South Wind Part 6

"I wish I had not eaten so many of those prawns," he added. "What are you thinking?"

"I think modern education over-emphasizes the intellect. I suppose that comes from the scientific trend of the times. You cannot obtain a useful citizen if you only develop his intellect. We take children from their parents because these cannot give them an intellectual training.

So far, good. But we fail to give them that training in character which parents alone can give. Home influence, as Grace Aguilar conceived it--where has it gone? It strikes me that this is a grave danger for the future. We are rearing up a brood of crafty egoists, a generation whose earliest recollections are those of getting something for nothing from the State. I am inclined to trace our present social unrest to this over-valuation of the intellect. It hardens the heart and blights all generous impulses. What is going to replace the home, Mr. Keith? And there is another point which has often forced itself upon me. A certain proportion of wealthy children tend to fall back into lower grades of life--manual labour, and so forth. They are born below the level of their parents. No difficulty about relapsing. But a fair percentage of the lowest cla.s.ses tend to rise; they stand, potentially, above their surroundings. An apparatus has been contrived for catching these children. But it is defective, because devoid of sympathy. I have known hundreds of cases in the East End of London where families have been unable to raise themselves by this means because, at the critical moment, there was not twenty shillings in the house wherewith to buy clothes in which the child could present himself to a good employer with any prospect of success. Worthy of a better fate, he is pushed back. The chance is missed; the family remains in poverty. All kinds of profitable and honourable capacities are being wasted in this fashion every day--peculiar apt.i.tudes for mechanics, talents for art, or music, or acting--"

"Acting!" interrupted Keith. "I am glad you reminded me. We are just in time to see some theatricals at the munic.i.p.ality. They only come off once a year. It would never do for you to miss them. No, never."

The bishop, rather regretfully, rose from his seat. He was feeling comfortable just then, and inclined to listen to a few more of Keith's educational heresies. But that gentleman seemed to have exhausted the subject, or himself.

"It's only a few minutes' walk," he observed. "We'll take a couple of sunshades."

They stepped into the broiling heat. The morning mists had rolled away from the mountains.

Walking along, Mr. Heard began to realize what a rambling and craggy sort of place this was. And how decorative! Almost operatic. The town was full of surprises--of unexpected glimpses upon a group of slender palms, some gleaming precipice, or the distant sea. Gardens appeared to be toppling over the houses; green vines festooned the doorways and gaily coloured porches; streets climbed up and down, noisy with rattling carriages and cries of fruit-vendors who exposed their wares of brightest hues on the pavement. Country women, in picturesque cinnamon-coloured skirts, moved gravely among the citizens. The houses, when not whitewashed, showed their building stone of red volcanic tufa; windows were aflame with cacti and carnations; slumberous oranges glowed in courtyards; the roadways underfoot were of lava--pitch-black.

It was a brilliant medley, overhung by a deep blue sky. The canvas was indeed overcharged, as Denis had said.

"There are no half-tones in this landscape," the bishop remarked to Mr.

Keith. "No compromise!"

"And yet perfect harmony. They are all true colours. I hate compromise.

It is one of the curses of life. That is why I cannot endure England for long. The country is full of half-tones, not only in nature.

Because a thing seems good, there must be some bad in it. It seems bad to us--therefore it must be good for us. Bedlamites! I like clean values. They make for clean thinking. This is the only day in the year," he went on, "when you will see the population abroad at this hour. The streets are generally quite empty. It is the only day when I would forgo my afternoon nap on Nepenthe."

"Nearly three o'clock," said the bishop, consulting his watch. "What a queer time for theatricals!"

"That Duke again. You can ask Eames about him, he must have been a man worth knowing. He always slept in the afternoons. It annoyed him to think that his people slept too. He might suddenly want them for something, he said. He commanded that they should stay awake, and decapitated several hundred who were found napping. When he saw that the habit was ingrained in their natures and that nothing would avail save a total extermination of the populace, he gave way, gracefully.

Then hi inst.i.tuted these popular theatricals in honour of the Patron Saint, and fixed them irrevocably for the hour of three o'clock. He meant to keep his faithful subjects awake on one afternoon of the year, at all events. He took it for granted that they could never resist a performance of this kind. He was right. He knew his people! That was ages ago. We shall find the place crammed this afternoon."

There was barely standing room, in spite of the sirocco heat. Mr.

Keith, by means of some mysterious formula, soon procured two seats in the front row, the occupants of which smilingly took their places among the crowd at the back.

The bishop found himself sitting between his host and a distinguished-looking elderly gentleman who turned out to be Count Caloveglia. He was dressed in black. There was something alert and military in that upright carriage, those keen eyes, bushy black brows and snowy mustache. He uttered a few pleasant remarks on making Mr.

Heard's acquaintance, but soon relapsed into silence. Absorbed in the spectacle, he sat motionless, his chin resting in the hollow of his right hand.

"A fine type," Keith whispered into the bishop's ear. "You will like him. I call him the Salt of the South. If you are interested in the old Greek life of these regions--well, he gives you an idea of those people.

He is the epitome of the Ionian spirit. I'll take you up to see him one of these days."

The performance consisted of a series of twelve scenes without words, representing the twelve chief episodes in the life of the Patron Saint, as portrayed in a certain marble frieze in the church. The actors were a handful of the more attractive and intelligent children of the place.

They had been trained under the watchful eye of a priest who confessed to some notions of stage-craft and delighted in juvenile theatricals.

It was a thrillingly realistic performance; the costumes--designed, long ago, by the Good Duke himself--varied with every tableau. Vociferous expressions of approval accompanied the performance. The Saint's encounter in the grove of Alephane with the golden-haired lady was a masterpiece of histrionic art; so was his solemn preaching among the black natives. Tears flowed freely at his violent death--a scene which was only marred by the erratic movements of his venerable beard; that mill-stone, too, of PAPIER MACHE, played lovely pranks upon a pea-green ocean. Best of all was the cannibalistic feast of the Crotalophoboi ending with a tempestuous, demoniacal war-dance. Their blackened limbs emerging from the scantiest of vesture, the actors surpa.s.sed themselves. Such an uproar of applause accompanied the orgy that it had to be repeated.

Every year it had to be repeated, this particular tableau. It was by far the most popular, to the intense regret of the PARROCO, the parish priest, a rigid disciplinarian, an alien to Nepenthe, a frost-bitten soul from the Central Provinces of the mainland. He used to complain that times were changed; that what was good in the days of the Duke might not be good for the present generation; that a scene such as this was no incentive to true religion; that the Holy Mother of G.o.d could hardly be edified by the performance, seeing that the players were almost nude, and that certain of the gestures verged on indelicacy and even immodesty. Every year he complained in like fashion: Ah, what would the Madonna say, if she saw it?

And every year the entire body of the local clergy, with Don Francesco as their eloquent spokesman, opposed his views.

The play was tradition, they avowed. Tradition must be upheld. And what more? It savoured of heresy to suggest that the Mother of G.o.d was blind to anything that happened on earth. Doubtless She saw this particular scene; doubtless She approved; doubtless She smiled, like everyone else. She loved her people in true motherly fashion. She was not born in the Central Provinces. She was fond of children, whether they wore clothes or not. The players enjoyed themselves. So did the audience.

The Mother of G.o.d liked them to make a cheerful show in honour of that good old man, the Patron Saint. And Saint Dodeka.n.u.s himself--what would he think, if this ancient act of homage were withheld? He would be very angry. He would send an earthquake, or a visitation of the cholera, or a shower of ashes from the volcano across the water. Piety and prudence alike counselled them to keep in his good graces. And what more? The performance had been established by the Good Duke; and that endless line of G.o.dly bishops, succeeding each other since his day, would never have given their sanction to the costumes and the acting had they not known that the Madonna approved of them. Why should She now think differently? The Mother of G.o.d was not a fickle earthly creature, to change Her mind from one day to the next.

With arguments such as these they endeavoured to controvert the PARROCO who, being a fighter to the death, a resourceful ascetic of unbending will, never admitted defeat. He bethought him of other shifts. On one celebrated occasion he actually induced the bishop--tired as the old prelate was, after his morning's ride on the white donkey--to attend the performance, hoping to obtain from him some confirmation of his own view, that the objectionable scene should be entirely remodelled or, better still, cut out altogether. The reverend dignitary was supposed to be extremely short-sighted and wandering, moreover, in his mind, from sheer decrepitude. Perhaps he was wily beyond the common measure of man. Be that as it may, he witnessed the spectacle but allowed nothing to escape his lips safe a succession of soft purring sound resembling:

Gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu-,

An ambiguous utterance, which was construed by both parties as a verdict in their favour.

Mr. Heard, while conceding that the acting was good--first rate, in fact--could not make up his mind whether to be shocked or pleased. He wondered whether such a play had any features in common with religion.

His host, who stood for paganism and nudity and laughter, convinced him that it had.

"You would have seen the same thing in pre-Puritan England," he concluded, at the end of a long exposition. "And now, if you like, we will have a look at that Club. It may amuse you. There is still time for the d.u.c.h.ess."

CHAPTER V

"This is the place," said Mr. Keith.

It was one of a row of tawdry modern buildings, the lower floors of which were utilized as shops--an undistinguished sort of place, in an undistinguished street. They climbed upstairs and wandered through two or three rooms, all alike save that one of them had a balcony; square, white-washed rooms, not very clean, and inadequately furnished with tables, cane-bottomed chairs and a few prints on the walls. There was a lavish display, however, of bottles and gla.s.ses, and several shelves were littered with newspapers in different languages. Acetylene lamps hung from the flat ceiling. An odour of stale tobacco and alcohol pervaded the premises. Flies were buzzing against the window-panes.

Half a dozen nondescript members, looking considerably the worse for wear, loafed about moodily or snored in deck chairs. Two or three were writing letters. It was the sulkiest hour of the day. Mr. Heard noticed a slender young Indian and a blond-haired fellow--probably a Scandinavian. They were arguing about cigars with a rosy-cheeked old reprobate whom they called Charlie. An adjoining apartment, the card-room, contained a livelier party, among whom the bishop recognized Mr. Muhlen. He had lost no time in making himself popular. He must have found congenial spirits here.

"Well?" asked Keith.

"Cheap and nasty," suggested the other.

"That's it! They call it the Alpha and Omega Club, to shadow forth its all-embracing international character; it's just a boozing inst.i.tution, where you run to seed. They come in here, and say the south wind makes them thirsty. Red and Blue Club would be a more appropriate name. That is the whisky they have to drink."

"Why cannot they drink wine or--or ginger beer?"

"He tries to stop that. He would not be able to make any profits on wine."

"Who?"

"The President."

And Mr. Keith proceeded to sketch the history of the establishment.

The Alpha and Omega Club had led a precarious existence. Often its life dangled by a thread for lack of members, or because those members who owed subscriptions were unable or unwilling to pay them. Such had been the case before the accession of the new President. It hung its drooping head; had almost withered away. Mr. Freddy Parker tended the languid flower, and watered it--with whisky of his own composition.

It revived. Or rather (which amounts to the same thing) Mr. Parker revived--sufficiently, at all events, to pay off some of the more pressing of his private debts. Napoleon, or somebody, once remarked: "L'ETAT, C'EST MOI." Mr. Parker thought highly of a strong character like Napoleon. He used to say, when talking things over with his lady in her "boudoir" at the Residency:

"The Club, that's me."

Declaring that wine was the ruin of the place, he imported--it was the lady's idea, originally--the far-famed "Red-and-Blue" brand of whisky in barrels. The liquid was bottled in the cellars of the Residency. What happened during that process was never revealed. It was affirmed, none the less, that one barrel of the original stuff was more than enough for three barrelfuls of the bottled product. Cultured members, on drinking it, were wont to say things about Locusta and Borgia. The commoner sort swore like h.e.l.l at Freddy Parker. It made you feel squiffy after the sixth gla.s.s--argumentative, magisterial, maudlin, taciturn, erotic, sentimental, sea-sick, ecstatic, paralysed, lachrymose, hilarious, pugilistic--according to your temperament.

Whatever your temperament it gave you a thundering head next morning, and a throat like Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace. It was known as "Parker's poison."