and sometimes by their very perfection, their discouraging spell, their insolent beauty, suggest the hopelessness of all human endeavour…. Denis! I should think him capable of anything, just now. Do you imagine a person like this could possibly remain insensible to the beguiling influence of these surroundings?"
"I never thought about him."
"Really? You interest me, Heard. If you deny the susceptibility of a temperament like his, you deny the whole operation of externals upon character and action. You deny, for example, the success of the Roman Catholic Church which relies, for its moral effects, upon such optic appeals to the senses, and upon the ease with which transitory feelings can be transmuted into axioms of conduct. Do you deny this?"
"Not at all. I have seen enough of their system to realize its extreme simplicity."
"And then think of the peculiar history of this island and its situation as a converging-point for men of every race and every creed. All these things stimulate to rapid nervous discharges; that is, to inconsidered, foolish actions—"
"All fools!" the boatman interrupted. "All foreigners! We people don't do these things. Only dam-fool foreigners. That so, gentlemens. They have trouble themselves, then they come to this rock and, boom! make trouble for their friends."
"Boom!" echoed his son, who had apparently caught the drift of the old man's speech. Whereat the two Greek genii in the stern laughed immoderately; knowing, as they did, that the boy had not the slightest idea of what his father was talking about.
"Boom!" they repeated, in derisive chorus.
At that moment all the occupants of the boat pricked up their ears. A sound had reached them, a similar sound—a sound that recalled the distant firing of a big gun. Boom! It reverberated among the rocks. The rowers dropped their oars. Everyone listened.
The sound came again. This time there was no question as to its origin.It was artillery, beyond a doubt.
The old sailor had grown preternaturally grave.
"IL CANNONE DEL DUCA," he said.
The cannon of the Good Duke Alfred, never used save on urgent or solemn occasions, was being discharged.
Then the boatman made another remark, in Italian, to Keith.
"What does he say?" asked Mr. Heard.
"He thinks they must be calling out the militia."
Something was very wrong, up yonder, on the market-place.
The cannon, to be hereinafter described, is not the sole surviving relic of the Good Duke's rule. Turn where you please on this island domain, memories of that charming and incisive personality will meet your eye and ear; memories in stone-schools, convents, decayed castles and bathing chalets; memories in the spoken word—proverbs attributed to him, legends and traditions of his sagacity that still linger among the populace. IN THE DAYS OF THE DUKE: so runs a local saying, much as we speak of the "good old times." His amiable laughter-loving ghost pervades the capital to this hour. His pleasantries still resound among those crumbling theatres and galleries. That gleeful deviltry of his, compounded of blood and sunshine, is the epitome of Nepenthe. He is the scarlet thread running through its annals. An incarnation of all that was best in the age he identified, for wellnigh half a century, his interests with those of his faithful subjects.
He meditated no conquests. It sufficed him to gain and to retain the affection of men in whose eyes he was not so much a prince, a feudal lord, as an indulgent and doting father. He was the ideal despot, a man of wide culture and simple tastes. "A smile," he used to say, "will sway the Universe." Simplicity he declared to be the keynote of his nature, the guiding motive of his governance. In exemplification whereof he would point to his method of collecting taxes—a marvel of simplicity. Each citizen paid what he liked. If the sum proved insufficient he was apprised of the fact next morning by having his left hand amputated; a second error of judgment—it happened rather seldom—was rectified by the mutilation of the remaining member. "Never argue with inferiors," was one of His Highness's most original and pregnant remarks, and it was observed that, whether he condescended to argue or not, he generally gained his point without undue loss of time.
"It's so simple," he would say to those perplexed potentates who flocked to him from the mainland for advice on administrative questions. "So simple! One knock to each nair. And keep smiling."
It was the Good Duke Alfred who, with a shrewd eye to the future prosperity of his dominions, made the first practical experiments with those hot mineral springs—those healing waters whose virtues, up till then, had been unaccountable neglected. Realizing their curative possibilities, he selected fifty of the oldest and wisest of his Privy Councillors to undergo a variety of hydro-thermal tests on their bodies, internal and external. Seven of these gentlemen had the good luck to survive the treatment. They received the Order of the Golden Vine, a coveted distinction. The remaining forty-three, what was left of them, were cremated at night-time and posthumously ennobled.
He was the author of some mighty fine dissertations on falconry, dancing and architecture. He wrote furthermore, in the flamboyant style of his period, two dozen pastoral plays, as well as a goodly number of verses addressed, for the most part, to ladies of his Court—a Court which was thronged with poets, wits, philosophers and noble women. The island was a gay place in those days! There was always something doing. His Highness had a trick of casting favourites into dungeons, and concubines into the sea, that endeared him to his various legitimate spouses; and the rapidity with which these self-same spouses were beheaded one after the other, to make room for what he mirthfully called "fresh blood," struck his faithful subjects as an ever-recurring miracle of statecraft. "Nothing," he used to say to his intimates, "nothing ages a man like living always with the same woman." Well aware, on the other hand, of the inequality of social conditions and keenly desirous of raising the moral tone of his people, he framed iron laws to restrain those irregularities of married life which had been a disreputable feature of local society prior to his accession.
Not in vain had he pondered in youth the political maxims of the great Florentine. He cultivated assiduously the friendship of Church and Mob; he knew that no throne, however seemingly well-established, can weather the blasts of fortune save by resting on those twin pillars of security. So it came about that, while all Europe was convulsed in savage warfare, his relations with other rulers were marked by rare cordiality and simplicity of intercourse. He never failed to conciliate his more powerful neighbours by timely gifts of local delicacies—gifts of dark-eyed virgins to grace their palaces, and frequent hampers of those succulent LANGOUSTES for which the coastal waters of the island are renowned, both items of the finest quality obtainable. A born statesman, he extended this ingratiating demeanour even to those minor sovereigns from whom, to all appearance, she had nothing to fear, supplying them likewise with periodical consignments of pretty maidens and well-flavoured crayfish, only of somewhat inferior quality—the crustaceans often too young, the damsels occasionally over-ripe.
His high aspirations made him the precursor of many modern ideas. In educational and military matters, more especially, he ranks as a pioneer. He was a pedagogue by natural instinct. He took a sincere delight in the school-children, limited their weekly half-holidays to five, designed becoming dresses for boys and girls, decreed that lute playing and deportment should become obligatory subjects in the curriculum, and otherwise reformed the scholastic calendar which, before his day, had drifted into sad confusion and laxity. Sometimes he honoured the ceremony of prize-giving with his presence. On the other hand it must be admitted that, judged by modern standards, certain of his methods for punishing disobedience smacks of downright pedantry. Thrice a year, on receiving form the Ministry of Education a list containing the names of unsatisfactory scholars of either sex, it was his custom to hoist a flag on a certain hill-top; this was a signal for the Barbary pirates, who then infested the neighbouring ocean, to set sail for the island and buy up these perverse children, at purely nominal rates, for the slave-markets of Stamboul and Argier. They were sold ignominiously—by weight and not by the piece—to mark his unqualified disapproval of talking and scribbling on blotting-pads during school hours.
It is recorded of the Good Duke that on one occasion he returned from this scene looking haggard and careworn, as though the sacrifice of so many young lives weighed on his fatherly spirit. Presently, envisaging his duties towards the State, he restrained these natural but unworthy emotions, smiled his well-known smile, and gave utterance to an apophthegm which had since found its way into a good many copy-books: "In the purity of childhood," he said, "lie the seeds of national prosperity." And if it be enquired by what arts of Machiavellian astuteness he alone, of all Christian princes, contrived to maintain friendly relations with these formidable Oriental sea-rovers, the answer lies at hand. His device was one of extreme simplicity. He appealed to their better natures by sending them, at convenient intervals, shiploads of local delicacies, girls and lobsters—of indifferent quality, it is true, but sufficiently appetizing to attest his honourable intentions.
His predecessors, intent only upon their pleasures, had given no thought to the possibility of a hostile invasion of their fair domain. But the Good Duke, despite his popularity, was frequently heard to quote with approval that wise old adage which runs "In peace, prepare for war." Convinced of the instability of all mundane affairs and being, moreover, a man of original notions as well as something of an artist in costumery, he was led to create that picturesque body of men, the local Militia, which survives to this day and would alone entitle him to the grateful notice of posterity. These elegant warriors, he calculated, would serve both for the purpose of infusing terror into the minds of potential enemies, and of acting as a decorative body-guard to enhance his own public appearances on gala days. He threw his whole soul into the enterprise. After the corps had been duly established, he amused himself by drilling them on Sunday afternoons and modelling new buttons for their uniforms; to give them the requisite military stamina he over-fed and starved them by turns, wrapped them in sheepskin overcoats for long route-marches in July, exercised them in sham fights with live grapeshot and unblunted stilettos and otherwise thinned their ranks of undesirables, and hardened their physique, by forcing them to escalade horrible precipices at midnight on horseback. He was a martinet; he knew it; he gloried on the distinction. "All the world loves a disciplinarian," he was wont to say.
Nevertheless, like many great princes, he realized that political reasons might counsel at times an abatement of rigour. He could relent and show mercy. He could interpose his authority in favour of the condemned.
He relented on one celebrated occasion which more than any other helped to gain for him the epithet of "The Good"—when an entire squadron of the Militia was condemned to death for some supposed mistake in giving the salute. The record, unfortunately, is somewhat involved in obscurity and hard to disentangle; so much is clear, however, that the sentence was duly promulgated and carried into effect within half an hour. Then comes the moot question of the officer in command who was obviously destined for execution with the rest of his men and who now profited, as events proved, by the clemency of the Good Duke. It appears that this individual, noted for a childlike horror of bloodshed (especially when practiced on his own person), had unaccountably absented himself from the ceremony at the last moment—slipping out of the ranks in order, as he said, to bid a last farewell to his two aged and widowed parents. He was discovered in a wine-shop and brought before a hastily summoned Court-martial. There his old military courage seems to have returned to him. He demonstrated by a reference to the instructions laid down in the Militiaman's Year-book that no mistake in saluting had been made, that his men had therefore been wrongfully convicted and illegally executed and that he A FORTIORI, was innocent of any felonious intent. The Court, while approving his arguments, condemned him none the less to the indignity of a double decapitation for the offence of leaving his post without a signed permit from His Highness.
It was at this point that the Good Duke interposed on his behalf. He rescinded the decree; in other words, he relented. "Enough of bloodshed for one day," he was heard to remark, quite simply.
This speech was one of his happiest inspirations. Instantly it echoed from mouth to mouth; from end to end of his dominions. Enough of bloodshed for one day! That showed his true heart, the people declared. Enough of bloodshed! Their enthusiasm grew wilder when, in an access of princely graciousness, he repaired the lamentable excess of zeal by pinning the Order of the Golden Vine to the offending officer's breast; it rose to a veritable frenzy as soon as they learned that, by Letters Patent, the entire defunct squadron had been posthumously ennobled. And this is only one of many occasions on which this ruler, by his intimate knowledge of human nature and the arts of government, was enabled to wrest good from evil, and thereby consolidate his throne….
It is passing strange, on the face of it, that this vivid personality, one of the most arresting figures in the history of the country, should be so briefly dealt with in the pages of Monsignor Perrelli. Doubly strange, and a serious disappointment to the reader, in view of the fact that the two men were contemporaries, and that the learned writer must have enjoyed exceptional facilities for obtaining first-hand knowledge of his subject. Almost inexplicable indeed, when one remembers those maxims which he himself, in the Introduction to his ANTIQUITIES, lays down for the writing of history; when one calls to mind his own gleams of exotic scholarship, those luminous asides and fruitful digressions, those statesmanlike comments on things in general which make his work not so much a compendium of local lore as a mirror of the polite learning of his age. It is no exaggeration to say that, compared with the ample treatment meted out to inconspicuous rulers like Alfonso the Seventeenth or Florizel the Fat, his account of the Good Duke Alfred is the baldest, the most perfunctory and conventional of chronicles. Neither good nor evil is related of him. There is nothing but a monotonous enumeration of events.
It was the bibliographer who, poring over the pages of the rival monk Father Capocchio, that audacious and salacious friar already mentioned—it was the bibliographer who hit upon a passage which suggested a solution of the mystery and proved that, though Monsignor Perrelli lived during the reign of the Good Duke, it would be stretching unduly the sense of a plain word to say that he "flourished" under his rule. Other persons may have flourished; not so the kindly prelate.
"Nothing whatever," says this implacable enemy of Nepenthe, "is to be recorded to the credit of the sanguinary brigand—so he terms the Good Duke—nothing whatsoever: save and except only this, that he cut off the ears of a certain prattler, intriguer, and snuff-taking sensualist called Perrelli who, under the pretence of collecting data for an alleged historical treatise, profited by his priestly garb to play fast and loose with what little remained of decent family life on that God-abandoned island. Honour to whom honor is due! The ostensible reason for this unique act of justice was that the said Perrelli had appeared at some palace function with paste buckles on his shoes, instead of silver ones. The pretext was well chosen, inasmuch as the tyrant added to his other vices and absurdities the pose of being an extravagant stickler for etiquette. We happen to know, nevertheless, that the name of a young dancer, a prime favourite at Court, cropped up persistently at the time in connection with this malodorous but otherwise insignificant episode."
It were idle, at this hour of the day, to pursue the enquiry; the mutilation of Monsignor Perrelli's person, however, would explain better than anything else his equivocal attitude as historian. Nor is the incident altogether inconsistent with what we know of the Duke's cheerful propensities. "Nose after ears!" was one of his blithest watchwords. Faced with so dispiriting a prospect and aware that His Highness was as good as his princely word, the sympathetic scholar, while too resentful to praise his achievements, may well have been too prudent to disparage them. Hence his reticence, his circumspection. Hence that monotonous enumeration of events.
This microscopic blot on the Duke's escutcheon, as well as other more commendable details of his life, were duly noted down by the zealous Mr. Eames who, in addition, had the good fortune to receive as a gift from his kindly but unassuming friend Count Caloveglia a quaint portrait of the prince, hitherto unknown—an engraving which he purposed to reproduce, together with other fresh iconographical material, in his enlarged and fully annotated edition of the ANTIQUITIES. The print depicts His Highness full face, seated on a throne in the accoutrements of Mars, with a gallant wig flowing in mazy ringlets from under the helmet upon his plated shoulders; overhead, upon a canopy of cloud, reclines a breezy assemblage of allegorical females—Truth, Mercy, Fame with her trumpet, and so forth. His nervous clean-shaven features do not wear the traditional smile; they are thoughtful, almost grim. On his left is portrayed a huge CANNON astride of which can be seen a chubby angel; the Duke's hand reposes, in a paternal caress on the cherub's head—symbolical doubtless of his love of children. His right elbow rests upon a table, and the slender bejewelled fingers are listlessly pressing open a lettered scroll of parchment on which can be deciphered the words "A CHI T'HA FIGLIATO" (to her who bare thee)—a legend which the bibliographer, whose acquaintance with the vernacular was not on a level with his classical attainments, conjectured to be some fashionable courtly toast of the period.
The mention of artillery recalls the fact that His Highness was an amateur of ordnance. He established a gun-foundry on the island, and what he did not know about the art of casting pieces, as practised in his day, was plainly not worth knowing. Had it not been for his passionate love of testing new processes and new combinations of metal, he might have attained to a European reputation in that department. But he was always experimenting, and the consequence was that his cannons were always splitting. One, however, a monster of its kind, remained intact, to outward appearances. It was fired on every conceivable occasion—to summon the Militia, for example, from remote corners of the island at any hour of the day or night, a considerable hardship to those who lived at a distance of two or three miles, seeing that according to the instructions set forth in the Militiaman's Year-book, the sternest penalties were imposed upon all who failed to appear in their ranks at the Palace gates within five minutes after the signal had been sounded.
It was a perilous gun to handle. Owing to some undiscoverable flaw of construction or imperfection in the alloy, the monster soon developed a disconcerting knack of back-firing, hazardous to life and limb. It stands to reason that the Good Duke attached no undue importance to any trifling disaster accruing therefrom. On the contrary, in order to be sure of a thunderous detonation, he often deigned to superintend in person the loading of this particular piece.
"More powder," he would then command. "More powder! Ram it in! Never mind her little caprices! A good salute is worth a good soldier! More powder! Fill her up to the brim! She's only playful, like her master." Those who lost fingers or hands or arms received the Order of the Golden Vine. Whenever a major portion of the anatomy, a head or so forth, went astray, the victim was posthumously ennobled.
Since his day, thanks to the science of a Paduan engineer, this defect has been almost completely overcome, and the gun can still be heard on great occasions, such as the Duke's birthday, the Festival of the Patron Saint, or the visit to the island of some foreign sovereign; it is also discharged, as of yore, to summon the Militia for the purpose of quelling any popular disturbance. But even now it occasionally relapses into its old humours—with this difference, that instead of being decorated with a coveted distinction, the disabled man is sent to the hospital and told not to make a fool of himself next time.
This was the gun whose sound attracted the strained attention of Mr.Keith and his companions, far away, on the sea, under the cliffs.