The market-place was filled to over-brimming. Everybody discussed the near events in the Court of Justice. It promised to be a bad day for Signor Malipizzo. And yet people could not help admitting how clever he had been to lock up those Russians. It was the best thing he could have done under the circumstances. It proved his freedom from anti-Catholic prejudices. It made him look icily objective.
Torquemada, on hearing that the prisoner's gold coin corresponded with those others which had been in the possession of the murdered man, thought it deplorable. Here was plain evidence of his cousin's guilt! Most deplorable. Still, the victim being not only a foreigner but a Protestant was a considerable mitigation of the offence from the moral and religious point of view, and possibly from the legal one as well. Anyhow, what did legal aspects matter? Had he not engaged Don Giustino? Innocent or guilty, the prisoner would be released. And, on second thoughts, he discovered him to be worthy of the great man's golden eloquence. He was not altogether a fool. There was a touch of manliness about him; he was decidedly a brighter lad than he looked. He deserved to be released.
Ten o'clock sounded.
The Court had never been so crowded. There was barely standing room. Sunlight poured in through the windows which had not been cleaned for many long months; the atmosphere was already rather oppressive. It was a stuffy place at all times, reeking of old tobacco smoke and humanity.
Everybody was still save the old grey-headed clerk who fussed about with papers. Signor Malipizzo, after a deferential but dignified bow to the famous lawyer, had taken his seat on the raised platform facing the public whence he was wont to dispense justice. Nailed against the wall, directly over his head, was a large white paper bearing the printed words "La Legge": the law. It dominated the chamber. On one side of this could be seen a coloured portrait of the Sovereign in the bersagliere uniform; a fierce military glance shot out of his eyes from under that helmet whose plume of nodding feathers made it look three sizes too large for his head. On the other side hung a representation of the Madonna, simpering benignly in a blue tea-gown besprinkled with pearls and golden lace. The spittoon, which His Worship required continually during the audiences, was wont to be placed immediately below this latter picture; it was the magistrate's polite freemasonish method of expressing his reverence for the Mother of God. Everybody noticed that on the present occasion this piece of furniture was located elsewhere. It stood below the Sovereign's portrait. A delicate compliment to the formidable lawyer-champion of Catholicism, sworn enemy to the House of Savoy. People commented favourably on this little detail. How artful of him! they said.
All eyes were fixed upon Don Giustino. He sat there quietly. If he was bored he certainly did not show it. Now that he was here he would give these good people a taste of his quality. He knew all about the gold coin; he was profoundly convinced of the prisoner's guilt. This was lucky for the young man. Had he thought otherwise he would probably have refused to take up the case. Don Giustino made a point of never defending innocent people. They were idiots who entangled themselves in the meshes of the law; they fully deserved their fate. Really to have murdered Muhlen was the one and only point in the prisoner's favour. It made him worthy of his rhetorical efforts. All his clients were guilty, and all of them got off scot free. "I never defend people I can't respect," he used to say.
He began his speech in a rambling, desultory sort of fashion and quite a low tone of voice, as if he were addressing a circle of friends.
A charming place, Nepenthe! He would carry away the pleasantest memories of its beauty and the kindliness of its inhabitants. It was like a terrestrial paradise, so verdant, so remote from all danger. And yet nothing on earth was secure. That volcanic eruption the other day—what a scare it must have given them! What a lucky escape they had, thanks to the Divine intervention of the Patron Saint! Hardly any damage done; no victims worth mentioning. The fertile fields were intact; mothers and fathers and children could once more go out to their daily tasks and return in the evening, tired but happy, to gather round the family board. Family life, the sacred hearth! It was the pride, the strength, the mainstay of the country; it was the source whence the rising generation drew their earliest notions of piety and right conduct. Nothing in the world could replace home influence, the parents' teaching and example—nothing! And this poor boy, now threatened with imprisonment, had a mother. He had a mother. Did the Court appreciate the import of those words? Did they realize what it meant to shatter that hallowed bond, to deprive the parent of her offspring's help and consolation—the child of its mother's fostering care? Let them consider the lives of all t hose great men of the past who were known to have had mothers—Themistocles, Dante, Virgil, Peter the Hermit and Madame de Maintenon—why had they achieved distinction in the world? What was the secret of their greatness? A mother's affectionate guidance in youth. They had not been torn, as children, from her loving arms.
A good many people were already sobbing. But the orator had noticed that something was wrong. He consulted a small scrap of paper and then continued in the same conversational tones as before.
He had no mother. He was an orphan. An orphan! Did the Court realize what it meant? No, he dared not ask them to picture to themselves all that was implied in that bitter word. An orphan. Nobody to instil those early lessons of piety … to grow up wild, neglected, despised…. It was impossible for a man to avoid going astray in such terribly unnatural conditions. Everybody else had parents to counsel and direct them; he alone was bereft of this blessing. It was cruel, it was illogical, to apply the same standard to him as to those fortunate other ones. Let the Court call to mind the names of those who had deviated from the narrow path of duty; did they not all belong to this unhappy class? It might safely be inferred that they had no mothers! Such person were to be pitied and helped, rather than condemned for what was the fault not of their natures but of their anomalous situation in life. To rescue a motherless young soul from the brink of perdition was the noblest task of a Christian. And this was still, thank Heaven, a Christian country, despite the ever-swelling invasion of that irreligious foreign element which threatened to break up the old faith in God. The Madonna was still worshipped; together with the Saints. Their precious relics and other holy amulets still proved their efficacy in the hour of danger.
Amulets—ah, that reminded him.
To kill a man with a view to possessing yourself of his substance was an unpardonable crime. Now what had this boy done? Let them take the so-called robbery first. Well, no robbery had been committed, in spite of the notorious fact that this Protestant, this foreigner was known to be loaded with money. His client had fought down the temptation, the almost irresistible temptation, of appropriating the gold. Let them remember that! The minutest investigation failed to reveal anything save a single coin which he had attached to a string and hung about his neck. Motives, not deeds! What were his motives for this strange act? An unconscious application of the homoeopathic principle. He had taken it as a safeguard, an amulet, in the childish belief that it might protect him on future occasions against insults such as those he had undergone.
Then, while the audience were still puzzling what the last words meant, he suddenly indulged in one of those abrupt transitions for which he was famous, and burst out:
"Down with foreigners! We Catholics know what foreigners are, how they work for evil in places high and low. One cannot take up a daily paper without seeing some exposure of their many-sided viciousness. They contaminate the land with their godless depravity. Nobody can count on immunity. The highest officials in the land, the very Ministers of the Crown, are subjected to their vile disguised attempts at bribery and corruption, no humble peasant girl, no child, is safe from the befoulment of their filthy minds. We know them—our police records, the archives of our Courts of Justice, testify to their demoralizing agency. A pest, a contagion! Who can tell what proposals were made in this particular case—what degrading proposals, backed by the insidious offer of foreign gold? A weak character might have succumbed. But the victim was made of different stuff. He belonged to another type—the heroic type. Suffering anguish of soul, he yet preferred honour to baseness. In self-defence—"
At this point the great Deputy ceased to speak. Signor Malipizzo had swooned away. He had to be carried out of Court.
It mattered little, for the proceedings were at an end save for a few formalities. The case was won.
People were rather annoyed at being deprived of one of Don Giustino's far-famed perorations. It could not be helped. Better luck next time. Then they asked themselves why the judge had fainted. Some thought it might be the heat, or a touch of his old complaint. The majority were agreed that the attack was due to the Deputy's eloquence. And it was true that he was greatly impressed by the speech, but not quite as much as all that. He had decided to faint at a critical moment, for the sake of appearances. It was clever of him. He did it beautifully too; he had been rehearsing half the night. Don Giustino, on his part, shared the common opinion and was charmed with this tribute to his genius. Altogether, the local judge had made a favourable impression on him; his attitude had been irreproachably correct. He was not a bat fellow, for a freemason. One might do worse than leave him in possession of his present appointment on Nepenthe.
The Deputy freed his prisoner; it was unavoidable. But the Russians remained in gaol, and this was always something to the credit of Signor Malipizzo….
Madame Steynlin, on hearing of Peter the Great's arrest, was stricken dumb. She wept the bitterest tears of all her life. Then, with returning calmness, she remembered Mr. Keith whose friendship with the magistrate was the common talk of the place. Would he be able to do anything? Impulsive by nature, she called on that gentleman and poured out her griefs to him. Mr. Keith was sympathetic. He declared he understood perfectly. He promised to do his utmost, that very day.
The Master, meanwhile, languished in prison. He had nobody to take his part, not even among the Little White Cows; the new section, that clique of young extremists, were only too delighted to have him out of the way. The communal doctor alone interceded on his behalf, imploring the judge in the name of the sacred brotherhood of freemasons that he, the Messiah, should be excarcerated in order that he, the physician, might be enabled to continue the daily treatment to which the old man had grown accustomed and for which he was being regularly remunerated. "Think of my wife and children!" he said to the magistrate.
Signor Malipizzo on this occasion did not mean to be baulked of his prey. He was in bad humour; Don Giustino had got on his nerves. By means of a lightning-like discharge of symbols intelligible only to the Elect he retorted that a physician, who depended for his livelihood upon a legitimate practice among BONA FIDE patients, was not fit to be a freemason.
Then the doctor urged the humanitarian aspects of the case. The old man needed the treatment which could be given in prison just as well; the fees would doubtless be paid sooner or later.
The magistrate proved inexorable, adamantine. What was good enough for a native, he argued, was good enough for a vicious old alien. A stomach-pump in prison! What more? They would be wanting fried fish and asparagus next.
As a special concession to the Master's age and rank a separate upper chamber, described as very airy, had been allotted to him in the local gaol. The poor old man did not know how he got there; they had thrust him into this strange place and locked the door on him. Long hours had passed. He sat on an uncomfortable cane-bottomed chair, his hands folded across his stomach. There was already a slight sense of oppression in that region of his body. His head, too, felt heavy. Without knowing how or why, he had fallen into a trap, after the manner of some dumb beast of earth. When would they take him out again? And when would that kind gentleman with the machine arrive?
Daylight entered through a small but thickly grated window. Looking out from where he sat, he could detect neither men nor houses nor trees—nothing but four rectangular patches of deep blue. The sea! Often had he wondered about the sea, and why it was there. It had ever been an enigma to him, this purposeless mass of water. Not even good to drink. He knew nothing of those fables of the pagans—of old Poseidon and white-armed Leucothea and the blithe crew of Triton and silver-footed Thetis moving upon the placid sunlit waters; nothing of that fair sea-born goddess whose beauty swayed the hearts of men. His Venus ideals had been of a more terrestrial nature—the wives or daughters of army generals and state functionaries who desired advancement, and sometimes got it.
Not even good to drink! There was nothing like this in Holy Russia. God would never have allowed it. The uselessness of this sea had always been to him a source of perplexity and even vague apprehension. The spectacle of this shining immensity troubled his world-scheme. Why did God create water, when land would have been so much more useful? Often had he puzzled on the subject…. Why?
But now, in the evening of his life and the extremity of his anguish, the truth was made manifest. A Revelation drew nigh. It just came to him.
The fishes.
It was a dying gleam of intelligence, his last inspired thought, his swan-song. How else could the fishes live save in the water? All these long years he had remained ignorant of the truth. Ah, if only his disciples were at hand, to jot it down into that GOLDEN BOOK!
But why—why must the fishes live in water? And why so much water for so few fishes? Why cannot fishes live on land? Then everybody would be satisfied. Inscrutable are the ways of God….
And his glazed eye moved wearily from that disquieting expanse of blue along the wall of his chamber which had once been white and was now scrawled over with obscene jests and drawings, product of the leisure hours of generations of prisoners. The writing, like all writing, was unintelligible to him. But some of the artistic efforts left little to the imagination. He was saddened, less by homely pictures than by the unfamiliar script. He had always distrusted the written word. Why all these strange letterings—so unnecessary, so dangerous to the life of an orthodox Christian? What one brother has to tell another—why write it down?
He saw the straw pallet destined for his nocturnal repose. It reminded him dimly of a similar resting-place during his monastic life. Then, too, he had slept on a couch near the floor. Flickering visions came to him of those days, so long ago, ere yet the First Revelation was given to the world. A breath of old Russia was wafted into his nostrils. He remembered the lusty, jovial country folk, the songs and dances at hay-making, the fragrance of the land, the sluggish rivers rolling their brown mud about the plains, the mild long-drawn evenings. He felt again that all-pervading charm of sadness, of tender yearning, that hangs in the pale Russian sky and penetrates to the very soul of the endless country.
Gloomy autumn days—wet leaves and lowering horizons. The long winter within doors. Faces appeared to him, faces of old, an endless procession of faces clear-cut as ever … his brother monks, bearded and unkempt … debauched acolytes … pilgrims from the Holy Land … glittering festal robes … vodka orgies, endless chants and litanies, holy lamps burning, somber eikons with staring eyes … the smell of greasy lukewarm cabbage soup, of unwashed bodies and boot leather and incense. Holy Russia—it all moved before his eyes in a kind of melodious twilight. Then the First Revelation. The Man-God.
Man-God. The word filtered through his intelligence. How strange it sounded. The Man-God—what could it mean.
A sudden change. A life of glory and intrigue. Food on platters of gold, sparkling wines and laughter. A diamond cross, an imperial gift, the reward of faithful services. Everybody cringing. Showers of bribes. Women—always women. A divine life! Nothing but women….
Darkness. Something had happened; they had carried him into a place full of endless penances, floggings, starvings. Then they accused him of doing wrong. What was it? The flesh of warm-blooded beasts…. He had preferred the service of God to that of his earthly master. For this they banished him and made him suffer. He was dying now—dying to save mankind. He was giving up his life for sinners. Someone else had once done the same thing. Who was it? He could not remember. People who read and write—they know these things. Some saint, possibly; or at least a man from another province—someone he had never met or spoken to. A good Russian, whoever it was. But the name—the name had slipped out of his mind. He always had a good memory for faces, but a bad one for names.
He was so ill and oppressed too. Worse than before. He felt himself rotting earthwards, like a fungus of his own native forests under autumn rains. His body remained inert but his eye, roaming away from the straw pallet, fixed itself upon the door. When, when would that kindly gentleman with the instrument arrive?
Concerning the life and death of Saint Eulalia, patroness of Nepenthean sailors, we possess ample and accurate information.
She was born in 1712 at a remote village in the Spanish province of Estramadura. Various divine portents accompanied her birth. Her mother dreamed a strange dream about a sea-serpent; her father was cured of a painful gouty affection; the image of Saint James of Compostella in the local church was observed to smile benignly at the very hour of her entry into the world. At the age of two years and eleven months she took the vow of chastity. Much difficulty was experienced in keeping the infant alive; she tormented her body in so merciless a fashion. She refused to partake of food save once in every five weeks; she remained immovable "like a statue" for months on end; she wore under her rough clothing iron spikes which were found, after death, to have entered deeply into her flesh. She was never known to use a drop of water for purposes of ablution or to change her underwear more than once a year, and then only at the order of her confessor who was obliged to be in daily contact with her. The heat of her body was such that it could not be touched by human hands. During her frequent trances she spoke accurately in sixty-nine different languages; there was no hair whatever on her head which was "spotless as an egg." She put baskets of sea urchins into her bed and, as a penance for what she called "her many sins," forced herself to catch the legions of vermin that infested her brown blanket, count them, separate the males from the females, set them free once more, and begin over again. She died at the age of fourteen years and two months. Her corpse forthwith became roseate in colour, exhaled a delicious odour of violets for twenty weeks, and performed countless miracles. On dissection, a portrait of Saint James of Compostella was discovered embedded in her liver.
Saint Eulalia appeared too late to find her proper niche in Monsignor Perrelli's ANTIQUITIES or to be commemorated in some worthy architectural monument by the Good Duke Alfred; too late—and this is doubtless a lucky circumstance—to become the victim of one of Father Capocchio's offensive sneers. Whoever is interested in her saintly career may purchase at Nepenthe, for the small sum of sixpence, an admirable biography by a young Canon of the Church, Don Giacinto Mellino. It gives a full account of her life and of those nine hundred and seventy-two miracles of hers which have been authenticated by eye-witnesses. No need, therefore, to expatiate further.
It stands to reason that Mr. Eames possessed a copy of this treatise. An ideal annotator, he rarely indulged in speculation; his business was to discover and co-ordinate references. Nevertheless, in regard to the earthly life of this particular saint, he used to say: "There are some things a man cannot help puzzling about." It irked him—her success on Nepenthe. He knew the sailormen to be a horny-handed, skeptical, worldly brood. Why had they imported the cult of Eulalia from Spain; why had they chosen for their patroness a mawkish suffering nonentity, so different from those sunny goddesses of classical days? He concluded, lamely, that there was an element of the child in every Southerner; that men, refusing to believe what is improbable, reserve their credulity for what is utterly impossible; in brief, that the prosaic sea-folk of Nepenthe were like everybody else in possessing a grain of stupidity in their composition—"which does not bring us much further," he would add….
At the time of this year's festival Mr. Eames was supremely happy. Another pamphlet had come into his hands, an anonymous pamphlet making fun of the Duchess whose reception into the Roman Church had been fixed for the day of Saint Eulalia's festival. It bore the objectionable title THE DIPPING OF THE DUCHESS and had presumably been indited by some wag at the Alpha and Omega Club who disapproved of water in every shape, even for baptismal purposes. The stuff was printed on the sly and hastily circulated about the island—some people maintained that Mr. Richards, the respectable Vice-President of that institution, was its author. It was a scurrilous anti-Catholic leaflet, grossly personal and savouring of atheism. The Duchess, on hearing of it—everything got about on Nepenthe—was so distressed that she decided to cancel, or at least postpone, the ceremony of her public conversion. At a meeting of urgency convened by the priests, who were bitterly disappointed at her attitude, it was agreed that this was no time for half-measures. A round sum of money was voted wherewith to buy back the pernicious pamphlet from its respective owners with a view to its destruction.
In the space of a single day every copy vanished from the island—every copy save one, which had found its way into Mr. Eames' collection. He meant to keep that copy. He would have died sooner than yield it up. When the clerical deputation arrived at his villa with soft words and promises of more solid lucre, he professed the uttermost amazement at their quest. Mr. Eames, the soul of honesty, the scorner of all subterfuge and crooked dealing, put on a new character. He lied like a trooper. He lied better than a trooper; that is to say, not only forcefully but convincingly. He lied as only a lover of bibliographical curios can lie, in defence of his treasure. He thanked them for their courteous visit and bade them keep their gold. He professed himself a poor recluse innocent of the world's ways and undesirous of riches, adding, as a mere afterthought, that he had not so much as heard of the noxious broadsheet in question. There must be some mistake. Society people might know something about it; that gentleman who called himself a bishop for example, that sallow gentleman from Africa, who spent so much of his time in social gaieties—he might very likely have received a copy. If they wished, he would gladly make enquiries, discreet enquiries, about the matter.
It was Mr. Eames' second lapse from grace. Gentlemen do not tell falsehoods. He did not want to be a gentleman just then. He wanted that pamphlet.
The reverend visitors withdrew convinced, amid showers of compliments and apologies. After seeing them safely off the premises and even, for greater security, half-way down the hill, Mr. Eames returned, drew out the jewel from where it lay in a secret hiding-place among others of its kind, and hugged it to his heart. He purposed to reproduce the pamphlet IN EXTENSO, in that particular appendix to his edition of Perrelli's ANTIQUITIES which dealt with "Contemporary Social History." …
Mr. Heard knew nothing of all this as, jostled among the crowd, he watched the procession on that bright morning. It reminded him of the feast of Saint Dodekanus which he had witnessed twelve days earlier; it was even more extravagant. But he now felt himself seasoned to this kind of display. Besides, he had seen funnier things in Africa; though not much funnier. Once more his thoughts went back to those laughing black people, he remembered all of them—the Wabitembes, the M'tezo, the Kizibubi—what a set of jovial ruffians! How they would have enjoyed this sunshiny nonsense. And the Bulangas. Really, those Bulangas—
There was a light touch on his shoulder. He turned, and found himself face to face with Mrs. Meadows. She was smiling and looking ever so happy.
"Well, Tommy!" she said. "You don't seem to be very pleased to see me. Why haven't you come to tea lately? And why are you looking so glum? He's got his leave, after all. I had a cable two days ago. He'll pick me up here in a fortnight or three weeks. Aren't you glad you needn't escort me to England?"
"Awfully glad!" he replied, trying to be jocular. The words stuck in his throat. He had expected to meet—if he met her at all—a skulking contrite criminal. This woman was jubilant. An amazing, terrifying state of affairs.
"There is something the matter with you, Tommy. Perhaps you have caught my headache. You remember how inquisitive you were? And how you complained of the roses? If you come up now you will find fresh ones waiting for you."
Her glance was unclouded. No human being ever looked less conscience-stricken. It was as though she had convinced herself of the righteousness of her deed, and thereafter dismissed it from her mind as something not worth bothering about. Blithe as a bird! If he had not seen with his own eyes—
"Has it gone, your headache?" he enquired, not knowing what to say.
"Gone away altogether. I have heard so much about this procession that I thought I would drive down and have a look at it. I missed the last one, you know. Besides, I wanted to see some friends here whom I've been neglecting lately. I feel quite guilty about it," she added.
He couldn't help saying:
"You don't look guilty."
"Ah, but you mustn't judge by appearances!"
"You blamed the sirocco, I remember."
"I don't blame it any longer. Surely a woman can change her mind? But what is the matter with you?"
"Perhaps the south wind," he ventured.
She remarked laughingly:
"I don't believe the wind is in the south at all. But you always were a funny boy, Tommy. If you are very good you will see some pretty fireworks presently. As for myself, I shall have to drive home for Baby's early dinner."
"Fireworks in broad daylight?" he asked. "That is something new."
"In broad daylight! Aren't they queer people? They can't wait till it gets dark, I suppose."
At that moment they were joined by Keith and three or four others. He had no more chance of speaking to her alone; she drove away, not long afterwards, waving her parasol at him and leaving him in a state of dazed perplexity.
He had been thinking night and day about his cousin, certain of her criminality and profoundly convinced of her moral rectitude. What had Muhlen done? He had probably threatened her with some exposure. He was her legal husband—he could make himself abominable to her and to Meadows. The future of the child, too, was imperiled. He might be able to claim it; or if not that—the bishop's notions of bastardy laws were not very clear—he could certainly rely upon his friend the magistrate to take the child out of the mother's custody or do something horrible of that kind. The happiness of that whole family was at his mercy. She had been goaded to desperation. Mr. Heard began to understand. To understand—that was not enough. Anybody could understand.
Keith took his arm and remarked:
"Come and see my cannas! They are prefect just now. I must tell you a story about them—it's the wildest romance. I am the only person in Europe who understands the proper cultivation of cannas. I shall have scented ones soon."
"Don't they smell?" enquired the bishop absent-mindedly.
"Not yet. You are looking a little tired, Heard, as if you had not slept well lately. Perhaps you would like to sit down? We can watch the fireworks from the terrace. You ought to read Pepys' DIARY. That is what I have been doing. I am also rather low-spirited just now. The end of another spring, you know—it always makes me feel sad. Pepys is the antidote. He is a tonic. Every Englishman ought to be compelled, for the good of his soul, to go through Pepys once in three years."
"I must read him again," said the bishop who was not particularly interested in the diarist just then.
"His universal zest! It seems to be extinct nowadays; it is a charm that I have not discovered in any living Englishman. What a healthy outlook! Not a trace of straining anywhere. He took life with both hands. How he threw himself into his work, his amusements, his clothes and women and politics and food and theatres and pictures. Warm heart, cool head. So childlike, and yet so wise. There's only one thing that troubles me about him—his love of music. It was so obviously sincere. He not only liked it; he actually understood it. Music, to me, is a succession of sounds more or less painful. I can't even whistle. It's too bad."
The bishop said:
"If the lives of all of us were written down with the same remorseless candour, how few would stand the test."
He was thinking of the Devil's Rock.
"I don't trouble about tests," replied Keith. "The whole herd of humanity adapts its pace to that of the weakest lamb. The capacity of the weakest lamb—that is the test. I don't consider myself bound to such a vulgar standard. And how spectacular we are, in matters of so-called right and wrong. That is because we have painfully cultivated the social conscience. Posing, and playing to the gallery! Mankind is curiously melodramatic, my dear fellow; full of affected reverence for its droll little institutions. As if anybody really cared what another person does! As if everybody were not chuckling inwardly all the time!"
"Surely there are heights and depths in the matter of conduct?"
"I don't trouble about heights and depths. Does it not all depend upon where we take up our stand? Must we always remain stationary like vegetables? A bird knows nothing of heights and depths. You sit here at night-time and look at the stars. They are firm-fixed, you say. Well, they are not firm-fixed. Therefore it is the wrong way to look at them. I have also written a diary, Heard. It is my legacy to posterity and will be published after my death. It relates of actions not all of which Count Caloveglia would call pretty. Perhaps it will give some people the courage of their unspoken convictions."
The bishop suddenly asked:
"If somebody you knew had committed a crime, what would you say?Somebody you really respect—a person like Mrs. Meadows?"
"Your cousin? I should say that whatever Mrs. Meadows does is well done."
"You would approve?"
"Of course I would. People like that are bound to be in the right."
"Really …?"
The fireworks were splendid; altogether, Saint Eulalia's day proved a tremendous success. The festal joy was only marred by the unseemly behaviour of Miss Wilberforce, who profited by the occasion to let off some fireworks, or at least steam, of her own.
In broad daylight too.
This was something new, and rather ominous.
The dear lady was becoming quite a problem.
Men looked down from the market-place that afternoon and beheld a gaily-coloured throng moving about Madame Steynlin's awkwardly situated promontory. Her house and its wide terrace overhanging the sea were filled with guests. The entertainment differed from the receptions of the Duchess. It was more rustic and unrestrained—more in the nature of a picnic. Everything possible had been done to convert that tongue of land, that refractory stretch of trachyte, into a garden. Paths were blasted through the rock; those few scarred olives, the aboriginals, had been supplanted by whatever flowers and shade-giving trees could be induced, with assiduous waterings, to strike roots into the arid soil. It was still rather a transparent place.
A number of new people had lately arrived on Nepenthe in favour of whom the hostess, with the frank cordiality of her nature, had issued invitations broadcast. There was the celebrated R. A. and his dowdy wife; a group of American politicians who were supposed to be reporting on economic questions and spent the Government's money in carousing about Europe; Madame Albert, the lady doctor from Lyons whose unique combination of magic and massage (a family secret) had brought the expiring Prince of Philippopolis to life again; an Italian senator with his two pretty daughters; a bluff hilarious Scotchman, Mr. Jameson, who, as a matter of fact, had done seven years for forgery but did not like to have it brought up against him; some sisters of charity; a grizzled sea-captain who was making discreet enquiries about a safe place for a shipwreck, having been promised by the owners twenty per cent of his vessel's insurance money; a dilapidated Viscount and his SOI-DISTANT niece; two fluffy Danish ladies who always travelled together and smiled at everything, though the younger one smiled in such a horrible knowing fashion that you could not help disliking her; Mrs. Roger Rumbold who addressed meetings to advocate Infanticide for the Masses; Mr. Bernard of the Entomological Society-author of THE COURTSHIP OF COCKROACHES; another young man of pleasant exterior who was held to be an architect because his brother used to be employed in a well-known engineering firm, and several more.
The exclusive Mr. Eames was absent. He sat at home, thinking how narrowly he had escaped imprisonment at the hands of Signor Malipizzo, in connection with Muhlen's disappearance. The closest shave of all his life! It showed how right Keith had been in bidding him keep on the right side of the law—on the right side of the judge—rather than trust to the promptings of a "good conscience." The Duchess likewise sent her excuses. She was so troubled about the pamphlet that Don Francesco hardly dared to leave her side. He, therefore, was also absent; so was the bereaved Commissioner. Mrs. Meadows had driven home again long ago. Van Koppen intended to sail in the early hours of next morning. The bishop and Denis were likewise on the verge of departure. A break-up was at hand.
Mr. Keith alone refused to budge. He was waiting for the first cicada whose strident call was due, he declared, in a week's time. Till then he proposed to remain on Nepenthe.
"Fancy waiting for an insect," said his friend van Koppen. "I believe,Keith, you've got a sentimental streak somewhere."
"I have been fighting against it all my life. A man ought to dominate his reflexes. But if the insect keeps good time—why not?"
He was in an elegiac mood, though he meant to drive away his cares later in the evening by the "Falernian system." He felt the exodus in the air. Another spring drawing to its close—everybody scattering! He was filled, too, with that peculiar pensiveness which troubles complex people when they have done a kindly act. Virtue had gone out of him.
He had wrought a miracle.
The moist look in the eye of his hostess testified to the miracle; so did her frock which, being of pink muslin, harmonized with the state of her mind but not with her complexion. Peter the Great had escaped from prison. Not only he, but all the others were at liberty once more, including the Messiah who, after some attentions on the part of the communal doctor, had been put to bed like a little child. The rest of them filled her trim walks with their gleeful laughter and bright raiment; they devoured abundant wines and food at those refreshment tables which groaned under the weight of good things. One could trust Madame Steynlin to attend to the commissariat department. She knew how to gladden the human heart. That of Peter the Great was gladdened to such an extent that he soon began to perform a Russian peasant dance, A PAS SEUL, to the delight of the assembled guests. It was a cheery interlude with a disastrous ending, for the rough terrace being different from what he expected, he stumbled and fell full length upon the ground. There he lay, laughing, like a young giant refreshed with wine.
"I don't know how you have done it, Mr. Keith," she said, "and I am not going to ask. But I shall never forget this kindness of yours."
"Would you not do the same for me? I imagine, between ourselves, that the judge has been a good deal flustered with this trial and the intervention of Don Giustino. Perhaps he lost his head. We are all liable to that, are we not? He is a nervous man; but quite a good fellow if one keeps on the right side of him. It is so easy to keep on the right side of people. I often wonder, Madame Steynlin, why men are so full of bitterness towards each other. It is one of the things I shall never live to understand. And another is this problem of music! Will you help me to grasp the pleasure which you seem to derive from it? Helmholtz does not bring me much further. He explains why certain sounds are necessarily disagreeable—"
"Oh, Mr. Keith! You would go to a professor. I fear you are not very musical. Have you never felt inclined to cry?"
"I have. But not in a concert-room."
"Nor yet in a theatre?"
"Never," he replied, "though it saddens me a little to see grown-up men and women stalking about in funny dressing-gowns and pretending to be kings and queens. When I watch HAMLET or OTHELLO, I say to myself: 'This stuff is nicely riveted together. But, in the first place, the story is not true. And secondly, it is no affair of mine. Why cry about it?'"
"That looks as if you were heartless and unimaginative. And you so compassionate! I do not understand you. I do not understand myself either. We are always groping about in the dark, are we not? We are always puzzling about our own problems instead of helping other people with theirs. Perhaps one should not think so much of oneself, though it is an interesting subject. Tell me, if music says nothing to you, why not leave it alone?"
"Because I want to be able to extract pleasure from it, as you do. That is what makes me curious. I like to understand things, because then I can begin to enjoy them. I think knowledge should intensify our pleasures. That is its aim and object, so far as I am concerned. What are other joys—those of the illiterate and incurious? A dog scratching his fleas in the sunshine. They too are not wholly to be despised—"
"What a dreadful simile!"
"A precise one."
"You like to be precise?"
"It is my mother's fault. She brought me up so carefully."
"I think that is a pity, Mr. Keith. If I had children I would let them run wild. People are too tame nowadays. That is why so few of them have any charm. These poor Russians—no one tries to understand them. Why is everybody so much alike? Because we never follow our feelings. And yet, what is a surer guide than the heart? We seem to live in a world of echoes."
"A world of masks, Madame Steynlin. It is the only theatre worth looking at…."
The lady was too happy to consider how the miracle had been wrought, though she suspected dirty work at the bottom of it. She never discovered how simple had been the method of Mr. Keith who had merely given His Worship to understand that he had done enough bribing for one season and that, unless Krasnojabkin were promptly released, there would be no bribing whatever next year. The judge, with his usual legal acumen, perceived the cogency of his friend's argument. He met Mr. Keith's wishes more than half-way. On an impulse of downright good-nature—there was no other interpretation to be put on it—he released all the Russians, including the Messiah. They were excarcerated then and there on a decree of "provisional liberty," which looked well in the records of the Court and, being interpreted, signified immunity from further judicial molestation. The incident was closed.
People talked about it none the less. They discussed Don Giustino, his past career and present prosperity. As for Mr. Muhlen—he was already almost forgotten. So was the Commissioner's lady. Madame Steynlin alone brought herself to say a few kind words about both of them. She was ready to say kind things about anyone. The magic of love! Her heart, under the influence of Peter, had opened so wide as to embrace not only the Russian colony, but even the nine thousand families of Chinese cultivators who, according to a paragraph in the morning's newspaper, had perished in a sudden inundation of the Hoang-Ho.
The poor people! she said. She did not see why one should not sympathize with the griefs of a Chinaman. Humble honest folks, without a doubt—swept off the face of the earth, through no fault of their own, by a cataclysm! There was quite a discussion about it on her terrace that afternoon.
Mr. Heard, feeling also very charitable, found himself taking her part against someone who said it was impossible to sympathize with the troubles of a yellow man—they were too different, too remote from ourselves. He thought that much individual hardship had been suffered, undeserved, unchronicled; homes destroyed, children drowned before the eyes of their parents. And nobody seemed to care.
Later on, he turned his back upon the crowded walks and found himself on a remote terrace overlooking the sea. It was quiet here, in view of the sunset—his last sunset on Nepenthe.
Leaning over the parapet he enjoyed, once more, the strangely intimate companionship of the sea. He glanced down into the water whose uneven floor was diapered with long weedy patches, fragments of fallen rock, and brighter patches of sand; he inhaled the pungent odour of sea-wrack and listened to the breathings of the waves. They lapped softly against the rounded boulders which strewed the shore like a flock of nodding Behemoths. He remembered his visits at daybreak to the beach—those unspoken confidences with the sunlit element to whose friendly caresses he had abandoned his body. How calm it was, too, in this evening light. Near at hand, somewhere, lay a sounding cave; it sang a melody of moist content. Shadows lengthened; fishing boats, moving outward for their night-work, steered darkly across the luminous river at his feet. Those jewel-like morning tints of blue and green had faded from the water; the southern cliff-scenery, projections of it, caught a fiery glare. Bastions of flame….
The air seemed to have become unusually cool and bracing.
Here, on a bench all by himself, sat Count Caloveglia. As the bishop took a seat beside him they exchanged a few words. The Italian, so affable as a rule, was rather preoccupied and disinclined for talk.
Mr. Heard remembered his first encounter with that old man—the Salt of the South, as Keith had called him. It was at those theatricals in the Municipality. Then too the Count had been remarkably silent, his chin reposing in his hand, absorbed in the spectacle—in the passionate grace of the young players. He was absorbed in another spectacle now—the old sun, moving in passionless splendour down the sky.
Only a fortnight ago, that first meeting. Less than a fortnight. Twelve days. How much had been crammed into them!
A kind of merry nightmare. Things happened. There was something bright and diabolical in the tone of the place, something kaleidoscopic—a frolicsome perversity. Purifying, at the same time. It swept away the cobwebs. It gave you a measure, a standard, whereby to compute earthly affairs. Another landmark passed; another milestone on the road to enlightenment. That period of doubt was over. His values had righted themselves. He had carved out new and sound ones; a workable, up-to-date theory of life. He was in fine trim. His liver—he forgot that he ever had one. Nepenthe had done him good all round. And he knew exactly what he wanted. A return to the Church, for example, was out of the question. His sympathies had outgrown the ideals of that establishment; a wave of pantheistic benevolence had drowned its smug little teachings. The Church of England! What was it still good for? A stepping-stone, possibly towards something more respectable and humane; a warning to all concerned of the folly of idolizing dead men and their delusions. The Church? Ghosts!
His thoughts wandered to England. Often had he sighed, in Africa, for its drowsy verdant opulence—those willow-fringed streamlets and grazing cattle, the smell of hay, the flowery lanes, the rooks cawing among slumberous elms; often had he thought of that village on the hill-top with its grey steeple. Well, he would see them all in a few days. And how would England compare with the tingling realism of Nepenthe? Rather parochial, rather dun; grey-in-grey; subdued light above—crepuscular emotions on earth. Everything fireproof, seaworthy. Kindly thoughts expressed in safe unvarying formulas. A guileless people! Ships tossing at sea; minds firmly anchored to the commonplace. Abundance for the body; diet for the spirit. The monotony of a nation intent upon respecting laws and customs. Horror of the tangent, the extreme, the unconventional. God save the King.
So much the better. This soulful cult of tradition, this clinging to the obvious and genteel as it were an anchor of safety—it nipped in the bud the monster-making faculty of low horizons and bleak, wintry stretches of earth. Bazhakuloff! Those Russians, it struck him, had been providentially sent to Nepenthe for his delectation and instruction. He was glad to have beheld a type of this nature, inconceivable in England. That grotesque, with three million followers! It had been a liberal education to look into his vacuous face, into those filmy eyes dripping with saintliness and alcohol. The Little White Cows! Chimaeras, engendered in hyperborean mists.
And still Count Caloveglia said nothing. He gazed at the sun, whose orb now rolled upon the rim of the horizon. Slowly it sank, fusing the water into a golden pool. A hush fell upon nature. Colours fled from earth into the sky. They scattered among the clouds. The enchantment began, overhead.
At last the old man remarked:
"I suppose that is why I am no colourist. That is why I worship the inexorable rigour of form. We of the South, Mr. Heard, are drenched in volatile beauty…. And yet one never wearies of these things! It is what you call a glamour, an interlude of witchcraft. Nature is a-tremble with the miraculous. She beckons us to explore her strange places. She says: Tread here, my friend—and here; tread where you have never trodden before! The sage surrenders his intelligence, and grows young again. He recaptures the spirit of his boyish dreams. He peers into worlds unknown. See! Adventure and discovery are lurking on every side. These painted clouds with their floating banners and citadels, yonder mysterious headlands that creep into the landscape at this hour, those islets emerging, like flakes of bronze, out of the sunset-glow—all the wonder of the ODYSSEY is there!"
He spoke out of politeness and soon fell silent again. His thoughts roamed far away.
They were thoughts commensurate with the grandeur of the scene.
Count Caloveglia was no colourist. He was a sculptor, about to reap the reward of his labours. The cheque would be in his pocket that night. Three hundred and fifty thousand francs—or nearly. That is what made him not exactly grave, but reserved. Excess of joy, like all other excesses, is not meet to be displayed before men. All excess is unseemly. Nothing overmuch. Measure in everything.
Measure even in the fabrication of Hellenic masterpieces. He had created one of them (the Demeter did not count); it sufficed for his modest ambitions. The Faun was his first forgery and his last. To retrieve the fortunes of his family he had employed those peculiar talents which God had given him. He would remain, henceforward, an artist. He shrank from the idea of becoming a wholesale manufacturer of antiques.
Three hundred and fifty thousand francs. If sufficed. Thinking of those figures, he began to smile with contentment. He smiled—but no more. And as he continued to muse upon the transaction his look melted, imperceptibly, into one of reverential awe; there was a solemnity about that sum, an amplitude, a perfection of outline that reminded him, in a way, of the proportions of some wonderful old Doric temple. The labour of a lifetime would not have enabled him to collect so much had he tried to sell bronzes of his own workmanship. A bust or statue by Count Caloveglia—it would command a certain small price, no doubt; but what was the reputation, the market value, of the most eminent modern artist as compared with that nameless but consummate craftsman of Locri?
The Count saw things in their true perspective. His mental attitude towards Sir Herbert Street and his American employer was not tinged with the faintest cloud of disrespect; for van Koppen, indeed, he cherished a liking which bordered on affection. He detected in the astute American what nobody else could detect—an element of childlike freshness and simplicity. As far apart, in externals, as two distant trees whose leaves are fluttering on either side of some tangled forest, he yet felt that their roots were interwoven below ground, drawing common life and nourishment and sympathies from that old teeming soil of human aspirations. Nor was he vainglorious of his achievement. His superiority over the art-expert he took as a gift of the gods. Vanityi was abhorrent to his nature. He was not proud but glad—glad to have been able to reconquer his legitimate social position; glad, above all things, to have forged a link with the past—a key to admit him into the fellowship of Lysippus and those others whose august shades, he opined, were even them smiling upon him. The Locri Faun was his handiwork. He was "entitled to dine well," as he had told Denis. That was what he now purposed to do. One master-stroke had repaired his fortunes. It sufficed. Nothing overmuch. Count Caloveglia knew the story of Polycrates, the too-fortunate man. He knew what lies in wait for the presumptuous mortal whoo oversteps the boundary of what is fair and good. Nemesis!
Three hundred and fifty thousand francs. There would be an ample dowry for Matilda. And, as regards himself, he could return to his passion of youth; he could afford to become a sculptor again and even, if so disposed, a collector—though not exactly after the style of his excellent friend Cornelius van Koppen.
"That was a suggestive encounter, was it not, between the Deputy and our local judge?"
He spoke, as before, out of civility.
"Very suggestive," assented Mr. Heard. "Two blackguards, I call them."
The bishop was particularly glad to learn, as everybody on the island had learnt, the minutest details of this sordid legal affair. It seemed likewise to have been providentially arranged, in order to afford him an insight into the administration of local law, and some notion of what would have been in store for his cousin had she applied for relief from Muhlen's persecutions to Signor Malipizzo, his intimate friend. There would have been no justice for her—not from that quarter. He would probably have forbidden the child to be moved out of his jurisdiction, pending the progress of a trial which might never end. Nor could the English Court, with its obsolete provisions on this head, have regarded Muhlen otherwise than as her legal husband—the child of her later union as illegitimate. Bastardy: a taint for life! How well she had done to put herself beyond a rancorous letter of the law; to protect her child and family according to the immutable instincts of mankind!
The Nepenthe magistrate had shown what he was capable of, in his bestial dealings with a half-witted lad and those harmless Russian lunatics—the first one saved through the intervention of a cut-throat politician, and the second … well, he did not exactly know how the Muscovites had been able to regain their freedom but, remembering what Keith had told him about Miss Wilberforce, her periodical imprisonments and his periodical bribes, he shrewdly suspected some underhand practices on the part of that gentleman at the instigation, very possibly, of the charming Madame Steynlin. Signor Malipizzo's cruel travesty of justice—how unfavourably it compared with his cousin's altogether satisfactory, straightforward and businesslike handling of Muhlen's little affair!
Doubtless she suffered intensely. He called to mind her looks, her voice, during that first interview at the villa Mon Repos; he thought it likely that, but for her child and husband, she would have taken her own life in order to escape from this villain. And doubtless she had weighed the matter in her own mind. Sensible people do not take steps of this gravity without reflecting on the possible consequences. She must have tried her hardest to talk Muhlen over, before coming to the conclusion that thee was nothing to be done with the fellow. She knew him; she knew her own mind. She knew better than anyone else what was in store for her if Muhlen got the upper hand. Her home broken up; her child a bastard; herself and Meadows—social outcasts; all their three lives ruined. Mrs. Meadows, plainly, did not relish such a prospect. She did not see why her existence should be wrecked because a scoundrel happened to be supported by a disreputable paragraph of the Code. Muhlen was a troublesome insect. He must be brushed aside. Ridiculous to call such a thing a tragedy!
He thought of the insignificance of a human life. Thousands of decent upright folks swept away at a blow…. Who cared? One dirty blackmailer more or less: what on earth did it matter to anybody?
An enigma? His cousin was not an enigma at all. Keith had called her a tiger mother. That was correct. Not every parent could do what she had done. Not every parent could do what she had done. Not every parent was placed under the necessity. Not every parent had the grit. If all of them fought for their offspring after this fashion, the race would be stronger and better. Thinking thus, he not only understood. He approved. Mrs. Meadows had saved her family. She was perfect of her kind.
Suddenly he remembered that other parent on the passenger boat when he came to Nepenthe—that ugly peasant-woman dressed in black, with the scar across her cheek—how she had tried to console her suffering child. What had Muhlen said? "Throw it into the water! It's often the only way of ridding oneself of a nuisance." Into the water. His own words. That was where he, the nuisance, had gone. It was unpleasant, maybe, to hurtle through eight hundred feet of air. But men who specialize in making themselves objectionable after Muhlen's peculiar fashion deserve all they can get. Sensible women do not put up with such nonsense, if they can help it.
One owes something to one's self, N'EST-CE PAS?
Decidedly so.
Everything was as clear as daylight. And he found he had bothered himself long enough about Muhlen; there were so many other interesting things on earth. A contemptible little episode! He decided to relegate it into the category of unimportant events. He was glad that the whole affair had remained in the background, so to speak, of his Nepenthean experiences. It seemed appropriate. Odd, all the same, that the most respectable woman on the island should be a murderess.
"Dear me!" he mused. "How very queer. It never struck me in the light before. Shows how careful one must be…. And a relation of mine into the bargain. H'm. Some people, if they knew, would call it a compromising situation. Well, I begin to think it rather creditable than otherwise to our family. We want more women of this kind on earth. All mothers ought to be tiger mothers…."
"Don't you notice, Count, that there is an unwonted sparkle in the air this evening? Something cleansing, clarifying?"
"To be sure I do," replied the other. "And I can tell you the cause of it. Sirocco is over for the present. The wind has shifted to the north. It brightens all nature. It makes one see things in their true perspective, doesn't it?"
"That is exactly what I feel," said Mr. Heard.