Decidedly, things were happening, as Mr. Heard would have said.
Strange to say that gentleman himself was probably the only person on
Nepenthe who still remained in ignorance of all these praeternatural
occurrences. In the early morning, after admiring the sea overhung by a
cloudless sky and once more thanking the Duchess in his heart for such
a delightful residence when he might have been boxed up in some stuffy
hotel bedroom, he descended to the beach for his morning bathe. Such
was his custom. The swim did him good, it freshened him up.
Then back to breakfast and a busy morning's work, to settle up arrears
of correspondence. He wrote to various friends in England; he wrote a
long letter--the third since his arrival--to his mother, telling her of
all such things as might interest her; a nice gossipy letter, full of
information about the entertainments of the foreigners on Nepenthe,
about the obliging natives, the Russian colony, the persistent sirocco,
his own domestic life, his improved health. Much as he liked the place
and people, he said, he expected to be leaving in a week or so. He
concluded with two pages describing his last visit to his cousin. She
was rather poorly or troubled in mind, he thought; he would see her
again ere long.
And that reminded him--he would write to Mrs. Meadows as well. He did
so, enquiring after her health, asking whether he could be of any
assistance, and promising to call again shortly. "Rather a formal
epistle," he concluded, on reading it through. He was unable to force
the note: he could never write or talk otherwise than he felt, and this
cousin, after all, was rather remote, self-centred, and difficult of
comprehension. "It must go as it is," he decided. "To be quite frank,
she's not exactly encouraging either. Asks such queer questions. What
on earth did she mean by that conundrum about illegitimacy, I wonder?"
Then luncheon; then a long sleep till tea-time. Everyone slept at this
hour during the days of sirocco-heat. What else was there to do? He had
already learned to look forward to that calm post-prandial hour of
slumber. One owes something to oneself, N'EST CE PAS? as Muhlen had
said.
On waking he bethought him of an invitation to tea with Madame
Steynlin. He would have listened gladly to her music and her
instructive and charitable talk about Nepenthe and its inhabitants. But
he was afraid of meeting Russians there. The lady seemed to be
specializing in Muscovites just then, and Mr. Heard was not in the
Russian mood. He would take what he called "a day off" from social
duties.
Slipping his field glasses into his pocket, he rambled upwards by now
familiar paths, past white farmhouses nestling in a riot of greenery;
till he reached the barer regions. The vines were more sparsely
cultivated here, and soon all trace of human handcraft was at an end.
He found himself on a little plateau of volcanic cinders and
lava-blocks. The spare grasses and flowers that grew between fuliginous
masses of stone were already losing their bright enamel under the
withering heat; a peculiar odour, acrid but stimulating to the
nostrils, rose from the parched ground. Here he rested awhile. He
scanned the landscape through his glasses--a wine-coloured sea at his
feet, flecked with sailing boats innumerable; confronting him from the
volcano whose playful antics were even then attracting the attention of
a crowded Piazza. And his eye roved along the serrated contours of the
mainland, its undulating shore-line, its distant peaks throbbing in the
sunset glow; they rested upon many villages, coral-tinted specks of
light, so far away they seemed to belong to another world. It was a
pleasure to breathe on these aerial heights, surrounded by sky and sea;
to survey the world as a bird might survey it. Like floating in air....
He sat and smoked and pondered. He tried to get himself into
perspective. "I must straighten myself out," he thought. Assuredly it
was a restful place, this Nepenthe, abounding in kindly people; his
affection for it grew with every day. Rest without; but where was that
old rest within, that sense of plain tasks plainly to be performed, of
tangible duty? Whither had it gone? Alien influences were at work upon
him. Something new had insinuated itself into his blood, some demon of
doubt and disquiet which threatened his old-established conceptions.
Whence came it? The effect of changed environment--new friends, new
food, new habits? The unaccustomed leisure which gave him, for the
first time, a chance of thinking about non-professional matters? The
south wind acting on his still weakened health? All these together? Or
had he reached an epoch in his development, the termination of one of
those definite life--periods when all men worthy of the name pass
through some cleansing process of spiritual desquamation, and slip
their outworn weeds of thought and feeling?
Whatever it was he seemed to be no longer his own master, as in former
days. Fate had caused his feet to stray towards something new--something
alarming. He was poised, as it were, on the brink of a gulf. Or rather,
it was as if that old mind of his, like a boat sailing hitherto briskly
before the wind, had suddenly encountered a bank of calm, of utter and
ominous calm; it was a thing spell-bound; a toy of circumstances beyond
human control. The canvas hung in the stagnant air. From which quarter
would the quickening breeze arrive? Whither would it bring him?
And his glance fell upon a slender coquettish vessel, a new-comer,
lying in the sunny harbour under the cliff. He knew it from hearsay. It
was the FLUTTERBY, van Koppen's yacht. He recollected all he had ever
heard about the millionaire; he tried to conjure up some idea of his
features and habits from gossip overheard at odd moments.
This man, he concluded, must be intelligent beyond ordinary standards.
It would be worth while making his acquaintance. America is notoriously
the land of youthful precocity. But it is not every American who, as a
stripling of fourteen summers, puzzling in callow boyish perplexity
upon the thousand ills that afflict mankind and burning with desire for
their betterment, makes a discovery in Malthusian methods destined to
convulse the trade and the social life of a continent. Not everybody is
like young Koppen--he attached a van to his name on reaching his
seventy-fifth million--who, possessed at that time of barely three
dollars in the world and not even the shadow of a moustache, had both
the wit to realize the hygienic importance of a certain type of goods
and the pertinacity to insist on cheapening their price, in the
interest of public health, to such an extent that--to quote from
subsequent advertisements--they should be "within reach of the humblest
home." It is not everybody--no, not every American--who, after
revolutionizing the technique of manufacture and shattering the Paris
monopoly, dares boldly to advertise the improved article across the
length and breadth of the land, and to thrust his commodity upon a
reluctant market in the teeth of popular prejudice and commercial
rivalry. Van Koppen had done all this. And it was noted that he had
done it without ever for a moment losing sight of his dual
aim--mercantile and philanthropic; for if he was a humanitarian by
natural disposition, he became what he called "a tradesman by force of
circumstance"--and not a bad tradesman, either. He had done all this and
more. Unlike most self-made men who remain yoked like oxen to their
sordid affairs (in harness, they aptly call it) he had been shrewd
enough to retire from business in the heyday of his age, on a
relatively modest competence of fifteen million dollars a year. He was
spending his time at present in the gratification of personal whims,
and leaving the remaining millions to be picked up by whoever cared to
take the trouble. Manifestly an unusual type of millionaire--this man
who had lived down half a century of obloquy and was now hailed, in
well-informed circles, as the saviour of his country.
Nor was this all. Van Koppen was described as a brisk, genial,
talkative old fellow, rather fat, with a clear complexion, sound teeth,
shrubby grey beard, a twang barely sufficient to authenticate his
transatlantic descent, and the digestion of a boa-constrictor. He was
tremendously fond of buttered tea-cakes--so the Duchess said; a man who,
in the words of Madame Steynlin, "really appreciated good music" and
who, as the PARROCO never ceased to declare, could be relied on to give
a handsome contribution towards the funds for supporting the poor and
repairing a decrepit parish organ. (The parish poor were never in such
dire distress, the parish organ never so hopelessly deranged, as during
that annual week when the FLUTTERBY rode at anchor.)
In fact there was no doubt about it: van Koppen had the gifts of making
himself beloved. But nobody's company was more markedly to his taste
than that of Count Caloveglia. The two old men spent hours together in
Caloveglia's shady courtyard, eating candied fruits, sipping home-made
liqueurs of peaches or mountain-herbs and talking--ever talking. Between
them there existed some strong and strange bond of friendship or
interest. Speculation was rife as to its origin, its meaning, its end.
What was all the talk about?
Andrea, the devoted retainer, however artfully approached on the
subject, was ambiguous to a distressing degree. It was understood, none
the less, that Count Caloveglia was perhaps of use to the other in the
accumulation of classical relics which--the Italian Government
forbidding the export of antique works of art--were smuggled at
night-time on board the FLUTTERBY to be incorporated in a magnificent
museum somewhere out West, a museum which was destined to be presented
by van Koppen as a gift to the great American people. Again, it might
be inferred that these two elderly gentlemen, choice representatives of
two conflicting civilizations, widely experienced and profoundly
versed, each in his own way, in the knowledge of mankind, took a
sincere and childlike pleasure in one another's society, going over
past times and anxious, to the very end of life, to add something fresh
to their store of learning.
Both these explanations were sufficiently plausible to be straightway
dismissed by the majority as inadequate to account for the phenomenon.
They inclined, rather, to adopt an alternative and alluring theory
propounded by the Commissioner's lady. This theory laid it down that
the American was bargaining for the Count's daughter, a pretty girl
whom the old ruffian had shut up in a convent somewhere in anticipation
of the day when a purchaser, rich enough to content his inordinate lust
for gold, should present himself. Van Koppen was that purchaser. They
had now been haggling, she said, for two or three years; a DENOUEMENT
might be expected at any moment. If the Count's avarice could be
appeased the unhappy child might expect to find herself, with as little
delay as possible, an inmate of the floating harem on board the
FLUTTERBY.
No visitor was safe from her lively tongue, and alas, certain little
details, insignificant in themselves, gave ground for the ungenerous
hypothesis that van Koppen, like all the rest of them, had a cloven
hoof. There was the usual "dark side" to this otherwise charming and
profitable stranger, the usual mystery, the usual fly in the ointment.
In the first place it was a singular fact, much commented on, that
nobody had ever been invited on board the yacht. That alone was
suspicious. IF YOU WANT TO GET ANYTHING OUT OF OLD KOPPEN--so ran a
local saying--DON'T PROPOSE A VISIT TO THE FLUTTERBY. More curious still
was the circumstance that nobody, save the owner and certain bearded
venerables of the crew, had ever been known to land on the island. How
about the other passengers? Who were they? The millionaire never so
much as mentioned their existence. It was surmised, accordingly, that
he voyaged over the seas with a bevy of light-hearted nymphs; a
disreputable mode of conduct for a man of his advanced years, and all
the more aggravating to other people since, like a crafty and jealous
old sultan, he screened them from public view. Impropriety could be
overlooked--it could pass, where a millionaire was concerned, under the
heading of unconventionality; but such glaring selfishness might end in
being fatal to his reputation.
Confirmatory evidence of this scandalous state of affairs was obtained,
one sunny morning, in the most unexpected fashion. A fisherman named
Luigi, paddling about the stern of the FLUTTERBY where, in consequence
of the kitchen refuse thrown overboard, marine beasts of every shape
and kind were wont to congregate, cast down his spear at what looked
like a splendid caerulean flat-fish of uncommon size and brilliance.
The creature shivered and collapsed at that contact in the most
unnatural, unfishlike manner; and Luigi drew up, to his amazement, a
fragment of a lady's dress--to wit, a short length of sky-blue CREPE DE
CHINE. Bitterly disappointed, he nevertheless took the matter with the
characteristic Southern philosophy. "This will do for my little
Annarella," he decided. And doubtless the child, arrayed in these
celestial tints, would have been the envy of all her girl companions at
the next festival of the patron saint b for the fact that Mr. Freddy
Parker was strolling on the beach at the very moment of the man's
return to land. By a rare piece of good luck, as he himself phrased it,
his eye fell upon the dripping fabric; by a stroke of intuition not
rare but unique, he divined its worth as a sociological document.
Promising the man a reasonable sum of money (the Commissioner happened
to have no loose change in his pocket just then) he carried the
incrimination morsel in triumph to the Residency, where it was
displayed by his lady, to all and sundry, in corroboration of her
theory.
"That settles it," she used to say. "Unless indeed he dresses up his
cabin-boy as a girl, and in that case...."
Mr. Heard, reposing on the rough pumiceous ground with his eye fixed
upon the naughty FLUTTERBY whose virginal whiteness, with declining
day, had assumed a tell-tale crimson blush, pieced together these and
sundry other little bits of information. They made him more than
usually thoughtful; they chimed in with his momentary mood of
self-analysis.
One thing was dead certain. To circumnavigate the globe in the arms of
a dozen chorus-girls was not his ideal. He was not built on those
lines. He purposed, God Willing, to spend the evening of his days in
another and more respectable manner. A vision arose before his
imagination--a vision of a peaceful homestead among the green lanes of
England, where he would lead a life of study and of kindly,
unostentatious acts, with family and friends; old friends of College
days, and London days, and African days; new friends from among the
rising generation--straightforward and decent-minded youngsters, whom he
would take to his heart like a father.
Why could not van Koppen see the beauty of such dreamings?
And yet, he argued, if the man does seclude them in this
fashion--supposing they really exist--who can blame him? No woman is safe
on Nepenthe with persons like Muhlen about. From chance meetings in the
street, from stray conversations overheard, he had been led to take an
unreasoning dislike to this foreigner, whose attitude towards the
gentle sex struck him as that of a cur. Muhlen, if the yacht were his,
would flaunt these ladies about the streets. The American, in keeping
them secluded on board, betrayed a sense of shame, almost of delicacy;
a sense of his obligations towards society which, so far as it went,
was rather a laudable trait of character than otherwise.
And then--the difference between himself and the millionaire in life,
training, antecedents! A career such as van Koppen's called for
qualities different, often actually antagonistic, to his own. You could
not possibly expect to find in a successful American merchant those
features which go to form a successful English ecclesiastic. Certain
human attributes were mutually exclusive--avarice and generosity, for
instance; others no doubt mysteriously but inextricably intertwined. A
man was an individual; he could not be divided or taken to pieces; he
could not be expected to possess virtues incompatible with the rest of
his mental equipment, however desirable such virtues might be. Who
knows? Van Koppen's doubtful acts might be an unavoidable expression of
his personality, an integral part of that nature under whose ferocious
stimulus he had climbed to his present enviable position. And Mr. Heard
was both shocked and amused to reflect that but for the co-operation of
certain coarse organic impulses to which these Nepenthe legends
testified, the millionaire might never have been able to acquire the
proud title of "Saviour of his Country."
"That's queer," he mused. "It never struck me before. Shows how careful
one must be. Dear me! Perhaps the ladies have inevitable organic
impulses of a corresponding kind. Decidedly queer. H'm. Ha. Now I
wonder.... And perhaps, if the truth were known, these young persons
are having quite a good time of it--"
He paused abruptly in his reflections. He had caught himself in the
act; in the very act of condoning vice. Mr. Thomas Heard was seriously
concerned.
Something was wrong, he concluded. He would never have argued on
similar lines a short time ago. This downright sympathy with sinners,
what did it portend? Did it betray a lapse from his old-established
principles, a waning of his respect for traditional morality? Was he
becoming a sinner himself?
Thomas--the doubting apostle. He wondered whether there was anything in
a name.
Then he called to mind how he had approved--yes, almost approved--of Don
Francesco's deplorable act of familiarity towards the little serving
maid. An absurdly small matter, but symptomatic. Things like that had
happened in Africa lately. He remembered various instances where he had
intervened on behalf of the natives, despite the murmured protests of
the missionaries. They were such laughing, good-natured animals--so fine
and healthy! What was it, this excessive love of erring humanity, and
whither trending? Mr. Heard began to vex his soul to stray about in a
maze of doubts. It was so miserably complex, this old, old problem of
right and wrong; so unreasonably many-sided. Anon, he pulled himself
together with characteristic bluntness.
"The whole question," he concluded, "is plain as a pikestaff. Am I
becoming more of a Christian, or less?"
As though to learn an answer to his riddle he gazed fro he eyrie over
the wide horizon, upon leagues of sea rising upward to blend their
essence, under the magic touch of evening, with the purple dome
overhead.
The elements, as is their wont upon such occasions, gave forth no clear
reply.
None the less, while the moist south wind, shorn of the sting of
midday, relaxed his pores and passed over his cheek like a warm caress,
there exhaled from those limitless spaces a sense of joyous
amplitude--of freedom and exhilaration.