Part 15 (1/2)
”Is it true that you gave the plumpest of them to the Sultan of Colambang in exchange for the recipe of some wonderful sauce? Is it true that you used to be known as the Lightning Lover? Is it true that you used to say, in your London days, that no season was complete without a ruined home?”
”She exaggerates a good deal, that lady.”
”Is it true that you once got so drunk that you mistook one of those red-coated Chelsea pensioners for a pillar-box and tried to post a letter in his stomach?”
”I'm very short-sighted, Don Francesco. Besides, all that was in a previous incarnation. Do come and listen to the music! May I offer you my arm, d.u.c.h.ess? I have a surprise for you.”
”You have a surprise for us every year, you bad man,” she said. ”Now do try and see if you can't get married. It makes one feel so good.”
Keith had a peculiar habit of vanis.h.i.+ng for a day or two to the mainland, and returning with some rare orchid from the hills, a piece of Greek statuary, a new gardener, or something. Sowing his wild oats, he called it. During this last visit he had come across the tracks of an almost extinct tribe of gipsies that roamed up and down the glens of those mysterious mountains whose purple summits were visible, on clear days, from his own windows. After complex and costly negotiations they had allowed themselves to be embarked, for this one night only, in a capacious sailing boat to Nepenthe, in order to pleasure Mr. Keith's guests. And here they sat, huddled together in dignified repose and abashed, as it seemed, by the strangeness of their surroundings; a bizarre group stained to an almost negro tint by exposure to sun and winds and rain.
Here they sat--gnarled old men and sinewy fathers of families, with streaming black hair, golden earrings, hooded cloaks of wood and sandals bound with leathern thongs. Mothers were there, shapeless bundles of rags, nursing infants at the breast. The girls were draped in gaudy hues, and ablaze with metal charms and ornaments on forehead and arms and ankles. They showed their flas.h.i.+ng teeth and smiled from time to time in frank wonder, whereas the boys, superbly savage, like young panthers caught in a trap, kept their eyes downcast or threw distrustful, defiant glances round them. Here they sat in silence, smoking tobacco and taking deep draughts out of a pitcher of milk which was handed round from one to the other. Occasionally the older people would pick up their instruments--bagpipes of sheepskin, small drums and gourd-like mandolines--and draw from them strange dronings, gurglings, thrummings, tw.a.n.gings; soon a group of youngsters would rise gravely from the ground and, without any preconcerted signal, begin to move in a dance--a formal and intricate measure, such as had never yet been witnessed on Nepenthe.
Something inhuman and yet troublingly personal lay in the performance; it invaded the onlookers with a sense of disquietude. There was primeval ecstasy in those strains and gestures. Giant moths, meanwhile, fluttered overhead, rattling their frail wings against the framework of the paper lanterns; the south wind pa.s.sed through the garden like the breath of a friend, bearing the aromatic burden of a thousand night-blooming shrubs and flowers. Young people, meeting here, would greet one another shyly, with unfamiliar ceremoniousness, and then, after listening awhile to the music and exchanging a few awkward phrases, wander away as if by common consent--further away from this crowd and garish brilliance, far away, into some fragrant cell, where the light was dim.
”What do you make of it?” asked Keith of Madame Steynlin, who was listening intently. ”Is this music? If so, I begin to understand its laws. They are physical. I seem to feel the effect of it in the lower part of my chest. Perhaps that is the region which musical people call their ear. Tell me, Madame Steynlin, what is music?”
”That's a puzzle,” said the bishop, greatly interested.
”How can I explain it to you? It is so complicated, and you have so many guests this evening. You are coming to my picnic after the festival of Saint Eulalia? Yes? Well, I will try to explain it then”--and her eye turned, with a kind of maternal solicitude, down the pathway to where, in that patch of bright moons.h.i.+ne, her young friend Krasnojabkin, gloriously indifferent to gipsies and everything else, was astounding people by the audacity of his terpsich.o.r.ean antics.
”Let that be a promise,” Keith replied. ”Ah, Count Caloveglia! How good of you to come. I would not have asked you to such a worldly function had I not thought that this dancing might interest you.”
”It does, it does!” said the old aristocrat, thoughtfully sipping champagne out of an enormous goblet which he carried in his hand. ”It makes me dream of that East which it has never been my fortune, alas, to behold. What a flawless group! There is something archaic, Oriental, in their att.i.tudes; they seem to be fraught with all the mystery, the sadness, of life that is past--of things remote from ourselves.”
”My gipsies,” said Keith, ”are not everybody's gipsies.”
”I think they despise us! And this austere regularity in the steps of the dancers, this vibrating accompaniment that dwells persistently on one note--how primitive, how scornfully unintellectual! It is like a pa.s.sionate lover knocking to gain an entrance into our hearts. And he succeeds. He breaks down the barrier by the oldest and best of lovers'
expedients--sheer reiteration of monotony. A lover who reasons is no lover.”
”How true that is,” remarked Madame Steynlin.
”Sheer monotony,” repeated the Count. ”And it is the same with their pictorial art. We blame the Orientals for their chill cult of geometric designs, their purely stylistic decoration, their endless repet.i.tions, as opposed to our variety and love of floral, human, or other naturalistic motives. But by this simple means they attain their end--a direct appeal. Their art, like their music, goes straight to the senses; it is not deflected or disturbed by any intervening medium.
Colour plays its part; the sombre, throbbing sounds of these instruments--the glowing tints of their carpets and tapestries. Talking of gipsies, do you know whether our friend van Koppen has arrived?”
”Koppen? A very up-to-date nomad, who takes the whole world for his camping-ground. No, not yet. But he'll turn up in a day or two.”
Count Caloveglia was concerned, just then, about Mr. van Koppen. He had a little business to transact with him--he fervently hoped that the millionaire would not forgo his annual visit to Nepenthe.
”I shall be glad to meet him again,” he remarked carelessly. Then looking up he saw Denis, who moved under the trees alone. Observing that he seemed rather disconsolate, he walked up to him and said in a fatherly tone: ”Will you confer a favour, Mr. Denis, on an old man who lives much alone? Will you come and see me, as you promised? My daughter is away just now and will not be back till midsummer. I wish you could have met her. Meanwhile, I am a little solitary. I have also a few antiquities that might interest you.”
While Denis, slightly embarra.s.sed, was uttering some appropriate words, the bishop suddenly asked:
”Where is Mrs. Meadows? Wasn't she coming down to-night?”
”Of course she was,” said Keith. ”Isn't she here? What can this mean?
Your cousin is a particular friend of mine, Heard, though I have not seen her for the last six days or so. Something must be wrong. That baby, I expect.”
”I missed her once already,” said Heard. ”I'll write and make an appointment, or go up again. By the way, Count--you remember our conversation? Wel, I have thought of an insuperable objection to your Mediterranean theory. The sirocco. You will never change the sirocco.
The Elect of the Earth will never endure it all their lives.”
”I think we can change the sirocco,” replied the Count, meditatively.