South Wind Part 29

Both the old boatman and Mr. Keith were correct in their surmises.

There was trouble in the market-place, serious trouble; so serious that for the first time in five years--ever since that deplorable scandal of the Irish lady and the poodle--the Militia were being called out. And it was entirely the fault of the Sacred Sixty-three.

The Messiah, personally, was not to blame. That poor old man had much declined of late; he was enfeebled in health and spirits. A French artist who was specially despatched from Paris to do an original sketch of him for the enterprising journal L'ILl.u.s.tRATION had, at the end of several sittings, uncharitably declared him to be "COMPLEETEMENT GA-GA." The voluptuous surroundings of Nepenthe, the abundant food, adoration of disciples, alcoholic and carnal debaucheries, had impaired his tough Monjik frame and blunted his wit, working havoc with that energy and peasant craftiness which once ruled an Emperor's Court. His body was obese. His mind was in a state of advanced putrefaction. Even his personal cleanliness left something to be desired. Sitting there, puffy and pasty, in a darkened room, he looked more than ever like some obscene vegetable that has grown up in the shade.

He moved seldom and with difficulty; he hardly ever opened his mouth save to eat--for his appet.i.te, thanks to certain daily exertions on the part of the communal doctor, was still fairly satisfactory. When he spoke at all it was in scattered monosyllables which even the most devoted of his disciples were unable to arrange into such coherence as to justify their inclusion in the GOLDEN BOOK. All this, though hidden from the world at large, had been observed with dismay by the initiated. It was an open secret among them that the last twenty-one sayings ascribed to him in that volume had never issued from his lips at all. They had been concocted by a clique of young extremists, who were now masters of the situation. These fanatics edited the GOLDEN BOOK and held the old man completely in subjection, ousting his former and more moderate collaborators.

An ill-considered action on the part of this group led to the disaster and eclipsed the light of holiness on Nepenthe by bringing the apostles into conflict with the secular arm of the law. Fretting at the Master's prolonged inactivity and eager, after the fas.h.i.+on of disciples, to improve on his maxims, they decided on a bold step. They decided that the time was ripe for a new Revelation.

The Messiah's last authentic one, it will be remembered, ran to the effect that "flesh and blood of warm-blooded beast is Abomination to Little White Cows." He had been inspired to insert the word WARM-BLOODED because fish, for example, was an article of diet of which he was inordinately fond, and he could not bring himself to deprive the faithful of this gift of G.o.d.

With misplaced zeal, and little thinking that it would cost many of them their lives and liberties, these enthusiasts gave it out that the new Revelation ran as follows: "everything derivable from dead beasts is Abomination to Little White Cows." They had been inspired to insert the word DEAD because sheep's wool, for example, was an article of clothing in which they greatly delighted, and they could not bring themselves to deprive the faithful of this gift of G.o.d.

Even as it stood, the Commandment entailed severe sacrifices on the part of the Sacred Sixty-three. No boot-leather, no picturesque belts, no bone knife-handles or combs, no tallow candles.... They were prepared, none the less, to carry out to the letter this injunction, since it gave them what all religious people require--something to torment themselves with; and this is how matters stood when, on that morning, a stalwart batch of new-comers from the wilds of Muscovy, burning with the ardour of abnegation and wholly ignorant of local laws and customs, sauntered across the market-place in freshly purchased hempen sandals.

Tobacco being derivable neither from warm-blooded beasts nor yet from dead ones, a member of the band bethought himself of the fact that he had run out of cigarettes. Knowing not a word of Italian he entered the shop of a tobacconist and imitated the gesture of smoking with such success that the proprietor straightway understood and supplied him with a packet. Then he remembered that he also needed matches. This called for a gesture rather more complex; so complex, indeed, that perhaps n.o.body but a Nepenthean--gifted, as all his nation is, with alert intuition--could have divined the Apostle's want. The tobacconist was equal to the occasion. With a friendly smile of comprehension he laid on the counter a diminutive pack of wax vestas, price two sous.

There the matter might have rested but for the new Revelation, which prompted the st.u.r.dy stranger to investigate the composition of the article tendered. He took out one match and examined it carefully.

Then, triturating its substance between his fingers, he applied his nose to the product and sniffed critically. The outcome was suspicious in the highest degree. There was no perceptible odour of beeswax; the object had been compounded, only too plainly, of the fat of dead animals; it was the Abomination, the Unclean Thing. Devout, and gifted with the hot impulse of youth, he acted precisely as he would have acted in Russia under a similar provocation. With a third gesture, one of abhorrence and ungovernable fury, he threw the box in the tobacconist's face.

And there the matter, once more, might have rested, had the salesman been a Russian. Russians understand frank dealing.

He happened to be a native.

Fully to appreciate what followed, it is necessary to bear in mind that local tobacconists are in a somewhat anomalous position. They occupy a social status superior to those of many other countries. They are not private merchants or ordinary citizens; they are, in a manner, servants of the State. A native tobacconist is empowered to dispense CARTA BOLLATA, which is the official stamped paper used for contracts and other legal doc.u.ments requiring registration; he deals in tobacco and postage stamps--government monopolies; he sells, by special licence, wax vestas, on each box of which there is a duty so minute as not to be felt by the individual purchaser and yet, in its c.u.mulative effect, so great as to enable the State to pay, out of this source of revenue alone, for the upkeep of all its colonial judges at a monthly salary of forty-five francs apiece. It is a reasonable tax. Don Francesco, who had notions of political economy and knew something of English life, having preached to thousands of Catholic miners in Wales and confessed hundreds of Catholic ladies in Mayfair--an occupation in which he might still be engaged, but for a little CONTRETEMPS which brought him into collision with the Jesuits of Mount Street--Don Francesco, who could voice the Southerner's one-sided point of view, often adverted to this match-tax when proving the superiority of his country's administrative methods over those of England. This is what he would say to his intimate friends:

"The Russian has convictions but no principles. The Englishman has principles but no convictions--cast-iron principles, which save him the trouble of thinking out anything for himself. This is as much as anyone can ever hope to grasp concerning this lymphatic, unimaginative race.

They obey the laws--a criminal requires imagination. They never start a respectable revolution--you cannot revolt without imagination. Among other things they pride themselves on their immunity from vexatious imposts. Yet whisky, the best quality of which is worth tenpence a bottle, is taxed till it costs five s.h.i.+llings; ale, the life-blood of the people, would be dear at three-pence a gallon and yet costs fivepence a pint; tobacco, which could profitably be sold at twopence a pound, goes for fivepence an ounce. They will submit to any number of these extortions, being persuaded, in the depths of their turbid intelligence, that such things are devised for the good of the nation at large. That is the Englishman's method of procuring happiness: to deny himself pleasure in order to save his neighbour's soul. Ale and tobacco are commodities out of which a man can extract pleasure. They are therefore appropriate objects for hara.s.sing restrictions. But n.o.body can extract pleasure out of lucifer matches. They are therefore pre-eminently unfitted for exploitation as a source of governmental revenue. So keen is their sense of pleasure and non-pleasure, and such is their FUROR PHLEGMATICUS on this particular question, that when it is proposed to establish a tax on matches--an imperceptible duty which would enrich the Exchequer to a vast extent--they will form a procession ten miles long to protest against the outrage, and threaten to batter down the Houses of Parliament. Why? Because there is no ethical purpose to be served by taxing matches, seeing that only a madman would give himself the guilty pleasure of either drinking or smoking them. In short, these English reason after the fas.h.i.+on of paranoiacs--logically, but from a wrong premise. Not that I dislike their women...."

The action of the quick-tempered Apostle can now be appraised in its full enormity. A local tobacconist is a person in authority, a State official, and the nation safeguards the interests and the fair name of those who serve it faithfully. When it is remembered that according to sect 43 of the 16th Section of their Penal Code any person speaking disrespectfully to, or of, a Government official renders himself liable to a term of cellular confinement not exceeding thirty-one years, ten lunar months and eighteen days, it may be imagined what penalties are applicable to the crime of actual personal violence towards such a sacrosanct individual--a crime of which the Russian was unquestionably guilty.

Now this particular tobacconist, though tremulously sensitive, like all Southerners, on a point of honour, was as good-natured and forgiving as might be consistent with his rank of Government official. He pa.s.sed for a respectable married man with an eligible daughter and a taste for the quiet life; he did not want trouble. The purchase of an additional pack of cigarettes, accompanied or unaccompanied by a frank apology, would have more than satisfied his sense of honour.

There the matter might have rested. The second packet might have been bought and even the apology tendered, but for the ill-considered action of a young farmer who entered the shop at that moment to procure a couple of postcards. This worthy lad was one of several dozen aspirants to the hand of the tobacconist's daughter, whose dowry was reputed to be considerable. He witnessed the insult and, desirous of standing well in the graces of a prospective father-in-law, dealt the offending alien so masterly a punch in the region of the solar plexus that he not only doubled up, but forgot to straighten himself out again. Two or three l.u.s.ty Apostles came to the rescue without delay. They threw the youth down, stamped on his face, pounded his abdomen, pulled his hair out in handfuls, and otherwise treated him exactly as if the thing were happening in Russia. This spectacle was too much for the tobacconist's sense of honour. With unwonted sprightliness he vaulted over the writhing cl.u.s.ter and summoned a munic.i.p.al policeman. The officer was on the spot in a twinkling, sword and trumpet in hand. And there, in all conscience, the matter ought to have rested--with the identification and bestowal in custody of the turbulent parties.

But frenzy hung in the air; a red cloud of insanity was hovering over Nepenthe. Although the volcano continued to behave in exemplary fas.h.i.+on, although the clergy had done their utmost to allay popular apprehensions, the native mind had not calmed down since the news concerning the Saint Elias fountain and those other portents had been disseminated. The inhabitants were in a state of suppressed alarm and ready, at the least provocation, to burst out into some fiendish act of folly. And the Russians, especially those latest arrivals, could not withdraw themselves from the subtle influence of the sound wind, the frank stimulation of a cloudless sky; it made them fell, after their gloomy forests and lowering horizons, like wild beasts that rush from darkened cages into some sunny arena. Everyone lost his wits. The appearance of a constable, far from restoring order, was the signal for an uproarious tumult; the FRACAS, as the French artist was heard to declare, promptly developed into a MELEE. n.o.body troubled about the merits of the case further than that it was a question of Apostles VERSUS Gentiles.

The former were in sad minority. But they const.i.tuted a serried rank of muscular Christians; they laid about them like those old monks of Alexandria. All Russians are born fighters--if not on the battlefield, then at least in the lanes and taverns of their natal villages. The Little White Cows, wholly ignorant of the difference between their own law and that of Italy on questions of a.s.sault and battery, used their fists with such success that thirty natives were stretched out in almost a few seconds. Their Faith was at stake; moreover, and as a matter of fact, they were enjoying themselves hugely. The occasion reminded them of a Sunday at home.

Then numbers began to tell--numbers and knives. For your sun-scorched Nepenthean, when duly roused, confesses to an expert knowledge of anatomy; he can tell you, to the fraction of an inch, where the liver, the spleen, kidneys and various other coy organs of the human frame are located. Blood, the blood of the Sacred Sixty-three, began to flow. At that sight the women, as their manner is, set up a scream.

The Palace of Justice ab.u.t.ted on the market-place, and up to that moment His Wors.h.i.+p Signor Malipizzo might have been lost to the world, so deeply immersed was he in threading the labyrinthine mazes of an exceptionally intricate affiliation case--a warm doc.u.ment, after his own heart. The sound of the scream suspended his labours. Like a gouty parrot he hopped down from his seat of judgment, spat on the floor, limped to the window and took in the situation at a glance. That is to say, he understood the cause of the disturbance as little as did any one else; it would have required a divine inspiration to guess that a box of wax vestas was at the bottom of the affair; but he knew enough, quite enough, more than enough, for the purpose at hand. He knew, to begin with, that Apostles were involved in the brawl. He knew, what was equally important, the provisions of the Penal Code. It sufficed. His chance for dealing with the Russian colony had at last arrived.

Allowing himself barely time to smack his lips at this providential interlude he gave orders for the great cannon of Duke Alfred to be sounded. It boomed once or twice over Nepenthe and reverberated among the rocks.

In times of yore a certain interval was wont to elapse before the Militia could be a.s.sembled, living as they did in distant regions of the island. But nowadays, as befitted a laborious rural population, they were spending their morning in the wine-shops of the town, gambling, drinking, or playing skittles. This enabled a sufficient number of them to forgather, in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time, at the outskirts of the market-place (occupied by a seething, howling tangle of humanity)--there to receive the plainest of instructions. They were to quell the disorder and to single out for punishment, whenever possible, the strangers, the obvious authors of the rebellion, easily discernible by their scarlet blouses. Not that the judge was particular about the lives or deaths of a few natives; he knew that any injuries received by his countrymen would strengthen his case against the outsiders. But an order couched in such terms would look well in the records of the Court.

Within ten minutes the market-place was cleared. The Militia had used their weapons with such precision that four school children, seven women, eleven islanders, and twenty-six Apostles were wounded--about half of them, it was believed, mortally. Order reigned in Nepenthe.

The warm affiliation case having been laid on ice for the nonce, the next few minutes were occupied by His Wors.h.i.+p in issuing warrants of arrest against the Messiah's followers. They were lodged by batches in gaol, and in supplementary gaols--disused cellars and so forth. Once under lock and key they were safe from mischief for an indefinite length of time, since according to the statutes of the Code of Criminal Procedure, there is no reason on earth why an Italian lawsuit should ever end, or indeed, why it should ever begin. They might, and probably would, remain incarcerated for life, pending the commencement of a trial which could only be set in motion by the judge himself--a most improbable conjuncture--or, failing that, by an extravagant bribe to his official superior, the President of the Court of Ca.s.sation. How were poor Apostles to find the necessary sixty or seventy francs for such a venture?

His Wors.h.i.+p retired to luncheon, reasonably satisfied with the morning's work. And yet not altogether delighted. Both the Messiah and Peter the Great had eluded his wrath. Peter was able to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he had spent the last twenty-four hours on Madame Steynlin's premises and knew nothing whatever of occurrences in the outside world. In the face of such a fact--so comfortable to common knowledge, so inherently probable--Malipizzo gave way. He was too good a lawyer to spoil his case. Sooner or later, he foresaw, that bird would be caged with the rest of them. Regarding the Messiah, an unexpected and breathless appeal for mercy was lodged by the Communal doctor, atheist and freemason like the judge, who implored, with tears in his eyes, that the warrant for his arrest should be rescinded. By means of a sequence of rapid and intricate Masonic signs, he explained that Bazhakuloff was a patient of his; that he was undergoing a daily treatment with the stomach-pump; that the prison diet being notoriously slender, he feared that if he, the Messiah, were confined in captivity, than it, the stomach-pump, would be no longer required and therefore he, the physician, a family man, deprived of a small but regular source of income. Again the astute judge relented. This is how the Messiah and his disciple escaped.

They escaped, but not for long.

And all this happened while Mr. Keith and his companion, drowsily ensconced among the morocco cus.h.i.+ons of their boat, were being wafted over the blue sea, far away, under the cliffs.

CHAPTER XXII

"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 sh.e.l.l, 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?"