South Wind Part 33

"Nor did I--not till this moment. But when it's a question of defending the honour of a Club-member I always rise to the occasion. Some things--they simply make my blood boil. Look at this REFEREE: two weeks out of date! How the blazes is a man--"

"I say, Charlie, what did the fellow on the ranch want to do with that skunk? Something about tickling, wasn't it?"

"Hush, my boy. We can't talk about it here. You're not old enough yet.

I don't think I ought to tell you. It's too funny for words...."

"You're a black-and-white man and I'm a writer, and really, you know, we're a cut above all those sots on the balcony. Now just be reasonable for a moment. Look here. Have you ever thought about the impossibility of realizing colour description in landscape? It's struck me a good deal lately, here, with this blue sea, and those orange tints on the mountain, and all the rest of it. Take any page by a well-known writer--take a description of a sunset by Symonds, for example. Well, he names all the gorgeous colours, the yellow and red and violet, or whatever it may be, as he saw them. But he can't make you see them--d.a.m.ned if he can. He can only throw words at your head. I'm very much afraid, my dear fellow, that humanity will never get its colour-values straightened out by means of verbal symbols."

"I always know when a man is drunk, even when I'm drunk myself."

"When?"

"When he talks about colour-values."

"I believe you're right. I'm feeling a bit muzzy about the legs, as if I couldn't move. A bit fuzzy--"

"Muzzy, I think you said."

"Fuzzy."

"Muzzy. But we needn't quarrel about it, need we? I shall be sick in a minute, old man."

"It's rather hard on a fellow to be always misunderstood. However, as I was saying when you interrupted me, I am feeling slightly wobblish in the peripatetic or ambulatorial department. But my head's all right.

Now do be serious, for a change. You don't seem to catch my drift. This blue sea, and those orange tints on the mountains, I mean to say--how are they going to be held fast by the optic apparatus? The lens, you understand. I want to be able to shove them into a sketch-book, like you fellows. Well, how? That's what I want to know. How to turn my retina into a canvas."

"Rot, my good sir."

"It may be rot to you, but it strikes me as rather unfortunate, all the same, when you come to think of it. This blue sea, I mean, and those orange tints and all that, you know. Take a sunrise by John Addington.

Of course, as a matter of fact, we ought both to have been born in another age--an age of sinecures. Why are sinecures extinct? I feel as if I could be Governor of Madagascar at this moment."

"I feel as if you were getting slightly intoxicated."

"That's me. But it's only my legs. My head is astonishingly clear. And I do wish you would try, just for once in a way, to follow my meaning.

Be reasonable, for a change! I mean to say that a man has talents for all sorts of things. I, for example, have p.r.o.nounced views upon agriculture. But what's the use of farming without capital? What I mean to say is this: we see the blue sea and the orange tints on the mountains, and all that, I mean, and we don't seem to realize, I mean, that we may die at any moment and never see them again. How few people grasp that simple fact! It's enough to make one sick. Or do you think it's a laughing matter?"

"Bally rotten, I call it. You're quite right. People don't realize things the way they ought, except in a few selected moments. They live like animals. I shall be sick in a minute, old man."

"Like animals. Good Lord! You've hit the nail on the head this time.

How true that is. Like animals. Like animals. Like animals."

"I know what we want. We want fresh air. No more Parker's poison for me. Let's take a stroll."

"I would if I could. But I can't get off this chair, d.a.m.n it. I shall fall down if I move an inch. I can hardly turn my head round, as it is.

Awfully sorry. You don't mind, do you?"

"Gad! That's awkward. Couldn't we take your chair along with us, somehow? I'm going to be sick, I tell you, this very minute."

"Not here, not here! Third on the left. But surely, my dear fellow, you can put it off a little longer? Can't you be reasonable, for once in your life? Just for once in your life? Do listen to what those inebriated lunatics are saying on the balcony...."

"What did you do to that skunk, Charlie?"

"Not if I know it, young man. I promised my mother I'd never tell.

Another day, perhaps, when I've got a little whiskey inside me. It's too funny for words."

"You oughtn't to go tickling young girls, Charlie. It's not polite, at your age...."

They all cleared out, as it seemed, after midnight; some on all fours, many of them fairly perpendicular. But when the serving lad entered the premises in the sober light of morning, to clear up the debris, he was surprised to perceive a human form reclining under a table. It was the young Norwegian professor. He lay there wide awake, with disheveled hair and an inspired gleam in his eye, tracing on the floor, with the point of a corkscrew, what looked like a tangle of parallelograms and conic sections. He said it was a map of Trinidad.

CHAPTER XXV

As to Miss Wilberforce--she was becoming a real problem.

Once again she had shocked the Faithful. She had misconducted herself by interrupting the torchlight procession with some of those usual or unusual antics, a detailed description of which, while entertaining to a few lost souls, would certainly mortify the majority of decent folks.

The cup of endurance was full, overbr.i.m.m.i.n.g. Once again she had pa.s.sed the night in the lock-up. Questioned as to her motives for this particular incident, she artlessly blamed the darkness which misled her, she said, into the regrettable delusion that it was night; "and at night, you know...."

This, as Signor Malipizzo observed with his usual legal ac.u.men, might pa.s.s for an explanation but nevermore for an excuse. How much longer, he continued, with a fine Ciceronian gesture of eloquent indignation--how much longer would the foreign colony on Nepenthe endure the presence in their midst of such a disgrace to womanhood?

Thus spake the judge, well aware of what was expected from a man in his position. In his heart he desired nothing less than her departure; he was charmed with her disturbing influence; he hoped she would live a hundred years on the island. In the first place he received occasional gifts in kind from various grocers and wine-merchants who enriched themselves by supplying her at preposterous prices with intoxicants, and who thought by these subtle tactics to retain him as an ally in their cause. Secondly and chiefly, every new scandal of this nature gave him a fresh opportunity of consigning her, temporarily, to the lock-up. Only temporarily. Because Mr. Keith would be sure to bail her out again in the morning, which meant another fifty francs in his pocket.

This is exactly what had just taken place. Mr. Keith had bailed her out, for the thirty-fourth time. She was at liberty once more, sobering down.

Both the d.u.c.h.ess and Madame Steynlin pitied her, as only one woman can pity another. Often the prayed to their respective G.o.ds, Lutheran and High Church, that she might be led to see the error of her ways or, failing that, removed by some happy accident from the island or, failing that, run over by a pa.s.sing vehicle and injured--injured not dangerously, but merely to such an extent as to necessitate her permanent seclusion from society. Other careless folk were maimed by the furious driving of the Nepentheans; it was a common form of accident. Miss Wilberforce--the eye-sore, the scandal of her s.e.x--remained intact. Some impish deity seemed to guide her wayward footsteps.

Had she been a person of low extraction there would have been no difficulty in dealing with her. But she was so obviously a lady--she had such obviously rich and influential connections in England! These people, however glad to have her out of the way, might object if violent measures were taken by persons who, after all, had no right to interfere in her affairs. And the situation was rendered none the less complex by the att.i.tude of Miss Wilberforce herself. She was a Tartar.

She felt that all men's hands were against her. She used her tongue to good purpose and, at a pinch, her teeth and claws. The policemen of Nepenthe could bear witness to that fact. Drunk, she had a perfectly blistering flow of invective at command. Sober, she was apt to indulge in a dignified b.e.s.t.i.a.lity of logic that cut like a knife. It was only in the intermediate stage that she was affable and human. But to catch her in that intermediate stage was extremely difficult. It was of such very brief duration.

They tried to tempt her with the prospect of being repatriated.

Strenuously she opposed the notion, on grounds of health. She argued that she had come to the South at the bidding of her English doctor--which was true enough, that grave personage having been urgently pressed by the family to make a suggestion; a return to England, she declared, would be the death of her. If any attempt were made to interfere with her liberty in this manner, she would appeal to the local Court for protection.

Then the project of sending her to an Inebriates' Home on the mainland was mooted. A sprightly young clergyman, not long resident on Nepenthe, volunteered for the delicate task of persuading the lady to take this step; it would be given out that she was merely undergoing a "rest cure." The sprightly young clergyman started on his mission full of bright expectations. He returned anon, looking prematurely aged. n.o.body could get a word out of him at first; he seemed top have become afflicted with a partial paralysis of the tongue. After babbling childishly for an hour or so he fell silent altogether, and it was not till next morning that he recovered full powers of speech. Wild horses, he then announced, would not drag form his lips what had pa.s.sed at the interview.

As a last resource it was decided to inaugurate a sanatorium on the island for her especial benefit, with a trained nurse permanently in attendance; during her ever-decreasing spells of sobriety the place, together with the nurse, could be utilized for needle-cla.s.ses and so forth. Money was required. A committee of ladies and gentlemen collected a certain small amount, but their hopes did not rise high till the day when the d.u.c.h.ess broached the subject to her countryman, Mr. van Koppen, after inveigling him into what she called "a friendly teat-a-teat." Surfeited to bursting-point with his favourite tea-cakes, the millionaire was in a lovely humour. He declared his readiness, then and there, to subscribe half a million francs to the scheme if--if his good friend Mr. Keith would make himself responsible for a similar sum, or even a thousandth part of it.

"Half a million francs--what's that, d.u.c.h.ess, as the price of a smile from yourself? Cheap. Dirt cheap!"

"Another one?" queried the lady.

"Well, just one. I can't swallow any more. But I can still chew."

So fatuously fond was he of this particular variety of condiment that, on their account alone, he would have imported the d.u.c.h.ess and her entire establishment into America. For all that, old Koppen was no fool. Half a million b.u.t.tered tea-cakes could not impair the lively workings of a brain which had long ago mapped out a swift and sure path to worldly success. He had wind of this project; his answer was carefully prepared. It was a mathematical certainty that not one cent of those half-million francs would ever leave his pocket. For he knew what the Committee did not know--the real character of his friend Keith.