Part 17 (1/2)
Then came the Good Duke Alfred. His Highness posed as a conservative in some matters; it pleased him to revive memories of the long-buried past. He cared little about ghosts. He liked to take things in hand.
After remarking in his brisk epigrammatic fas.h.i.+on that ”not everything old is putrid,” he devoted his attention to the Cave of Mercury and caused a flight of convenient stairs to be built, wide enough to admit the pa.s.sage of two of his fattest Privy Councillors walking abreast, and leading down to this particular grotto through a cleft in the rock.
n.o.body knew what happened there under his superintendence. Mankind being ever p.r.o.ne to believe the worst of every great man, all kinds of stupid and even wicked things were said, though not during his lifetime. People vowed that he carried on the old traditions, the tortures and human sacrifices, and even improved upon them in his blithe Renaissance manner. They were ready to supply circ.u.mstantial and excruciating details of how, disguised, down to the minutest details of costume, in the semblance of the Evil One, he had sought to prolong his life and invigorate his declining health with the blood of innocent children, artfully done to death after fiendish, lingering agonies.
Father Capocchio, needless to say, has some shocking pages on this subject.
Mr. Eames, who had made a careful study of Duke Alfred's reign, came to the conclusion that such excesses were incompatible with the character of a ruler whose love of children was one of his most salient traits.
In regard to those other and vaguer accusations, he contended that the Duke was too jovial by nature to have tortured any save those who, in his opinion, thoroughly deserved it. Indeed, he was sceptical about the whole thing. Monsignor Perrelli might have told us the truth, had he cared to do so. But, for reasons which will appear anon, he is remarkably silent on all that concerns the reign of his great contemporary. He says nothing more than this:
”His Highness deigned, during the same year, to restore, and put into its old working order, the decayed heathen rock-chapel vulgarly known as the Cave of Mercury.”
To put into ITS OLD WORKING ORDER; that would sound rather suspicious, as though to contain a veiled accusation. We must remember, however, that the historian of Nepenthe bore a grudge against his Prince (of which likewise more anon), a grudge which he was far too prudent to vent openly; so bitter and personal a grudge that he may have felt himself justified in making a covert innuendo of this kind whenever he could safely risk it.
Meanwhile, everything remained as before--shrouded in mystery. Being doubly haunted now, by the Duke's victims and by those earlier ones, the cave fell into greater neglect than ever. Simple folk avoided speaking of the place save in a hushed whisper. It became a proverb among the islanders when speaking of something outrageously improbable: ”Don't tell me! Such things only happen in the Cave of Mercury.” When someone disappeared from his house or hotel without leaving any trace behind--it happened now and then--or when anything disreputable happened to anyone, they always said ”Try the Cave,” or simply ”Try Mercury.”
The path had crumbled away long ago. n.o.body went there, except in broad daylight. It was as safe a place as you could desire, at night-time, for a murder or a love-affair. Such was the Cave of Mercury.
Denis had gone to the spot one morning not long after his arrival. He had climbed down the slippery stairs through that dank couloir or funnel in the rock overhung with drooping maidenhair and ivy and umbrageous carobs. He had rested on the little platform outside the cavern's vineyard far below, and upwards, at the narrow ribbon of sky overhead. Then he had gone within, to examine what was left of the old masonry, the phallic column and other relics of the past. That was ten days ago. Now he meant to follow Keith's advice and go there at midnight. The moon was full.
”This very night I'll go,” he thought.
All was not well with Denis. And the worst of it was, he had no clear notion of what was the matter. He was changing. The world was changing too. It had suddenly expanded. He felt that he, also, ought to expand.
There was so much to learn, to see, to know--so much, that it seemed to paralyse his initiative. Could he absorb all this? Would he ever get things in order once more, and recapture his self-possession? Would he ever again be satisfied with himself? It was an invasion of his tranquillity, from within and without. He was restless. Bright ideas never came to him, as of old; or else they were the ideas of other people. A miserable state of affairs! He was becoming an automaton--an echo.
An echo.... How right Keith had been!
”It's rotten,” he concluded. ”I'm a ludicrous figure, a pathetic idiot.”
The novel impressions of Florence had helped in the disintegration.
Nepenthe--it's suns.h.i.+ne, its relentless paganism--had done the rest. It shattered his earlier outlook and gave him nothing in exchange.
Nothing, and yet everything. That vision of Angelina! It filled his inner being with luxurious content; content and uncertainty. It was there, at the back of every dream, of every intimate thought and every little worldly phrase that he uttered. He was like a man who, looking long at the sun, sees its image floating in heaven, on earth--wherever he casts his eye. Angelina! Nothing else was of any account. How would it all end? He drifted along in blissful apprehension of what the next day might bring. She seemed to have become genuinely well-disposed towards him of late, though in rather a mocking, maternal sort of fas.h.i.+on.
The poetic vein had definitely run dry. Impossible to make things rhyme, somehow. Perhaps his pa.s.sion was too strong for technical restraints. He tried his hand at prose:
”Your eyes bewilder me. I would liken you to a shaft of sunlight, a withering flame--a black flame, if such there be--for your grace and ardour is even as a flame. Your step is laughter and song. Your hair is a torrent of starless night. The sun is your lover, you G.o.d. He takes joy in your perfection. Your slender body palpitates with his imprisoned beams. He has moulded your limbs and kissed your smooth skin in the days when you ... nevermore will you whiten those kisses....”
”It won't do,” he sadly reflected, laying down the pen. ”The adaptation is too palpable. Why does everybody antic.i.p.ate my ideas? The fact is, I have nothing to say. I can only feel. Everything went right, so long as I was in love with myself. Now everything goes wrong.”
Then he remembered Keith's pompous exhortation.
”Find yourself! You know the Cave of Mercury! Climb down, one night of full moon--”
”There is something in what he says. This very night I'll go.”
It was particularly hard for him that evening. The d.u.c.h.ess was dining with a party at Madame Steynlin's; it was an open secret that the entertainment would end in a moonlight excursion on the water; she would not return till very late. Angelina would be alone, accessible.
It was her duty to guard the house in the absence of its mistress. He might have gone there on some pretext and talked awhile, and looked into her elvish eyes and listened to that Southern voice, rich and clear as a bell. Almost he yielded. He thought of the inept.i.tude of the whole undertaking and, in particular, of those slippery stairs; one might break one's neck there at such an hour of the night. Unless one wore tennis shoes--
Well, he would wear them. He would resist the temptation and approve himself a man. Everybody, even the d.u.c.h.ess, was always telling him to be a man. He would find himself. Keith was right.
The night came.
He descended noiselessly into the cool and dark chasm, resting awhile on a ledge about half-way down, to drink in the spirit of the place.