South Wind

by Norman Douglas

  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 Grea
t 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 delusi
ons. 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.