South Wind

by Norman Douglas

  “Terrific,” said Mr. Heard. “What was that about the English lord?”

  “Two young fellows who rented the villa at the back of it for a summer. They used to bathe and booze all day long. I was not on the island at the time, but of course I heard about it. One day the younger one jumped over the edge of the cliff for a bet; said he was going to dive. They never recovered his body. There is a strong current at this point. That’s so, isn’t it, Antonio?”

  “That so, gentlemens. Drink branty all the time, both of them. But little one—everybody smile at him. Pretty boy. Swim and dive, something lovely. One evening both get drunk and walk along the edge of cliff up there. Then little one, he say: I good diver, eh, what, friend? Big one say: You dive prettier than dolphin.—What bet, over cliff here, now?—Six bottle branty.—Done! Clothes off, over he go, like a sea-bird. All finished. That so, gentlemens. Next morning they bring clothes to big one into house. Big one, when he wake up and see clothes lying there, with no friend inside, he very angry with servants and everybody else, and drink no more branty for three days. Dam-fool foreigners.”

  “That’s a tragedy, anyhow,” said the bishop.

  “You are right. It is quite artistic—that touch about bringing back the clothes, the empty shell, next morning. Quite artistic.”

  Mr. Heard looked up at the crag. It made him dizzy to picture some human body hurtling through the air from that awful height. Its surface was of perfect smoothness. But what struck him even more was the uncommon and almost menacing coloration. The rock was bluish black, spattered with maculations of a ruddy sanguine tint, as though drops of blood had oozed out, in places, from its stony heart.

  “I remember Mrs. Meadows telling me that story,” he said to Keith. “Isn’t her villa at the back?”

  “The very place. By the way, when next you call, would you please say something particularly nice DE MA PART? I don’t see half enough of that lady, considering how much I like her. How is she?”

  “Complains of headache.”

  “Headache? That is very unlike Mrs. Meadows. I always look upon her as a bundle of steel springs. Perhaps something is wrong with the baby.”

  “Maybe,” replied the bishop. “She seems to dote on it.”

  Then that last visit to his cousin suddenly recurred to him; he remembered her conversation—he thought of the lonely woman up thee. Strange! Somehow or other, she had been at the back of his mind all the time. He decided to call again in a day or two.

  Keith said:

  “I should not like to come between her and the child. That woman is a tiger—mother…. Heard, there has been something in your mind all day long. What is it?”

  “I believe there has. I’ll try to explain. You know those Japanese flowers—” he began, and then broke off.

  “I am glad you are becoming terrestrial at last. Nothing like Mother Earth! You cannot think how much money I wasted on Japanese plants, especially bulbs, before I convinced myself that they cannot be grown on this soil.”

  “Those paper flowers, I mean, which we used to put in our finger-bowls at country dinner tables. They look like shrivelled specks of cardboard. But in the water they begin to grow larger and to unfold themselves into unexpected patterns of flowers of all colours. That is how I feel—expanding, and taking on other tints. New problems, new influences, are at work upon me. It is as if I needed altogether fresh standards. Sometimes I feel almost ashamed—”

  “Ashamed? My dear Heard, this will never do. You must take a blue pill when we get home.”

  “Can it be the south wind?”

  “Everybody blames the poor sirocco. I imagine you have long been maturing for this change, unbeknown to yourself. And what does it mean? Only that you are growing up. Nobody need be ashamed of growing up…. Here we are, at last! We will land at the little beach yonder, near the end of that gulley. You can go ashore and have a look at the old thermal establishment. It used to be a gay place with a theatre and ballrooms and banqueting rooms. Nobody dare enter it nowadays. Haunted! Perhaps you will see the ghost. As for me, I mean to take a swim. I always feel as if I needed a bath after talking about religion. You don’t mind my saying so, do you?”

  Mr. Heard, climbing upwards from the beach, felt as though he did not mind what anyone said about anything.

  With the Devil’s Rock the most imposing tract of Nepenthean cliff—scenery came to an abrupt end. That mighty escarpment was its furthest outpost. Thereafter the land fell seawards no longer precipitously, but in wavy earthen slopes intersected by ravines which the downward-rushing torrents of winter had washed out of the loose soil. It was at the termination of one of these dry stream-beds that Mr. Heard set foot on shore. Panting under the relentless heat he wound his way along a path once carefully tended and engineered, but now crumbling to decay.

  Before him, on a treeless brown eminence, silhouetted against the blue sky, stood the ruin. It was a fanciful woe-begone structure, utterly desolate. The plaster, gnawed away by winds laden with searching sea-moisture, had fallen to earth, exposing the underlying masonry of cheap construction whose rusty colour was the same as that of the ground from which it had arisen, and into which it now seemed ready and eager to descend. Everything useful or portable, everything that spoke of man’s occupation, everything that suggested life and comfort—the porcelain tiles, woodwork, window-panes, roofings, mosaic or marble floors, leaden pipes—all this had been carried away long ago. It stood there stark, dismantled, de-humanized, in the midday heat. Here was nothing to charm the eye or conjure up visions of past glory; nothing elegant or romantic; nothing savouring of grim warlike purposes. It was a modern ruin; a pile of rubbish; a shameless, frivolous skeleton. Those hastily built walls and staring windows wore an air of faded futility, almost of indecency—as though the mouldering bones of some long-forgotten lady of pleasure had crept out of their tomb to give themselves an airing in the sunshine.

  Mr. Heard, after glancing at what remained of a pretentious facade, stepped within.

  Deep shade was here, in those of the chambers whose roofs remained intact; shade, and a steamy heat, and the noxious odour of some mineral product—the healing waters. He strayed in the twilight through halls and corridors, past ample saloons and rows of cells which had apparently served for convenience of disrobing. Everywhere that noisome smell accompanied his footsteps; the place was reeking with it. And all was in decay. Gaudy paper hung in tatters from the ceilings; the dust lay thick, undisturbed for generations. Unclean things littered in musty corners. Through gaping skylights a sunny beam would penetrate; it played about the mildewy stucco partitions encrusted, in patches, with a poisonous lichen of bright green. Wandering about this dank and mournful pile of wreckage, he could understand why simple folks should dread to enter so ghoul-haunted a spot.

  Gladly he issued, by way of an obscure passage, into what had once been a trim garden. No trace of flowers or shrubs remained; the walks, the ornamental stone seats and artificial terraces, were merging into brown earth. Here, in the centre of this ruined pleasaunce, the health-giving fountain had lately flowed, bubbling up in a couch-shaped basin of cement. It was now dry. But a damp warmth still clung to its rim, whereon the mineral had left a comely deposit of opaline texture. Lowering his hand he felt an intermittent stream of hot air rising out of the ground, feeble as the breath of a dying man. Still some mysterious gusts of life down there, he concluded, in the dark earth. How curious that volcanic connection with the mainland, of which Count Caloveglia had spoken!

  Soon he found himself beside the shattered framework of a small pavilion, built in a grotesque Chinese style and looking woefully out of place in this classic landscape, with the blue Tyrrhenian at its foot. And here he rested. He surveyed the traces of the old path leading down from the higher lands in serpentine meanderings; that path—once, doubtless, bordered by shady trees—whereby all those worldly invalids had once descended. He pictured the lively caravan afoot, on mule-back, in sedan chairs, seeking health and plea
sure at this site, now so void of life. Lower down, almost within a stone’s throw, lay the beach. The sailors, father and son, had drawn the boat up to the shore and were sitting huddled up on its shady side, with some food between them on a coloured handkerchief. That Brobdingnagian luncheon-basket had also been disembarked. Keith was swimming, together with his two genii; he looked like a rosy Silenus. They seemed to be enjoying themselves vastly, to judge by the outbursts of laughter. Mr. Heard thought of going to join the fun, but gave up the idea; there was something astir that clogged his energies.

  He knew them—these Southern noons. If no ghost resided in the melancholy ruin hard by, there might well be some imponderable hostile essence afloat in the still air of midday. Anything, he felt, could happen at this unearthly hour. The wildest follies might be committed at the bidding of this unseen Presence.

  He tried to recollect what Keith had told him concerning Muhlen, that corrupt personality. Retlow … where had he heard that name before? In vain he flogged his memory. There was an alien power in this brightness; a power as of a vampire that drained away his faculties, his vitality; a spirit of evil, exhaling from the sunny calm. It made a mock, a mirage, of the landscape which danced before his eyes; it distorted the realities of nature, the works of man….

  Presently he observed that Keith and his companions were clothed and occupied in dragging things out of the preposterous food-receptacle. They called up to him. The spell was released.

  He descended.

  “Nice bathe?” he enquired.

  “Rather! And now these fellows will make a passable omelette, to begin with. I don’t fancy cold luncheons, do you? They seem to lie dead on one’s stomach.”

  “Are those sailors not coming with us?”

  “No. They are well paid for their work. No doubt they would like to be in my service too. But I never employ islanders, except for casual jobs; it saves me all kinds of local trouble and family intrigues. Nor yet older people. They are so apt to think; and once a servant begins to think he ceases to be of use. I believe in the outsider, for all purposes of human intercourse. If you want a thing done, go to the outsider, the intelligent amateur. And when you marry, Heard, be sure to select a wife from another class, another province, another country—another planet, if possible. Otherwise you will repent it. Not that I see any objection, on principle, to incest; it strikes me as the most natural proceeding in the world—”

  “Dear me!”

  “And yet—that inexplicable prejudice. It is probably artificial and of modern origin. I suspect the priestly caste. Royal families kept up the custom and do so still, like that of Siam. Odd, how anachronisms linger longest at the two poles of society. What do you say,” he went on, “to climbing a little up that gorge, into the shade? I cannot digest properly with the sun staring at me. And tell me, as we go along, your impressions of the ruin … I perceive drawbacks to incest; grave practical drawbacks—sterility, inbreeding. Yes, there is obviously something to be said for exogamy. AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM as Eames might say, though God knows why he thinks it sounds better in Latin. Seen the ghost?”

  The bishop remembered a certain answer given him by Madame Steynlin, to whom he had once spoken of the “tonic” effects of Keith’s conversation.

  “A tonic?” she had said. “Very likely! But not a tonic for men and women. A tonic for horses.”

  After luncheon they improvised a shelter in order to repose awhile. It was the right thing to do on Nepenthe at that hour of the day, and Mr. Keith tried to conform to custom even under unusual circumstances such as these. Protected by the boat’s scarlet awning from the rays of the sun, they slumbered through the flaming hours.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  The duchess was a good sleeper, as befitted a person of regular habits and pure life.

  It was her custom to retire for the night at about eleven o’clock. Angelina, who reposed in an adjoining room, would enter softly at nine in the morning, draw up the blinds, and deposit a cup of tea at the bedside of her mistress. Up to that moment, she would slumber like a child. Rarely did she suffer from insomnia or nightmare. On this particular night, however, her rest was troubled by a strange and disquieting dream.

  She was a little girl once more, at her parental home out West. All the old memories were around her. It was winter time. She was alone, out of doors. Snow, the familiar snow, was falling from a sombre sky; already it lay deep on the boundless plains. It fell without ceasing. The sky grew darker. Hours seemed to pass, and still the flakes descended. It was not cold snow. It was warm snow—warm and rather suffocating. Very suffocating. It began to choke her. Suddenly she found she could breathe no more. She gave a wild cry of despair—

  Her maid was standing beside the bed, a lighted candle in her hand. Otherwise the room was in pitch darkness. Angelina looked like a Tanagra statuette. Draped in nothing but a clinging nightgown that reached two inches below the knee and accentuated the charm of her figure, with the candle-light throwing playful gleams upon her neck and cheeks, Angelina was an apparition to gladden the heart of man.

  The heart of the Duchess was not gladdened by any means.

  “What is the meaning of this, girl?” she enquired sternly, in what she took to be the language of the country. “And in the middle of the night!”

  “It’s nine o’clock, Madam.”

  “Nine o’clock? Then draw the blinds.”

  “I’ve drawn them.” She stepped to the window and tapped on the glass panes by way of confirmation. “All dark outside,” she added. “Ashes are falling from heaven. The volcano is very, very angry.”

  “Ashes? The volcano? I must dress at once. Light two more candles. No, three! We can’t have three candles burning. Don Francesco may be here at any moment.”

  The Duchess often laughingly described herself as “only a weak woman.” A certain number of persons concurred in that opinion. Just then she was the most self-possessed inhabitant of Nepenthe. The disturbance of nature left her undisturbed. Her intellect was naturally incurious as to the habits of volcanoes; her soul, moreover, in good hands, her conscience in excellent working order, as befitted a potential convert to Catholicism. She could rely on a spiritual adviser who had instilled into her mind a lofty sense of obedience and resignation. Don Francesco would never desert her. He would arrive in due course, explaining why God had allowed the volcano to behave in this unseemly fashion, and brimming over with words of consolation for his daughter-to-be. God, if so disposed, could work a miracle and drive away the plague, even as he had sent it. Ashes or no ashes, all was for the best. Calmly she waited.

  Out of doors, meanwhile, the shower went on without ceasing. It had begun shortly after midnight; the ground was covered to the depth of two inches. Nepenthe lay veiled in Cimmerian gloom, darker than starless midnight—a darkness that could be felt; a blanket, as it were, hot and breathless, weighing upon the landscape. All was silent. No footfall could be heard in the streets; the powdery ashes, softer than snow, absorbed every sound. And still they fell. Those few scared natives whom necessity forced to go abroad crept about in fear of their lives. They thought the end of the world had come. Terror-stricken, they carried knives and revolvers in their pockets; they passed each other distrustfully in the streets holding, in one hand, a lighted torch or lantern, and in the other a handkerchief pressed to the face for fear of suffocation. In one or two of the shop windows could be discerned a light glimmering feebly as through the thickest fog. All the ordinary sights and sounds of morning—the vehicles plying for hire, the cracking of whips, the cries of the fish and fruit vendors—all were gone. The deathly stillness was broken only by a clangour of the town clock, tolling the hours into a darkened world.

  Half a dozen adventurous spirits had gathered together at the Club. They called themselves adventurous. As a matter of fact they were scared out of their wits and had gone there merely with a view to leaning on each other for mutual support and courage. There was no whisky drinking that morning, no cards, no scanda
l-mongering. They sat round a table under an acetylene lamp, anxiously listening to a young professor from Christiania who claimed to be versed in the higher mathematics and was then occupied in calculating, by means of the binomial theorem, how long it would take for the whole town of Nepenthe to be submerged under ashes up to the roofs—presuming all the buildings to be of equal height. He was a new-comer to the place and, for that reason, rather a cheerful pessimist. He thought it quite possible that before the second floors of the houses had been reached—granted, of course, that none was higher or lower than the other—the wind might change and carry the ashes elsewhere. His demonstration had a depressing effect on the hearts of those who had lived longer on the island. They rose from the table and sadly shook their heads, prepared for the worst. They knew their sirocco.

  As morning wore on other stragglers entered the premises, muffled up to the ears; they scattered ashes from their cloaks and hastily closed the door behind them. More lamps were lighted. The news was not inspiring. It was dark as ever outside; you could not see your hand before your face; the shower had accumulated to an alarming extent. Some roofs had fallen in under the weight of ashes; telegraphic communication with the mainland was interrupted owing, it was supposed, to the snapping of the cable in some submarine convulsion; a man had stumbled in the market-place over the dead body of a woman—choked, no doubt; two of the judge’s Russian prisoners, unaccustomed to volcanic phenomena, had gone stark staring mad and disembowelled one another with a carving knife. Mr. Muhlen, who presently turned up in anything but his usual sprightly humour, was furnished with a full and corrected version of this last affair, to the effect that there were not two, but fourteen, of these victims; that prior to their frenzied act they had partaken of bread and salt and sung the national anthem; that the instrument chosen was not a carving knife but a rusty chisel. None of his listeners seemed to be greatly moved by what, under ordinary circumstances, would have been a valuable contribution to the entertainment. They were waiting for the appearance of their president, the Commissioner, the life and soul of the place, who would be able to give them an official apology for this scandalous outbreak of nature. The Commissioner, for once in his life, failed to perform his duty.