The duchess was a good sleeper, as befitted a person of regular habits
and pure life.
It was her custom to retire for the night at about eleven o'clock.
Angelina, who reposed in an adjoining room, would enter softly at nine
in the morning, draw up the blinds, and deposit a cup of tea at the
bedside of her mistress. Up to that moment, she would slumber like a
child. Rarely did she suffer from insomnia or nightmare. On this
particular night, however, her rest was troubled by a strange and
disquieting dream.
She was a little girl once more, at her parental home out West. All the
old memories were around her. It was winter time. She was alone, out of
doors. Snow, the familiar snow, was falling from a sombre sky; already
it lay deep on the boundless plains. It fell without ceasing. The sky
grew darker. Hours seemed to pass, and still the flakes descended. It
was not cold snow. It was warm snow--warm and rather suffocating. Very
suffocating. It began to choke her. Suddenly she found she could
breathe no more. She gave a wild cry of despair--
Her maid was standing beside the bed, a lighted candle in her hand.
Otherwise the room was in pitch darkness. Angelina looked like a
Tanagra statuette. Draped in nothing but a clinging nightgown that
reached two inches below the knee and accentuated the charm of her
figure, with the candle-light throwing playful gleams upon her neck and
cheeks, Angelina was an apparition to gladden the heart of man.
The heart of the Duchess was not gladdened by any means.
"What is the meaning of this, girl?" she enquired sternly, in what she
took to be the language of the country. "And in the middle of the
night!"
"It's nine o'clock, Madam."
"Nine o'clock? Then draw the blinds."
"I've drawn them." She stepped to the window and tapped on the glass
panes by way of confirmation. "All dark outside," she added. "Ashes are
falling from heaven. The volcano is very, very angry."
"Ashes? The volcano? I must dress at once. Light two more candles. No,
three! We can't have three candles burning. Don Francesco may be here
at any moment."
The Duchess often laughingly described herself as "only a weak woman."
A certain number of persons concurred in that opinion. Just then she
was the most self-possessed inhabitant of Nepenthe. The disturbance of
nature left her undisturbed. Her intellect was naturally incurious as
to the habits of volcanoes; her soul, moreover, in good hands, her
conscience in excellent working order, as befitted a potential convert
to Catholicism. She could rely on a spiritual adviser who had instilled
into her mind a lofty sense of obedience and resignation. Don Francesco
would never desert her. He would arrive in due course, explaining why
God had allowed the volcano to behave in this unseemly fashion, and
brimming over with words of consolation for his daughter-to-be. God, if
so disposed, could work a miracle and drive away the plague, even as he
had sent it. Ashes or no ashes, all was for the best. Calmly she
waited.
Out of doors, meanwhile, the shower went on without ceasing. It had
begun shortly after midnight; the ground was covered to the depth of
two inches. Nepenthe lay veiled in Cimmerian gloom, darker than
starless midnight--a darkness that could be felt; a blanket, as it were,
hot and breathless, weighing upon the landscape. All was silent. No
footfall could be heard in the streets; the powdery ashes, softer than
snow, absorbed every sound. And still they fell. Those few scared
natives whom necessity forced to go abroad crept about in fear of their
lives. They thought the end of the world had come. Terror-stricken,
they carried knives and revolvers in their pockets; they passed each
other distrustfully in the streets holding, in one hand, a lighted
torch or lantern, and in the other a handkerchief pressed to the face
for fear of suffocation. In one or two of the shop windows could be
discerned a light glimmering feebly as through the thickest fog. All
the ordinary sights and sounds of morning--the vehicles plying for hire,
the cracking of whips, the cries of the fish and fruit vendors--all were
gone. The deathly stillness was broken only by a clangour of the town
clock, tolling the hours into a darkened world.
Half a dozen adventurous spirits had gathered together at the Club.
They called themselves adventurous. As a matter of fact they were
scared out of their wits and had gone there merely with a view to
leaning on each other for mutual support and courage. There was no
whisky drinking that morning, no cards, no scandal-mongering. They sat
round a table under an acetylene lamp, anxiously listening to a young
professor from Christiania who claimed to be versed in the higher
mathematics and was then occupied in calculating, by means of the
binomial theorem, how long it would take for the whole town of Nepenthe
to be submerged under ashes up to the roofs--presuming all the buildings
to be of equal height. He was a new-comer to the place and, for that
reason, rather a cheerful pessimist. He thought it quite possible that
before the second floors of the houses had been reached--granted, of
course, that none was higher or lower than the other--the wind might
change and carry the ashes elsewhere. His demonstration had a
depressing effect on the hearts of those who had lived longer on the
island. They rose from the table and sadly shook their heads, prepared
for the worst. They knew their sirocco.
As morning wore on other stragglers entered the premises, muffled up to
the ears; they scattered ashes from their cloaks and hastily closed the
door behind them. More lamps were lighted. The news was not inspiring.
It was dark as ever outside; you could not see your hand before your
face; the shower had accumulated to an alarming extent. Some roofs had
fallen in under the weight of ashes; telegraphic communication with the
mainland was interrupted owing, it was supposed, to the snapping of the
cable in some submarine convulsion; a man had stumbled in the
market-place over the dead body of a woman--choked, no doubt; two of the
judge's Russian prisoners, unaccustomed to volcanic phenomena, had gone
stark staring mad and disembowelled one another with a carving knife.
Mr. Muhlen, who presently turned up in anything but his usual sprightly
humour, was furnished with a full and corrected version of this last
affair, to the effect that there were not two, but fourteen, of these
victims; that prior to their frenzied act they had partaken of bread
and salt and sung the national anthem; that the instrument chosen was
not a carving knife but a rusty chisel. None of his listeners seemed to
be greatly moved by what, under ordinary circumstances, would have been
a valuable contribution to the entertainment. They were waiting for the
appearance of their president, the Commissioner, the life and soul of
the place, who would be able to give them an official apology for this
scandalous outbreak of nature. The Commissioner, for once in his life,
failed to perform his duty.
That unfortunate man was sitting at home, in the remote villa known as
the "Residency," profoundly troubled in mind. He leaned over his study
table, which was lighted by a lamp; his eyes peered dejectedly, through
the windows beyond, into the gloom. Before him lay the skeleton draft
of his annual report to the Nicaraguan Minister of Finance, a gentleman
who developed a passionate craving, once a year, to be informed of the
condition of Nepenthe in regard to matters such as shipping and trade
returns, zymotic diseases, and the methods locally employed for
combating beri-beri.
The elaboration of this report had hitherto given Mr. Freddy Parker no
trouble whatever. It was an understood thing between himself and his
protector, Senor Pomponio de Vergara y Puyarola, that his labours need
not be otherwise than purely formal. To every one of the intelligent
queries on the part of a paternal government it had been his custom,
therefore, to append the magic word NIL. Banking system--NIL. Meat
export--NIL. Cotton industry--NIL. Agriculture--NIL. Canal traffic--NIL.
Teak trade--NIL. Emery mines--NIL. Fisheries--NIL.
He could trust Senor de Vergara to arrange matters, in the event of any
complaint arising as to the unwarranted ambiguity or succinctness of
the Nepenthean Report.
Bad news had just reached him; very bad news indeed. His friend and
protector had been stabbed to death, after the approved fashion of
Nicaraguan politicians, by a couple of assassins in the pay of that
minister's rival, a bankrupt tradesman who, desirous of bettering his
fortunes, conceived that he would make as good a Finance Minister as
anyone else and had, in fact, already usurped that post. Worse news
could hardly be imagined. The prognosis was most unfavourable. For Mr.
Parer shrewdly argued that a rival of the late Don Pomponio would look
askance at those whom His Excellency had exalted--at himself, for
instance. And what then? However conscientiously he might henceforward
edit the report, he realized that his position was no longer secure; he
was liable to be recalled at any moment--to cede his place to some
candidate of the opposing faction. Those damned republics! Or the post,
being a purely honorary one created expressly for himself by the
obliging and now defunct Don Pomponio, might be permanently abolished.
It was not a pleasant prospect. Mr. Freddy Parker was rather too old to
start knocking about the world again. He was losing what he called his
"nerve." What was to be done?
He tugged at his beard and puffed furious clouds of smoke out of his
briar pipe. He thought of another grief--another source of anxiety. The
quarterly remissions forwarded to him by certain obscure but
respectable relatives in England, under the condition that he should
never again set foot in that land of honest men, had not arrived. It
was two weeks overdue. What had happened? Had they decided to cancel
it? They had threatened to do so ere now. And if so, how was he going
to live? It was a facer, that was. The equivalent of fifteen pounds
sterling was urgently necessary at that very moment. Fifteen pounds.
Who would lend him fifteen pounds? Keith? Not likely. Keith was a
miser--a Scotchman, ten to one. Koppen? He had once already tried to
touch him for a loan, with discouraging results. A most unsympathetic
millionaire. Almost offensive, the older bounder had been. Perhaps
somebody had let on about that bit of CREPE DE CHINE preserved at the
Residency, and its uses as a sociological document. How things got
about on Nepenthe! Where the Hell, then, was money to come from?
Both these troubles, great in themselves, faded into insignificance
before a new and overwhelming sorrow.
In a room directly overhead lay the dead body of his lady. She had
breathed her last on the previous midday, and it is more than likely
that the noise of the cannon-shots, reverberating through her chamber,
had accelerated her end; not the noise as such, for she was naturally a
rowdy woman and never felt comfortable save in an atmosphere of
domestic explosions and quarrels with servants, but the noise in its
social significance, the noise as demonstrating to her exhausted
consciousness that there was something wrong, something at the same
time of considerable importance--something she might never live to
comment on--happening in the market-place. In other words, it is highly
probable that her death had been hastened by the moral rather than the
physical shock of the noise; by disappointment; by the bitter
reflection that she would never survive to learn what this new scandal,
evidently an interesting one, was about.
The doctor, for reasons which he deemed sufficient, had recommended a
speedy interment; it was fixed for that morning. The fall of ashes had
put the ceremony out of the question. There she lay. And in the room
below sat her bereaved stepbrother, distractedly gazing out of the
window upon the darkness of Erebus.
It harmonized with the darkness of his mourning trousers, newly creased
but not newly purchased; and of his soul. He saw his worldly existence
menaced--tottering to its fall. All these catastrophes, so crushing, so
unexpected, filled him with a kind of primeval terror. Mr. Parker was
neither a devout believer nor the reverse. He was a fool and liable, as
such, under the stress of bodily or mental disturbance, to spasmodic
fits of abject fright which he mistook for religion. An attack of
indigestion, the failure of some pecuniary speculation, the demise of a
beloved stepsister--these various happenings, so dissimilar to one
another, had yet this feature in common, that they put the fear of God
into the otherwise empty brain of Mr. Parker.
He had been in many tight corners, but never in so tight a corner as
this. Hardly ever. He thought of the lady lying dead upstairs and all
she had done towards establishing and consolidating their social
position; how she had economized for him, yes, and lied for him--better,
far better, than he could ever hope to lie. For she possessed that most
priceless of all gifts: she believed her own lies. She looked people
straight in the face and spoke from her heart; a falsehood, before it
left her lips, had grown into a flaming truth. She was a florid,
improvident liar. There was no classical parsimony about her
misstatements. They were copious baroque, and encrusted with pleasing
and unexpected tricks of ornamentation. That tropical redundancy for
which her person was renowned reflected itself likewise in her
temperament--in nothing more than the exuberance of her untruths which
were poured out in so torrential a flood, with such burning conviction
at the opulence of detail that persons who knew her well used to stand
aghast (Catholics had been known to cross themselves) at the fertility
of her constructive imagination, while the most hardened sceptics
protested that, even if her facts were wrong, there could be no doubt
as to her sincerity, her ingenuousness. Ah, she was a woman in a
thousand! Often had Mr. Parker sat at her feet, a respectful disciple,
listening spellbound and striving to acquire that secret--a secret which
was, after all, not so much art as nature. He could never hope to rival
her technique.
That was because he could not look you in the face; because he
disbelieved not only his own lies, but those of other people--and not
only their lies, but their truths; because he distrusted everything and
everybody, and was duly distrusted in his turn. Nobody believed a word
he said, and some rude persons went so far as to tell him exactly what
they thought of him. They called him a liar in public and in private.
Such experiences are trying to one's nerve; they end in giving you a
shifty look. People who knew him well never took his word for granted,
and the more casual acquaintance would say that even if his facts were
correct now and then he could not help being a fraud all the same.
And now she was gone, this lady who had saved him from countless small
annoyances, who had given him self-esteem and a kind of social
backbone. He stared into the darkness. Where was money to come
from--those miserable fifteen pounds, for example? What would happen?
He almost decided upon praying, only he could not think of appropriate
words in which to appeal for this loan; it might seem to the Deity a
contemptuously small sum, not worth bothering the angels about. On the
other hand he dared not apply for more than he actually needed--not to
that quarter, at least--for fear of being found out. He was always being
found out, even by his earthly creditors. Besides, there lingered at
the back of his mind all the time certain doubts as to the efficacy of
applying to God for money or anything else. The whole thing might be a
farce. He remembered, with pain and grief, that he had already on
several occasions tried the prayer-system, like most other systems. And
alas, the results had invariably been NIL....
A visit from His Reverence the parroco was announced.
This heroic priest, accompanied by two acolytes bearing torches, had
braved the downpour of ashes. He never shirked his duty. It was his
duty that morning to confer with Mr. Parker anent the delayed funeral
and other painfully material matters. For the deceased lady had not
deserted the creed of her fathers; she was an ardent Catholic--so ardent
that she professed great pain at her stepbrother's alien leanings and
had taken considerable trouble to convert him to her own way of
thinking. She used to say, in her flowery language, that his
contumacious attitude towards the true Faith gnawed at her
vitals--meaning, presumably, that it annoyed her. Often she pointed out
how many social and other advantages they would gain--living in a
Catholic country--if he, too, could bring himself to enter the field of
believers. In vain! The Commissioner had a knack of being
ultra-protestant on such occasions.
Not that he greatly cared to what Church he belonged. But if nobody
made it worth his while--why, he remained an Englishman. He knew
perfectly well that the parroco, his lady's confessor, was anxious to
do something in the proselytizing line which might lower the prestige
of Don Francesco. And he was clever enough to realize that, by
embracing Catholicism at Torquemada's hands, he, the Official
Representative of Nicaragua, would be putting a feather in the priest's
cap. He was not going to put a feather in anybody's cap--not for
nothing. It was not good enough. Some strong leader of nations had once
remarked, "Every man his price." Mr. Parker liked that phrase; he was
deeply convinced of its veracity. He also had his price, and once, in a
moment of extreme financial embarrassment, he had delighted his
stepsister by announcing that he was prepared to consider the question
of conversion. He then named his price. It was a condition not to be
expressed by such terms as a gratified church might have been able to
concede--by some elevation to a higher sphere of influence or other
worldly favour; it was a figure baldly commercial, expressible, that
is, in pounds, shillings and pence.
"You've got some cheek, Freddy," was all she could bring herself to
say.
"My dear Lola, he can take it or leave it," the Commissioner had
replied, sulkily.
His Reverence never found himself in the odious dilemma of either
taking it or leaving it, for the lady was wise enough not to divulge so
ignoble a proposition.
But now, while the good priest uttered a few parting platitudes of
condolence, the other was revolving in his mind how negotiations--direct
negotiations, this time--could be opened up. He needed fifteen pounds;
well, one might be able to do a little juggling with the Club money for
that part of the business. It was necessary, above all, to devise some
means whereby the Nicaraguan Government might be induced to keep him at
his old post. Here was Torquemada. How could the fellow be turned to
account?
"The Nuncio!" he suddenly thought. A Catholic republic like Nicaragua
was sure to have a Papal Nuncio whatever that might be; and if he
became a convert to the official faith of that country, the Nuncio
would be delighted and might whisper in the ear of the President a few
words commending his act and requesting that so good a servant of the
Church should not be despoiled of his post. And if the President,
himself a Catholic, could be brought to share this view, then he,
Freddy Parker, could snap his fingers at the machinations of Senor
Vergara's successor.
He decided to show some signs of devotion to what he had been
accustomed to call the grossest of superstitions; to reveal symptoms of
latent Roman proclivities. Grief seemed to have sharpened his wits, for
an inspiration came to him. After the sordid and melancholy details of
the funeral had been discussed yet again--it was to take place as soon
as ever the state of the sky would allow of it--Mr. Parker, pointing to
the blackened world outside, made an oracular remark.
"Something must be done," he said.
His companion agreed, very heartily. But soon he drew a deep sigh. How
could a volcanic eruption be stopped? In other words, what must be
done?
"Let me suggest something, parroco. Why not organize a procession at
once, a penitential procession? Such things take place during eruptions
on the mainland. Why not here?"
It was the most tactful and diplomatic proposal that the Commissioner
had ever made. A thundering good tip, in fact. How proud his Lola would
have been, had she heard him make it! A flash of inspiration--and he was
actually following it up. The effect was instantaneous. At the sound of
the word "procession" the other's thin lips relaxed, and into his
ferrety eyes there came a gentler look. He was pleased, infinitely
pleased. The Protestant Commissioner betraying only too plainly the
heart of a Catholic--that augured well. But difficulties, apparently
insurmountable, presented themselves.
"That thought, Signor Parker, coming from you, gives me pleasure beyond
words. But I question whether a procession can be formed. Even the
priests, most of them, would not care to attend. As to the populace--who
is going to risk his life in the midst of this calamity? We might all
be choked to death. Not that I would hesitate to play my becoming
part!"
"You know your people--how inquisitive they are. If you toll the church
bells a certain number are sure to gather in the market-place in order
to learn, even at risk of their lives, what is happening. When they see
a torchlight procession being formed, you will obtain a sufficient
quantity, I feel sure, to carry the Holy Image of the Saint; and some
to spare. Also, I see no reason why the priests should be present in
full strength. Toll the bells, parroco! You will get your men."
His Reverence was thinking hard. At last he said:
"Your project appeals to me. It does credit to your heart. It would do
credit to our island. I will try to arrange it. But if--"
"You mean, don't you, if the ashes continue to fall, notwithstanding
our expiatory demonstration? Let me see. There was that disgraceful
tumult in the town yesterday. Saint Dodekanus is perhaps too deeply
vexed against his people to concede them a grace under such
circumstances. I imagine him to be very displeased with us just now.
That being the case, the fall of ashes might well be permitted to
continue for our castigation, despite the penitential act. What do you
think?"
Nobody knows what the parroco thought. It was not his habit to think
aloud, much less to express opinions on ticklish arguments such as
these. But he could corroborate the fact with a clear conscience.
"It was indeed enough to anger a saint in Heaven! Seven more of the
wounded have succumbed to their injuries; three of them little
children. Ah, these deeds of violence and bloodshed, for which Nepenthe
was ever infamous! When will the peace of God descend upon our island?"
Mr. Parker had no idea when that might happen. He was not particularly
keen about the peace of God--he was keen about keeping his job. None the
less, he managed to move his head up and down, in a decidedly becoming
fashion.
"And now," concluded the parroco, "with your kind permission, I will
take my leave, to confer with the clergy if I can discover any of them,
as to what can be done towards forming a procession. I confess that the
more I think upon your idea, Signor Parker, the more I like it. If only
we can find a sufficient number to participate!"
"Have no fear of that. Only toll the bells. You will get your men. This
eruption is enough to make anybody religious. I mean--you know what I
mean, parroco."
The acolytes having rekindled their torches His Reverence, a happier
man, stepped boldly out of doors and was swallowed up in the murk.
This is a succinct and faithful account of the genesis of that
procession which was to become famous in Nepenthean annals. However
much, in later years, certain envious folks claim to be the originators
of the project it was, from first to last, the Commissioner's idea.
Honour to whom honour is due. He deserved, and took, all credit for it.
Meanwhile he sat down at his table once more, and stared into the
pitchy darkness.
Not long afterwards, the sound of bells announced that something was
being done. Men looked out of their windows and saw flickering lights
moving about the gloom. The flames grouped themselves into definite
arrangements; a procession was being formed. As the parroco had
foretold it was but sparsely attended in the beginning; out of
sixty-five priests and canons of the church, only fourteen found it
convenient to attend; another dozen, however, were presently shamed
into taking their places in the ranks. The same with the followers.
Their number gradually increased. For the bells did the work of
arousing curiosity; they tolled plangently into the night.
Stranger pageant never trod Nepenthe. Some thoughtful person had
discovered that umbrellas might be used with advantage. Umbrellas were
therefore utilized by all save the priests, the choristers,
torch-bearers, and those carrying the statue of the Saint who, for
reasons of personal dignity or expediency, preferred the other method.
They chanted their psalms and litanies through handkerchiefs, knowing
full well that their music would be none the less pleasing to the Saint
for being more than usually nasal in tone. Thus, with soundless
footfalls, they perambulated the streets and outskirts of the town,
gathering fresh recruits as they went.
And still the ashes fell.
Viewing this cortege of awe-struck innocents braying into the blackness
under their umbrellas at the heels of a silver-plated idol (not yet
paid for), an intelligent God might well be proud of his workmanship.
So thought the parroco. He was undismayed. Come what might, he had an
explanation ready. Saint Dodekanus, if the ashes continued to fall, was
only showing his displeasure; he was perfectly justified in letting his
wrath be known for the better guidance of mankind. Certain of the
younger priests, on the other hand, were growing nervous at the
prospect of a possible failure of the procession. They began to blame
His Reverence for what he had given them to understand was his own
idea. For two hours they had now been in movement; they had swallowed a
hatful of ashes. And yet no sign from Heaven. The sky appeared darker
than ever. Many of the followers, exhausted, dropped out of the
procession and returned sadly to their homes. They thought the
speculation was going to turn out badly. The others deemed in not
impossible that the Saint could not see them through so thick a
curtain. Well, then, he might hear them. They chanted more furiously.
The sound must have reached Heaven, at last, for a miracle occurred.
The gloom decreased in density. Men looked up and beheld a sickly
radiance overhead--it was the sun, ever so far away; it shone as when
seen through thickly smoked glasses. Then a veil seemed to be
withdrawn. The light grew clearer--the song of the penitents jubilant
with hope. Sullen gleams, now, pierced the murky air. Outlines of trees
and houses crept furtively into their old places. The fall of ashes had
almost ceased. With a wrench, as it seemed, the final covering was
drawn away. The land lay flooded in daylight.
That paean of joy and thanksgiving which ought to have greeted this
divine largesse, died on the lips of the beholders when they saw the
state of their island. Nepenthe was hardly recognizable. The Saint had
lifted a mantle from Heaven only to reveal the desolation on earth.
Ashes everywhere. Trees, houses, the fertile fields, the mountain
slopes--all were smothered under a layer of monotonous pallor. They knew
what it meant. It meant ruin to their crops and vineyards. None the
less, they raised a shout, a half-hearted shout, of praise. For
Nepentheans are born politicians and courteous by nature. It is their
heritage from the Good Duke Alfred to "keep smiling." A shout was
expected of them under the circumstances; it costs nothing and may even
do good, inasmuch as Saint Dodekanus could remove the ashes as easily
as he had sent them. Why not shout?
"A miracle, a miracle!" the cry went up. "Long life to our patron!"
A poor tribute; but the Saint took note of it. Half an hour had barely
passed ere the sky grew cloudy. Moist drops began to fall. It was the
first rain for many weeks, and foreign visitors, accustomed to think of
Nepenthe as a rainless land, were almost as interested in the watery
shower as in that of the ashes. Mud, such mud as the oldest midwife
could not remember, encumbered the roofs, the fields, the roadways. It
looked as if the whole island were plastered over with a coating of
liquid chocolate. Now, if the shower would only continue--
Suddenly it ceased. The sky grew clear.
Saint Dodekanus had often been accused of possessing a grain of malice.
Some went so far as to say he had the Evil Eye. It was by no means the
first time in his long career that the natives had found cause to
complain of a certain rancour in his temperament--of certain spiteful
viperish acts to which the priests, and they alone, were able to give a
benevolent interpretation. Now their wrath blazed out against the
celestial Patron. "He's not fit for his job," said some; "let's get a
new saint! The ruffian, the son of an impure mother--up to his tricks,
was he? Ah, the cut-throat, the Saracen, the old paederast: into the
ditch with him!"
During a brief moment his fate hung in the balance. For it was plain
that the ashes, if unwetted, might ultimately have been blown away by
the wind. But what was going to happen when all this mud, baked by the
sun into the hardness of brick, covered the island?
Perhaps the Saint was only putting their tempers to the test. The
experiment of another shout was worth trying. One could always punish
him later on.
So feeble was the noise that Saint Dodekanus must have had uncommonly
good ears. He had. And soon showed his real feelings. Rain fell once
more. Instead of diminishing it grew more violent, accompanied by warm
blasts of wind. There was sunshine overhead, but the peaks were
shrouded in scudding vapours, trees bent under the force of the wind;
the sea, a welter of light and shade, was dappled with silvery patches
under the swiftly careering clouds. Soon there came a blinding
downpour. Gullies were blocked up with mud; rills carried tons of it
into the sea. Then the gale died down; the sun beamed out of a bright
evening sky. The miraculous shower was over.
Men walked abroad and recognized their beloved Nepenthe once more. It
glowed in the tenderest hues. The events of morning and midday were
like a bad dream. Everything sparkled with unaccustomed brilliance; the
land was refreshed--swept clean; the sea alone remained discoloured to a
dingy brown. Truly, as the Commissioner--once more a sound
Protestant--remarked in later years: "The old rotter came up to the
scratch that time." So clear and pleasant was the air that it seemed as
if the wind had actually veered to the north. But no. It still blew
from the other quarter--the old familiar sirocco. Which proved that the
shower of ashes had not been "carried elsewhere," as the youthful
teacher of mathematics had prognosticated. It had not been carried
anywhere. It simply ceased to fall, the volcano having momentarily run
out of its stock of objectionable materials.
The Clubmen therefore, calling to mind the discussion of the morning,
were led to revise their opinion as to that gentleman's intelligence.
They remembered one or two things. They remembered that even when
Heavenly Powers are not known to be directly interested in the event,
eruptions now and then come to an end quite irrespective of the wind--a
contingency which had not been foreseen in the acute young
Scandinavian's computations.
"That comes," they said, "of studying the higher mathematics...."
For their miraculous deliverance from a shower of volcanic ashes the
islanders gave all credit, as might have been expected, to their Patron
Saint. And this proves how inadequately causes and effects are
understood, here on earth. For the priests, the most intelligent
section of the populace, knew perfectly well that but for the orders of
the parroco no procession could have taken place. The Saint would have
remained locked up in his musty shrine, without the faintest chance of
performing a miracle of any kind. They argued, consequently, that Saint
Dodekanus got the credit for what was really the parroco's notion. And
Torquemada, thinking over the day's proceedings, was driven to confess
that he was indebted for the suggestion to the fertile brain of the
Nicaraguan Representative; in other words that he, the parroco, was
praised for what was really the Commissioner's idea. And it is evident
that if Mr. Parker's lady had not died from the effects of a
mosquito-sting, that gentleman would never have been in such a complex
funk as to suggest a procession to the worthy priest.
Thus it came about that the Commissioner, the Parish Priest, and the
Patron Saint got the credit for what was really an insect's work.
Which shows how a mosquito can cure an eruption.