Mr. Keith was apt to be a bore, but he could do things properly when he
wanted, as for example on the occasion of his annual bean-feast. There
were no two opinions about that. The trees, arbours, and winding ways
of his garden were festooned that evening with hundreds of Chinese
lamps whose multi-coloured light mingled pleasantly with the purer
radiance of the moon, shining directly overhead. It was like fairyland,
the Duchess was wont to declare, year after year. And Don Francesco
who, on this particular night, clung closely to her skirts in view of
that impending conversion to the Roman Church, replied laughingly:
"If fairyland is anything like this, I would not object to living
there. Provided always, dear lady, that you are to be found somewhere
on the premises. What do you say, Mr. Heard?"
"I will gladly join your party, if you will allow me," replied the
bishop. "This aspic could not be better. It seems to open up a new
world of delights. Dear me. I fear I am becoming a gourmand, like
Lucullus. Though Lucullus, to be sure, was a temperate man. No, thank
you, Don Francesco; not a drop more! My liver, you know. I declare it's
making me feel quite dizzy."
As Marten had foretold, the wine flowed in torrents. There was a
bewildering display of cool dishes, too, prepared under the personal
supervision of the chef--that celebrated artist whom Keith had inveigled
out of the service of a life-loving old Ambassador by the threat of
disclosing to the police some hideously disreputable action in the
man's past life which His Excellently had artlessly confided to him,
under the seal of secrecy.
Mr. Samuel, a commercial gentleman who had got stuck somehow or other
at the Alpha and Omega Club, cast a practised eye over the wines,
chaud-froids, fruits, salads, ices, the lanterns and other joys of the
evening and announced, after a rough computation, that Keith's outlay
for that little show must have run well into three figures. Mr. White
agreed, adding that it did one good to get a mouthful of drinkable fizz
after Parker's poison.
"Ah, but you ought to try the punch."
"Come on then," said White.
They moved away and soon stumbled upon a cluster of bibulous mortals in
their element. Miss Wilberforce was there. She liked to linger near the
fountain-head; the fountain-head, on this occasion, being a cyclopean
bowl of iced punch. The lady was in grand condition; festive, playful,
positively flirtatious. She nibbled, between her libations, at a
savoury biscuit (she hated solid food, as a rule) in order, she said,
to staunch her thirst; she told everybody that it was her birthday.
Yes, her birthday! In fact, she was quite a different creature from the
bashful visitor at the Duchess's entertainment; she was hardly shy at
all.
"Punch and moonlight!" she was saying. "It's all as right as
rain--birthday or no birthday."
Miss Wilberforce had about forty birthdays in the year, each of them
due to be worthily celebrated like this one.
It was a sad and scandalous business. Better things might have been
expected of her. She was so obviously a lady. She had been so nicely
brought up. While there was still an English Church on the island, she
never failed to attend Divine Service, despite her Sunday headache. She
was often the only member of the congregation--she and Mr. Freddy
Parker, whose official dignity and English origin, however questionable
his Christianity, constrained him to put in an appearance. Mortal
enemies, they used to sit on opposite pews, glaring across the vacant
building to see if they could catch each other asleep, responding at
irregular intervals out of sheer cussedness, and trying vainly to feel
more charitable during those moments when the scraggy young
curate--generally some social failure who raked together a few pounds
from these hazardous continental engagements--recited the Gospel
according to Saint John. Those days were over. She was definitely on
the downward grade. Three members of the Club and two Russian apostles
were even then engaged in tossing up who should have the privilege of
seeing her home. The lot fell to Mr. Richards, the excellent
Vice-President, an elderly gentleman whose carefully parted hair and
flowing beard made him the very picture of respectability. To look at
him, one would have said that the dear lady could not be in better
hands.
Mr. Keith was a perfect host. He had the right word for everybody; his
infectious conviviality made them all straightway at their ease. The
overdressed native ladies, the priests and officials moving about in
prim little circles, were charmed with his affable manner "so different
from most Englishmen"; likewise that flock of gleeful tourists who had
suddenly turned up, craving for admission without a single letter of
introduction between them, and were forthwith welcomed on the strength
of the fact that one of their party had been to Easter Island. Even the
PARROCO could not help laughing as Keith, with irresistible good
nature, seized him by the arm and thrust a MARRON GLACE between his
lips. An ideal host! The "Falernian system" was in abeyance that day.
It was the one evening in the year when, in the interests of his
guests, he could be relied upon to remain absolutely sober to the last
moment; a state of affairs which doubtless had its drawbacks, seeing
that it made him, in longer conversational efforts, rather more
abstruse and unintelligible than usual--"blind sober," as Don Francesco
once said. Even sobriety was forgiven him. He took the precaution, of
course, to keep the house locked and to replace his ordinary services
of plate by Elkington; people being pardonably fond of carrying away
memories of so enjoyable an evening. Bottles, plates, and glasses were
smashed by the dozen. He liked to see them smashed. It proved that
everybody was having a good time.
A person unacquainted with Keith's nature could never have guessed what
a sacrifice this entertainment was to him. He was an egoist, a
solitary, in his pleasures; he used to contend that no garden on earth,
however spacious, was large enough for more than one man. And this
little Nepenthe domain, though he saw it for only a few weeks in the
year, was the apple of his eye. He guarded it jealously, troubled at
the thought that its chaste recesses might be profaned, if but for one
day, by the presence of a motley assemblage of nonentities. But a man
of his income is expected to do something to amuse his
fellow-creatures. One owes certain duties to society. Hence this
gathering, which had become a regular feature in the spring calendar of
the island. Having once decided on the step, he did not propose to be
bound by conventionalities which were the poison of rational human
intercourse. Unlike the Duchess and Mr. Parker, he refused to draw the
line at Russians; the Club, too, was represented by some of its most
characteristic members. He often descanted on the social intolerance of
men, their lack of graciousness and generous instincts; he would have
made room for the Devil himself--at all events in his "outer circle."
Such being the case, it stands to reason that he did not draw the line
at freethinkers. It was sometimes rather hard to know where he did draw
the line.
The red-haired judge, with straw hat and Mephistophelean limp, was
there, looking like an Offenbach villain out for a spree. After being
effusively greeted by the host--they understood one another
perfectly--and forced to eat a quantity of some pink-looking stuff which
he could not resist although knowing it would disagree with him, His
Worship, left to his own devices, hobbled along in pursuit of his new
friend Muhlen. He found him, and was soon relating succulent anecdotes
of his summer holidays--anecdotes, all about women, which Muhlen tried
to cap with experiences of his own. The judge always went to the same
place--Salsomaggiore, a thermal station whose waters were good for his
sore legs. He described to Muhlen how, in jaunty clothes and shining
shoes, he pottered about its trim gardens, ogling the ladies who always
ogled back; it was the best fun in the world, and sometimes--! Mr.
Malipizzo, for all his incredible repulsiveness, posed as an ardent and
successful lover of women. No doubt it cost money. But he was never at
a loss for that commodity; he had other sources of revenue, he hinted,
besides his wretched official salary.
Wandering along arm in arm, they passed various contingents of the
Russians, male and female, whose scarlet blouses shone brightly under
the variegated globes of light. These exotics were happy as children,
full of fun and laughter; none more so than the young giant
Krasnojabkin, whose name had been coupled by scandalmongers with that
of Madame Steynlin. An admiring audience had gathered around him while
he performed a frenzied cancan in an open moonlit space; he always
danced when he had enough to drink. The judge looked on with envy. It
sickened him to realize that those far-famed luncheons and dinners of
Madame Steynlin were being devoured by a savage like this. And the
money he doubtless extracted from her! Presently a loud guffaw from
some bosky thicket announced that the friends had been joined by the
Financial Commissioner for Nicaragua. The Trinity was complete. They
were always together, those three, playing cards at the Club or sipping
lemonade and vermouth on the terrace.
"Oh, Mr. Keith," said the Duchess in her sweetest accents, "do you know
of what this entertainment makes me think?"
"Shall I guess?"
"Nothing of the kind! It makes me think that it is very, very wrong of
a man like you to be a bachelor. You want a wife."
"To want a wife, Duchess, is better than to need one. Especially if it
happens to be only your neighbour's."
"I am sure that means something dreadful!"
Don Francesco broke in:
"Tell me, Keith, how about your wives? What have you done with them? Is
it true that you sold them at various Oriental ports?"
"They got mislaid somehow. All that was before my Great Renunciation."
"Is it true that you kept them locked up in different parts of London?"
"I made it a rule never to introduce my lady-friends to one another.
They are so fond of comparing notes. Novelists try to make us believe
that women delight in men's society. Rubbish! They prefer that of their
own sex. But please didn't refer to the same painful period of my
life."
The priest insisted:
"Is it true that you gave the plumpest of them to the Sultan of
Colambang in exchange for the recipe of some wonderful sauce? Is it
true that you used to be known as the Lightning Lover? Is it true that
you used to say, in your London days, that no season was complete
without a ruined home?"
"She exaggerates a good deal, that lady."
"Is it true that you once got so drunk that you mistook one of those
red-coated Chelsea pensioners for a pillar-box and tried to post a
letter in his stomach?"
"I'm very short-sighted, Don Francesco. Besides, all that was in a
previous incarnation. Do come and listen to the music! May I offer you
my arm, Duchess? I have a surprise for you."
"You have a surprise for us every year, you bad man," she said. "Now do
try and see if you can't get married. It makes one feel so good."
Keith had a peculiar habit of vanishing for a day or two to the
mainland, and returning with some rare orchid from the hills, a piece
of Greek statuary, a new gardener, or something. Sowing his wild oats,
he called it. During this last visit he had come across the tracks of
an almost extinct tribe of gipsies that roamed up and down the glens of
those mysterious mountains whose purple summits were visible, on clear
days, from his own windows. After complex and costly negotiations they
had allowed themselves to be embarked, for this one night only, in a
capacious sailing boat to Nepenthe, in order to pleasure Mr. Keith's
guests. And here they sat, huddled together in dignified repose and
abashed, as it seemed, by the strangeness of their surroundings; a
bizarre group stained to an almost negro tint by exposure to sun and
winds and rain.
Here they sat--gnarled old men and sinewy fathers of families, with
streaming black hair, golden earrings, hooded cloaks of wood and
sandals bound with leathern thongs. Mothers were there, shapeless
bundles of rags, nursing infants at the breast. The girls were draped
in gaudy hues, and ablaze with metal charms and ornaments on forehead
and arms and ankles. They showed their flashing teeth and smiled from
time to time in frank wonder, whereas the boys, superbly savage, like
young panthers caught in a trap, kept their eyes downcast or threw
distrustful, defiant glances round them. Here they sat in silence,
smoking tobacco and taking deep draughts out of a pitcher of milk which
was handed round from one to the other. Occasionally the older people
would pick up their instruments--bagpipes of sheepskin, small drums and
gourd-like mandolines--and draw from them strange dronings, gurglings,
thrummings, twangings; soon a group of youngsters would rise gravely
from the ground and, without any preconcerted signal, begin to move in
a dance--a formal and intricate measure, such as had never yet been
witnessed on Nepenthe.
Something inhuman and yet troublingly personal lay in the performance;
it invaded the onlookers with a sense of disquietude. There was
primeval ecstasy in those strains and gestures. Giant moths, meanwhile,
fluttered overhead, rattling their frail wings against the framework of
the paper lanterns; the south wind passed through the garden like the
breath of a friend, bearing the aromatic burden of a thousand
night-blooming shrubs and flowers. Young people, meeting here, would
greet one another shyly, with unfamiliar ceremoniousness, and then,
after listening awhile to the music and exchanging a few awkward
phrases, wander away as if by common consent--further away from this
crowd and garish brilliance, far away, into some fragrant cell, where
the light was dim.
"What do you make of it?" asked Keith of Madame Steynlin, who was
listening intently. "Is this music? If so, I begin to understand its
laws. They are physical. I seem to feel the effect of it in the lower
part of my chest. Perhaps that is the region which musical people call
their ear. Tell me, Madame Steynlin, what is music?"
"That's a puzzle," said the bishop, greatly interested.
"How can I explain it to you? It is so complicated, and you have so
many guests this evening. You are coming to my picnic after the
festival of Saint Eulalia? Yes? Well, I will try to explain it
then"--and her eye turned, with a kind of maternal solicitude, down the
pathway to where, in that patch of bright moonshine, her young friend
Krasnojabkin, gloriously indifferent to gipsies and everything else,
was astounding people by the audacity of his terpsichorean antics.
"Let that be a promise," Keith replied. "Ah, Count Caloveglia! How good
of you to come. I would not have asked you to such a worldly function
had I not thought that this dancing might interest you."
"It does, it does!" said the old aristocrat, thoughtfully sipping
champagne out of an enormous goblet which he carried in his hand. "It
makes me dream of that East which it has never been my fortune, alas,
to behold. What a flawless group! There is something archaic, Oriental,
in their attitudes; they seem to be fraught with all the mystery, the
sadness, of life that is past--of things remote from ourselves."
"My gipsies," said Keith, "are not everybody's gipsies."
"I think they despise us! And this austere regularity in the steps of
the dancers, this vibrating accompaniment that dwells persistently on
one note--how primitive, how scornfully unintellectual! It is like a
passionate lover knocking to gain an entrance into our hearts. And he
succeeds. He breaks down the barrier by the oldest and best of lovers'
expedients--sheer reiteration of monotony. A lover who reasons is no
lover."
"How true that is," remarked Madame Steynlin.
"Sheer monotony," repeated the Count. "And it is the same with their
pictorial art. We blame the Orientals for their chill cult of geometric
designs, their purely stylistic decoration, their endless repetitions,
as opposed to our variety and love of floral, human, or other
naturalistic motives. But by this simple means they attain their end--a
direct appeal. Their art, like their music, goes straight to the
senses; it is not deflected or disturbed by any intervening medium.
Colour plays its part; the sombre, throbbing sounds of these
instruments--the glowing tints of their carpets and tapestries. Talking
of gipsies, do you know whether our friend van Koppen has arrived?"
"Koppen? A very up-to-date nomad, who takes the whole world for his
camping-ground. No, not yet. But he'll turn up in a day or two."
Count Caloveglia was concerned, just then, about Mr. van Koppen. He had
a little business to transact with him--he fervently hoped that the
millionaire would not forgo his annual visit to Nepenthe.
"I shall be glad to meet him again," he remarked carelessly. Then
looking up he saw Denis, who moved under the trees alone. Observing
that he seemed rather disconsolate, he walked up to him and said in a
fatherly tone: "Will you confer a favour, Mr. Denis, on an old man who
lives much alone? Will you come and see me, as you promised? My
daughter is away just now and will not be back till midsummer. I wish
you could have met her. Meanwhile, I am a little solitary. I have also
a few antiquities that might interest you."
While Denis, slightly embarrassed, was uttering some appropriate words,
the bishop suddenly asked:
"Where is Mrs. Meadows? Wasn't she coming down to-night?"
"Of course she was," said Keith. "Isn't she here? What can this mean?
Your cousin is a particular friend of mine, Heard, though I have not
seen her for the last six days or so. Something must be wrong. That
baby, I expect."
"I missed her once already," said Heard. "I'll write and make an
appointment, or go up again. By the way, Count--you remember our
conversation? Wel, I have thought of an insuperable objection to your
Mediterranean theory. The sirocco. You will never change the sirocco.
The Elect of the Earth will never endure it all their lives."
"I think we can change the sirocco," replied the Count, meditatively.
"We can tame it, at all events. I do not know much about its history;
you must ask Mr. Eames--"
"Who is at home," interrupted Keith, "closeted with his Perrelli."
"What has been, may be," continued the old man, oracularly. "I question
whether the sirocco was as obnoxious in olden days as now, otherwise
the ancients, who had absurdly sensitive skins, would have complained
of it more frequently. The deforestation of Northern Africa, I suspect,
has much to do with it. Frenchmen are now trying to revive those
prosperous conditions which Mohammedanism has destroyed. Oh, yes! I
don't despair of muzzling the sirocco, even as we are muzzling that
often Mediterranean pest, the malaria."
Keith observed:
"Petronius, I remember, speaks of the North wind being the mistress of
the Tyrrhenian. He would not use such language nowadays, unless
alluding to its violence rather than its prevalence. Once I thought of
translating Petronius. But I discovered certain passages in the book
which are almost improper. I don't think the public ought to be put
into possession of such stuff. I am rather sorry; I like Petronius--the
poetical fragments, I mean; they make me regret that I was not born
under the Roman Empire. People are leaving," he added. "I have said
good-bye to about fifty. I shall be able to get a drink soon."
"So you were born out of time and out of place, like many of us,"
laughed the Bishop.
Count Caloveglia said:
"It is an academic problem, and therefore a problem which does not
exist for me, and therefore a problem dear to your own metaphysical
heart, to enquire whether a man is ever born at an inopportune moment.
We use the phrase. If we took thought we would discard it. For what is
the truth of the matter? The truth is that a man, of whom we say this,
is born at exactly the right moment; that those with whose customs and
aspirations he seems to be in discord have urgent need of him at that
particular time. No great man is ever born too soon or too late. When
we say that the time is not ripe for this or that celebrity, we confess
by implication that this very man, and no other, is required. Was
Giordano Bruno, or Edgar Poe, born out of time? Surely no generation
needed them more imperiously than their own. Only fools are born out of
time. And yet--no; not even they. For where should we be without them?"
He smiles suavely, as though some pleasant thought was passing through
his mind.
"At any rate a good many people die too soon or too late," said Mr.
Edgar Marten who, after doing full justice to the food and drinks, had
suddenly appeared on the scene. "Often too late," he added.
Keith, despite his professions of sanity and reason, had an
inexplicable, invincible horror of death; he quailed at the mere
mention of the black phantom. The subject being not at all to his
taste, he promptly remarked:
"The scholar Grosseteste was unquestionably born too soon. And I know
one man who is born too late. Who? Yourself, Count. You were made for
the Periclean epoch."
"Thank you," said that gentleman with a gracious wave of his hand. "But
forgive me for disagreeing with you. Had I lived in that age, I should
be lacking in reverence for what it accomplished. I should be too near
to its life; unable, as you say, to see the forest for the trees. I
should be like Thucydides, a most sensible person who, if I recollect
aright, barely mentions Ictinus and the rest of them. How came it
about? This admirable writer imagined they were building a temple for
Greece; he lacked the interval of centuries which has allowed mankind
to see their work in its true perspective. He possessed traditional
moral standards whereby to judge the actions of historical
contemporaries; he could praise or blame his politicians with a good
conscience. For the Parthenon creators he had no sure norm. The
standards were not yet evolved. Pheidias was a talented
fellow-citizen--a hewer in stone by profession: what could he know of
the relations of Pheidias to posterity? Great things can only be seen
at a proper distance. Pheidias, to him, may have been little more than
an amateur, struggling with brute material in the infancy of his trade
or calling. No, my friend! I am glad not to be coeval with Pericles. I
am glad to recognize Hellenic achievements at their true worth. I am
glad to profit by that wedge of time which has enabled me to reverence
things fair and eternal."
"Things fair and eternal," echoed Keith, who was getting too thirsty
and restless to discuss art-matters. "Come with me! I will show you
things fair and eternal."
He led the way to a distant arbour, overhung with a canopy of blood-red
passion-flowers and girt about by design dangled from the clustering
foliage in its roof. Within, directly under the beams, all by itself,
on an upright chair beside a small table, sat an incongruous,
startling, awe-inspiring apparition--a grimy old man of Mongolian
aspect. He might have been frozen to stone, so immobile, so lifeless
were his features. Belated visitors passed near the entrance of the
shrine, peered within as at some outlandish and sinister freak of
nature, and moved on with jocular words. Nobody ventured to overstep
the threshold, whether from religious fear or because of something
repellent, something almost putrescent, which radiated from his person.
A contingent of Little White Cows, a kind of bodyguard, stood at a
respectful distance beyond, intent upon his every movement. The Master
never stirred. He sat there to be looked at--accustomed to homage almost
divine; beatifically inane. Like the Christians of old, he wore no hat.
The head was nearly bald. A long cloak, glistening with grease stains,
swathed his limbs and portly belly, on which one suspected
multitudinous wrinkles of fat. Two filmy lidless eyes, bulging on a
level with his forehead, stared into vacuity; his snub nose grew out of
a flattened face whose pallor was accentuated by the reflection of the
glittering leaves--it looked faded and sodden, like blotting-paper that
has been left out all night in the rain. Sporadic greenish-grey hairs
were scattered about his chin. The mouth was agape.
On Mr. Keith's appearance he made no sign of recognition. Presently,
however, his lips seemed to get out of control. They moved; they began
to chatter and to mumble, in childish fashion, the inarticulate
yearnings of eld. Keith said, as though displaying some museum
curiosity:
"Mine is the only house on Nepenthe which the Master still deigns to
enter. I'm afraid he has grown very groggy on his pins of late; if he
sat on any by a straight-backed chair they would never get him up
again. To think that was once a pretty little boy.... Poor old
fellow! I know what he wants. They've been neglecting him, those young
idiots."
He departed, and soon returned with a tumbler full of raw whisky which
he placed on the table within reach of the arm. A flaccid,
unwholesome-looking hand was raised slowly, in a kind of deprecatory
gesture; then allowed to fall again upon the belly where it lay, with
the five fingers, round and chalky-white, extended like the rays of a
starfish. Nothing more happened.
"We must go away for a while," said Keith, "or else he won't touch it.
He does not object to alcohol, you know. Whisky has not come out of a
warm-blooded beast. But it's going into one. A kind of Asiatic
Socrates, don't you think?"
"A Buddha," suggested the Count. "A Buddha in second-rate alabaster. A
Chinese Buddha of a bad, realistic period."
"It's odd," remarked Mr. Heard. "He reminds me of a dead fish.
Something ancient and fishlike--it's that mouth--"
"He's a beauty!" interrupted Edgar Marten, sniffing with disgust. "Eyes
like a boiled haddock. And that thing has the cheek to call itself a
Messiah. Thank God I'm a Jew; it's not business of mine. But if I were
a Christian, I'd bash his blooming head in. Damned if I wouldn't. The
frowsy, fetid, flow-blown fraud. Or what's the matter with the Dog's
Home?"
"Come, come," said Mr. Heard, who had taken rather a liking to this
violent youngster and was feeling more than usually indulgent that
evening. "Come! He can't help his face, I fancy. Have you no room in
your heart for an original? And don't you think--quite apart from
questions of religion--that we tourists ought to be grateful to these
people for diversifying the landscape with their picturesque red
blouses and things?"
"I have no eye for landscape, Mr. Heard, save in so far as it indicates
strata and faults and other geological points. The picturesque don't
interest me. I am full of Old Testamentary strains; I can't help
looking at men from the ethical point of view. And what have people's
clothes to do with their religion? He can't help his face, you say.
Well, if he can't help that greasy old mackintosh, I'll eat my hat.
Can't a fellow be a Messiah without sporting a pink shirt or fancy
dressing-gown or blue pyjamas or something? But there you are! I defy
you to name me a single-barrelled crank. If a man is a religious
lunatic, or a vegetarian, he is sure to be touched in some other
department as well; he will be an anti-vivisectionist, a nutfooder,
costume-maniac, stamp-collector, or a spiritualist into the bargain.
Haven't you ever noticed that? And isn't he dirty? Where is the
connection between piety and dirt? I suggest they are both relapses
into ancestral channels and the one drags the other along with it. When
I see a thing like this, I want to hew it in pieces. Agag, Mr. Heard;
Agag. I must have another look at this specimen; one does not see such
a sight every day. He is a living fossil--post-pleistocene."
He drew off; Keith and the Count, engaged in some deep conversation,
had also moved a few paces away.
Mr. Heard stood alone, his back turned to the Master. Moonlight still
flooded the earth, the lanterns were flickering and sputtering. Some
had gone out, leaving gaps of darkness in the lighted walls. Many of
the guests retired without bidding farewell to their host; he liked
them to feel at their ease, to take "French leave" whenever so
disposed--to depart "A L'ANGLAISE," as the French say. The garden was
nearly empty. A great quietude had fallen upon its path and thickets.
From afar resounded the boisterous chorus of a party of revellers loth
to quit the scene; it was suddenly broken by a terrific crash and
bursts of laughter. Some table had been knocked over.
Standing there, the bishop could not but listen to Keith, who had
raised his voice in emphasis and was saying to the Count, in his best
Keithean manner:
"I am just coming to that point. A spring-board is what humanity needs.
What better one can be contrived than this pure unadulterated
Byzantianism. Cretinism, I call it. Look at the Orthodox Church. A
repository of apocalyptic nonsense such as no sane man can take
seriously. Nonsense of the right kind, the uncompromising kind. That is
my point. The paralysing, sterilizing cult of these people offers a far
better spring-board into a clean element of thought than our English
Church, whose DEMI-VIERGE concessions to common sense afford seductive
resting-places to the intellectually weak-knee'd. Do I make myself
clear? I'm getting infernally thirsty."
"I quite agree with you, my friend. The Russians have got a better
spring-board than the English. The queer thing is, that the Russians
won't jump, whereas the Englishman often does. Well, well! We cannot
live without fools."
Mr. Heard was slightly perturbed by these words. A good fellow like
Keith! "DEMI-VIERGE concessions to common sense"; what did he mean by
that? Did his church really make such concessions?
"I'll think about it to-morrow," he decided.
The Master, when they returned to him, had not budged from his
resting-place. The fingers still lay, starfish-wise, upon the folds of
that soiled homespun; his eyes still stared out of the leafy bower; his
face still wore its mask of placid imbecility.
The glass was empty.
Slowly, as on a pivot, his head turned in the direction of the
bodyguard.
Forthwith some favourite disciple--not Krasnojabkin, who happened to be
escorting Madame Steynlin to her villa just then--darted to his side;
with the help of two lady-apostles known, respectively, as the
"goldfinch" and the "red apple," they conveyed him out of that shelter
into the deserted, moonlit garden. He leaned heavily on the arm of the
youth; peevish sounds, quasi-human, proceeded from his colourless lips.
And now he was almost speaking; desirous, it seemed, of formulating
some truth too deep for human utterance.
"I bet I know what he is saying," whispered Keith. "It's something
about the Man-God."