Part 10 (1/2)

CHAPTER VII

Mr. Heard was not p.r.o.ne to wax enthusiastic over the delights of architecture or natural scenery. He called himself unexpansive and unromantic; he confessed to small understanding, small veneration, for artistic effects. The beauty of a man's character moved him more strongly than the beauty of any picture or any landscape. Yet, on arriving next afternoon at the upper plateau of Nepenthe he could not help being struck by the strange and almost compelling charm of the ”Old Town.” It was so different from the lower regions--so calm and reposeful.

Down below, in that more accessible modern settlement, everything was bright and many-tinted; there was movement and noise and colour; a dazzling spot! The subtle influence of the sea, though it lay four hundred feet lower down, was ever present; one felt oneself on an island. On reaching these heights that feeling evaporated. You were embowered in mighty trees, in the midst of which stood the Old Town.

Unlike that other one, it faced due North; it lay, moreover, a few hundred feet higher up. That alone could not have explained the difference in temperature, one might say in climate, between the two.

To begin with, there was on this tiny upland basin exceptionally deep soil, borne down by the rains of unnumbered centuries from the heights overhead and enabling those shady oaks, poplars, walnuts and apples to shoot up to uncommon size and luxuriance and screen away the sunny beams. From above, meanwhile, a perennial shower descended. The moisture-laden sirocco, tearing itself to shreds against the riven summits of the high southern cliffs, dripped ceaselessly upon this verdant oasis in clouds of invisible dew. You could often enjoy the luxury of a s.h.i.+ver, at night-time, in the Old Town.

It was a stronghold originally; built on these heights for the greater security of the islanders against Saracenic inroads. When a more peaceful era drew night the population began to decline; they found it more convenient to establish themselves in the new settlement lower down. Then came the Good Duke Alfred--that potentate who, as Mr. Eames was wont to say, NIHIL QUOD TETIGIT NON ORNAVIT. He took a fancy to this quaint old citadel which, before his day, could only be reached b a rough mule-track easily defended against invaders. After constructing a fine road of access with many twists and turnings, wide enough to admit the pa.s.sage of two of his roomy state carriages driving abreast, he turned his mind to other improvements. Professing to be an admirer of the good old times, he decided to keep up its traditional character--it was to remain a fortress, in appearance if not reality. A ma.s.sive crenellated rampart, furnished with four gateways and watch-towers at convenient intervals but serving no purpose in particular, grew up around the place; every one of its houses which failed to fit in with the design of this battlemented structure--and there were a good many of them--was ruthlessly demolished. The Old Town was enclosed in a ring.

Desirous, next, of putting an end to the annoying exodus of the natives, he fixed by law the number of inhabitants; there were to be five hundred souls, neither more nor less. If in any one year the population exceeded that figure, the surplus was taken away, from among the adult males, to work as galley-slaves in his fleet; a deficiency in the requisite number was met by giving new husbands from the lower town, often three or four at a time ”with a view to ensuring good results,” to those of the native women who had hitherto failed to produce offspring. The system worked well. With some trifling but reprehensive fluctuations, the birth-rate and the death-rate remained even; things were at a standstill; a fact which caused His Highness to be compared, by a courtly panegyrist, to Joshua who bade the sun arrest his march across the heavens. Another of these gentlemen calls the Duke's action a ”triumph of art over nature,” adding, not without a grain of malice, that ”never have the generative capacities of mankind adapted themselves with more conspicuous success to the shape of an unnecessary wall.” Monsignor Perrelli, unfortunately, has nothing whatever to say on the subject. For reasons which will appear anon, he is remarkably silent on all that concerns the reign of his great contemporary.

Even so the Prince was not satisfied. The fastness was yet imperfect; he disliked the variegated hues of the buildings--they reminded him of the garish brilliance in the lower town. Something different had to be contrived. He took thought and, being a man of taste and a decorist where picturesque effects were concerned, decreed that the entire place--walls, houses, the two convents (Benedictine and Carthusian), the church, and even stables and pigsties--was to be painted a uniform pink: ”pink,” he ordained, ”without the slightest admixture of blue.” He desired, in fact, a kind of rose or flesh colour, a particular tint which, he foresaw, would look well among the luscious verdure of the surroundings. His behest, as usual, was obeyed without much loss of time.

Then he surveyed his work, and saw that it was good. He had created a gem. The Old Town was a symphony in emerald and coral.

So it remained. The inhabitants grew to be proud of their rosy citadel; it was an unwritten law among them that every new house should adapt itself to this tone. For the rest, there was not much building done after his death, with the exception of a few isolated villas that sprang up, despite his old commands, in the neighbourhood. And the decline in population once more set in. Men forsook the place--all save the peasantry who tilled the surrounding fields. Towers and battlements crumbled to earth; roadways heaved uneasily with gra.s.sy tufts that sprouted in the c.h.i.n.ks of the old paving-blocks. Sometimes at decline of day a creaking hay-waggon would lumber along, bending towards a courtyard in whose moss-grown recesses you discerned stacks of golden maize and pumpkins; apples and plum-trees, nodding drowsily over walls, littered the streets with snowy blossoms or fallen leaves. Commercial life was extinct. The few remaining shopkeepers wore an air of slumberous benevolence. The very stones suggested peace. A mellow and aristocratic flavour clung to those pink dwellings that nestled, world--forgotten, in a green content....

One of those few modern houses was the Villa Mon Repos. There was a curious history attached to the place. It had been built about a century ago at the orders of an eccentric French lady, a lyric poetess, who professed to be tired of life. She had heard that somewhere on Nepenthe was a towering precipice, unique of its kind and convenient for suicidal purposes. She thought she would like to live near that precipice--it might come in handy. There was nothing of the right sort in Paris, she declared; only five-storey hotels and suchlike; the notion of casting herself down from one of those artificial eminences did not appeal to her high-strung temperament; she craved to die like Sappho, her ideal. An architect was despatched, the ground purchased, the house built and furnished. That done, she settled up her affairs in France and established herself at Mon Repos. On the evening of her arrival she climbed the little height at the back of her domain and looked southward, down a sheer wall of rock eight or nine hundred feet high, over the wrinkled ocean. It made her feel queer. Further familiarity with the precipice did not breed contempt; her visits to the site became rarer and rarer. She died, at a patriarchal age, in her bed, after writing a scholarly pamphlet to prove that the tale of Sappho's leap over her famous silvery crag was a myth, the ”purest sensationalism,” a fable of the grammarians ”hopelessly irreconcilable with what we know of that great woman's character.”

This much the bishop had learnt from Mr. Keith. That gentleman liked the Sappho story; he called it absolutely true to human nature and so creditable to the old lady's intelligence that he would have insisted upon paying his respects to her had she not expired a good many years before his arrival on the island. And he, of course, got it from Eames who, as annotator of Perrelli's ANTIQUITIES, was in the habit of garnering old details anent private houses and so forth, and had possessed himself, in the course of his researches, of this particular pamphlet which he intended to reprint, together with others of its kind, in an appendix ent.i.tled, ”Contemporary Social History.”

The driving road terminated at the Old Town. Mr. Heard, descending from his carriage, followed a pathway which had been described to him by Denis and soon found himself at the entrance of the Villa Mon Repos. It was an inconspicuous little place, surrounded by three or four chestnut trees and a rose garden. A steep incline at the back of the property ended, abruptly, in air. He concluded that the precipice must be on the other side of that slope and that, if so, it was rather too near the house for his taste. Mr. Heard thoroughly understood the feelings of the French poetess. He, too, was not fond of precipices. It was as much as he could do to look down from a church tower without growing dizzy.

On the house-steps, beside an empty cradle, sat a shrivelled hag--a gaunt, forbidding anatomy, with hooked nose and brown skin. Tousled grey hair, like that of a Skye terrier, hung over her forehead, half concealing a pair of coal-black eyes. She rose up, barred the entrance with one claw-like hand, and scrutinized him distrustfully.

”A Cerberus!” he thought. ”This must be the old lady who understands Hindustani. Now I wonder if she knows English?”

She seemed to understand that language too; or perhaps his kindly face disposed her in his favour. He was allowed to pa.s.s within.

The house was empty. Mrs. Meadows had presumably gone out for a ramble, taking the child with her. He sat down and waited, glancing round the premises. It was a peaceful sort of abode, pervaded by a strong sense of home. It appealed to the bishop, who had domestic instincts and, despite his youth, was already a little weary of tossing about the world. He envied his cousin's happy married life. Would such an existence ever fall to his own lot? Although, like himself, she was only a bird of pa.s.sage on Nepenthe, she had succeeded in impressing her personality upon those rather scantily furnished rooms and filling them with an atmosphere of England. Heavy bowls of fresh roses were ranged about. But what was she like, after all these years? Would she recognize him? Had she heard of his arrival on the island?

Mrs. Meadows failed to return. Perhaps she had met some friend of neighbour who was keeping her to dinner together with the child. The old woman seemed unwilling or unable to give him any information as to her whereabouts. After waiting an hour, he scribbled a short note, left it on the writing-table, and took his leave. The eyes of that fierce creature followed him right out of the garden. So did the scent of roses....

The afternoon was drawing to its close as Mr. Heard, in a placid, contemplative frame of mind, once more drew nigh the pink ramparts of the Old Town, purposing to find his way home on foot.

He entered the most westerly of its four gateways. There were stone seats within the structure on either side of the road, convenient for sheltering from sun or rain. Pa.s.sing under the vaulted roof he met Count Caloveglia, that handsome soldier-like personality, who instantly recognized him and greeted him in friendliest fas.h.i.+on.

”Will you do me the pleasure of coming to my house, and allow me to offer you a cup of tea? It is visible from here--that rounded portal, do you see? with the fig tree leaning over the street. Only a hundred yards. Or perhaps we can rest awhile under this archway and converse.

It is always pleasant to watch the movements of the country-folk, and there is a peculiar charm in this evening light. Well, let us sit down then. I observe you are interested in those people. A singular illusion, is it not?”

He referred to a group of men and boys who, stripped to the waist, were bearing aloft immense ma.s.ses of some argent-coloured rock.

”You've guessed my thoughts,” replied the bishop. ”How on earth are they able to support such a weight? They remind me of Atlas with the world on his shoulders.”

”It is pumice-stone--one of the old industries of the place. They excavate it on the hill-side yonder. Volcanic stuff. There are several suchlike indications of subterranean fires; a hot spring, for instance, which the people regard with a kind of superst.i.tious awe. It is dedicated to Saint Elias and believed to stand in mysterious sympathy with the volcano on the mainland. You will observe too, sooner or later, something fiery and incalculable in the temperament of the natives. Perhaps it is due to the wine grown on these scorching slopes.

If geologists are right, we are sitting at this moment on the crater of a volcano--”

”Dear me! That might be rather awkward. I suppose this pumice is very light?”