Part 13 (1/2)
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.”
”Conscience, my dear fellow, is a good servant but a bad master. Your sentiments are English. They will never do in a country where the personal element still counts for something.”
”The personal element signifying favouritism and venality?” asked Eames. ”A pretty state of affairs!”
”The philosopher can only live under a venal government.”
”I disagree with you altogether.”
”You always disagree with me,” answered Keith. ”And you always find yourself in the wrong. You remember how I warned you about that little affair of yours? You remember what an a.s.s you made of yourself?”
”What little affair?” enquired Eames, with a tinge of resignation in his voice.
The other did not reply. Mr. Keith could be tactful, on occasions. He pretended to be absorbed in cutting a cigar.
”What little affair?” insisted the bibliographer, fearful of what was coming next.
It came.
”Oh, that balloon business....”
It was not true to say of Mr. Eames that he lived on Nepenthe because he was wanted by the London police for something that happened in Richmond Park, that his real name was not Eames at all but Daniels--the notorious Hodgson Daniels, you know, who was mixed up in the Lotus Club scandal, that he was the local representative of an international gang of white-slave traffickers who had affiliated offices in every part of the world, that he was not a man at all but an old boarding-house keeper who had very good reasons for a.s.suming the male disguise, that he was a morphinomaniac, a disfrocked Baptist minister, a p.a.w.nbroker out of work, a fire-wors.h.i.+pper, a Transylvanian, a bank clerk who had had a fall, a decayed jockey who disgraced himself at a subsequent period in connection with some East-End mission for reforming the boys of Bermondsey and then, after p.a.w.ning his mother's jewelry, writing anonymous threatening letters to society ladies about their husbands and vice-versa, trying to blackmail three Cabinet Ministers and tricking poor servant-girls out of their hard-earned wages by the sale of sham Bibles, was luckily run to earth in Piccadilly Circus, after an exciting chase, with a forty-pound salmon under his arm which he had been seen to lift from the window of a Bond Street fishmonger.
All these things, and a good many more, had been said. Eames knew it.
Kind friends had seen to that.
To contrive such stories was a certain lady's method of a.s.serting her personality on the island. She seldom went into society owing to some physical defect in her structure; she could only sit at home, like Penelope, weaving these and other bright tapestries--odds and ends of servants' gossip, patched together by the virulent industry of her own disordered imagination. It consoled Mr. Eames slightly to reflect that he was not the only resident singled out for such aspersions; that the more harmless a man's life, the more fearsome the legends. He suffered, none the less. This was why he seldom entered the premises of the Alpha and Omega Club where, quite apart from his objection to Parker's poison and the loose and rowdy talk of the place, he was liable to encounter the lady's stepbrother. Of course he knew perfectly well what he ought to have done. He ought to have imitated the example of other people who behaved like scoundrels and openly gloried in it. That was the only way to be even with her; it took the wind out of her sails. Keith often put the matter into a nutsh.e.l.l:
”The practical advantages of doing something outrageous must be clear to you. It is the only way of stopping her mouth, unless you like to have her poisoned, which might be rather expensive even down here, though you may be sure I would do my best to smooth things over with Malipizzo. But I am afraid you don't realize the advantages of ruffianism as a mode of art, and a mode of life. Only think: a thousand wrongs to every right! What an opening for a man of talent, especially in a country like this, where frank and independent action still counts its admirers. You have done nothing, of late, worthy to be recorded in the CHRONIQUE SCANDALEUSE of Nepenthe. Twelve years ago, wasn't it, that little affair of yours? Time is slipping by, and here you muddle along with your old Perrelli, in a fog of moral stagnation. It is not fair to the rest of us. We all contribute our mites to the gaiety of nations. Bethink yourself. Bestir yourself. Man! Do something to show us you are alive.”
To such speeches Mr. Eames would listen with a smile of amused indignation. He was incapable of living up to the ideals of a man like Keith whose sympathy with every form of wrong-doing would have rendered him positively unfit for decent society but for his flagrant good nature and good luncheons. He suffered in silence.
He had good reason for suffering. That ”little affair” of twelve years ago was a ghost which refused to be laid. Every one on the island knew the story; it was handed down from one batch of visitors to the next.
He knew that whenever his name was mentioned this unique indiscretion of his, this toothsome morsel, would likewise be dished up. It would never grow stale, though atoned for by twelve years of exemplary conduct. He felt guilty. There was a skeleton in his cupboard. He realized what people were saying.
”Know Eames? Oh, yes. That quiet man, who writes. One can't swallow half those yarns about him; quite impossible to believe, of course. She overdoes things, the good woman. All the same, there's no smoke without fire. You know what actually did happen, don't you? Well; one really doesn't quite know what to make of a fellow like that, does one?”
What had happened?