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.



CHAPTER XXXVIII



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.



CHAPTER XXXIX



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.



CHAPTER XL



The symposium, that evening, might have degenerated into something like an orgy but for the masterful intervention of Denis who was not going to let Keith make a fool of himself. It took place in the most famous of all the caves of Nepenthe-Luisella's grotto-cavern dedicated, by common usage, to the worship of Venus and Bacchus.

There were two or three living rooms on the surface of the ground. Walking through the first of these you clambered down some slippery stairs into what was once a breathless subterranean vault hewn out of the soft and dry pumiceous rock and used, as was customary, for storing barrels and other paraphernalia. In the course of time, as more barrels accumulated, the grotto was excavated further and further into the entrails of the island. There seemed no reason why it should ever cease growing when suddenly, one day, the perspiring workmen were struck in the face by a cool blast of wind laden with marine moisture. They knew what this meant. They had encountered one of those mysterious and dangerous fissures that lead down to unknown depths, opening upon the world of sunshine often at the water's edge, four hundred feet below. It was deemed prudent to suspend excavations. These rents in the interior of the earth had a knack of enlarging themselves, without a word of warning, from cracks of a few inches to black gulfs several hundred feet across. The cavern ceased to grow. As a matter of fact, it turned out to be just large enough.

That current of air ventilating the grotto made the fortune of these orphan girls—Luisella and her three sisters. The barrels and other lumber once removed, the recess became a breezy night-tavern, its natural vaulting being first whitewashed and then adorned, by master-hand, with thrilling pictures of crimson fish afloat upon caerulean waves, and piles of bossy pumpkins, and birds of Paradise with streaming golden feathers, and goats at pasture among blue lilies, and horses prancing over emerald mountains, and trees laden with flowers and fruits such as no mortal had ever seen or tasted. It was an ideal place for a carousal.

They could cook, those girls. Their savoury stews and vegetable soups and FRITTURAS of every description were known far and wide. It was universally agreed that nobody could make a more appetizing mayonnaise sauce for cold fish and lobsters. No mayonnaise was quite like theirs; no, not quite. Its flavour lingered on the palate; it haunted your memory in distant lands, like the after-glow of some happy love-affair. Nice girls, too; well-mannered; not very difficult to caress, and never jealous of each other. "It's all in the family," they used to declare.

"Am I right, then, or am I wrong?" asked Mr. Keith, whose pomposity was melting away under successive bottles of his own wine, specially imported to grace the table.

The honest Vice-President of the Club, Mr. Richards, was pretty far gone, but could always be relied upon to say something opposite. That was due to his legal training. Once a thriving solicitor, he had been struck off the rolls in consequence of some stupid trustee business which turned out all wrong and thereafter driven along devious paths known only to himself: hence his residence on Nepenthe. He replied:

"That depends entirely, my dear Sir, upon what you postulated."

"The older I get," observed Mr. van Koppen, "the more I realize that everything depends upon what a man postulates. The rest is plain sailing."

"I never heard a truer remark," said Keith, "not even from you! One has only to posit a thing, and it's done. Don't you agree, Bishop? Here is what I would call a worn-out earthenware plate. It is not a plate unless I tell it to be a plate. You may call it anything you like—it can't answer back. But we need not pursue the argument. Speaking for myself, I am feeling as comfortable as a beetle in a rose."

The Vice-President remarked:

"We all know what it means when Mr. Keith becomes horticultural in his similes. It means the same thing as when I become legal. Gentlemen! I propose to grow legal within the next half-hour or so."

"You promised to tell me the history of your cannas," said Mr. Heard.

"You were going to tell it me too," answered Denis.

"I did. I was. And I will. But let me ask you this: have you ever heard of a teetotaler conspicuous for kindliness of heart, or intellectually distinguished in any walk of life? I should be glad to know his name. A sorry crew! Not because they drink water, but because the state of mind which makes them dread alcohol is unpropitious to the hatching of any generous idea. WHEN MEN HAVE WELL DRUNK. I like that phrase. WHEN MEN HAVE WELL DRUNK. I am inclined to think that the Aramaic text has not been tampered with at this point. What do you say, Heard?"

"Nothing is more improbable," replied the bishop. "And the water, you perceive, was changed into wine; not into cocoa or lemonade. That conveys, if I am not mistaken, rather a suggestive implication."

"I have been pursuing Seneca's letters. He was a cocoa-drinker, masquerading as an ancient. An objectionable hypocrite! I wish people would read Seneca instead of talking about him."

Van Koppen observed:

"What a man postulates is truer than what exists. I have grown grey in trying to make my fellow-creatures understand that realities are less convincing than make-believe."

"Given the proper atmosphere," said the bishop, laughing, "everything becomes inevitable. If you were wrong, Mr. van Koppen, where would our poets and novelists be?"

"Where are they?" queried the American.

"How shall that come out of a man," continued Mr. Heard, "which was never in him? How shall he generate a harmonious atmosphere if he be disharmonious himself? It is all a question of plausibility, of verisimi—simili—"

"I never heard a more profound remark, Koppen, no, nor a more subtle one; not even from you. Nor yet from you, Heard. And I can tell you something to the point. I was talking this afternoon with a gentleman about the stage. I said it made me said to see flesh-and-blood people pretending to be kings and queens. Because it cannot be done. No sensible person can bring himself to believe it. But when you watch some of these local marionette theatres the illusion is complete. Why is a poppy show more convincing than the COMEDIE FRANCAISE? Because it is still further removed from reality. There is so much make-belief that you cease to struggle. You succumb without an effort. You are quite disposed, you are positively anxious, to make concessions to the improbable. Once they are made—why, as you say, it is plain sailing."

"All life is a concession to the improbable," observed the bishop rather vaguely.

Mr. Richards remarked:

"These questions must be approached with an open mind. An open mind, gentlemen, is not necessarily an empty one."

"A fine distinction!"

"Very well. Mr. Keith proposes to abolish theatres. I second the motion. Nothing is easier. Let me draw up a memorial to the House of Lords. We will appeal to them on moral grounds. I know the proper language. WHEREAS BY THE GRACE OF GOD YOUR PETITIONERS HUMBLY PROTEST THAT THERE IS TOO MUCH KISSING ON THE STAGE—ah! Talking of kissing, here comes our friend Don Francesco. He shall put his name to the memorial and seal it with an oath. No Englishman can resist a Monsignor. And nothing like a solemn oath. People always think you mean it."

That amiable personage strode down the stairs in dignified fashion, greeting the guests with a sonorous:

"PAX VOBISCUM!"

He could not be induced to stay long, however. He had been perturbed all day on account of the Duchess who now threatened to join the Moravian Brotherhood; she was so annoyed about a little thing which had happened. He did not quite believe it, of course; but, like a well-trained priest, took nothing for granted and was prepared for every emergency where ladies are concerned.

"Just one glass!" said Keith.

"Let me drink to your health ere we part," added the bishop. "I am sorry to leave you. Our friendship will endure. We meet in September, during the vintage season. Keith has been talking to me. I am as wax in his hands. Your smile, Don Francesco, will follow me across the ocean. Just one glass!"

"Ah, well!" said the priest. "The next best thing to leading others astray is to be led astray oneself."

He gulped down a couple of tumblers and dutifully took his leave, turning round, as he reached the staircase, to make a playful gesture of benediction towards the assembled company.

"Don't leave your bottle half empty," Keith called after him, imploringly. "It looks untidy."

"And so unhappy," added the bishop. "Dear me! This is most singular. I seem to see two lamps instead of one. It must have been those apricots."

Keith interposed:

"Or perhaps you strained one of your eyes bathing. It has happened to me, occasionally. Darkness is the best remedy. It rests the optic nerve."

"Shall we take a turn or two outside?" asked Denis.

It was past midnight as the two climbed out of the cave into the night air. A cool north wind blew across the market-place. The bishop was filled with a sense—a clear-cut, all-convincing sense—of the screamingly funny insignificance of everything. Then he noticed the moon.

It dangled over the water, waning, sickly, moth-eaten, top-heavy, and altogether out of condition—as if it had been on duty for weeks on end. In other respects, too, its appearance was not quite normal. In fact, it soon took to behaving in the most extraordinary fashion. Sometimes there were two moons, and sometimes one. They seemed to merge together—to glide into each other, and then to separate again. Mr. Heard was vastly pleased and puzzled by the phenomenon—so pleased that he gave utterance to one of the longest speeches he had made since his arrival on Nepenthe. He said:

"I have seen many funny things here, Denis. But this is the funniest of all. The spectacle seems to have been providentially arranged, as a sort of BONNE BOUCHE, for my last evening on the island. Dear me. Now there are two again. And now they are behind each other once more. A kind of celestial hide and seek. Most interesting. I wish Keith could see it. Or that dear Count Caloveglia. He would be sure to say something polite. . . . The inconstant moon! I know, at last, what the poet meant by that expression, though the word inconstant strikes me as hardly forcible enough. The skittish moon, I should be inclined to call it. The skittish moon. The frivolous moon. The giddy moon. The quite-too-absurd moon. . . . There it goes again! Very curious. What can it be? . . . Why, this is the reverse of an eclipse, my boy. The disk is darkened during an eclipse. It disappears IN VACUO. In the present case it is brightened and rendered, so to speak, doubly apparent. What would you call the reverse of an eclipse, Denis? Anti-eclipse? That sounds rather barbaric to my ears. One should never mix Greek and Latin, if it can possibly be avoided. Well?"

"We must have a good look at this thing from your window, and then find out all about it."

"Oh, but I could not possibly take you from your friends! I know my way home perfectly well. You will not dream of accompanying me."

"Indeed I will. I walked with you to that house when you first arrived here, and helped you to unpack. Don't you remember? And now you must let me take you there on our last evening. . . ."

By the time Denis returned to the grotto a more exuberant and incoherent tone had been generated among the guests. He was not pleased. He felt inclined to be stern. A number of reprobates from the Club had dropped in, and Keith, whom he meant to keep straight for one night at least, was saying silly things and giving himself away. So was the excellent Mr. Richards.

"This is a good island," observed that gentleman. "We discourse like sages and drink like swine. Peace with Honour! . . . How that old Jew took our English measure, eh? How he laughed in his sleeve at our infatuation for a phrase like that. Peace with Honour! The sort of claptrap that makes a man feel so jolly comfortable inside, so damned satisfied with everything like after a good deed. And that sentimental primrose business. Dizzy as flower-expert! What cared he for primroses? Votes and moneybags was what he was after. But he knew the British Public. And that accounts for the pious domestic button-hole. Who ever heard of a Jew telling the difference between a primrose and any other kind of rose? They're not such blasted fools."

"Excuse me," said Keith, rising from his seat in an afflatus of inspiration. "Excuse me. I know the difference. It is primarily a question of nutrition. Glucose! I am a great believer in glucose. Because, even if it could be proved that the monks of Palaiokastron stripped the vine of its leaves and thereby hastened the maturing of the grape without reducing its natural supply of sugar—"

"You don't shine," interrupted Denis, "when you talk like that."

"Because even if this could be proved, which I greatly doubt, yet nothing on earth will make me believe that glucose is otherwise than beneficial to vegetation. Because—"

"Do sit down, Keith. You are monopolizing the conversation."

"Because the glucose resides within that verdant foliage like truth in her well, like the oyster within its pearl. The monks of Palaiokastron—they got it straight from Noah. I am a great believer in glucose. Which is absurd. Because—"

"Oh, shut up! You are making a perfect exhibition of yourself. Can't you oblige me, for once in the way?"

Denis was growing seriously alarmed for the reputation of his friend. He had changed of late; he was beginning to know his own mind. He meant to put a stop to this humiliating scene. As the other, regardless of his pleadings, continued to babble dithyrambic nonsense concerning glucose and self-fertilization and artificial manures and inflorescence and Assyrian bas-reliefs and Stilton cheese, he suddenly gripped his arm and pulled him, with a crash, into his chair.

"Sit down, you double-distilled owl!"

This was the first virile achievement of his young life, and directed to a worthy end. For it was obvious to the meanest intelligence that Mr. Keith was considerably drunk. Too surprised to utter a word of protest, the orator paused in his declamation, beaming blandly at nobody in particular. Then he remarked, in quite a subdued tone of voice:

"We are all at the mercy of youth. Mr. Richards! Could you oblige me with a fairy-tale?"

THE END