South Wind Part 40

"I did not know Italians read the Bible. Where did you become acquainted with it?"

"In New York. I often amused myself strolling about the Jewish quarter there and studying the inhabitants. Wonderful types, wonderful poses!

But hard to decipher, for a person of my race. One day I said to myself: I will read their literature; it may be of a.s.sistance. I went through the Talmud and the Bible. They helped me to understand those people and their point of view."

"What is their point of view?"

"That G.o.d is an overseer. This, I think, is the keynote of the Bible.

And it explains why the Bible has always been regarded as an exotic among Greco-Latin races, who are all pagans at heart. Our G.o.d is not an overseer; he is a partaker. For the rest, we find the whole trend of the Bible, its doctrinal tone, antagonistic to those ideals of equanimity and moderation which, however disregarded in practice, have always been held up hereabouts as theoretically desirable. In short, we Southerners lack what you possess: an elective affinity with that book.

One may wonder how the morality of those tawny Semites was enabled to graft itself upon your alien white-skinned race with such tenacity as to influence your whole national development. Well, I think I have at last puzzled it out," he added, "to my own satisfaction at least."

The bishop interposed with a laugh:

"I may tell you, Count, that I am not in the Episcopal mood to-day. Not at all. Never felt less Episcopal in my life. For that matter, it is our English ecclesiastics who have dealt some of the most serious blows at Biblical authority of late, with their modern exegesis. Pray go on!"

"I imagine it is nothing but a matter of racial temperament."

"Goth and Latin?"

"One does not always like to employ such terms; they are so apt to cover deficiency of ideas, or to obscure the issue. But certainly the sun which colours our complexion and orders our daily habits, influences at the same time our character and outlook. The almost hysterical changes of light and darkness, summer and winter, which have impressed themselves on the literature of the North, are unknown here.

Northern people, whether from climatic or other causes, are p.r.o.ne to extremes, like their own myths and sagas. The Bible is essentially a book of extremes. It is a violent doc.u.ment. The Goth or Anglo-Saxon has taken kindly to this book because it has always suited his purposes. It has suited his purposes because, according to his abruptly varying moods, he has never been at a loss to discover therein exactly what he wanted--authority for every grade of emotional conduct, from savage vindictiveness to the most abject self-abas.e.m.e.nt. One thing he would never have found, had he cared to look for it--an incitement to live the life of reason, to strive after intellectual honesty and self-respect, and to keep his mind open to the logic of his five senses. That is why, during the troubled Middle Ages when the oscillations of national and individual life were yet abrupter--when, therefore, that cla.s.sical quality of temperance was more than ever at a discount--the Bible took so firm a hold upon you. Its unquiet teachings responded to the unquiet yearnings of men. Your conservatism, your reverence for established inst.i.tutions, has done the rest. No! I do not call to mind any pa.s.sages in the Bible commending the temperate philosophic life; though it would be strange if so large a miscellany did not contain a few sound reflections. Temperance," he concluded, as though speaking to himself--"temperance! All the rest is embroidery."

Mr. Heard was thoughtful. The American observed:

"That side of the case never struck me before. How about Solomon's proverbs?"

"Maxims of exhaustion, my dear friend. It is easy to preach to me. I am an old man. I can read Solomon with a certain patience. We want something for our children--something which does not blight or deny, but vivifies and guides aright; something which makes them hold up their heads. A friend, an older brother; not a pedagogue. I would never recommend a boy to study these writings. They would lower his spirits and his self-respect. Solomon, like all reformed debauchees, has a depressing influence on the young."

"Do you know England well?" asked Mr. Heard.

"Very little. I have spent a few days in Liverpool and London, here and there, on my periodical journeyings to the States. Kind friends supply me with English books and papers; the excellent Sir Herbert Street sends me more than I can possibly digest! I confess that much of what I read was an enigma to me till I had studied the Bible. Its teachings seem to have filtered, warm and fluid, through the veins of your national and private life. Then, slowly, they froze hard, congealing the whole body into a kind of crystal. Your ethics are stereotyped in black-letter characters. A gargoyle morality."

"It is certainly difficult," said Mr. van Koppen, "for an Anglo-Saxon to appraise this book objectively. His mind has been saturated with it in childhood to such an extent as to take on a definite bias."

"Like the ancients with their ILIAD. Where is a truer poet than Homer?

Yet the worship of him became a positive bane to independent creative thought. What good things could be written about the withering influence of Homer upon the intellectual life of Rome!"

The bishop asked:

"You think the Bible has done the same for us?"

"I think it accounts for some Byzantine traits in your national character and for the formlessness and hesitancy which I, at least, seem to detect in the demeanour of many individual Anglo-Saxons. They realize that their traditional upbringing is opposed to truth. It gives them a sense of insecurity. It makes them shy and awkward. Poise! That is what they need, and what this unbalanced Eastern stuff will never give them."

"The withering influences of Homer: surely that is a bad sign?" asked the American.

"And that of the Bible?" added Mr. Heard.

"How shall a plant survive, save by withering now and then? If the ancients had not exhausted themselves with Homer, the soil might not have been ready for our Renaissance. A bad sign? Who can tell! Good and bad--I question whether these are respectable words to use."

"You are content, as you observed before, to establish a fact?"

"Amply content. I leave the rest to the academicians. And the only fact we seem to have established is that your notions of morality resemble my notions of beauty in this one point: neither of them are up to date.

You will have be admire a steam-engine. Why? Because of its delicately adjusted mechanism, its perfect adaptation to modern needs. So be it. I will modify my conception of what is fair in appearance. I will admire your steam-engine, and thereby bring my ideals of beauty up to date.

Will you modify your conception of what is fair in conduct? Will you admire something more adapted to modern needs than those intemperate Hebrew doctrines; something with more delicately adjusted mechanism?

The mendicant friar, that flower of Oriental ethics--he is not up to date. He resembles all Semites. He lacks self-respect. He apologizes for being alive. It is not pretty--to apologize for being alive!"

The American observed:

"I should say that even our greatest bigots, nowadays, don't take those old doctrines as seriously as you seem to think."

"I daresay they don't. But they profess to reproach themselves for not doing so. And this is more contemptible. It adds insincerity to imbecility."

A sunny smile played about his face as he spoke these words. It was evident that his thoughts were already far away. The bishop, following the direction of his glance, saw that it rested upon the statuette of the Faun whose head and shoulders were now enveloped in a warm beam of light. Under that genial touch the old relic seemed to have woke up from its slumber. Blood was throbbing in its veins. It was inn movement; it dominated the scene in its emphatic affirmation of joy.

Mr. Heard, his eyes fixed upon the statuette, now realized the significance of what had been said. He began to see more clearly. Soon it dawned upon him that not joy alone was expressed by the figure.

Another quality, more evasive yet more compelling, resided in its subtle grace: the element of mystery. There, emprisoned in the bronze, dwelt some benignant oracle.

Puzzle as he would, that oracle refused to clothe itself in words.

What could it be?

A message of universal application, "loving and enigmatical," as the old man had called it. True! It was a greeting from an unknown friend in an unknown land; something familiar from the dim past or distant future; something that spoke of well-being--plain to behold, hard to expound, like the dawning smile of childhood.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

Towards evening, Mr. van Koppen drove the bishop down in the carriage which he usually hired for the whole of his stay on Nepenthe. They said little, having talked themselves out with the Count. The American seemed to be thinking about something. Mr. Heard's eye roamed over the landscape, rather anxiously.

"I don't like that new cloud above the volcano," he observed.

"Looks like ashes. Looks as if it might drift in our direction, doesn't it, if the wind were strong enough to move it? Do you see much of the Count?" he enquired.

"Not as much as I should like. What excellent veal cutlets those were!

So white and tender. Quite different from the veal we get in England.

And that aromatic wine went uncommonly well with them. It was his own growth, I suppose."

"Very likely. From that little vineyard which produces so many good things." He chuckled softly. "As to English veal--I never yet tasted any worth eating. If you don't slaughter a calf till it's grown into a cow--why, you're not likely to get anything but beef."

"They say the English cannot cook, in spite of the excellence of their prime materials."

"I think the prime materials are at fault. They sacrifice everything to size. It's barbaric. Those greasy Southdown sheep! It's the same with their fowls; they're large, but insipid--very different from the little things you get down here. Now a goose is capital fodder. But if you grow him only for his weight, you destroy his quality and flavour; you get a lump of blubber instead of a bird."