South Wind Part 20

"It is," replied Don Francesco, "And perhaps you do not know," he added, turning to the company, "that there has been another robbery as well, doubtless by the same hand. Yes! I only heard of it an hour ago.

Poor Miss Wilberforce is the victim. She is terribly upset. A number of valuables have disappeared from her house; they must have been ransacked, she thinks, at the time of Mr. Keith's party. I understand she was rather overcome on that occasion. The thief seems to have been aware of her condition, and to have profited by it."

"Poor Miss Wilberforce!" said everybody. They were all sorry for poor Miss Wilberforce.

It was a rather full dinner-party on the whole. Mr. Heard left at half-past eleven.

Pa.s.sing the Club on his way home, he remembered his intention of looking in there and perhaps doing good to a few of those fellows.

He climbed up the stairs. There was a fearful row going on. The place was crammed with members of various nationalities, drinking and arguing amid clouds of tobacco smoke. They seemed all to be at loggerheads with one another and on the verge of breaking out into violence, the south wind having been particularly objectionable all day long. A good deal of filthy and profane language was being used--it was worse than those hot places he had known in Africa. That pink-faced old drunkard known as Charlie was the only person who made any signs of recognizing him.

He half rose from his chair with a genial: "h.e.l.lo, Bishop--" and instantly collapsed again. Mr. Muhlen was there; he bowed rather distantly. A tremulous pale-faced youngster invited him pressingly to a drink, and just as the bishop was on the verge of accepting with a view to getting the victim out of that den of vice, the lad suddenly remarked: "Excuse me, won't you?" and tottered out of the door. They were too far gone to be spoken to with any prospects of success. Things might have been different if the restraining influence of Mr. Freddy Parker could have made itself felt, but that gentleman was at home, his lady being not very well. In the Commissioner's absence, Mr. Richards, the respectable Vice-President, was making his voice heard. Sober or not, he was certainly articulate and delighted with himself as, stroking his beard placidly, he roared out above the crowd:

"I've no use for makeshifts. Honesty is a makeshift. A makeshift for saving time. Whoever wants to save time is not fit for the society of gentlemen."

"Hear, hear!"

"Call yourself a gentleman?" enquired another.

"Just a makeshift. You won't hear honesty talked about in the great periods of the world's history. It's the small tradesman's invention, is honesty. He hasn't the the brains to earn anything more than three and a half per cent. That's why he is always in such a hurry to finish his first little deal and get on with the next one. Else he'd starve.

Hence honesty. Three and a half per cent! Who's going to pick that up?

People who earn three hundred don't cackle about honesty."

"Call yourself a gentleman? Outside!"

"I've no use for honesty. It's the small man's flapdoodle, is honesty.

This world isn't made for small men! I am talking to you over there--the funny little bounder who made the offensive remark just now."

"Are you? Well, take that!"

A gla.s.s tumbler, which Mr. Richards dodged in quite a professional manner, came hurtling through the air and missed the bishop's forehead by about four inches.

That crowd was past his aid. He turned to go. As he did so, a curious idea flitted through his brain. This Mr. Richards--was he, perhaps, the burglar? He was; but Mr. Heard dashed aside the horrible suspicion, mindful of the mistake he had made about Angelina's character and how careful one must be in judging of other people. The voice, meanwhile, pursued him down the stairs.

"No, gentlemen! I've no use for an honest man. He always lets you down.

Fortunately, he is rather rare--"

Mr. Heard slept badly that night, for the first time since his arrival on Nepenthe. It was unbearably hot. And that visit to Mrs. Meadows had also troubled him a little.

The Old Town looked different on this occasion. A sullen death-like stillness, a menacing stagnation, hung about those pink houses. Not a leaf was astir under the burning sirocco sky. Even old Caterina, when he saw her, seemed to be afflicted, somehow.

"SOFFRE, LA SIGNORA," she said. The lady was suffering.

The bishop would not have recognized his cousin after all those years; not if he had met her in the street at least. She greeted him affectionately and they talked for a long time of family matters. It was true, then. Her husband's leave had been again postponed. Perhaps she would travel back to England with him, and there await the arrival of Meadows. She would let him know definitely in a day or two.

He watched her carefully while she conversed, trying to reconstruct, out of that woman's face, the childish features he dimly remembered.

They were effaced. He could see what Keith had meant when he described her as "tailor-made." There was something clear-cut about her, something not exactly harsh, but savouring of decision. She was plainly a personality--not an ordinary type. The lines of her face told their story. They had been hammered into a kind of hard efficiency. But over that exterior of tranquil self-possession was super-imposed something else--certain marks of recent trouble. Her eyes looked almost as if she had been weeping. She made a tremendous show of cheeriness, however, calling him Tommy as in olden days.

Just a little headache. This sirocco. It was bad enough when it blew in the ordinary fashion. But quite intolerable when it hung breathlessly about the air like this. Mr. Eames--he once called it PLUMBEUS AUSTER.

That meant leaden, didn't it? Everybody had headaches, more or less.

Was she speaking the truth? The bishop decided that she had an headache and that this south wind was certainly unendurable. None the less, he suspected that she was employing the common subterfuge--telling the truth, but not the whole truth; perhaps not even the main part of it.

She was holding back something.

"You haven't attended to these roses lately," he said, observing that the flowers had not been changed and that their fallen petals strewed the tables. "They looked so fresh when I was here alone the other day."

"What a dreadful person you are, Tommy, for noticing things. First you discover my headache, and now those flowers! I see I shall have to be careful with you. Perhaps you would like to look at my precipice and tell me if there is anything wrong with that too? You have heard of the old French lady, I daresay. She ended, you know, in not approving of it at all. We can have tea when we come back. And after that perhaps you will let me know what is wrong with baby?"

"I can tell you that without looking at him. He is teething."

"Clever boy! As a matter of fact, he isn't. But I had to make some excuse to the dear d.u.c.h.ess."

They climbed up the short slope and found themselves looking towards the sea over the face of a dizzy cliff. A falcon, on their approach, started with rustle of wings from its ledge and then swayed crazily over the abyss. Watching this bird, the bishop felt a sudden voice in his stomach. A sensation of blackness came before his eyes--sky and sea were merged together--his feet were treading on air. He promptly sat down.

"Not an inch nearer!" he declared. "Not for a thousand pounds. If you go along that edge again, I shall have to look the other way. It makes me feel empty inside."

"I'm not in the least giddy," she laughed. "There was an English boy who threw himself over this cliff for a bet--you have heard the story?

They never found his body. It's a good place for throwing oneself down, isn't it?"

She seemed to consider the idea quite seriously.

"Well?" she pursued. "Have you any fault to find with my precipice?"

"I have. It ought to be railed in. It is dangerous. What a temptation this cliff must be to anyone who has an enemy to dispose of! It would be so simple," he added, laughing.

"That advantage has never struck me before...."

These and other things pa.s.sed through Mr. Heard's mind as he lay in bed that evening. He came to the conclusion that he could not quite make his cousin out. Had something upset her? And what did she mean by that sudden conundrum:

"Do you know anything, Tommy, about our laws of illegitimacy?"

"Nothing," he had replied, "except that they are a disgrace to a civilized country. Everybody knows that."

She seemed to be disappointed. Perhaps she mistrusted him. The thought gave him a little pain. He had done nothing to merit mistrust. He was frank and open himself; he liked others to be the same.

What was the use of thinking about it? He knew tantalizingly little about his cousin--nothing but sc.r.a.ps of information gathered from his mother's letters to him. He would call again in a day or two and make some definite arrangements about their journey to England. Perhaps he had talked more dully than usual.... Or could it be the south wind?

Neither of these explanations was wholly convincing.

CHAPTER XV