South Wind Part 47

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

The market-place was filled to over-br.i.m.m.i.n.g. Everybody discussed the near events in the Court of Justice. It promised to be a bad day for Signor Malipizzo. And yet people could not help admitting how clever he had been to lock up those Russians. It was the best thing he could have done under the circ.u.mstances. It proved his freedom from anti-Catholic prejudices. It made him look icily objective.

Torquemada, on hearing that the prisoner's gold coin corresponded with those others which had been in the possession of the murdered man, thought it deplorable. Here was plain evidence of his cousin's guilt!

Most deplorable. Still, the victim being not only a foreigner but a Protestant was a considerable mitigation of the offence from the moral and religious point of view, and possibly from the legal one as well.

Anyhow, what did legal aspects matter? Had he not engaged Don Giustino?

Innocent or guilty, the prisoner would be released. And, on second thoughts, he discovered him to be worthy of the great man's golden eloquence. He was not altogether a fool. There was a touch of manliness about him; he was decidedly a brighter lad than he looked. He deserved to be released.

Ten o'clock sounded.

The Court had never been so crowded. There was barely standing room.

Sunlight poured in through the windows which had not been cleaned for many long months; the atmosphere was already rather oppressive. It was a stuffy place at all times, reeking of old tobacco smoke and humanity.

Everybody was still save the old grey-headed clerk who fussed about with papers. Signor Malipizzo, after a deferential but dignified bow to the famous lawyer, had taken his seat on the raised platform facing the public whence he was wont to dispense justice. Nailed against the wall, directly over his head, was a large white paper bearing the printed words "La Legge": the law. It dominated the chamber. On one side of this could be seen a coloured portrait of the Sovereign in the bersagliere uniform; a fierce military glance shot out of his eyes from under that helmet whose plume of nodding feathers made it look three sizes too large for his head. On the other side hung a representation of the Madonna, simpering benignly in a blue tea-gown besprinkled with pearls and golden lace. The spittoon, which His Wors.h.i.+p required continually during the audiences, was wont to be placed immediately below this latter picture; it was the magistrate's polite freemasonish method of expressing his reverence for the Mother of G.o.d. Everybody noticed that on the present occasion this piece of furniture was located elsewhere. It stood below the Sovereign's portrait. A delicate compliment to the formidable lawyer-champion of Catholicism, sworn enemy to the House of Savoy. People commented favourably on this little detail. How artful of him! they said.

All eyes were fixed upon Don Giustino. He sat there quietly. If he was bored he certainly did not show it. Now that he was here he would give these good people a taste of his quality. He knew all about the gold coin; he was profoundly convinced of the prisoner's guilt. This was lucky for the young man. Had he thought otherwise he would probably have refused to take up the case. Don Giustino made a point of never defending innocent people. They were idiots who entangled themselves in the meshes of the law; they fully deserved their fate. Really to have murdered Muhlen was the one and only point in the prisoner's favour. It made him worthy of his rhetorical efforts. All his clients were guilty, and all of them got off scot free. "I never defend people I can't respect," he used to say.

He began his speech in a rambling, desultory sort of fas.h.i.+on and quite a low tone of voice, as if he were addressing a circle of friends.

A charming place, Nepenthe! He would carry away the pleasantest memories of its beauty and the kindliness of its inhabitants. It was like a terrestrial paradise, so verdant, so remote from all danger. And yet nothing on earth was secure. That volcanic eruption the other day--what a scare it must have given them! What a lucky escape they had, thanks to the Divine intervention of the Patron Saint! Hardly any damage done; no victims worth mentioning. The fertile fields were intact; mothers and fathers and children could once more go out to their daily tasks and return in the evening, tired but happy, to gather round the family board. Family life, the sacred hearth! It was the pride, the strength, the mainstay of the country; it was the source whence the rising generation drew their earliest notions of piety and right conduct. Nothing in the world could replace home influence, the parents' teaching and example--nothing! And this poor boy, now threatened with imprisonment, had a mother. He had a mother. Did the Court appreciate the import of those words? Did they realize what it meant to shatter that hallowed bond, to deprive the parent of her offspring's help and consolation--the child of its mother's fostering care? Let them consider the lives of all t hose great men of the past who were known to have had mothers--Themistocles, Dante, Virgil, Peter the Hermit and Madame de Maintenon--why had they achieved distinction in the world? What was the secret of their greatness? A mother's affectionate guidance in youth. They had not been torn, as children, from her loving arms.

A good many people were already sobbing. But the orator had noticed that something was wrong. He consulted a small sc.r.a.p of paper and then continued in the same conversational tones as before.

He had no mother. He was an orphan. An orphan! Did the Court realize what it meant? No, he dared not ask them to picture to themselves all that was implied in that bitter word. An orphan. n.o.body to instil those early lessons of piety ... to grow up wild, neglected, despised....

It was impossible for a man to avoid going astray in such terribly unnatural conditions. Everybody else had parents to counsel and direct them; he alone was bereft of this blessing. It was cruel, it was illogical, to apply the same standard to him as to those fortunate other ones. Let the Court call to mind the names of those who had deviated from the narrow path of duty; did they not all belong to this unhappy cla.s.s? It might safely be inferred that they had no mothers!

Such person were to be pitied and helped, rather than condemned for what was the fault not of their natures but of their anomalous situation in life. To rescue a motherless young soul from the brink of perdition was the n.o.blest task of a Christian. And this was still, thank Heaven, a Christian country, despite the ever-swelling invasion of that irreligious foreign element which threatened to break up the old faith in G.o.d. The Madonna was still wors.h.i.+pped; together with the Saints. Their precious relics and other holy amulets still proved their efficacy in the hour of danger.

Amulets--ah, that reminded him.

To kill a man with a view to possessing yourself of his substance was an unpardonable crime. Now what had this boy done? Let them take the so-called robbery first. Well, no robbery had been committed, in spite of the notorious fact that this Protestant, this foreigner was known to be loaded with money. His client had fought down the temptation, the almost irresistible temptation, of appropriating the gold. Let them remember that! The minutest investigation failed to reveal anything save a single coin which he had attached to a string and hung about his neck. Motives, not deeds! What were his motives for this strange act?

An unconscious application of the h.o.m.oeopathic principle. He had taken it as a safeguard, an amulet, in the childish belief that it might protect him on future occasions against insults such as those he had undergone.

Then, while the audience were still puzzling what the last words meant, he suddenly indulged in one of those abrupt transitions for which he was famous, and burst out:

"Down with foreigners! We Catholics know what foreigners are, how they work for evil in places high and low. One cannot take up a daily paper without seeing some exposure of their many-sided viciousness. They contaminate the land with their G.o.dless depravity. n.o.body can count on immunity. The highest officials in the land, the very Ministers of the Crown, are subjected to their vile disguised attempts at bribery and corruption, no humble peasant girl, no child, is safe from the befoulment of their filthy minds. We know them--our police records, the archives of our Courts of Justice, testify to their demoralizing agency. A pest, a contagion! Who can tell what proposals were made in this particular case--what degrading proposals, backed by the insidious offer of foreign gold? A weak character might have succ.u.mbed. But the victim was made of different stuff. He belonged to another type--the heroic type. Suffering anguish of soul, he yet preferred honour to baseness. In self-defence--"

At this point the great Deputy ceased to speak. Signor Malipizzo had swooned away. He had to be carried out of Court.

It mattered little, for the proceedings were at an end save for a few formalities. The case was won.

People were rather annoyed at being deprived of one of Don Giustino's far-famed perorations. It could not be helped. Better luck next time.

Then they asked themselves why the judge had fainted. Some thought it might be the heat, or a touch of his old complaint. The majority were agreed that the attack was due to the Deputy's eloquence. And it was true that he was greatly impressed by the speech, but not quite as much as all that. He had decided to faint at a critical moment, for the sake of appearances. It was clever of him. He did it beautifully too; he had been rehearsing half the night. Don Giustino, on his part, shared the common opinion and was charmed with this tribute to his genius.

Altogether, the local judge had made a favourable impression on him; his att.i.tude had been irreproachably correct. He was not a bat fellow, for a freemason. One might do worse than leave him in possession of his present appointment on Nepenthe.

The Deputy freed his prisoner; it was unavoidable. But the Russians remained in gaol, and this was always something to the credit of Signor Malipizzo....

Madame Steynlin, on hearing of Peter the Great's arrest, was stricken dumb. She wept the bitterest tears of all her life. Then, with returning calmness, she remembered Mr. Keith whose friends.h.i.+p with the magistrate was the common talk of the place. Would he be able to do anything? Impulsive by nature, she called on that gentleman and poured out her griefs to him. Mr. Keith was sympathetic. He declared he understood perfectly. He promised to do his utmost, that very day.

The Master, meanwhile, languished in prison. He had n.o.body to take his part, not even among the Little White Cows; the new section, that clique of young extremists, were only too delighted to have him out of the way. The communal doctor alone interceded on his behalf, imploring the judge in the name of the sacred brotherhood of freemasons that he, the Messiah, should be excarcerated in order that he, the physician, might be enabled to continue the daily treatment to which the old man had grown accustomed and for which he was being regularly remunerated.

"Think of my wife and children!" he said to the magistrate.

Signor Malipizzo on this occasion did not mean to be baulked of his prey. He was in bad humour; Don Giustino had got on his nerves. By means of a lightning-like discharge of symbols intelligible only to the Elect he retorted that a physician, who depended for his livelihood upon a legitimate practice among BONA FIDE patients, was not fit to be a freemason.

Then the doctor urged the humanitarian aspects of the case. The old man needed the treatment which could be given in prison just as well; the fees would doubtless be paid sooner or later.

The magistrate proved inexorable, adamantine. What was good enough for a native, he argued, was good enough for a vicious old alien. A stomach-pump in prison! What more? They would be wanting fried fish and asparagus next.

As a special concession to the Master's age and rank a separate upper chamber, described as very airy, had been allotted to him in the local gaol. The poor old man did not know how he got there; they had thrust him into this strange place and locked the door on him. Long hours had pa.s.sed. He sat on an uncomfortable cane-bottomed chair, his hands folded across his stomach. There was already a slight sense of oppression in that region of his body. His head, too, felt heavy.

Without knowing how or why, he had fallen into a trap, after the manner of some dumb beast of earth. When would they take him out again? And when would that kind gentleman with the machine arrive?

Daylight entered through a small but thickly grated window. Looking out from where he sat, he could detect neither men nor houses nor trees--nothing but four rectangular patches of deep blue. The sea! Often had he wondered about the sea, and why it was there. It had ever been an enigma to him, this purposeless ma.s.s of water. Not even good to drink. He knew nothing of those fables of the pagans--of old Poseidon and white-armed Leucothea and the blithe crew of Triton and silver-footed Thetis moving upon the placid sunlit waters; nothing of that fair sea-born G.o.ddess whose beauty swayed the hearts of men. His Venus ideals had been of a more terrestrial nature--the wives or daughters of army generals and state functionaries who desired advancement, and sometimes got it.

Not even good to drink! There was nothing like this in Holy Russia. G.o.d would never have allowed it. The uselessness of this sea had always been to him a source of perplexity and even vague apprehension. The spectacle of this s.h.i.+ning immensity troubled his world-scheme. Why did G.o.d create water, when land would have been so much more useful? Often had he puzzled on the subject.... Why?

But now, in the evening of his life and the extremity of his anguish, the truth was made manifest. A Revelation drew nigh. It just came to him.

The fishes.

It was a dying gleam of intelligence, his last inspired thought, his swan-song. How else could the fishes live save in the water? All these long years he had remained ignorant of the truth. Ah, if only his disciples were at hand, to jot it down into that GOLDEN BOOK!

But why--why must the fishes live in water? And why so much water for so few fishes? Why cannot fishes live on land? Then everybody would be satisfied. Inscrutable are the ways of G.o.d....

And his glazed eye moved wearily from that disquieting expanse of blue along the wall of his chamber which had once been white and was now scrawled over with obscene jests and drawings, product of the leisure hours of generations of prisoners. The writing, like all writing, was unintelligible to him. But some of the artistic efforts left little to the imagination. He was saddened, less by homely pictures than by the unfamiliar script. He had always distrusted the written word. Why all these strange letterings--so unnecessary, so dangerous to the life of an orthodox Christian? What one brother has to tell another--why write it down?

He saw the straw pallet destined for his nocturnal repose. It reminded him dimly of a similar resting-place during his monastic life. Then, too, he had slept on a couch near the floor. Flickering visions came to him of those days, so long ago, ere yet the First Revelation was given to the world. A breath of old Russia was wafted into his nostrils. He remembered the l.u.s.ty, jovial country folk, the songs and dances at hay-making, the fragrance of the land, the sluggish rivers rolling their brown mud about the plains, the mild long-drawn evenings. He felt again that all-pervading charm of sadness, of tender yearning, that hangs in the pale Russian sky and penetrates to the very soul of the endless country.

Gloomy autumn days--wet leaves and lowering horizons. The long winter within doors. Faces appeared to him, faces of old, an endless procession of faces clear-cut as ever ... his brother monks, bearded and unkempt ... debauched acolytes ... pilgrims from the Holy Land ... glittering festal robes ... vodka orgies, endless chants and litanies, holy lamps burning, somber eikons with staring eyes ... the smell of greasy lukewarm cabbage soup, of unwashed bodies and boot leather and incense. Holy Russia--it all moved before his eyes in a kind of melodious twilight. Then the First Revelation. The Man-G.o.d.

Man-G.o.d. The word filtered through his intelligence. How strange it sounded. The Man-G.o.d--what could it mean.

A sudden change. A life of glory and intrigue. Food on platters of gold, sparkling wines and laughter. A diamond cross, an imperial gift, the reward of faithful services. Everybody cringing. Showers of bribes.

Women--always women. A divine life! Nothing but women....

Darkness. Something had happened; they had carried him into a place full of endless penances, floggings, starvings. Then they accused him of doing wrong. What was it? The flesh of warm-blooded beasts.... He had preferred the service of G.o.d to that of his earthly master. For this they banished him and made him suffer. He was dying now--dying to save mankind. He was giving up his life for sinners. Someone else had once done the same thing. Who was it? He could not remember. People who read and write--they know these things. Some saint, possibly; or at least a man from another province--someone he had never met or spoken to. A good Russian, whoever it was. But the name--the name had slipped out of his mind. He always had a good memory for faces, but a bad one for names.

He was so ill and oppressed too. Worse than before. He felt himself rotting earthwards, like a fungus of his own native forests under autumn rains. His body remained inert but his eye, roaming away from the straw pallet, fixed itself upon the door. When, when would that kindly gentleman with the instrument arrive?