The firing had ceased; the boat began to glide forwards once more. But
Mr. Heard's eye remained fixed upon the ill-omened black rock. The
sun's rays had already licked dry the moisture on its surface; it shone
with a steady dull glow. Some malefic force seemed to dwell here. Some
demon haunted the place, peering out of the crevices or rising up from
the turquoise-tinted water at its foot. The suicides' rock!
That vague sense of apprehension, of impending disaster, once more
invaded him. Suddenly it revealed itself in definite terms. A ghastly
notion flitted through his mind.
"You think it possible that Denis--?" he began.
His friend seemed to have lost all interest in that subject. It was a
way he had.
"Denis? I really could not tell. I'm not sufficiently in his
confidence.... Honour thy father and thy mother," he proceeded,
reverting to his former theme. "What think you, Heard, of this old
injunction? Is it not altogether obsolete? Was it not written for quite
other conditions? Honour thy father and mother. Why? The State educates
children, feeds them, investigates and cures their complaints, washes
and weighs them, reports on their teeth and stomachs, prescribes when
they may begin to smoke and enter public-houses: where does parental
authority come in? The State provides old folks with refuges and
pensions: how about the former obligations of children? Child and
parent alike now thank the community for what they once received from
each other. And the geographical elements that went to the making of a
home are also dispersed. Rich and poor roam like gipsies from one
country to another, from one flat into the next; the patriarchal board
is replaced by clubs and grill-rooms and fried-fish shops. Many a man
who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern
for his friends. Note, too, that the family has outgrown its
ecclesiastical sanction; the oil of supernaturalism which once greased
the wheels has run dry; the machinery is creaking. Industrial
conditions have killed the old home. REQUIESCAT! Honour thy father and
mother. Industrialism has killed that commandment. Thou shalt not
steal. Consider this injunction, Heard, and ask yourself whether
industrialism does not split its sides with laughing at it. If we are
to galvanize that old collection of laws into some semblance of life,
every one f them must be re-written and brought up to date. They are
inappropriate for modern life; their interest is purely historical. We
want new values. We are no longer nomads. Industrialism has killed the
pastoral and the agricultural points of view. And how the modern Jews
smile at our infatuation for those queer doctrines and legends which
they themselves have long ago outgrown. Apropos, what has become of
Marten?"
"Left the island, I hear."
"Quick work. Now I wonder why?"
Everybody wondered at Marten's precipitate departure. Even Angelina
wondered.
She just wondered.
Had he known that she wondered, he might have been tempted to prolong
his stay. But Marten was too young to be a practical psychologist. He
had lived for half a day in terror of what he called "the inevitable
reaction," unaware of the fact that certain people do not suffer from
reactions and too engrossed in mineralogy to have learnt, from a study
of other sciences, that Angelina was one of them. She had passed that
stage, with Homeric laughter, long before his appearance on Nepenthe.
She just wondered, nowadays.
Scared, as though the avenging Furies were at his heels, he quitted the
scene of his nocturnal romance, leaving half his geological projects
incomplete. Had he taken the amiable Don Francesco into his confidence
he might have heard something to his advantage. But the scientist could
not endure the sight of a Christian priest. Like other intolerant folk
he was now paying for his prejudices.
"An erotic little beast," Keith went on. "And a typical Hebrew--a
scoffer. Have you noticed what a disruptive and irreverential brood
they are? They move up and down society like some provocative fluid,
insensible to our ideals; they take a diabolical pleasure in shattering
our old-established conceptions of right and wrong. I confess I like
them for that; they need shattering, some of those conceptions. And
they have their weaknesses too, their Achilles heel--music, for
instance, or chess. When next you are in town don't forget to go to
that little chess club of theirs over Aldgate East station. It is
better than a play to watch their faces. And with all this materialism
they have a mysterious feminine leaven of enthusiasm and unworldliness.
What pecuniary advantage could Marten expect to gain from his
minerals?"
"A professorship."
"Why, possibly. He had the professorial temperament; there was not much
poetry in his composition. If you were to ask him, 'What are those
wonderful rocks over there, shaped like some Titanic organ and glowing
with a kind of violet flame?' he would say, 'Organ be blowed. It's
columnar lithoidite.' I learnt a little from him, but not enough. I
wish we had him here. He could have told us something."
And Mr. Keith, ever avid of fresh things, regretted his lost
opportunities. He was in one of this acquisitive, Corsair moods. He
said:
"I could take geology by the throat just now. It's disgusting, not to
know things!"
His companion, meanwhile, beheld the panorama in all its nightmarish
splendour, as it drifted past him. He saw the bluffs of feathery
pumice, the lava precipices--frozen cataracts of white, black, blood
red, pale grey and sombre brown, smeared over with a vitreous enamel of
obsidian or pierced by oily, writhing dykes that blazed with metallic
scintillations. Anon came some yawning cleft or an assemblage of dizzy
rock-needles, fused into whimsical tints and attitudes, spiky,
distorted, over-toppling; then a bold tufa rampart, immaculate in its
beauty, stainless as a curtain of silk. And as the boat moved on he
looked into horrid dells which the rains had torn out of the loose
scoriae. Gaping wounds, they wore the bright hues of corruption. Their
flanks were blotched with a livid nitrous efflorescence, with flaring
sulphur, unhealthy verdure of pitchstone, streaks of arsenical
vermilion; their beds--a frantic maze of boulders.
He beheld this crazy stratification, this chaos of incandescent nature,
sent in a flame of deep blue sky and sea. It lay there calmly, like
some phantasmagoric flower, some monstrous rose that swoons away, with
upturned face, in a solar caress.
He saw it with the eye. His mind was elsewhere. He was trying, in
honest and relentless fashion, to discover himself. What if his human
values were really wrong?
Thomas, the doubting apostle....
Africa had made him think; had made him more silent and reflective than
ever. And now this sudden strange stimulus of Nepenthe--it was driving
his thoughts headlong, out of their old grooves.
Here was Keith, a man of altogether different stamp, drawing
conclusions which he dared not formulate for himself. How far were they
applicable, those old Hebrew precepts, to modern conditions? Were they
still availing as guides to conduct?
"You are a candid person, Keith, and I think I am. I sincerely try to
be. Will you tell me what you think? You seem to have a quarrel with
Moses and his commandments, which we are taught to regard as the
keystone of ethics. I don't want to discuss things. I want to listen to
the opinions of a man so different from myself as you are. It may do me
good. And I think I could stand almost anything," he added, with a
laugh, "in this landscape--in this clear pagan light, as you call it."
"I used to be interested in such things as a boy. I suppose all
respectable boys are; and I was respectable even at that tender age.
Nowadays, though I still pick up an Oriental rug now and then, I have
no further use for Oriental gods."
"What is your objection to them?"
Mr. Keith paused before replying. Then he said:
"The drawback of Oriental gods is that they have been manufactures by
the proletariat for the use of the aristocracy. They act accordingly;
that is, they distil the morality of their creators which I consider a
noxious emanation. The classic gods were different. They were invented
by intellectualists who felt themselves capable of maintaining a kind
of comradeship with their deities. Men and gods were practically on a
level. They walked hand in hand over the earth. These gods belonged to
what one might call the horizontal or downstairs variety."
"And those others?"
"Oh, they are the upstairs or vertical type. They live overhead. Why
overhead? Because they have been created by the proletariat. The
proletariat loves to humiliate itself. Therefore they manufacture a god
who approves of grovelling, a god who can look down upon them. They
exalt this deity to an infinite degree in point of goodness and
distance, and in so doing they inevitably abase themselves. Now I
disapprove of grovelling. That means I disapprove of upstairs gods."
"Upstairs gods--"
"If you walk into my front door as a distinguished visitor I am happy
to show you the place. You can prowl about the garden, poke your nose
into the pantry and learn, if it amuses you, all about my private life.
But if you rent a high attic overlooking my premises and stair out of
your window all day long, watching my movements and noting down
everything I do, why, damn it, I call that vulgar. Staring is bad form.
Vertical gods are inquisitive. I don't like to be supervised. I don't
care about this DOSSIER business. My garden is for you and me to walk
about in, not for outsiders to stare into. Which reminds me that you
have not been to see me lately. You ought to come and look at my
cannas; you really ought! They are in magnificent bloom just now. When
shall it be?"
Mr. Keith seemed to be already tired of the subject. In fact he was as
near being bored as ever he allowed himself to be. But the other
refused to let the conversation be side-tracked. He wanted to know.
"Vertical and horizontal gods.... Dear me. Sounds rather profane."
"I have not heard that word for quite a long time."
"You don't feel the need of any kind of superior being to control human
affairs?"
"Not up to the present. I can find no room in my Cosmos for a deity,
save as a waste product of human weakness, an excrement of the
imagination. If you gave me the sauciest god that ever sat on a cloud
or breakfasted with the Village Idiot--'pon my word, I shouldn't know
what to do with him. I don't collect bric-a-brac myself, and the
British Museum is dreadfully overstocked. Perhaps the Duchess could
make some use of him, if he specialized in lace vestments and choral
mass. By the way, I hear that she is going to be admitted into the
Roman Church next week; there is to be a luncheon after the ceremony.
Are you going?"
"Vertical and horizontal gods.... I never heard that distinction
made before."
"It is a difference, my dear Heard. Mankind remains in direct contact
with the downstairs variety. That simplifies matters. But the peculiar
position of those others--perpendicularly overhead at a vast
distance--necessitates a troublesome code of verbal signals,
unintelligible to common folk, for the expression of mutual desires.
You cannot have any god of this kind without some such cumbrous
contrivance to bridge over the gulf and make communication possible. It
is called theology. It complicates life very considerably. Yes," he
pursued, "the vertical-god system is not only vulgar; it is perplexing
and expensive. Think of the wastage, of the myriads of people who have
been sacrificed because they misinterpreted some enigmatical word in
the code. Why are you intent on these conundrums?"
"Well, partly at least, it's quite a practical matter. You know that
American millionaire, van Koppen, and the scandal attached to his
peculiar habits? It made me wonder, only yesterday--"
But at this juncture the tiresome old boatman lifted up his voice once
more.
"See that high cliff, gentlemens? Funny thing happen there, very funny.
Dam-fool foreigner here, he collect flowers. Always collecting flowers
on bad rocks; sometimes with rope round him, for fear of falling; with
rope, ha, ha, ha! Nasty man. And poor. No money at all. He always say,
'All Italians liars, and liars where go? To Hell, sure. That's where
liars go. That's where Italians go.' Now rich man he say liar to poor
man. But poor man, he better not say liar to rich man. That so,
gentlemens. One day he say liar to nice old Italian. Nice old man
think: 'Ah, you wait, putrid puppy of bastard pig, you wait.' Nice old
man got plenty good lot vineyards back of cliff there. One day he walk
to see grapes. Then he look to end of cliff and see rope hanging. Very
funny, he think. Then he look to end of rope and see nasty-man hanging.
That so, gentlemens. Nasty-man hanging in air. Can't get up. 'Pull me
up,' says he. Nice old man, he laugh--ha, ha, ha! laugh till his belly
hurt. Then he pull out knife and begin to cut rope. 'See knife?' he
shout down. 'How much to pull up?' Five hundred dollar! 'How much?'
Five thousand! 'How much?' Fifty thousand! Nice old man say quite
quiet: 'You no got fifty thousand in the world, you liar. Liars where
go? To Hell, sure. That's where liars go. That's where you go, Mister.
To Hell.' And he cut rope. Down he go, patatrac! round and round in
air, like firework wheel, on to first rock--pa-pa-pa-paff! Six hundred
feets. After that he arrive, all messy, in water. That so, gentlemens.
Gone where to? Swim to Philadelphia? I don't think! Him drownded, sure.
Ha, ha, ha! Nice old man, when he come home that morning, he laugh. He
laugh. He just laugh. He laugh first quiet, then loud. He laugh all the
time, and soon family too. He laugh for ten days, till he nearly die.
Got well again, and live plenty good years after. In Paradise to-day,
God rest his soul! And never found out, no never. Fine judge on
Nepenthe. Always fine judge here. He know everything, and he know
nothing. Understand? All nice people here. That so, gentlemens."
He told the tale with Satanic gusto, rocking himself to and fro as
though convulsed with some secret joy. Then, after expectorating
violently, he resumed the oars which had been dropped in the heat of
gesticulation.
The bishop was pensive. There was something wrong with this
story--something fundamentally wrong. He turned to Keith:
"That man must be a liar too. If, as he says, the thing was never found
out, how can he have learnt all about it?"
"Hush, my dear fellow. He thinks I don't know, but I do. It was his own
father to whom the adventure occurred."
"The adventure?" said Mr. Heard.
"The adventure. Surely you are not going to make a tragedy of it? If
you cannot see the joke of that story, you must be hard to please. I
nearly died of laughing when I first heard it."
"What would you have done?"
"If I had been the botanist? I would not have made myself disagreeable
to the natives. Also, I would not have got myself into a tangle with
that rope."
"You think he ought to have cut it?"
"What else could the poor fellow do? It strikes me, Heard, you attach
some inordinate importance to human life."
"It's all rather complex," sighed the bishop.
"Now that is really interesting!"
"Interesting?"
"Why should you find it complex, when I find it simple? Let me see. Our
lives are perfectly insignificant, aren't they? We know it for a fact.
But we don't like it. We don't like being of no account. We want some
thing to make us feel more valuable than we are. Consequently we invent
a fiction to explain away that insignificance--the fiction of a
personality overhead everlastingly occupied in watching every single
one of us, and keenly engrossed in our welfare. If this were the case,
we would cease to be insignificant, and we might try to oblige him by
not killing each other. It happens to be a fiction. Get rid of the
fiction, and your feeling of complexity evaporates. I perceive you are
in an introspective mood. Worrying about some pastoral epistle?"
"Worry about my values, as you would say. Up to the present, Keith, I
don't seem to have had time to think; I had to act; there was always
something urgent to be taken in hand. Now that I am really lazy for the
first time, and in this stimulating environment, certain problems of
life keep cropping up. Minor problems, of course; for it is a
consolation to know that the foundations of good conduct are immutable.
Our sense of right and wrong is firmly implanted in us. The laws of
morality, difficult as they often are to understand, have been written
down for our guidance in letters that never change."
"Never change? You might as well say, my dear Heard, that these cliffs
never change. The proof that the laws of good conduct change is this,
that if you were upright after the fashion of your great-grandfather
you would soon find yourself in the clutches of the law for branding a
slave, or putting a bullet through someone in a duel. I grant that
morality changes slowly. It changes slowly because the proletariat,
whose product it is, does the same. There is not much difference, I
imagine, between the crowds of old Babylon and new Shoreditch; hence
their peculiar emanations resemble each other more or less. That is why
morality compares so unfavourably with intellectuality, which is the
product of the upper sections of society and flashes out new lights
every moment. But even morality changes. The Spartans, a highly moral
people, thought it positively indecent not to steal. A modern vice,
such as mendacity, was accounted a virtue by the greatest nation of
antiquity. A modern virtue, like that of forgiving one's enemies, was
accounted a vice proper to slaves. Drunkenness, reprobated by ancients
and moderns alike, became the mark of a gentlemen in intermediate
periods."
"I see what you are driving at. You wish me to think that this
fictitious value, as you would call it--this halo of sanctity--with which
we now invest a human life, may be blown away at any moment. Possibly
you are right. Perhaps we English do exaggerate its importance. They
don't take much account of life in my part of Africa."
"And then, I disagree with what you say about the difficulty of
understanding the laws of morality. Any child can grasp the morality of
its period. Why should I pretend to be interested in what a child can
grasp? If is a positive strain to keep one's mind at that low level.
Why should I impose this strain upon myself? When a group-up man shows
an unfeigned interest in such questions I regard him as a case of
arrested development. All morality is a generalization, and all
generalizations are tedious. Why should I plague myself with what is
tedious? Altogether the question that confronts me is not whether
morality is worth talking about, but whether it's worth laughing at.
Sometimes I think it is. It reminds me of those old pantomime jokes
that make one quite sad, at first, with their heart-breaking vulgarity;
those jokes, you know, that have to be well rubbed in before we begin
to see how really funny they are. And, by Jove, they do rub this one
in, don't they? You must talk to Don Francesco about these things. You
will find him sound, though he does not push his conclusions as far as
I do--not in public, at least. Or to Count Caloveglia. He is a
remarkable Latin, that old man. Why don't you drive up one day and have
a look at his Locri Faun? Street, the South Kensington man, thinks very
highly of it."
"I would like to listen to you just now. I am listening, and thinking.
Please go on. I'll preach you my sermon some other day."
"Will you? I wonder! I don't believe, Heard, that you will preach
another sermon in your life. I don't think you will ever go back to
Africa, or to any other episcopal work. I think you have reached a
turning point."
The bishop was thoughtful for a moment. Those words went home. Then he
said lightly:
"You are in better vein than you were a short while ago."
"That story of the botanist has revived me. He tells it rather well,
doesn't he? It is good to inhabit a world where such things can still
happen. I feel as if life were worth living. I feel as if I could
discuss anything. What were you going to say about the American
millionaire?"
"Ah yes," replied Mr. Heard. "I wondered, supposing these reports about
the ladies are true, how far you and I, for example, should condone his
vices."
"Vices. My dear bishop! Under a sky like this. Have a good look at it;
do."
Mr. Heard, barely conscious of what he was doing, obeyed the counsel.
Raising his hand, he pushed the silken awning to one side. Then he
peered skyward, into the noonday zenith; into an ocean of blue,
immeasurable. There was no end to this azure liquid. Gazing thus, his
intelligence became aware of the fact that there are skies of different
kinds. This one was not quite like his native firmament. Here was no
suggestion of a level space overhead, remote, but still conceivable--a
space whereon some god might have sat enthroned, note-book in hand,
jotting down men's virtues, and vices, and what not. A sky of this kind
was obviously not built to accommodate deities in a sitting posture.
Instead of commenting on this simple observation he remarked:
"I mean, whether one should publicly approve of van Koppen's ladies,
supposing they exist."
"Why should I approve or disapprove? Old Koppen's activities do not
impinge on mine. Like a sensible fellow he cultivates a hobby. He
indulges himself. Why interfere? Tell me, why should I disapprove of
things?"
"Look here, Keith! Not long ago you were disapproving of vertical
gods."
"That is different. They do impinge on my activities."
"Are the peculiar hobbies of their votaries distasteful to you?"
"Not at all. Their hobbies do not clash with mine. To feel righteous,
or to feel sinful, is quite an innocent form of self-indulgence--"
"Innocent self-indulgence? Dear me! You seem to be taking morality by
the throat for a change. Is that your conception of sin? How should
Moses have come to inscribe some particular form of wrong-doing into
his Code, if it had not proved harmful to the community at large?"
His friend paused before replying. He took out another cigar, bit off
its end, and lighted it. Then he sent a few fragrant whiffs over the
sea. At last he said:
"Moses! I have a clear portrait of Moses in my mind; a clear and
favourable portrait. I imagine him gentle, wise, and tolerant. Picture
to yourself such a man. He is drawing up a preliminary list of the more
noteworthy forms of misconduct, with a view to submitting it for Divine
approval, to be welded later into the so-called Ten Commandments. He is
still puzzling, you perceive, which sins ought to be included and which
left out. Now that particular offence of which our millionaire is
accused happens to have been left out of consideration so far."
"Why has it been left out?" enquired the bishop.
"Nomadic habits. And besides--Moses, don't forget, is a kindly old
fellow, who likes people to have as much harmless amusement as
possible; he is not always sniffing about to discover evil. But Aaron,
or some other old family friend of his, thinks differently. He is a
person such as we all know--a sour-faced puritan who has lost the vigour
which people, rightly or wrongly, attribute to van Koppen. This man
forgets what he used to do in his own youthful days; he comes up to
Moses, professing to be horrified at this particular offence. 'These
young people,' he says, 'the way they go on! It's a sin, that's what it
is. And you, Moses, I'm ashamed of you. This sort of thing ought to be
stopped. It ought to be publicly reprimanded in those blessed Tables of
yours.' 'A sin?' says gentle Moses. 'You surprise me, Aaron. I confess
it never struck me in that light before. But I think I see your point.
We have a conference to-night on the Holy Mountain; I may be able to
get a clause inserted--' 'Do, there's a good fellow,' says the other.
'But aren't you a little hard on the youngsters?' asks Moses. 'You
wouldn't believe it, but I was a boy myself once and I should have got
into a lot of rows if such an enactment had been in existence then.
Moreover (and here his eyes assume a rapt, prophetic look) I seem to
see, rising out of the distant future, a personage of royal line,
beloved of God--one David who, if your proposal were to come into force,
would be classed as a pretty hot sinner,' 'Oh, bother David! Look here,
I'm not asking for a loan of money, old man. Just see to it that my New
Sin is inscribed on the Tables. Hang it all! What's that, to a man of
your influence up there? You can't think how it annoys me nowadays to
see all these young people--all these young people--need I go into
particulars?' 'You needn't. I'm not altogether a fool,' says gentle
Moses. 'And I'll see what I can do to oblige you, if only for the sake
of your dear mother.'"
The bishop, at the end of this narration, could not help smiling.
"That," continued Keith, "is how Moses gets talked over by the
Pharisees. That is how sins are manufactured and classified. And from
that preposterous old Hebrew system of right and wrong they jump
straight into our English penal code. And there they sit tight," he
added.
"Is that your quarrel with what you call the upstairs god system?"
"Precisely! It affects me by its unsanitary tendency to multiply sins;
that is to say, when it transforms those sins into legal crimes. How
would you like to be haled before a Court of law for some ridiculous
trifle, which became a crime only because it used to be a sin, and
became a sin only because some dyspeptic old antediluvian was envious
of his neighbour's pleasure? Our statute-book reeks of discarded
theories of conduct; the serpent's trail of the theologian, of the
reactionary, is over all."
"It never struck me in that light before," said Mr. Heard.
"No? Our reverence for inspired idiots: has it never struck you? Don't
you realize that we are still in the stage of that ENFANT TERRIBLE of
Christianity, Paul of Tarsus, and his gift of tongues? In the stage of
these Russians here, with their decayed Messiah? What do you think of
them?"
"I must say they look pretty, all bathing together. Rather improper.
But decidedly apostolic. You know I am not easily shocked in such
matters. When you have lived in Africa among the M'tezo! Lovely
fellows. I assure you they could give points to anyone on this island.
And your friends the Bulanga! To think that I once baptized three
hundred of them in one day. And the very next week they ate up old Mrs.
Richardson, our best lady preacher. The poor dear! We buried her riding
boots, I remember. There was nothing else to bury.... It's getting
warm, isn't it? Makes one feel sleepy."
"Sleepy? I don't agree with you at all. That Russian sect, Heard, had
between two and three million followers out there. But I fancy our
little contingent will not be on this island much longer. The judge
tells me that he means to make short work of them when he gets a
chance. If the Militia have really been called out, I should not be
surprised to learn that the Messiah has been up to some new
tomfoolery."
"Really? H'm. The Militia.... I find it very warm all of a sudden."
Mr. Heard had listened enough for the time being. Now he leaned back
and rested.
But Keith was wide awake.
"You are a disappointing person, Mr. Heard. First you inveigle me into
a religious discussion and then, when I begin to wake up, you go to
sleep."
"I didn't want to argue, my dear fellow. It's too hot to argue. I
wanted to hear your opinion."
"My opinion? Listen, Heard. All mankind is at the mercy of a handful of
neurotics. Neurotics and their catchwords. Catchwords like duty,
charity, purity, sobriety. Sobriety! In order that Miss Wilberforce may
not come home drunk--listen, Heard!--all we other lunatics forgo the
pleasure of a pint of beer after ten o'clock. How we love tormenting
ourselves! Listen, Heard. I'll tell you what it is. We are ripe for a
new Messiah, like these Russians. We are not Europeans. We are Indian
fakirs, self-torturers. We are a pack of masochists. That is what
upstairs gods have done for us. Listen, Heard!"
The bishop failed to catch the import of this peroration. Its sound
alone reached him like an echo from far away. He was unaccountably
drowsy.
"Fakirs. I quite understand--"
The boat seemed to move more slowly than before. Perhaps the oarsmen
were weary, or suffering from the heat. The glare pierced the awning.
Mr. Heard, as he reclined about his cushions, felt the perspiration
gathering on his forehead. A spell had fallen upon him--the spell of a
Southern noon. It lulled his senses. It laid chains upon his thoughts.
There was a long silence, broken only by the splash of the oars and by
a steady flow of conversation on the part of the two Greek genii, who
seemed impervious to the midday beams and entirely absorbed in one
another. Mr. Heard opened his drooping eyelids from time to time to
take pleasure in their merry play of feature, wondering dreamily what
could be the subject-matter of this endless polite conversation.