"Take those damned things away, quickly!" he commanded. It was the celebrated artist's one and only LACHE.

As a rule, however, he did not sleep on the spot. Peasants, climbing to their work on the hillsides in the twilit hour of dawn, were wont to encounter that staggering procession headed by Mr. Keith who, with spectacles all awry and crooning softly to himself, was carried round the more perilous turnings by a contingent of his devoted retainers.

He found it pleasant to live like this. And now another spring was nearing to its end. For how many more years, he wondered. . . . That confounded funeral. . . .

There was a rustle at his back. The southerly breeze had struck Nepenthe on its morning ripple over the Tyrrhenian, setting things astir; it searched a passage through those mighty canes which sprouted in a dank hollow where the rains of winter commingled their waters. The leaves grew vocal with a sound like the splash of a rivulet. Often had he listened joyfully to that melody which compensated, to some small degree, for the lack of the old Duke's twenty-four fountains. Legendary music! Now it made him sad. What was its burden? MIDAS HAD ASSES' EARS. Midas, the fabled king, whose touch turned everything to gold. And gold, and jewels—of what avail were these against the spectre?

The gardeners, moving with bare feet among the sinuous paths, were quick to perceive that a cloud had fallen upon his spirit. They divined his moods with the tactfulness of natural sympathy. On some horticultural pretext one of them drew near and craftily engaged his thoughts and conversation. At last he said something that made him smile. One or two more appeared upon the scene, as if by accident. It was evident that the master needed cheering up. They began to tell him the fairy-tales he loved; tales of robbers and witches and pirates—grand old tales that never wearied him. To arouse his interest they joked among themselves, as though unaware of his existence. One of them, and then another, sang some wild song of love and war which he had picked up while wandering with his flocks among the craggy hills of yonder mainland. He was laughing now; outdoing their songs and stories. It kept him young—to unbend, to play the fool in company such as theirs and relax the fibres stiffened by conventionality; it refreshed him to exchange the ephemeral for the eternal, the tomfoolery of social life for Theocritus and his deathless creatures. How fair it was, this smiling earth! How blithely the young voices went aloft!

They failed to drown those other strains, vagrant wraiths that now floated upwards over fields and houses on the tepid wings of the sirocco—fragmentary snatches, torn from the brazen measure of the municipal band as it marched with the funeral procession. He cursed the sounds from the bottom of his heart. They reminded him of that infamous apparition, of all he most ardently desired to forget. His laughter died down. Wanly he looked at his mirthful pagans, the embodiment of joys. Yes; these were his distractions, his playmates, his elixir of life, his antidote against the only disease, the only sin, crime, vice which he recognized on earth—a vice none the less, because it happened to be the inevitable—the vice of old age. And all the time that pallid swarm came crowding on: messengers from the inexorable spectre. He felt them creeping about with ghostly tread, blighting the radiance of his life, tainting the very air he breathed. Hateful intruders! They wailed among his lilies. The garden was full of their horrid footsteps.

In their presence Mr. Keith began to experience an uncomfortable sensation, a kind of chill—as though something evil had stepped between himself and the brave light of the sun. It was a fleeting feeling which he would have diagnosed, in other people, as perilously akin to a moral stomach-ache.



CHAPTER XXIX



Only one other person on Nepenthe found cause to complain of the municipal music. It was Mr. Heard. Altogether, he was not greatly edified by this, the first funeral of its kind he had ever witnessed. A rowdy-dowdy business, he called it. The music was too lively and blatant for so solemn an occasion; the gorgeous vestments of the clergy, the loud chattering among the mourners, the violent gestures that accompanied Torquemada's well-meant and carefully prepared oration (Don Francesco, a born speaker, would have done it better, but the defunct was no friend or even client of his)—all these things savoured slightly of irreverence. Everyone was talking and laughing as they marched along. It was more like a polonaise than a funeral. In his African period the sight of such a burial would have affected him unpleasantly. But Mr. Heard was changing, widening out.

"These people live gaily," he said to himself. "Why not? A funeral is supposed to be nothing but a friendly leave-taking. Why not be cheerful about it? We are all going to see each other again, sometime, somewhere. I suppose. . . ."

The problem gave him no trouble whatever.

He found himself walking side by side with Mr. Eames who ventured to remark, in a seemly whisper, that he attended the funeral not so much out of respect for the lamented lady—every cloud, he fancied, had a silver lining—as because he hoped to gather, from among so representative a concourse of natives and foreigners, the "popular impression" of yesterday's eruption, with a view to utilizing it in this appendix on RECENT VOLCANIC PHENOMENA OF NEPENTHE.

"Really?" replied the bishop. "A chapter on Volcanic Phenomena? It is sure to be interesting."

Mr. Eames warmed to his subject.

It might be made interesting, he agreed, but for his own ignorance of geology. As it was the business gave him a vast deal of trouble. Monsignor Perrelli had dealt with geological matters in a fashion far too summary for present-day requirements. The old scholar was not to blame, of course, seeing that geology was quite a modern science; but he might at least have been a little more painstaking in his record of those showers of ashes and lapilli which were known to have covered the island from time to time. His account of them was lamentably defective. It was literally bristling with—with—with lacunae, which had to be filled up by means of laborious references to contemporary chronicles. Altogether one of the most unsatisfactory sections of an otherwise admirable work. . . .

"I wish I could help you," said Mr. Heard.

"I wish you could. I wish anyone could. There was that young Jew, Marten, who understood more about these things than most people. A coarse little fellow, but quite a specialist. He promised to supply me with an up-to-date statement, accompanied by a map of the geological structure of the island. I said to myself: Just what I wanted! Well, this confounded statement has never reached my hands. Now I fear he has left the place. Gone away altogether. Didn't have the decency to say good-bye or leave his address. Too bad. Who knows when the next mineralogist will turn up? These fellows are not as common as blackbirds. Meanwhile I have to rely on my own efforts. It's wonderful, by the way, how much a person can pick up of odds and ends of information when forced, by a hobby of this kind, to delve into recondite departments of knowledge which he would otherwise not have dreamt of exploring. One grows quite encyclopaedic! Minerals, medicine, strategy, heraldry, navigation, palaeography, statistics, politics, botany—what did I know or care about all these things before I stumbled on old Perrelli? Have you ever tried to annotate a classic, Mr. Heard? I assure you it opens up new vistas, new realms of delight. It gives one a genuine zest in life. Enthralling!"

And thereupon the bibliographer fell silent, all at once. He had succumbed, yet again, to his besetting sin: talking too enthusiastically to outsiders of what was nearest his heart. Why on earth should a globe-trotting bishop be bothered about the mineralogy of Nepenthe? It was absurd: tactless of him.

He tried to atone for the blunder by some mundane trivialities.

"What are you doing afterwards?"

"Going up to see Mrs. Meadows."

"Are you? Do remember me very kindly! Or perhaps—no. Better not. Fact is, she cut me dead two days ago. At least, it looked uncommonly like it. I confess I was rather upset, because I'm not conscious of having done anything to annoy her. Indeed, I've always felt a kind of weakness for Mrs. Meadows; there is something so fine and womanly about her. Will you try to find out what it's all about? Thanks. Perhaps she may not have noticed me. She was walking very fast. And I must say she was not looking herself at all. Not at all. White and scared. Looked as if she had seen a ghost."

The bishop was troubled by these words.

"Is that so?" he asked. "You alarm me. I think I'll be off this minute. She is my cousin, you know; and I've been rather concerned about her lately. Yes; I won't wait for the end of this funeral; I'll be off! Perhaps we shall meet this evening. Then I can tell you her news. As to deliberately cutting you—don't you believe that for a minute."

"I shall be down here about seven o'clock. . . ."

"People like her," thought Mr. Heard, as he fell out of the procession. He would make a point of having a good long chat, and perhaps stay to luncheon.

He dreaded the coming heat of midday. It was quite warm enough already, as he climbed slowly upward by the short cuts that intersected the driving road, availing himself of every little patch of shade that fell from trees or cottages athwart the pathway.

The country seemed deserted, the funeral ceremony having attracted all the natives from far and near. Yet one figure was moving rapidly up the road in front of him. Muhlen! Even at this distance he was recognizable; he looked, as usual, overdressed. What was he doing there, at this hour? Mr. Heard remembered seeing him go up, once before, at the same time of the day.

He called to mind what he had heard from Keith in the boat. He was quite prepared to believe that this man lived on blackmail and women; that was precisely what he looked like. A villainous personality, masquerading under an assumed name. The sight of the fellow annoyed him. What business had he to transact up there? Retlow! Once more he began to puzzle where he had heard that name. It conjured up, dimly, some unpleasant connotation. Where? Long ago; so much was clear. For a brief moment he felt on the verge of remembering. Then his mind became blank as before; the revelation had slipped away, past recall.

He was glad to enter the shady garden of the villa Mon Repos. Old Caterina sat, sphinx-like, on the stones at the house entrance. There was some knitting-work on her lap, with brown wool and curiously shaped needles; one foot rested on the base of the cradle, which she rocked from time to time. At his approach she rose up, stark and hieratic, without a trace of a friendly smile on her countenance. Was the lady indoors? No, she was out. Out! Where? There was a definite but enigmatical movement of her withered brown arm; it appeared to embrace the universe. And when would she be back? No reply whatever. Only a slight upward movement of the eyes, as much as to say: God knows!

"I'll wait," thought Mr. Heard.

He walked past the forbidding hag who seemed to exhale a positive hostility towards him, and entered his cousin's sitting-room. He would wait. He waited. He glanced through a pile of illustrated newspapers that lay about. And still he waited. The room looked different somehow; almost untidy. There were no rouses about. An hour passed. And still no sign of his cousin.

Out. Always out. What could this mean? Where could she be? It was all rather mysterious and unsatisfactory.

At last he took out his watch. Ten minutes to one! No use waiting any longer. He scribbled a hasty note, left it on the writing-table, and walked into the garden past the impenetrable Caterina, who barely deigned to glance up from her knitting. He would look for a carriage, and give himself the luxury of a drive down. It was too hot to walk at that hour.

Strolling along he espied a familiar courtyard that gave upon the street; Count Caloveglia's place. On an impulse he entered the massive portal which stood invitingly ajar. Two elderly gentlemen sat discoursing in the shade of the fig tree; there was no difficulty in recognizing the stranger as Mr. van Koppen, the American millionaire, a frequent visitor, they said, of Count Caloveglia.

A bronze statuette, green with age, stood on a pedestal before them.

"How kind of you to come and see me!" said the Italian. "Pray make yourself as comfortable as you can, though these chairs, I fear, are not of the latest design. You are going to do me the honour, are you not, of sharing my simple luncheon? Mr. van Koppen is staying too."

"Very good of you!"

"Delighted to make your acquaintance," said the millionaire. "Keith was talking about you only yesterday—such nice things! Do stay. Count Caloveglia has been touching on most interesting subjects—I would come from the other end of the world to listen to him."

The Count, manifestly shy of these praises, interrupted by asking:

"What do you think of that bronze, Mr. Heard?"

It was an exquisite little thing.

Perfect to the finger-tips and glowing in a lustrous patina of golden-green, the Locri Faun—so-called from the place of its discovery—was declared to be stamped with the hall-mark of individual distinction which the artificers of old Hellas contrived to impress upon every one of the rare surviving bronzes of its period. It was perhaps the finest of the whole group. No wonder the statue had created wild excitement among the few, the very few, discreet amateurs who had been permitted to inspect the relic prior to its clandestine departure from the country. And much as they might deplore the fact that it was probably going to adorn the museum of Mr. Cornelius van Koppen, an alien millionaire, not one of them found it in his heart to disapprove Count Caloveglia's action. For they all liked him. Every one liked him. They all understood his position. He was a necessitous widower with a marriageable daughter on his hands, a girl whom everybody admired for her beauty and charm of character.

Mr. van Koppen, like all the rest, knew what hard times he had gone through; how, born of an ancient and wealthy family, he had not hesitated to sell his wonderful collection of antiques together with all but a shred of his ancestral estates, in order to redeem the gambling debts of a brother. That amounted to quixotism, they declared. They little realized what anguish of mind this step had cost him, for he concealed his true feelings under a cloak of playful worldliness. Excess of grief, he held, is an unlovely thing—not meet to be displayed before men. All excess is unlovely. That was Count Caloveglia's classic point of view. Measure! Measure in everything.

People revered him, above all else, for his knowledge in matters of art. His connoisseurship was not one of mere learning; it was intuitional. Astonishing tales were told of him. By the sense of touch alone, and in the dark, he could appraise correctly any piece of plastic work you liked. He had a natural affinity with such things. They held it quite likely that the blood of Praxiteles or his compeers may still have flowed through his veins—certain at all events, that there hung about his person the traditions of the versatile colonists on the shores of Magna Graecia who, freed by legions of slaves from the trivial vexations which beset modern lives, were able to create in their golden leisure those monuments of beauty which are the envy and despair of our generation. On all that concerned the history and technique of ancient bronzes, more especially, he was FACILE PRINCEPS in the land, and it was hinted, after the sale of his property, that Count Caloveglia would not be low to retrieve the fortunes of his family by putting into exercise those talents for metal-working of which, as a gifted boy, he had already shown himself to be possessed.

In this they were disappointed. He spoke of these things as "sins of his youth," professing an invincible distaste, in these later years, for the drudgery of work. He called himself an old dreamer. There was a shed, it is true, attached to the house, a shed which went by the name of a studio. All visitors were taken to see this atelier. It was smothered in dust and cobwebs. Clearly, as the Count himself would explain with a honeyed smile, it had not been in use for twenty years or more.

Mr. van Koppen knew all this.

He knew about that strip of land which the old man had reserved for himself at the sale of his ancestral domain. It lay among the hills, some twenty or thirty miles above the classic site of Locri. On this spot, people were given to understand, fragments of old marbles and vases had been picked up by the peasantry within the last years. Things of small worth—pottery mostly; they lay about Count Caloveglia's Nepenthe courtyard and were given by him, as keepsakes, to any visitor who showed an interest in them. He attached no value to these trifles.

"From my little place on the hills," he would say. "Pray take it as a memento of the pleasure which your visit has given me! Oh, it is quite a small property, you know; just a few acres, with a meager soil; in good years it produces a little oil and a barrel or two of wine. And that is all. I only kept back this morsel from the general ruin of my property—well, for sentimental reasons. One likes to feel that one is still tied—by a slender thread, it is true—to the land of one's ancestors. There is certainly no wealth to be obtained above ground. But it is quite possible that something might emerge from below, given the energy and the means to make systematic excavations. The whole country is so rich in remains of Hellenic life! The countrymen, ploughing my few fields, often stumble upon some odd trifle of this kind. There was that Demeter you may have heard about; sadly mutilated, alas!"

Before the discovery of the Locri Faun on this site the only find of any value had been a battered head—a Demeter, presumably. It was sold to a Paris collection for a few thousand francs, and had thereafter attracted no further attention. It was not worth talking about.

Now, when this dazzling Faun came to light and Mr. van Koppen announced his intention of purchasing the masterpiece for his collection, his art-expert, Sir Herbert Street—the eminent connoisseur whom he had filched form the South Kensington Museum with the bribe of a Cabinet Minister's salary—thought it his duty to compare the disfigured Demeter with this new and marvelous thing. Sir Herbert Street was an inordinately vain man, but conscientious at the same time and, in matters of art-criticism, sufficiently reliable. Not every art-expert would have done what he did. In the interests of his employer he took the trouble of journeying to Paris and carefully examining the poor Demeter fragment. Then, viewing the Locri Faun at Nepenthe in the presence of Count Caloveglia, he made rather a subtle remark.

"Does it not strike you, Count, that there is a curious, an evasive kind of resemblance between this Faun and the Demeter?"

The old man beamed with joy at these words.

"My dear Sir Herbert, allow me to congratulate you on your keen artistic perception! I believe you are the only person, besides myself, who has hitherto been struck by those definite but undefinable traits of similarity. Mr. van Koppen may well be proud of your penetration—"

"Thank you," said the other, immensely flattered. "That is what I am paid for, you know. But now, how do you account for the likeness?"

"I will tell you my own hypothesis. I hold, to be brief, that they both came from the same workshop."

"The same workshop! You amaze me."

"Yes, or at all events from the same school of craftsmen, or some common fountain of inspiration. We know lamentably little of the art history of even a great center like Locri, but, judging by the hints of Pindar and Demosthenes, I think there may well have been—there must have been—consummate local masters, now forgotten, who propagated certain methods of work, certain fashions in form and feeling and treatment which ended, naturally enough, in a kind of fixed tradition. This would suffice to explain the resemblance which your sagacity has enabled you to detect between these two pieces. That is what I mean by saying that they came from the same workshop. What do you think of my theory?"

"I think it accounts for the fact in a most satisfactory manner," the expert had replied, thoroughly convinced.

Mr. van Koppen knew all this.

But he only believed half of it. . . .

"You were saying, Count?"

The Italian shifted his glance from the dainty outlines of the Locri Faun and smiled upon his interlocutor and then upon Mr. Heard, who had at last taken a seat, after walking approvingly round and round the statuette.

"I was going to tell you of another point which occurred later on to Sir Herbert; a man, by the way, of unusual acumen. We agreed that Locri was the indubitable place of origin both of the Demeter and of the Faun. 'Well,' said he, 'granting this—how came they to be unearthed up in the hills, on your property, twenty-five miles away?' I confess I was at first nonplussed by this question. For, to the best of my knowledge, there are no indications of any large Hellenic settlement up there. But it struck me that there may well have been a villa or two—indeed, there must have been, to judge by the miscellaneous ancient material found on my little place. This is what makes me think that these two relics were deliberately carried there."

"Carried?"

"Carried. For although the summer season at Locri was undoubtedly more endurable then than it now is, yet the town must have been sufficiently hot in the dog-days; whereas my vineyard is situated among the cool uplands—"

"A kind of climatic station, you mean?"

"Precisely. Don't you think that richer people had domiciles in both places? The ancients, you know, were so sensitive in the matter of temperatures that in summer time they traveled only by night and some of their toughest generals had underground chambers built for them during their campaigns. I can imagine, for instance, some young and ardent lover of art, in the days when Pythagoras taught under those glittering colonnades of Croton, when the fleets of Metapontum swept the blue Ionian and Sybaris taught the world how to live a life of ease—I can almost see this youth," he pursued enthusiastically, "flitting from a hot palace on the plain towards those breezy heights and, inflamed with an all-absorbing passion for the beautiful, carrying up with him one or two, just one or two, of those beloved bronzes from which he could not, and would not, be parted—no, not even for a short summer month—to be a joy to his eyes and an inspiration to h is soul among the mountain solitudes. These men, I take it, had a sense in which we their descendants are wholly deficient—the sense of the solace, of the pleasurable companionship, to be derived from works of art. That sense has been destroyed. The Japanese alone, of all moderns, still foster an ingenuous affection which prompts them to cling closely to these things of beauty, to press them to their hearts as loving friends; the rest of us, surrounded by a world of sordid ugliness, have become positively afraid of their fair but reproachful shapes. Ah, Mr. van Koppen, that was the age of true refinement, the age of gold! Nowadays—nowadays we only carry our troubles about with us."

The bishop was touched by these moving words.

Mr. van Koppen, wearing a benevolent twinkle in his eye, said to himself:

"What a lordly liar! Almost as good as myself."

Luncheon was announced.



CHAPTER XXX



"You are quite right," the Count was saying to Mr. Heard. "The ideal cuisine should display an individual character; it should offer a menu judiciously chosen from the kitchen-workshops of the most diverse lands and peoples-a menu reflecting the master's alert and fastidious taste. Is there anything better, for instance, than a genuine Turkish pilaf? The Poles and Spaniards, too, have some notable culinary creations. And if I were able to carry out my ideas on this point I would certainly add to my list of dishes a few of those strange Oriental confections which Mr. Keith has successfully taught his Italian chef. There is suggestion about them; they conjure up visions of that rich and glowing East which I would give many years of my remaining life to see."

"Then why not do what I have proposed several times already?" queried the millionaire. "I am in the East every winter; we reckon this year to reach Bangkok the first fortnight in November. We can find room for you on board. We'll make room! Your company would give me more pleasure than I can say."

Count Caloveglia was probably the only male person on earth to whom the owner of the FLUTTERBY would have extended such an invitation.

"My dear friend!" replied the other. "I shall never be able to repay your kindness, as it is. Alas, it cannot be done, not now. And don't you think," he went on, reverting to his theme, "that we might revive a few of those forgotten recipes of the past? Not their over-spiced entremets, I mean—their gross joints and pasties, their swans and peacocks—but those which deal, for example, with the preparation of fresh-water fishes? A pike, to my way of thinking, is a coarse, mud-born creature. But if you will take the trouble, as I once did, to dress a pike according to the complicated instructions of some obsolete cookery-book, you will find him sufficiently palatable, by way of a change."

"You would make an excellent chef!"

"It is plain," added Mr. Heard, "that the Count does not disdain to practise his skill upon the most ancient and honourable of domestic arts."

"Indeed I don't. I would cook CON AMORE if I had leisure and materials. All culinary tasks should be performed with reverential love, don't you think so? To say that a cook must possess the requisite outfit of culinary skill and temperament—that is hardly more than saying that a soldier must appear in uniform. You can have a bad soldier in uniform. The true cook must have not only those externals, but a large dose of general worldly experience. He is the perfect blend, the only perfect blend, of artist and philosopher. He knows his worth: he holds in his palm the happiness of mankind, the welfare of generations yet unborn. That is why you will never obtain adequate human nourishment from a young girl or boy. Such persons may do for housework, but not in the kitchen. Never in the kitchen! No one can aspire to be a philosopher who is in an incomplete state of physical development. The true cook must be mature; she must know the world form her social point of view, however humble it be; she must have pondered concerning good and evil, in however lowly and incongruous a fashion; she must have passed through the crucible of sin and suffering or, at the very least—it is often the same thing—of married life. Best of all, she should have a lover, a fierce and brutal lover who beats and caresses her in turns; for every woman worthy of the name is subject and entitled to fluctuating psychic needs—needs which must be satisfied to the very core, if the master is to enjoy sound, healthy fare."

"We don't always allow them to fulfil that last condition," observed Mr. Heard.

"I know we don't. That is precisely why we are so often poisoned or starved, instead of being cheered with wholesome food."

"You were speaking of woman-cooks?" asked van Koppen.

"I was. But it stands to reason that no woman can be trusted with so responsible a task—so sacred a mission, I ought to call it—in regions south of Bordeaux or east of Vienna. Among many other reasons the whole sex is too drowsy, outside that radius. And if she drinks a little—"

"Drinks a little?"

"If she drinks a little, why it is all to the good. It shows that she is fully equipped on the other side of her dual nature. It proves that she possesses the prime requisite of the artist; sensitiveness and a capacity for enthusiasm. Indeed, I often doubt whether you will ever derive well-flavoured victuals from the atelier of an individual who honestly despises or fears—it is the same thing—the choicest gift of God. Andrea, my man here, is abstemious to the last degree; not, I am glad to say, from conviction or ill-health—it is the same thing—but because he is incurably desirous of saving my money. What is the consequence? You can taste his self-imposed asceticism in the very ZABBAGLIONE, for which I must really apologize! It speaks to the eye, but not to the heart. Let us hope the coffee will be more harmonious."

"Would you not include some of our American dishes in your bill of fare?"

"To be sure I would; a fine selection. I have most pleasant recollections of the cuisine of Baltimore."

"You can get all those things in New York."

"No doubt; no doubt. But one thing invariably distresses me in transatlantic dinners: the unseemly haste in rising. One might really think the company were ashamed of so natural and jovial a function as that to which a dining-room is consecrated. And then, have you not noticed that, sitting at table, a certain intellectual tone, an atmosphere of a definite kind, is insensibly generated among the guests, whatever the subject of conversation may be? They are often quite unaware of its existence, but it hangs none the less about the room and binds the inmates together for the time being. Suddenly we are bidden to rise and betake ourselves elsewhere; to sit on other chairs in a different temperature among different surroundings. It is a wrench. That peculiar atmosphere is dissipated; the genius of the earlier moment driven out beyond recapture; we must adapt ourselves to other conditions and begin anew, often with a good deal of trouble—often, how often, against our inclination! I call that a perverse custom. Every state of the mind, whether we are in society or alone, should be pressed to the last drop, irrespective of whether we happen to have swallowed a final mouthful of food or not. When the conversation has died, as everything must die, from sheer inability to draw further breaths of life, then is the time to break up that old encircling dome of thought; to construct a fresh one, if need be, in a fresh environment."

"I confess," said the American, "it has always struck me as rather barbarous—this running away. I like to linger. But the ladies don't. They know that their dresses show off better in a parlour than under a boards of a mahogany table; perhaps their conversation, too, sounds better among arm-chairs and rugs. So we run after then, as we generally do; instead of making them run after us" ("as I do," he added to himself). "But, Count! If you like our American dishes, why not get this man of yours to learn a few from the Duchess? I know she would gladly teach him; she is not jealous of her knowledge like a professional chef."

"I would have asked her that favour long ago, if Andrea had been a born cook, like Keith's men. Unfortunately he is quite different. The philosopher is represented in his nature, but not the artist. He is only a devoted Arcadian, overflowing with good intentions."

"And are they of no avail?" queried the bishop.

"I have been told that, in art and literature, they will atone for deficiency of natural talent. It may be so; some persons, at least, have been able to cajole their brains into believing this. However that may be, I do not think the rule can be extended into the domain of cookery. Good intentions—no. Nobody need attempt such an imposture on his stomach, an upright and uncompromising organ, which refuses to listen to nonsense. Or let them try the experiment. Gastritis will be the result of good intentions. . . ."

Mr. Heard stretched out his legs. He was beginning to feel at ease. He like this comely old man; he detected an abiding quality in his outlook and person. And he felt at home in these surroundings. There was an air of simplicity and refinement in that calm ground-floor chamber, with its subdued light filtering through windows that opened upon the courtyard, groined vaulting of noble proportions, stucco frieze stained with age to an ivory hue, and those other decorations which the Count, loyal to the traditions of old-world peasant architecture, had piously left unaltered—or, it may be, adapted to modern needs by touches so deft as not to reveal his own consummate artistry. Through the open door by which they had entered came breathings of warm wind laden with the suave odour of a tuft of Madonna lilies that grew, half neglected, in a shady corner. He had noticed them on his entry—how they stood in proud clusters, bending forward with mighty effort to reach the light.

His eye strayed into the courtyard and moved about the green penumbra created by the fig tree's massy foliage; it glanced over fragments of statuary half buried under a riot of leaves and nodding flowers, and rested with complaisance upon the brickwork flooring of herring-bone pattern, coloured in a warm, velvety Indian-red. It was worn down here and there by tread of feet, and pleasantly marked with patches of emerald-green moss and amber-tinted streaks of light that played about its surface wherever the sunbeams could pierce the dense leafage overhead.

From where he sat he could see the Locri Faun on its pedestal. The figure was drowned in twilight. It seemed to slumber.

Meanwhile Andrea, looking uncommonly ceremonious in white tie and white cotton globes, was handing round the coffee. It was pronounced an unqualified success. "Absolutely harmonious," declared the bishop, who had no hesitation, after a critical sip or two, in extending his approval to a curiously flavoured liqueur of unknown ingredients.

"From my little property on the mainland," the Count explained. "If it were a clear day I would take you up to my roof and show you the very site, although it is leagues and leagues away. But the south wind always casts a haze over the mainland at this time of day—a kind of veil."

Mr. van Koppen, connoisseur of cigars, opened his capacious case and offered its contents, without disclosing the fact that they were specially manufactured for him at a fabulous price.

"You will find them smokable, I hope. As a matter of fact it's no use trying to keep a cigar in good condition on the yacht. And it must be the same on an island like this. So far as tobacco is concerned, Nepenthe can be nothing but a ship at anchor."

"True," said the Count. "The moist sirocco is injurious to the finer growths."

"This south wind!" exclaimed Mr. Heard. "This African pest! Is there no other wind hereabouts? Tell me, Count, does the sirocco always blow?"

"So far as I have observed it blows constantly during the spring and summer. Hardly less constantly in autumn," he added. "And in winter, often for weeks on end."

"Sounds promising," observed the bishop. "And has it no influence on the character?"

"The native is accustomed, or resigned. Foreigners, sometimes, are tempted to strange actions under its influence."

The American said:

"You spoke of amalgamating our cuisine with yours, or vice versa. It can doubtless be done, to the profit of both parties. Why not go a step further? Why not amalgamate our respective civilizations?"

"A pleasant dream, my friend, with which I have occasionally beguiled myself! Our contribution to human happiness, and that of America—are they not irreconcilable? What is yours? Comfort, time and labour saving contrivances; abundance; in a word, all that is summed up under the denomination of utility. Ours, let us say, is beauty. No doubt we could saturate ourselves with each other's ideals, to our mutual advantage. But it would never be an amalgam; the joints would show. It would be a successful graft, rather than a fusion of elements. No; I do not see how beauty and utility are ever to be syncretized into a homogeneous conception. They are too antagonistic to coalesce."

"But there is abundant beauty and grandeur in modern American life," said the millionaire, "quite apart, I mean, from that of the natural scenery. A fine steam-engine, for instance—I call that a beautiful thing, perfectly adapted to its end. Is its beauty really so antagonistic to that of your civilization?"

"I know that some excellent persons have been writing lately about the beauty of a swift-gliding motor-car and things of that kind. They are right, in one sense of the word. For there is a beauty to mechanical fitness which no art can enhance. But it is not the beauty of which I spoke."

"And therefore," observed the bishop, "we ought to have another word for it."

"Precisely, my dear sir! We ought to have another word. All values are continually being revised, and tested anew. Are they not? We have been restating moral values within the last half-century; it is the same with artistic ones. New canons of taste, new standards, are continually being evolved; there is a general widening and multiplying of notions. This, I think, ought to make us careful as to the words we employ, and ready to coin new ones whenever a new idea is to be expressed. If we enlarge our concepts, we should likewise enlarge our vocabulary. When I spoke of beauty, I used the word in its narrow classical meaning, a meaning which may be out of fashion, but which has the great advantage that it happens to be irrevocably fixed and defined for us by what the ancients themselves have handed down in the way of art and criticism. This particular beauty, I say, is irreconcilable with that other beauty of which you spoke."

"How so?" asked the millionaire.

"There resides, for example, in Hellenic sculpture a certain ingredient—what shall we call it? Let us call it the factor of strangeness, of mystery! It is a vague emanation which radiates from such works of art, and gives us a sense of their universal applicability to all our changing moods and passions. That, I suppose, is why we call them ever young. They beckon to all of us familiarly and yet, as it were, from an unexplored world. They speak to us at all seasons in some loving and yet enigmatical language, such language as we may read, at times, in the eyes of a child that wakes from sleep. Now the swiftest and fairest steam-engine in the world is not for ever young; it grows obsolete and ends, after a short life, on the scrap-heap. That is to say, where usefulness enters, this spirit of mystery, of eternal youth, is put to flight. And there is yet another element of classical beauty which is equally at variance with your modern conception of it: the element of authority. Beholding the Praxitelean Eros, the veriest ruffian feels compelled to reverence the creator and his work. 'Who was the man?' he asks; for he acknowledges that such things impose themselves upon his untutored mind. Now a certain Monsieur Cadillac builds the most beautiful motor-cars. Who is this man? We do not care a fig about him. He is probably a Jewish syndicate. Such being the case, I cannot bring myself to reverence Monsieur Cadillac and his cars. They are comfortable, but that factor of authority, which compels our homage to the Eros, is wholly lacking. Yet both things are called beautiful. That we should apply the same word to products so different, so hopelessly conflicting, as those of Praxiteles and Monsieur Cadillac—what does it prove? It proves our poverty of invention. And what does it explain? It explains our confusion of thought."

The millionaire remarked:

"I suppose the human outlook has shifted with the years. Democracy hyas changed your old point of view."

"Assuredly. No American, no modern of any race, I fancy, can divest himself of the notion that one man is as good as another; in the eyes of God, they add—meaning in their own eyes. No Greek, no ancient of any race, I fancy, could have burdened himself with so preposterous a delusion. Democracy has killed my point of view. It has substituted progress for civilization. To appreciate things of beauty, as do the Americans, a man requires intelligence. Intelligence is compatible with progress. To create them, as did the Greeks, he requires intelligence and something else as well: time. Democracy, in abolishing slavery, has eliminated that element of time—an element which is indispensable to civilization."

"We have some fine slavery in America at this moment."

"I am using the word in the antique sense. Your modern slavery is of another kind. It has all the drawbacks and few of the advantages of the classic variety. It gives leisure to the wrong people—to those who praise the dignity of labour. Men who talk about the Dignity of Labour had better say as little as possible about civilization, for fear of confusing it with the North Pole."

The American laughed.

"That's one for me!" he remarked.

"On the contrary! You are an admirable example of that happy graft which we mentioned just now."

"Progress and civilization!" exclaimed Mr. Heard. "One uses those words so much in my walk of life that, thinking it over, I begin to wonder whether they mean more than this: that there are perpetual readjustments going on. They are supposed to indicate an upward movement, some vague step in the direction of betterment which, frankly, I confess myself unable to perceive. What is the use of civilization if it makes a man unhappy and unhealthy? The uncivilized African native is happy and healthy. The poor creatures among whom I worked, in the slums of London, are neither the one nor the other; they are civilized. I glance down the ages, and see nothing but—change! And perhaps not even change. Mere differences of opinion as to the value of this or that in different times and places."

"Pardon me! I was using the words in a specific sense. What I mean by progress is the welding together of society for whatever ends. Progress is a centripetal movement, obliterating man in the mass. Civilization is centrifugal; it permits, it postulates, the assertion of personality. The terms are, therefore, not synonymous. They stand for hostile and divergent movements. Progress subordinates. Civilization co-ordinates. The individual emerges in civilization. He is submerged in progress."

"You might call civilization a placid lake," said the American, "and the other a river or torrent."

"Exactly!" remarked Mr. Heard. "The one is static, the other dynamic. And which of the two, Count, would you say was the more beneficial to humanity?"

"Ah! For my part I would not bring such consideration to bear on the point. We may deduce, from the evolution of society, that progress is the newer movement, since the State, which welds together, is of more recent growth than the individualistic family or clan. This is as far as I care to go. To debate whether one be better for mankind than the other betrays what I call an anthropomorphic turn of mind; it is therefore a problem which, so far as I am concerned, does not exist. I content myself with establishing the fact that progress and civilization are incompatible, mutually exclusive."

"Do you mean to say," asked the millionaire, "that it is impossible to be progressive and civilized at the same time?"

"That is what I mean to say. Now if America stands for progress, this old world may be permitted—with a reasonable dose of that flattery which we accord to the dead—to represent civilization. Tell me, Mr. van Koppen, how do you propose to amalgamate or reconcile such ferociously antagonistic strivings? I fear we will have to wait for the millennium."

"The millennium!" echoed Mr. Heard. "That is another of those unhappy words which are always cropping up in my department."

"Why unhappy?" asked Mr. van Koppen.

"Because they mean nothing. The millennium will never come."

"Why not?"

"Because nobody wants it to come. They want tangible things. Nobody wants a millennium."

"Which is very fortunate," observed the Count. "For if they did, the Creator would be considerably embarrassed how to arrange matters, seeing that every man's millennium differs from that of his neighbour. Mine is not the same as yours. Now I wonder, Mr. van Koppen—I wonder what your millennium would be like?"

"I wonder! I believe I never gave it a thought. I have had other things to puzzle out."

And the millionaire straightway proceeded to think, in his usual clear-cut fashion. "Something with girls in it," he soon concluded, inwardly. Then aloud:

"I guess my millennium would be rather a contradictory sort of business. I should require tobacco, to begin with. And the affair would certainly not be complete, Count, without a great deal of your company. The millennium of other people may be more simple. That of the Duchess, for example, is at hand. She is about to join the Roman Catholic Church."

"That reminds me," said Mr. Heard. "She gave me some remarkable tea-cakes not long ago. Delicious. She said they were your specialty."

"You have found them out, have you?" laughed the American. "I always tell her that once a man begins on those tea-cakes there is no reason on earth, that I can think of, why he should ever stop again. All the same, I nearly overate myself the other day. That was because we had a late luncheon on board. It shall never occur again—the late luncheon, I mean. Have you discovered, by the way, whether the business of Miss Wilberforce has been settled?"

Mr. Heard shook his head."

"Is that the person," enquired the Count, "who is reported to drink to excess? I have never spoken to her. She belongs presumably to the lower classes—to those who extract from alcohol the pleasurable emotions which we derive from a good play, or music, or a picture gallery."

"She is a lady."

"Indeed? Then she has relapsed into the intemperance of her inferiors. That is not pretty."

"Temperance!" said the bishop. "Another of those words which I am always being obliged to use. Pray tell me, Count, what you mean by temperance."

"I should call it the exercise of our faculties and organs in such a manner as to combine the maximum of pleasure with the minimum of pain."

"And who is the judge of what constitutes the dividing line between use and abuse?"

"We cannot do better, I imagine, than go to our own bodies for an answer to that question. They will tell us exactly how far we may proceed with impunity."

"In that case," said the millionaire, "if you drink a little too much occasionally—only occasionally, I mean!—you would not call that intemperance?"

"Certainly not. We are not Puritans here. We do not give wrong names to things. What you suggest would be by the way of a change, I presume—like the eating of a pike: something we do not indulge in every day. If I were to come home a little joyful now and then, do you know what these people would say? They would say: 'The old gentleman is pleased to be merry to-night. Bless his heart! May the wind do him good.' But if I behaved as Miss Wilberforce is reported to do, they would say: 'That old man is losing self-control. He is growing intemperate. Every evening! It is not a pretty sight.' They never call it wrong. Their mode of condemnation is to say that it is not pretty. The ethical moment, you observe, is replaced by an aesthetic one. That is the Mediterranean note. It is the merit of the Roman Church that she left us some grains of common sense in regard to minor morals."

The bishop remarked:

"What I have seen of the local Catholicism strikes me as a kind of pantomime. That is the fault of my upbringing, no doubt."

"Oh, I am not referring to externals! Externally, of course, our Church is the purest rococo—"

Mr. Heard was expanding in this congenial atmosphere; he felt himself in touch with permanent things. He glanced at the speaker. How charming he looked, this silvery-haired old aristocrat! His ample and gracious personality, his leisurely discourse—how well they accorded with the environment! He suggested, in manner, the secret of youth and all that is glad, unclouded, eternal; he was a reflection, a belated flower, of the classic splendour which lay in ruins about him. Such a man, he thought, deserves to be happy and successful. What joy it must have been to a person of his temperament—the chance discovery of the Locri Faun!

A great stillness brooded upon the enclosure beyond. The shadows had shifted. Sunny patches lay, distributed in fresh patterns, upon the old brickwork flooring. An oval shaft of light, glinting through the foliage, had struck the pedestal of the Faun and was stealthily crawling up its polished surface. He looked at the statue. It was still slumbering in the shade. But a subtle change had spread over the figure, or was it, he wondered, merely a change in the state of his own mind, due to what the Count had said? There was energy, now, in those tense muscles. The slightest touch, he felt, would unseal the enchantment and cause life to flow through the dull metal.

Mr. van Koppen was slightly ruffled.

"Are you not a little hard on the Puritans?" he asked. "Where would we have been without them in America?"

"And after all," added the bishop, "they cleared up an infinity of abuses. They were temperate, at all events! Too temperate in some matters, I am inclined to think; they did not always allow for human weakness. They went straight back to the Bible."

The Count shook his head slowly.

"The Bible," he said, "is the most intemperate book I have ever read."

"Dear me!"

Mr. van Koppen, a tactful person, scented danger ahead. He remarked:

"I did not know Italians read the Bible. Where did you become acquainted with it?"

"In New York. I often amused myself strolling about the Jewish quarter there and studying the inhabitants. Wonderful types, wonderful poses! But hard to decipher, for a person of my race. One day I said to myself: I will read their literature; it may be of assistance. I went through the Talmud and the Bible. They helped me to understand those people and their point of view."

"What is their point of view?"

"That God is an overseer. This, I think, is the keynote of the Bible. And it explains why the Bible has always been regarded as an exotic among Greco-Latin races, who are all pagans at heart. Our God is not an overseer; he is a partaker. For the rest, we find the whole trend of the Bible, its doctrinal tone, antagonistic to those ideals of equanimity and moderation which, however disregarded in practice, have always been held up hereabouts as theoretically desirable. In short, we Southerners lack what you possess: an elective affinity with that book. One may wonder how the morality of those tawny Semites was enabled to graft itself upon your alien white-skinned race with such tenacity as to influence your whole national development. Well, I think I have at last puzzled it out," he added, "to my own satisfaction at least."

The bishop interposed with a laugh:

"I may tell you, Count, that I am not in the Episcopal mood to-day. Not at all. Never felt less Episcopal in my life. For that matter, it is our English ecclesiastics who have dealt some of the most serious blows at Biblical authority of late, with their modern exegesis. Pray go on!"

"I imagine it is nothing but a matter of racial temperament."

"Goth and Latin?"

"One does not always like to employ such terms; they are so apt to cover deficiency of ideas, or to obscure the issue. But certainly the sun which colours our complexion and orders our daily habits, influences at the same time our character and outlook. The almost hysterical changes of light and darkness, summer and winter, which have impressed themselves on the literature of the North, are unknown here. Northern people, whether from climatic or other causes, are prone to extremes, like their own myths and sagas. The Bible is essentially a book of extremes. It is a violent document. The Goth or Anglo-Saxon has taken kindly to this book because it has always suited his purposes. It has suited his purposes because, according to his abruptly varying moods, he has never been at a loss to discover therein exactly what he wanted—authority for every grade of emotional conduct, from savage vindictiveness to the most abject self-abasement. One thing he would never have found, had he cared to look for it—an incitement to live the life of reason, to strive after intellectual honesty and self-respect, and to keep his mind open to the logic of his five senses. That is why, during the troubled Middle Ages when the oscillations of national and individual life were yet abrupter—when, therefore, that classical quality of temperance was more than ever at a discount—the Bible took so firm a hold upon you. Its unquiet teachings responded to the unquiet yearnings of men. Your conservatism, your reverence for established institutions, has done the rest. No! I do not call to mind any passages in the Bible commending the temperate philosophic life; though it would be strange if so large a miscellany did not contain a few sound reflections. Temperance," he concluded, as though speaking to himself—"temperance! All the rest is embroidery."

Mr. Heard was thoughtful. The American observed:

"That side of the case never struck me before. How about Solomon's proverbs?"

"Maxims of exhaustion, my dear friend. It is easy to preach to me. I am an old man. I can read Solomon with a certain patience. We want something for our children—something which does not blight or deny, but vivifies and guides aright; something which makes them hold up their heads. A friend, an older brother; not a pedagogue. I would never recommend a boy to study these writings. They would lower his spirits and his self-respect. Solomon, like all reformed debauchees, has a depressing influence on the young."

"Do you know England well?" asked Mr. Heard.

"Very little. I have spent a few days in Liverpool and London, here and there, on my periodical journeyings to the States. Kind friends supply me with English books and papers; the excellent Sir Herbert Street sends me more than I can possibly digest! I confess that much of what I read was an enigma to me till I had studied the Bible. Its teachings seem to have filtered, warm and fluid, through the veins of your national and private life. Then, slowly, they froze hard, congealing the whole body into a kind of crystal. Your ethics are stereotyped in black-letter characters. A gargoyle morality."

"It is certainly difficult," said Mr. van Koppen, "for an Anglo-Saxon to appraise this book objectively. His mind has been saturated with it in childhood to such an extent as to take on a definite bias."

"Like the ancients with their ILIAD. Where is a truer poet than Homer? Yet the worship of him became a positive bane to independent creative thought. What good things could be written about the withering influence of Homer upon the intellectual life of Rome!"

The bishop asked:

"You think the Bible has done the same for us?"

"I think it accounts for some Byzantine traits in your national character and for the formlessness and hesitancy which I, at least, seem to detect in the demeanour of many individual Anglo-Saxons. They realize that their traditional upbringing is opposed to truth. It gives them a sense of insecurity. It makes them shy and awkward. Poise! That is what they need, and what this unbalanced Eastern stuff will never give them."

"The withering influences of Homer: surely that is a bad sign?" asked the American.

"And that of the Bible?" added Mr. Heard.

"How shall a plant survive, save by withering now and then? If the ancients had not exhausted themselves with Homer, the soil might not have been ready for our Renaissance. A bad sign? Who can tell! Good and bad—I question whether these are respectable words to use."

"You are content, as you observed before, to establish a fact?"

"Amply content. I leave the rest to the academicians. And the only fact we seem to have established is that your notions of morality resemble my notions of beauty in this one point: neither of them are up to date. You will have be admire a steam-engine. Why? Because of its delicately adjusted mechanism, its perfect adaptation to modern needs. So be it. I will modify my conception of what is fair in appearance. I will admire your steam-engine, and thereby bring my ideals of beauty up to date. Will you modify your conception of what is fair in conduct? Will you admire something more adapted to modern needs than those intemperate Hebrew doctrines; something with more delicately adjusted mechanism? The mendicant friar, that flower of Oriental ethics—he is not up to date. He resembles all Semites. He lacks self-respect. He apologizes for being alive. It is not pretty—to apologize for being alive!"

The American observed:

"I should say that even our greatest bigots, nowadays, don't take those old doctrines as seriously as you seem to think."

"I daresay they don't. But they profess to reproach themselves for not doing so. And this is more contemptible. It adds insincerity to imbecility."

A sunny smile played about his face as he spoke these words. It was evident that his thoughts were already far away. The bishop, following the direction of his glance, saw that it rested upon the statuette of the Faun whose head and shoulders were now enveloped in a warm beam of light. Under that genial touch the old relic seemed to have woke up from its slumber. Blood was throbbing in its veins. It was inn movement; it dominated the scene in its emphatic affirmation of joy.

Mr. Heard, his eyes fixed upon the statuette, now realized the significance of what had been said. He began to see more clearly. Soon it dawned upon him that not joy alone was expressed by the figure. Another quality, more evasive yet more compelling, resided in its subtle grace: the element of mystery. There, emprisoned in the bronze, dwelt some benignant oracle.

Puzzle as he would, that oracle refused to clothe itself in words.

What could it be?

A message of universal application, "loving and enigmatical," as the old man had called it. True! It was a greeting from an unknown friend in an unknown land; something familiar from the dim past or distant future; something that spoke of well-being—plain to behold, hard to expound, like the dawning smile of childhood.



CHAPTER XXXI



Towards evening, Mr. van Koppen drove the bishop down in the carriage which he usually hired for the whole of his stay on Nepenthe. They said little, having talked themselves out with the Count. The American seemed to be thinking about something. Mr. Heard's eye roamed over the landscape, rather anxiously.

"I don't like that new cloud above the volcano," he observed.

"Looks like ashes. Looks as if it might drift in our direction, doesn't it, if the wind were strong enough to move it? Do you see much of the Count?" he enquired.

"Not as much as I should like. What excellent veal cutlets those were! So white and tender. Quite different from the veal we get in England. And that aromatic wine went uncommonly well with them. It was his own growth, I suppose."

"Very likely. From that little vineyard which produces so many good things." He chuckled softly. "As to English veal—I never yet tasted any worth eating. If you don't slaughter a calf till it's grown into a cow—why, you're not likely to get anything but beef."

"They say the English cannot cook, in spite of the excellence of their prime materials."

"I think the prime materials are at fault. They sacrifice everything to size. It's barbaric. Those greasy Southdown sheep! It's the same with their fowls; they're large, but insipid—very different from the little things you get down here. Now a goose is capital fodder. But if you grow him only for his weight, you destroy his quality and flavour; you get a lump of blubber instead of a bird."

"Apple sauce?"

"I don't like apples in any shape. A sour kind of potato, I call them. They eat an awful lot of apples in our country. That is what makes so many of our women as flat as boards, in front and behind—especially in the Eastern States. It's apple-eating. Apples ought to be taxed. They ruin the female figure. I'm not sure that they don't sour the character as well."

"Don't you care about our English vegetables?"

"Can't say I'm much in love with them, Mr. Heard. Brussels sprouts, for instance—I'm very partial to Brussels sprouts. But the things they give you over there are the size of a bath sponge, and much the same taste, I reckon. And the carrots! A carrot ought to be small and round and yellow, it ought to melt in the mouth like a plum. Those carrots aren't carrots at all. They're walking sticks. And the peas! No, I don't care about English peas. Too large and too lively for me."

"Lively?"

"That's it. Lively. I shall never forget my first experience of them," he went on, laughing. "There were two or three in the dish; just two or three; filled it up nicely. Looked like cannon-balls. What do they expect me to do with these things? I wondered. I didn't like to ask the waiter. One doesn't care to be taken for an ignorant stranger. Well, I landed one on my plate and began carving at it, to see if there was anything eatable inside the shell, when the durned thing slipped away from my knife and crashed on to the floor. Bounced up like a marble. I called for a nutcracker—'I shall want the largest you've got,' I said. They couldn't find one. Now I'm not the sort of man, Mr. Heard, to be beaten by a vegetable, if it really was a vegetable. Because, you see, it behaved more like a blamed mineral. I sent for the head waiter, and took him into my confidence. I tried to talk English, like I'm talking to you. 'What d'ye call these things?' I asked. 'Marrowfats, Sir.' 'Ah, I thought they weren't peas. You've got PETITS POIS down on the bill of fare. Better get that put right. And now, how d'ye eat them?' 'You bite them!' That's what he said. 'You bite them.' Of course I didn't believe him. I thought it was just a bit of English humour, especially as the other waiter was looking the opposite way all the time. Well, like a fool, I said to myself: 'No harm in trying!' I've got pretty sharp teeth, you know, for a boy of my age. That's how I managed to do what a lot of you younger fellows couldn't have done. I got them fixed into the softest of that bunch of marrowfats. But as to pulling them out again! The head waiter, you bet, had disappeared. And the other fellow was standing at the window with his back to me. Looking up the street, I should say, to see if it was going to rain."

After this little outburst, the millionaire seemed to have nothing more to say.

He was thinking. . . .

Cornelius van Koppen loved a good liar. He knew something about the gentle art. It was an art, he used to say, which no fool should be allowed to cultivate. There were too many amateurs knocking about. These bunglers spoiled the trade. Without doing any good to themselves, they roused distrust; they rubbed the fine bloom off human credulity. His puritan conscience was enraged at petty thefts, petty forgeries, petty larcenies. That was why he despised that otherwise excellent person, the Financial Commissioner for Nicaragua, whose wildest flights of embezzlement never exceeded a few hundred dollars. He respected a man who, like himself, could work in the grand style. To play upon the credulity of a continent—it was Napoleonic, it was like stealing a kingdom; it was not stealing at all. This, he shrewdly suspected, was what his good friend the Count was engaged upon. That delightful old man was working in the grand style.

Bronzes, ancient or modern, were Greek to Mr. van Koppen. He could not tell the difference between the art of Clodion and of Myron—had, in fact, never heard the names of these good people and did not particularly care to hear them; he paid Sir Herbert Street for that part of the business. But he had picked up, in the course of his long humanitarian career, a good deal of general knowledge. Old Koppen was no fool. He was intelligent; intelligence, as the Count had said, being perfectly compatible with progress. The millionaire could put two and two together as fast as most men; he was celebrated, even among his quick-witted compatriots, for an uncanny faculty of walking round people without getting off his chair. Common sense, he called it.

Many a time he had listened to Count Caloveglia's rounded periods anent the Locri Faun. Taking his own personal experience as a guide, he had come to the conclusion that a man does not explain things quite so satisfactorily, unless he has some business in hand. Everything fitted into a hypothesis which had been slowly maturing in his mind, namely, that he was confronted by a fraud, a really noble fraud, a fraud after his own heart, a fraud deserving the fullest support of every sensible man and woman.

That vineyard, for instance, with those antiquities. A good many friends of his in the States had made their pile out of salted gold mines. Why not salt a vineyard? Oh yes; everything fitted in beautifully. The remoteness of that vineyard . . . a town like Locri was obviously unsafe, too public a place for such important discoveries. The conscientious Sir Herbert would certainly want to make enquiries on the spot—enquiries which would prove that no Faun had ever been found there. And that would ruin everything. Therefore the statue had been "carried" to the vineyard in ancient times by "some young and ardent lover of art." Carried, ha, ha! His knowledge of human nature made him doubt whether the Locri Faun had ever in its life made a further journey than to Caloveglia's shady courtyard from that mysterious, dusty shed at the back of his house. Or the Demeter either. That "sadly mutilated head" was a feeler—a rehearsal. They both came "from the same workshop." Excellent! That shed was the workshop—the birthplace of these two antiques; the Count himself their old Hellenic creator.

Andrea, no doubt, was the secret.

These art experts! Here was Street, one of the best of them, a man of celebrity in his department, solemnly pronouncing for the authenticity of the fake—in the full and innocent conviction that it was really authentic. A sucking babe. This man, he could see by his simple society face, had not even made an arrangement with the Count as to a commission for himself in the event of a purchase being concluded. He was satisfied with his salary. These experts—what a crowd of fools they were! Especially the honest ones.

None the less, he was delighted with Sir Herbert's opinion. It was exactly what he wanted. For he meant to help the County who, he was sure, would never accept a cent from him save under a pretext like that of the sale of the Faun. He loved old Caloveglia. There was something clean and purposeful about him. His friendship with such a man filled up what he knew to be a void in his own equipment as citizen of the world. And the count was working—was lying—for a worthy purpose: a daughter's dowry. For that reason alone he was deserving of assistance.

Mr. van Koppen was unmarried. Knowing life as he did, from its more seamy or mercenary side, he had never brought himself to accept a single one of several hundred offers of marriage which had been more or less overtly made to him—to his millions. He loved the sex, as a whole; but distrusted them individually. He thought he knew exactly what they were after. Pearl necklaces and things. He was a good American; fond of bestowing pearl necklaces. But he liked to give them when, and to whom, he fancied; he meant to be his own master and to keep his painfully gotten millions under his own control. All of which, far from extinguishing, actually fostered that queer bachelor's feeling of reverential awe for the married state and its results. Every form of courage and success appealed to van Koppen—none more than the reckless impetuosity of a man who speculates in such a delirious lottery and sometimes actually draws a prize. Such had been Count Caloveglia's portion. His marriage had plainly been a love-match; a success; its result, this offspring—a daughter of whom any father might be proud. Mr. van Koppen thoroughly understood the Count's position. These Italians need dowries for their girls. Well, he should have one! What did it signify? One pearl necklace the less, for some operatic charmer. Not worth talking about. Among all h is various benefactions, none was ever projected with a lighter heart, with more sincere pleasure. It made him glad to be a millionaire.

All the details had been settled. The FLUTTERBY was sailing in a day or two. The relic would be brought on board, at dead of night, by the faithful Andrea, who would return to the Count with a cheque in his pocket. It was a considerable sum; so considerable that Caloveglia had displayed great hesitation in accepting it. But the millionaire pointed out that the parties must be guided by Sir Herbert's opinion. What was the good, he asked, of employing a specialist? Sir Herbert Street had declared the bronze to be priceless, unique. His employer, therefore, insisted on paying what the other had called "an adequate amount, if the value of such a work of art can be expressed in monetary figures at all." There was nothing more to be said. The Count gave way, with graceful reluctance. A sham ancestry having been manufactured for the masterpiece (it was proved to come from Asia Minor) in order to elude the vigilance of the Italian Government, the Locri Faun could thereafter be freely displayed to the American public, and Sir Herbert Street was probably right in foretelling that it would be the show piece of the millionaire's museum-artists and antiquarians flocking to see it from every part of the world.

And Mr. van Koppen, as he drove along, was thinking of that cheque; he was converting the dollars into francs. They made rather an awkward sum. He decided to round it off, if only for the sake of appearances; a further reason for not sending the cheque till the last moment, together with a carefully worded letter to allay the Count's scruples. The old fellow might otherwise return the balance, in a fit of conscientiousness. Like himself, Count Caloveglia was infernally, and very properly, punctilious—in small matters.

Yes, there was some fun, at times, in being a millionaire. Or a sculptor either, for that matter! For it evidently took some doing—a little thing like that Locri Faun. It took some doing. And it was worth doing: that was the main point. A man who could bamboozle Sir Herbert Street—such a man deserved to be supported. And what if the truth ultimately leaked out? Had he not acted with the best intentions, under the written advice of an expert? Far from feeling uneasy, Mr. van Koppen smiled at the thought of how his millions, backed by the opinion of a connoisseur of international reputation, had enabled him to play yet one more trick upon that great Republic whose fathomless gullibility no one had ever exploited to a better purpose than himself. . . .

Mr. Eames was waiting for the bishop, according to appointment.

"How about Mrs. Meadows?" he at once began.

"She was out, invisible. I waited nearly two hours and then lunched with Count Caloveglia. By the way, have you seen anything of Denis lately?"

"No. Why?"

"The old man seemed to be concerned about him. He asked me to make enquiries. Van Koppen thought that he might have got into trouble with some girl. But that strikes me as very unlikely. He may be a little homesick and lonely, so far from his mother."

The bibliographer said:

"I understand Mr. van Koppen is quite an authority on girls. As to Denis, I saw him last—when was it? Oh, not so very long ago. The day all those funny things happened; those portents. We walked up and down together on this very terrace. Perhaps he has left the island, like that wretched mineralogist who promised me—never mind! He seemed all right then. A little depressed, perhaps. Yes; a little depressed, no I come to think of it. But the Count need not be anxious. This island is a great place for scares and rumours."

Mr. Heard was not satisfied.

"Do you believe the influence of Nepenthe can make Northern people irresponsible for their actions? Keith does. Or how about the sirocco? Can it upset their nerves to such an extent?"

"Not my nerves. I have heard of people making fools of themselves and then blaming the Creator. Often! And of course, if one begins to brood over accidentals like the weather, one is sure to become a lunatic sooner or later. Weather was not made for that purpose. If you come to think of it, how few days there are when a man can honestly say that the weather is quite to his liking! It is nearly always too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry or too windy. I don't trouble myself about sirocco. Why should Denis? He is not nearly as much of a fool as many people look. And I would not listen to Keith. He moves among hyperbolas."

Mr. Heard felt slightly relieved. What a sensible fellow this was; so matter-of-fact and sure of his ground. The ideal scholar. Sirocco did not exist for him. He stood aloof from human passions and infirmities.

It was plain that the bishop had never heard that story about the BALLON CAPTIF.

"For my part," he said, "I am beginning to object to this south wind. I never felt it worse than to-day. Phew! Stifling! One can hardly breathe. My shirt is sticking to my back. Suppose we sit down somewhere?"

They found a bench, in view of the sea and the volcano. The population moved sedately up and down before their eyes.

"Is it always like this?" enquired Mr. Heard.

"Spring is a little warmer than usual. Or perhaps one should say that summer has begun earlier. The sirocco is the same, year after year, although there is a kind of conspiracy among the foreign residents to say that it happens to be worse than usual that particular season. It never varies."

"What does your Perrelli say on the subject?"

Mr. Eames glanced at him distrustfully.

"You are trying to chaff me," he said. "Serves me right for talking so much this morning. I am afraid I bored you dreadfully."

The bishop wanted to know.

"Then I may tell you that Monsignor Perrelli does not so much as mention the South wind. He names all the others and has come capital observations on the anchorages of the island as adapted to different winds and seasons. He has also extracted from old chronicles the records of the great storms of 1136, 1342, 1373, 1460, and so on; but never discloses the fact that they all blew from the south. He says the air is pleasant, tempered by gentle breezes from the sea. The word sirocco does not occur in his pages save once, when he laments its prevalence on the mainland."

"The old humbug!"

A little shiver ran through Mr. Eames. Then he observed, in a suave tone of voice:

"He was an historian of the period, an agreeable gentleman telling others of his kind what he knows will be of interest to them. That is what makes his work attractive to me: the personality of the writer. The facts that he records, taken in conjunction with those he slurs over or omits—they give one such an insight into changing human nature! You can construct the character of a man and his age not only from what he does and says, but from what he fails to say and do."

"Modern historians are not like that," said Mr. Heard. "They give you the truth to the best of their ability. It is rather dry reading sometimes. I would like to borrow your Perrelli for a day or two, if you don't mind."

"I'll send it round, together with some old prints of this island and modern photographs. You will then see what I mean. The prints are not exactly true to nature; these people did not want to be true to nature. And yet they convey a better impression of the place than the modern pictures. Perhaps there are two truths: the truth of fact and that of suggestion. Perrelli is very suggestive; romance grafted upon erudition, and blossoming out of it! So imaginative! He has a dissertation on the fishes of Nepenthe—it reads like a poem and is yet full of practical gastronomic hints. Can you picture Virgil collaborating with Apicius?"

The bishop said:

"Horace might have got on better with that old BON-VIVANT."

"Horace could never have had a hand in this chapter. He lacks the idealistic tinge. He could never have written about red mullets as Perrelli writes when he compares their skin to the fiery waves of Phelgethon, to the mantle of rosy-fingered dawn, to the blush of a maiden surprised in her bath, and then goes on to tell you how to cook the b east in thirty different ways and how to spit out the bones in the most noiseless, genteel fashion. That is Perrelli—so original, so leisurely. Always himself! He smiled as he wrote; there is not a shadow of doubt about it. In another section, on the fountains of the island, he deliberately indulges in the humour of some old mediaeval schoolman. Then there is a chapter on the ecclesiastical conditions of the place under Florizel the Fat—it is full of veiled attacks on the religious orders of his own day; I suspect it got him into trouble, that chapter. I am sorry to say there is a good deal of loose talk scattered about his pages. I fear he was not altogether a pure-minded man. But I cannot bring myself to despise him. What do you think? Certain problems are always cropping up, aren't they?"

Mr. Eames suddenly looked quite troubled.

"They are," replied the bishop, who was not in a mood to discuss ethics just then. "What are you going to do about it?" he added.

"About what?"

"This poetic omission on the part of Perrelli to mention the sirocco?"

"It has given me a deal of extra work, I can assure you. I have had to go into the whole question. I have tabulated no less than fifty-seven varieties of sirocco. Sailors' words, most of them; together with a handful of antiquated terms. Fifty-seven varieties. Twenty-three thousand words, up to the present, dealing the with south wind."

"That is a fair-sized foot-note," laughed the bishop. "A good slice of a book, I should call it."

"My foot-notes are to be printed in small type. In fact, I am thinking of casting the whole of this sirocco—material into an appendix. Too much, you think? Surely the number of words is not disproportionate to the subject? The south wind is a good slice of Nepenthe, is it not? . . . Look! That cloud has made up its mind to come our way after all. There will be another shower of ashes. Sirocco, you observe. . . ."

The terrace, meanwhile, had become crowded. Already the evening sun was slightly obscured behind a brown haze. Ashes were traveling fast. They began to fall, softly.

What was to be done? Everybody, mindful of the previous experience, was in favour of a second procession to take place immediately. The PARROCO held the same opinion. For form's sake, however, he dispatched a confidential messenger to learn the views of Mr. Parker, who was sitting dejectedly in his study with the incomplete Financial Report still staring him in the face. The Commissioner pulled himself together with praiseworthy alacrity and gave his whole mind to the question.

No. On due consideration, he was opposed to the idea of a procession. Having enjoyed, in various continents and various capacities, some experience of backing the same horse twice over, Mr. Parker was not in favour of demanding a second largesse from the Saint. It might spoil everything, he said. Let them wait till next morning. If there was a deep fall like last time, the experiment might be worth trying. But not just yet! While admitting that something ought to be done, it struck him as a hazardous proceeding to play fast and loose, in this fashion, with the reputation of a Saint.

His Reverence, duly impressed, waited for half an hour. It was then seen that the Nicaraguan Representative had once more given the soundest of advice. The downpour of ashes ceased abruptly, at the moment when the sun sank into the sea. No mischief was done.

Late at night another phenomenon became visible. The volcano was observed to be in violent eruption. It blazed forth like a gigantic torch held into the heavens. Streams of lava poured down the mountain flanks, reddening sky and sea.

Nepenthe was consoled by the spectacle. The demon had at last found an outlet—a method of relief. There would be no more showers of ashes. The fact that villages were being overwhelmed under a deluge of flame, vineyards scorched and hundreds of innocent folks, their retreat cut off by fiery torrents, were even then being roasted to death, was no concern to the islanders. It only proved what every one knew: that the jurisdiction of their Patron Saint did not extend to the mainland.

Each of those villages had its own Saint, whose business it was to forestall accidents of this kind. If they failed in their duty through incapacity or mulishness, nothing was easier than to get rid of them; there were others to choose from—dozens of others, waiting for the job! Thinking thus, the islanders gave vent to an immense sigh if relief. They wished long life to their Patron Saint, with whose services they had reason to be satisfied. Their own crops and lives were safe from harm, thanks to the martyr Dodekanus. He loved his people, and they loved him. He was a protector worthy of the name—not like those low-bred bastards across the water.



CHAPTER XXXII



Mr. Heard had just finished his early Italian luncheon. Sitting at his coffee and smoking a cigarette, in a mood of considerable contentment, he gazed over the mirror-like surface of the sea towards the volcano, whose pyrotechnical display on the previous evening had kept him awake to a late hour. Yet another glistering day! Each one warmer than the last, and never a change in the wind! Presently he would retire for an hour or two into his cool and darkened bed-room.

One little thing troubled his mind. There had been no reply to the note—a kind of note of enquiry—which he had left at the villa Mon Repos on the preceding day. Though he knew little of his cousin, he could not help feeling anxious. She was all by herself in that lonely little place, suffering—perhaps, and too proud or too shy to complain. Mr. Eames' description of her had made him uneasy. Why should she look as if she had seen a ghost? What could that signify? The bibliographer was a level-headed person, by no means given to flights of imagination. Imperceptibly, he felt, there had been established an under-current of sympathy between himself and this solitary woman, whom everybody seemed to like. She was different from the ordinary type; the kind of woman whom a man could not help respecting. She contrasted favourably with some of his recent female acquaintances who, however charming or witty, dissatisfied him in this or that particular. His cousin's devotion to child and husband appealed to his heart. She seemed to be perfect of her kind.