Part 4 (1/2)
Mr. Eames had not the faintest idea. Meanwhile he calmly went on collecting and collecting, and collecting. Something might turn up, one of these days. Everybody with the slightest pretensions to scholars.h.i.+p was interested in his work; many friends had made him offers of pecuniary a.s.sistance towards the printing of a book which could not be expected to be a source of profit to its publisher; the wealthy and good-natured Mr. Keith, in particular, used to complain savagely and very sincerely at not being allowed to a.s.sist to the extent of a hundred or two. There were days on which he seemed to yield to these arguments; days when he expanded and gave rein to his fancy, smiling in antic.i.p.ation of that n.o.ble volume--the golden Latinity of Monsignor Perrelli enriched with twenty-five years' patient labour on the part of himself; days when he would go so far as to discuss prospective contracts, and bindings and photogravures, and margins, and paper.
Everything, of course, was to be of appropriate quality--not pretentious, but distinguished. Oh, yes! A book of that kind--it must have a cachet of its own....
Then, suddenly, he would observe that he was joking; only joking.
The true Mr. Eames revealed and rea.s.serted himself. He shrank from the idea. He closed up like a flower in the chill of night-fall. He was not going to put himself under obligations to anybody. He would keep his sense of personal independence, even if it entailed the sacrifice of a life's ambition. Owe no man anything! The words rang in his ears. They were his father's words. Owe no man anything! They were that gentleman's definition of a gentleman--a definition which was cordially approved by every other gentleman who, like Mr. Eames junior, happened to hold a.n.a.logous views.
Gentlemen being rather scarce nowadays, we cannot but feel grateful to the Crotalophoboi for devouring Saint Dodeka.n.u.s and paving the way, VIA the ANTIQUITIES of Monsignor Perrelli, for the refined personality of Mr. Eames--even if such was not their original intention.
CHAPTER IV
Next morning, at precisely 4 a.m., there was an earthquake.
Foreigners unaccustomed to Nepenthean conditions rushed in their pyjamas out of doors, to escape the falling wreckage. An American lady, staying at Mr. Muhlen's high-cla.s.s hotel, jumped from her bed-room on the third floor into the courtyard below, and narrowly escaped bruising her ankle.
It was a false alarm. The sudden clanging of every bell on the place, the explosion of twelve hundred mortars and the simultaneous booming of an enormous cannon--that far-famed gun whose wayward tricks had cost the lives of hundreds of its loaders in the days of the Good Duke--might have pa.s.sed for an earthquake of the first magnitude, so far as noise and concussion were concerned. The island rocked to its foundations. It was the signal for the festival of the patron saint to begin.
n.o.body could have slept through that din. Mr. Heard, dog-tired as he was, woke up and opened his eyes.
”Things are happening here,” he said--a remark which he found himself repeating on several later occasions.
He looked round the room. It was not an hotel bed-room. Then he began to remember things, drowsily. He remembered the pleasant surprise of the previous evening--how the d.u.c.h.ess had called to mind a small villa, vacated earlier than she had expected by a lady friend for whom she had taken it. It was furnished, spotlessly clean, with a woman, a capable cook, in attendance. She had insisted on his living there.
”So much nicer than a dreadful room in an hotel! You'll show the bishop all over it, won't you, Denis?”
Walking together, he and Denis, they had been overtaken by another recent visitor to Nepenthe. It was Mr. Edgar Marten. Mr. Marten was a hirsute and impecunious young Hebrew of low tastes, with a pa.s.sion for mineralogy. He had profited by some University grant to make certain studies at Nepenthe which was renowned for its variegated rocks. There was something striking about him, thought Mr. Heard. He said little of consequence, but Denis listened enthusiastically to his abstruse remarks about fractures and so forth, and watched with eagerness as he poked his stick into the rough walls to dislodge some stone that seemed to be of interest.
”So you don't know the difference between augite and hornblende?” he once enquired. ”Really? Dash my eyes! How old did you say you were?”
”Nineteen.”
”And what have you been doing, Phipps, these last nineteen years?”
”One can't know everything at my age.”
”Granted. But I think you might have learnt that much. Come to me on Thursday morning. I'll see what I can do for you.”
Mr. Heard rather admired this youthful scientist. The fellow knew what he was after; he was after stones. Perfect of his kind--a condition which always appealed to the bishop. Pleasant youngsters, both of them.
And so different from each other!
As to Denis--he could not make up his mind about Denis. To begin with, he exhaled that peculiar College aroma which the most heroic efforts of a lifetime often fail to dissipate. Then, he had said something about Florence, and Cinque-Cento, and Jacopo Bellini. The bishop, a practical man, had not much use for Jacopo Bellini or for people who talked about him. None the less, while making himself useful with unpacking and arranging things, Denis dropped a remark which struck Mr. Heard.
”The canvas of Nepenthe,” he observed, ”is rather overcharged.”
Rather overcharged....
It was true, thought the bishop, as he glanced out of his window that evening, all alone, over the sea into which a young moon was just sinking to rest. Overcharged! A ceaseless ebb and flow of humanity surged before his weary eyes. That sense of irreality which had struck him on his first view of the island was still persisting; the south wind, no doubt, helped this illusion. He remembered the general affluence and kindliness of the people; that, at least, had made a definite mark upon his mind. He liked the place. Already he felt at home here, and in better health. But when he tried to conjure up some definite impression of town and people, the images became blurred; the smiling priest, the d.u.c.h.ess, Mr. Keith--they were like figures in a dream; they merged into memories of Africa, of his fellow-pa.s.sengers from Zanzibar; they mingled with projects relating to his own future in England--projects relating to his cousin on Nepenthe. Mr. Heard felt exhausted.
He was too tired to be greatly affected by that cannonade, which was enough to rouse the dead. Something must be happening, he mused; then, his meditations concluded, turned on his other side. He slept well into the morning, and found his breakfast appetisingly laid out in the adjoining room.