"The Devil's Rock, gentlemens! The rock of the Devil. Where the young
English lord jump over. Everyone know that story."
The word "devil" caused the bishop to wake up from his pleasant dreams
with something of a start.
"You had better take a good look at that cliff," suggested Mr. Keith.
"It is not only the finest on the island but, I fancy, the finest on
the whole Mediterranean. Those on the Spanish coast and on Mount Athos
lack the wonderful colour and the clean surface of this one. Looks as
if it had been done with a knife, doesn't it? Alpine crags seem
vertical but are nearly always inclined; their primary rock, you know,
cannot flake off abruptly like this tufa. This is a genuine precipice.
Plumb!"
"Terrific," said Mr. Heard. "What was that about the English lord?"
"Two young fellows who rented the villa at the back of it for a summer.
They used to bathe and booze all day long. I was not on the island at
the time, but of course I heard about it. One day the younger one
jumped over the edge of the cliff for a bet; said he was going to dive.
They never recovered his body. There is a strong current at this point.
That's so, isn't it, Antonio?"
"That so, gentlemens. Drink branty all the time, both of them. But
little one--everybody smile at him. Pretty boy. Swim and dive, something
lovely. One evening both get drunk and walk along the edge of cliff up
there. Then little one, he say: I good diver, eh, what, friend? Big one
say: You dive prettier than dolphin.--What bet, over cliff here,
now?--Six bottle branty.--Done! Clothes off, over he go, like a sea-bird.
All finished. That so, gentlemens. Next morning they bring clothes to
big one into house. Big one, when he wake up and see clothes lying
there, with no friend inside, he very angry with servants and everybody
else, and drink no more branty for three days. Dam-fool foreigners."
"That's a tragedy, anyhow," said the bishop.
"You are right. It is quite artistic--that touch about bringing back the
clothes, the empty shell, next morning. Quite artistic."
Mr. Heard looked up at the crag. It made him dizzy to picture some
human body hurtling through the air from that awful height. Its surface
was of perfect smoothness. But what struck him even more was the
uncommon and almost menacing coloration. The rock was bluish black,
spattered with maculations of a ruddy sanguine tint, as though drops of
blood had oozed out, in places, from its stony heart.
"I remember Mrs. Meadows telling me that story," he said to Keith.
"Isn't her villa at the back?"
"The very place. By the way, when next you call, would you please say
something particularly nice DE MA PART? I don't see half enough of that
lady, considering how much I like her. How is she?"
"Complains of headache."
"Headache? That is very unlike Mrs. Meadows. I always look upon her as
a bundle of steel springs. Perhaps something is wrong with the baby."
"Maybe," replied the bishop. "She seems to dote on it."
Then that last visit to his cousin suddenly recurred to him; he
remembered her conversation--he thought of the lonely woman up thee.
Strange! Somehow or other, she had been at the back of his mind all the
time. He decided to call again in a day or two.
Keith said:
"I should not like to come between her and the child. That woman is a
tiger--mother.... Heard, there has been something in your mind all
day long. What is it?"
"I believe there has. I'll try to explain. You know those Japanese
flowers--" he began, and then broke off.
"I am glad you are becoming terrestrial at last. Nothing like Mother
Earth! You cannot think how much money I wasted on Japanese plants,
especially bulbs, before I convinced myself that they cannot be grown
on this soil."
"Those paper flowers, I mean, which we used to put in our finger-bowls
at country dinner tables. They look like shrivelled specks of
cardboard. But in the water they begin to grow larger and to unfold
themselves into unexpected patterns of flowers of all colours. That is
how I feel--expanding, and taking on other tints. New problems, new
influences, are at work upon me. It is as if I needed altogether fresh
standards. Sometimes I feel almost ashamed--"
"Ashamed? My dear Heard, this will never do. You must take a blue pill
when we get home."
"Can it be the south wind?"
"Everybody blames the poor sirocco. I imagine you have long been
maturing for this change, unbeknown to yourself. And what does it mean?
Only that you are growing up. Nobody need be ashamed of growing up....
Here we are, at last! We will land at the little beach yonder, near
the end of that gulley. You can go ashore and have a look at the old
thermal establishment. It used to be a gay place with a theatre and
ballrooms and banqueting rooms. Nobody dare enter it nowadays. Haunted!
Perhaps you will see the ghost. As for me, I mean to take a swim. I
always feel as if I needed a bath after talking about religion. You
don't mind my saying so, do you?"
Mr. Heard, climbing upwards from the beach, felt as though he did not
mind what anyone said about anything.
With the Devil's Rock the most imposing tract of Nepenthean
cliff--scenery came to an abrupt end. That mighty escarpment was its
furthest outpost. Thereafter the land fell seawards no longer
precipitously, but in wavy earthen slopes intersected by ravines which
the downward-rushing torrents of winter had washed out of the loose
soil. It was at the termination of one of these dry stream-beds that
Mr. Heard set foot on shore. Panting under the relentless heat he wound
his way along a path once carefully tended and engineered, but now
crumbling to decay.
Before him, on a treeless brown eminence, silhouetted against the blue
sky, stood the ruin. It was a fanciful woe-begone structure, utterly
desolate. The plaster, gnawed away by winds laden with searching
sea-moisture, had fallen to earth, exposing the underlying masonry of
cheap construction whose rusty colour was the same as that of the
ground from which it had arisen, and into which it now seemed ready and
eager to descend. Everything useful or portable, everything that spoke
of man's occupation, everything that suggested life and comfort--the
porcelain tiles, woodwork, window-panes, roofings, mosaic or marble
floors, leaden pipes--all this had been carried away long ago. It stood
there stark, dismantled, de-humanized, in the midday heat. Here was
nothing to charm the eye or conjure up visions of past glory; nothing
elegant or romantic; nothing savouring of grim warlike purposes. It was
a modern ruin; a pile of rubbish; a shameless, frivolous skeleton.
Those hastily built walls and staring windows wore an air of faded
futility, almost of indecency--as though the mouldering bones of some
long-forgotten lady of pleasure had crept out of their tomb to give
themselves an airing in the sunshine.
Mr. Heard, after glancing at what remained of a pretentious facade,
stepped within.
Deep shade was here, in those of the chambers whose roofs remained
intact; shade, and a steamy heat, and the noxious odour of some mineral
product--the healing waters. He strayed in the twilight through halls
and corridors, past ample saloons and rows of cells which had
apparently served for convenience of disrobing. Everywhere that noisome
smell accompanied his footsteps; the place was reeking with it. And all
was in decay. Gaudy paper hung in tatters from the ceilings; the dust
lay thick, undisturbed for generations. Unclean things littered in
musty corners. Through gaping skylights a sunny beam would penetrate;
it played about the mildewy stucco partitions encrusted, in patches,
with a poisonous lichen of bright green. Wandering about this dank and
mournful pile of wreckage, he could understand why simple folks should
dread to enter so ghoul-haunted a spot.
Gladly he issued, by way of an obscure passage, into what had once been
a trim garden. No trace of flowers or shrubs remained; the walks, the
ornamental stone seats and artificial terraces, were merging into brown
earth. Here, in the centre of this ruined pleasaunce, the health-giving
fountain had lately flowed, bubbling up in a couch-shaped basin of
cement. It was now dry. But a damp warmth still clung to its rim,
whereon the mineral had left a comely deposit of opaline texture.
Lowering his hand he felt an intermittent stream of hot air rising out
of the ground, feeble as the breath of a dying man. Still some
mysterious gusts of life down there, he concluded, in the dark earth.
How curious that volcanic connection with the mainland, of which Count
Caloveglia had spoken!
Soon he found himself beside the shattered framework of a small
pavilion, built in a grotesque Chinese style and looking woefully out
of place in this classic landscape, with the blue Tyrrhenian at its
foot. And here he rested. He surveyed the traces of the old path
leading down from the higher lands in serpentine meanderings; that
path--once, doubtless, bordered by shady trees--whereby all those worldly
invalids had once descended. He pictured the lively caravan afoot, on
mule-back, in sedan chairs, seeking health and pleasure at this site,
now so void of life. Lower down, almost within a stone's throw, lay the
beach. The sailors, father and son, had drawn the boat up to the shore
and were sitting huddled up on its shady side, with some food between
them on a coloured handkerchief. That Brobdingnagian luncheon-basket
had also been disembarked. Keith was swimming, together with his two
genii; he looked like a rosy Silenus. They seemed to be enjoying
themselves vastly, to judge by the outbursts of laughter. Mr. Heard
thought of going to join the fun, but gave up the idea; there was
something astir that clogged his energies.
He knew them--these Southern noons. If no ghost resided in the
melancholy ruin hard by, there might well be some imponderable hostile
essence afloat in the still air of midday. Anything, he felt, could
happen at this unearthly hour. The wildest follies might be committed
at the bidding of this unseen Presence.
He tried to recollect what Keith had told him concerning Muhlen, that
corrupt personality. Retlow ... where had he heard that name before?
In vain he flogged his memory. There was an alien power in this
brightness; a power as of a vampire that drained away his faculties,
his vitality; a spirit of evil, exhaling from the sunny calm. It made a
mock, a mirage, of the landscape which danced before his eyes; it
distorted the realities of nature, the works of man....
Presently he observed that Keith and his companions were clothed and
occupied in dragging things out of the preposterous food-receptacle.
They called up to him. The spell was released.
He descended.
"Nice bathe?" he enquired.
"Rather! And now these fellows will make a passable omelette, to begin
with. I don't fancy cold luncheons, do you? They seem to lie dead on
one's stomach."
"Are those sailors not coming with us?"
"No. They are well paid for their work. No doubt they would like to be
in my service too. But I never employ islanders, except for casual
jobs; it saves me all kinds of local trouble and family intrigues. Nor
yet older people. They are so apt to think; and once a servant begins
to think he ceases to be of use. I believe in the outsider, for all
purposes of human intercourse. If you want a thing done, go to the
outsider, the intelligent amateur. And when you marry, Heard, be sure
to select a wife from another class, another province, another
country--another planet, if possible. Otherwise you will repent it. Not
that I see any objection, on principle, to incest; it strikes me as the
most natural proceeding in the world--"
"Dear me!"
"And yet--that inexplicable prejudice. It is probably artificial and of
modern origin. I suspect the priestly caste. Royal families kept up the
custom and do so still, like that of Siam. Odd, how anachronisms linger
longest at the two poles of society. What do you say," he went on, "to
climbing a little up that gorge, into the shade? I cannot digest
properly with the sun staring at me. And tell me, as we go along, your
impressions of the ruin ... I perceive drawbacks to incest; grave
practical drawbacks--sterility, inbreeding. Yes, there is obviously
something to be said for exogamy. AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM as Eames might
say, though God knows why he thinks it sounds better in Latin. Seen the
ghost?"
The bishop remembered a certain answer given him by Madame Steynlin, to
whom he had once spoken of the "tonic" effects of Keith's conversation.
"A tonic?" she had said. "Very likely! But not a tonic for men and
women. A tonic for horses."
After luncheon they improvised a shelter in order to repose awhile. It
was the right thing to do on Nepenthe at that hour of the day, and Mr.
Keith tried to conform to custom even under unusual circumstances such
as these. Protected by the boat's scarlet awning from the rays of the
sun, they slumbered through the flaming hours.