South Wind

by Norman Douglas

  All was not well with Denis. Early that morning he had tried his hand at poetry once more, after a long interval. Four words—that was all the inspiration which had come to him.

  “Or vine-wreathed Tuscany….”

  A pretty turn, in the earlier manner of Keats. It looked well on the snowy paper. “Or vine-wreathed Tuscany.” He was content with that phrase, so far as it went. But where was the rest of the stanza?

  How easily, a year or two ago, could he have fashioned the whole verse. How easily everything was accomplished in those days. To be a poet: that was a fixed point on his horizon. Any number of joyous lyrics, as well as three plays not intended for the stage, had already dropped from his pen. He was an extraordinary success among his college friends; everybody liked him; he could say and do what he pleased. Was he not the idol of a select group who admired not only one another but also the satanism of Baudelaire, the hieratic obscenities of Beardsley, the mustiest Persian sage, the modernest American ballad-monger? He was full of gay irresponsibility. Ever since, on returning to his rooms after some tedious lecture, he announced to his friends that he had lost an umbrella but preserved, thank God, his honour, they augured a brilliant future for him. So, for other but no less cogent reasons, did his doting, misguided mother.

  Both were disappointed. Those sprightly sallies became rarer; epigrams died, still-born, on his lips. He lost his sense of humour; grew mirthless, fretful, self-conscious. He suddenly realized the existence of a world beyond his college walls; it made him feel like a hot-house flower exposed to the blustering winds of March. Life was no longer a hurdle in a steeple-chase to be taken at a gallop; it was a tangle of beastly facts that stared you in the face and refused to get out of the way. With growing years, during vacation, he came in contact with a new set of people; men who smiled indulgently at mention of all he held most sacred—art, classics, literature; men who were plainly not insane and yet took up incomprehensible professions of one kind or another—took them up with open eyes and unfeigned zest, and actually prospered at them in a crude worldly fashion.

  He shrank at first from their society, consoling himself with the reflection that, being bounders, it did not matter whether they succeeded or not. But this explanation did not hold good for long. They were not bounders—not all of them. People not only dined with them: they asked them to dinner. Quite decent fellows, in fact. Nothing was wrong with them, save that they held a point of view which was at variance with his own.

  It was a rude awakening. Every moment he was up against something new. There were quite a lot of things, he discovered, which a fellow ought to know, and doesn’t. Too many of them to assimilate with comfort. They crowded in upon him and unsettled his mind. He kept up a brave exterior, but his inner core was suffering; he was no longer certain of himself. He became easily swayed and changeful in his moods. That sure touch in lyrics, as in daily life, was deserting him. His dreams were not coming true. He was not going to set the Thames on fire with poetry or anything else. He would probably be a failure. Aware of this weakness, he looked up to what was strong. Everything was different from himself, everything forceful, emphatic and clear-cut, exercised a fascination upon him. He tried in an honest, groping fashion, to learn what it was all about. That was why he had taken to Edgar Marten, the antithesis of himself, bright but dogmatic, a slovenly little plebeian but a man who after all had a determined, definite point of view.

  Denis repeated:

  “Sanidin?”

  “Let’s have a look at it then,” said Marten condescendingly, “though I can’t say I’m in a geological temper this morning. The south wind seems to rot one’s intelligence somehow. Hand it here. Sanidin be blowed! It’s specular iron. Now I wonder why you should hit upon sanidin? Why?”

  He, too, did not pause for a reply. He turned his glance once more down the steep hill-side which they had climbed with a view to exploring some instructive exposure of the rock. Marten intended to utilize the site as a text for a lay sermon. Arrived on the spot they had sat down. As if by common consent, geology was forgotten. To outward appearances they were absorbed in the beauties of nature. Sirocco mists rose upwards, clustering thickly overhead and rolling in billowy formations among the dales. Sometimes a breath of wind would convulse their ranks, causing them to trail in long silvery pennants across the sky and, opening a rift in their gossamer texture, would reveal, far down below, a glimmer of olives shining in the sunlight or a patch of blue sea, framed in an aureole of peacock hues. Stones and grass were clammy with warm moisture.

  “It’s a funny thing,” said Marten, after a long pause. “I’ve often noticed it. When I’m not actually at work, I’m always thinking about girls. I wish I could talk better Latin, or Italian. Not that I should be running after them all day long. I’ve got other fish to fry. I’ve got to catalogue my minerals, and I’m only half-way through. For the matter of that, I haven’t come across half as many nice ones here as I thought I would.”

  “Minerals?”

  “Girls. I don’t seem to take to these foreigners. But there’s one—”

  “Go on.”

  “You’re a queer fellow, Phipps. Don’t you ever look at women? I believe you have the making of a saint in you. Fight against it. A fellow can’t live without vices. Here you are, with lots of money, stewing in a back bedroom of a second-class hotel and getting up every morning at five o’clock because you like lying in bed late. Is that your way of mortifying the flesh? Got a soul, eh? Get rid of it. The soul! That unhappy word has been the refuge of empty minds ever since the world began. You’re just like a man I used to know at Newcastle. You can’t think what an ass he was. A sort of eugenical crank, who talked about the City Beautiful where everybody would lead regenerated lives like a flock of prize sheep. Everything sanitary and soulful; nothing but pure men and pure women. An addle-headed theorist, he was, till a woman got hold of him—one of the other kind, you know—and gave him something practical to think about. That’s what will happen to you, Phipps. I can see it coming.”

  “I’ve been analysing myself lately. I find I have too much romance in my composition, as it is.”

  “What do you call romance?”

  Denis thought awhile. Then he said:

  “When a man invests ordinary people or objects or occurrences with an extraordinary interest. When he reads attributes into them which they don’t possess, or exaggerates those which they do possess. When he looks at a person and can’t help thinking that there is nobody on earth quite like her.”

  “Too celestial for me, on the whole. But I’m glad you said that last part. Glad for your sake, I mean. It shows that you’ve perhaps got something better than a soul, after all.”

  “What is that?”

  “A body. Look here, Phipps. I also have my romantic moments, though you wouldn’t believe it. I can be as romantic as ever you please. But not when I’m alone.”

  “I should like to see you in that condition. And talking Latin, no doubt?” he added with a laugh.

  “I daresay you would,” replied the scientist. “Given the circumstances under which I become romantic, you’ll find it a little difficult. But there’s no knowing. Funny things happen sometimes!”

  Denis had picked up another stone. He scrutinized it with close attention, and then began to turn it round and round in his hand in an absent-minded fashion. At last he remarked:

  “We are not doing much mineralogy, are we? What do you think of chastity, Marten?”

  “Chastity be blowed. It’s an unclean state of affairs, and dangerous to the community. You can’t call yourself a good citizen till you have learnt to despise it from the bottom of your heart. It’s an insult to the Creator and an abomination to man and beast.”

  “Perhaps you never gave it a fair trial,” suggested Denis.

  “Perhaps I’m not quite such a damned fool as all that. A man needn’t handle everything dirty in order to be doubly sure about it. If you tell me that a dead donkey smells bad, I’m quite pre
pared to believe you without poking my nose into it. Chastity is a dead donkey. No beating will bring it to life again. Who killed it? The experience of every sane man and woman on earth. It’s decayed; it ought to be buried. You ask me to give it a trial. Perhaps I will, when I’m in the same mellow condition myself. Everything in its proper season. Don’t let us reverse the natural order of things. When we cease to practise, then is the time to preach. A fellow of your size! And with your good looks, too. Who knows how many golden opportunities you’ve missed. Try to make up for lost time, Phipps. Get rid of conventional notions, if you value your health.”

  “I will, when I find them wrong. What do you think of women—generally speaking, I mean?”

  Marten replied, without a moment’s hesitation:

  “Thank God I’m a Jew. You must take that into consideration. I think the Mormons have made a good shot at solving the woman question, if the question exists at all. Mormonism is a protest against monogamy. And please observe that it’s a protest not on the part of man alone. It’s a protest on the part of woman. Never forget that. In fact, I don’t believe any woman would ever bind herself to one fool of a man if she had her own way. She wouldn’t marry at all. She needn’t, nowadays. She won’t, very soon. A man who marries—well, there may be some excuse for him, though a love-match is generally a failure and a money-match always a mistake. The heroes, the saints and sages—they are those who face the world alone. A married man is half a man.”

  “Ahem!”

  Marten was silent.

  “I did not ask you to stop,” said Denis. “You’ve got it very pat!”

  “Plain sailing, my boy. It’s the social reformers and novelists who create these artificial conundrums; they want to sell their rotten literature; they want to make us forget that the only interesting and important part of the business is what nobody talks or writes about. What does it all amount to? Man creates intellectually and physically. He classifies minerals or blasts out a tunnel. Woman creates physiologically; she supplies the essential, the raw material; her noblest product is a child. I get on splendidly with women, because we both realize the stupidity of the average sex-twaddle. We have no illusions about each other. We know exactly what we are after. We know exactly how to attain it. I tell you what, Phipps, Female Emancipation is going to do away with a lot of cant and idealism. Knock the silly male on the head. There’ll be an end of your chastity-worship, once women are fairly started on the game. They won’t put up with it.”

  “Disgusting,” said Denis. “Go on.”

  “I’m done. What, sanidin again?”

  Denis still held the stone in his hand. He was thinking, however, of other things. He liked to collect fresh ideas, to be impregnated with the mentality of other people—he knew how much he had to learn. But he would have preferred his mind to be moulded gently, in artistic fashion. Marten’s style was more like random blows from a sledge-hammer, half of them wide of the mark. It was not very edifying, or even instructive. Keith was the same. Why was everybody so violent, so extreme in their views?

  Marten repeated:

  “Sanidin?”

  “It might be sanidin in places,” replied Denis. “I do know a little something about crystals, Marten. I have read Ruskin’s ETHICS OF THE DUST.”

  “Ruskin. Good god! He’s not a man; he’s an emetic. But you never answered my first question. You always hit upon sanidin. Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s rather a pretty word, don’t you think? It would do for a Christian name. Girls’ names are so terribly commonplace. They are always Marjorie, or something. If I had a daughter, I should call her Sanidin.”

  “You’re not likely to find yourself in that position at this rate. If I had a daughter, I know perfectly well what I should call her.”

  “What?”

  “Angelina.”

  “You would?” asked Denis slowly. “And why?”

  “Oh, it’s rather a pretty name, don’t you think?”

  “Not a bad name at all, now I come to think of it. But it sounds foreign. I thought you did not care about foreigners.”

  “I don’t. But there’s one—”

  “Go on,” said Denis.

  Mr. Marten winked.

  The mists had fled from the hilltops; rocks and vineyards, and the sea at their foot, lay flooded in sunshine. With one accord, the two young men rose from the ground and turned their steps homewards. The mineralogical lesson was over.

  “Coming to Keith’s to-night?” enquired Marten with a fine show of nonchalance.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I would if I were you. They say he does things properly. There’ll be an awful crowd—a regular bust-up. He only gives one of these entertainments a year. Dancing and Chinese lanterns and champagne in torrents. Won’t you go?”

  “Perhaps later in the evening.”

  Denis was perturbed. He scented a rival in this brutalitarian, though it seemed hardly possible that Angelina should take much notice of him. Meanwhile, he felt in need of some gentlemanly and soothing influence, after such an outpouring of vulgarity. He thought of the bibliographer. He liked Eames; he admired that scholarly detachment. He, too, might end in annotating some masterpiece—who knows? To be a bibliographer—what a calm, studious life!

  “I think I’ll go to Eames,” he remarked.

  “Really? A colourless creature, that Eames. As dry as a stick; a typical Don. I promised him a mineralogical map, by the way. You might tell him I haven’t forgotten, will you? I wonder what you can see in the man?”

  “I rather like him,” said Denis. “He knows what he wants.”

  “That is not enough, my young friend!” replied Marten with decision. “A fellow must want something sensible.”

  “What do you call sensible?”

  “Sanidin, and things like that. Things with pretty names. Eh, Phipps?”

  Denis said nothing.

  His friend continued jovially:

  “The tavern mood is upon me. I am going to Luisella’s to get a drink. One gets sick of that Club. Besides, I’ve taken rather a fancy to that younger sister. The second youngest, I mean; the one with the curly hair—you know! I only wish I knew a bit more Latin.”

  Luisella’s grotto-tavern had become quite a famous rendezvous. You could drop in there at any hour and always find company to your liking. Don Francesco had a good deal to do with its discovery; he discovered, at all events, the second eldest of the four orphan sisters who managed the house. After a time, having convinced himself that they were all good penitents and being a kindly sort of man, he thought that other people might like to share in the seductions which the place afforded. He took foreign friends there from time to time, and none were disappointed. The wine was excellent. Russians, excluded from the Club by Mr. Parker’s severity, frequented the spot in considerable numbers. They were nicely treated there. Not many nights previously one of the Master’s disciples, the athletic young Peter Krasnojabkin, who was credited with being a protege of Madame Steynlin’s, had distinguished himself by drinking sixteen bottles at a sitting. He afterwards smashed a few chairs and things, for which he apologized so prettily next morning that the girls would not hear of his paying for the damage.

  “It’s all in the family,” they said. “Come and break some more!”

  That was the way they ran the place, as regards drinks. The quality of the refreshments, too, was quite out of the common. As for the girls themselves—their admirers were legion. They could have married anyone they pleased, had it not been more in accordance with the interests of their business, to say nothing of the personal inclinations, to have only lovers.

  As Marten disappeared under that hospitable doorway, I flashed through the mind of Denis that Eames was a confirmed recluse; he might not like being disturbed in the morning.

  Besides, he was probably at work.

  He thought of going to see the bishop. There was a glamour in the name. To be a bishop! His mother had sometimes suggested the Churc
h, or at least politics as a career for him, if poetry should fail. But this one was so matter-of-fact and unpretentious in his clothing, his opinions. A broken-down matrimonial agent, Don Francesco had called him. Mr. Heard was not his idea of a shepherd of souls; he was only a colonial, anyhow. A grey type of man—nothing purple about him, nothing glowing or ornate. He did not get on particularly well with him either.

  Besides, he hardly knew him sufficiently to intrude at this hour of the day.

  One thing was certain. He would go to the Cave of Mercury that very evening. Keith was right. He must try to “find himself.” He wanted to be alone, to think things out. Or perhaps—no. He did not want to be alone with his thoughts. They were too oppressive just then. He required some kind of company.

  Besides, Keith had said “full moon.” The moon was not yet quite full.

  No!

  He would see what the Duchess was doing, and perhaps stay to luncheon. Eames could wait. So could the bishop. So could the cave. He was fond of the Duchess.

  Besides, it was such a quaint place—that austere old convent, built by the Good Duke Alfred.

  CHAPTER IX

  “That is the worst of dining with a man. You have to be civil next morning. But surely, Eames, we two need not stand on ceremony? I am particularly anxious for you to come to-night. Can’t you really manage it? I want you to meet Malipizzo and say a few nice words to him. You are too aloof with that man. There is nothing like keeping on the right side of the law.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “The right side of the judge,” said Keith. “It is so easy to be polite to people, and so advisable in some cases. How would you like to spend a week or two in gaol? He will have you there one of these days, unless you have placed him under some kind of obligation. He represents justice here. I know you don’t like him. But what would it cost you—just a friendly handshake?”

  “He cannot touch me. I have nothing on my conscience.”