The Salzburg Tales (28 page)

St. Clemens had an imposing appearance, even as a boy. If he was short, at twelve, he was very thickset and muscular, his magnificent brown eye rolled sullenly and passionately under a heavy and bold brow, his chin jutted and his great nose flapped its mobile nostrils in the wind. He had a habit of rolling his head from side to side quickly and looking down his nose which was positively terrifying, and of setting his large head far back on his thick neck and looking under half-closed eyelids, which indicated immense self-possession, energy and cunning: when he smiled, the whole aspect of his face changed, his eyes became mild and gay and his glance melting.

The singular boy smiled and looked thus when he applied to Ludwig Tripos himself at his office for the job of office-boy, and he was accepted. Old Ludwig Tripos was inordinately fond of oranges, and the office-boy was sent out each day before lunch-hour to buy him half-a-dozen. The boys before St. Clemens had always spent the entire shilling given them, feeling that old Ludwig expected and should receive the best. St. Clemens had bargained all his life, and he bargained now: he offered a greengrocer the daily business, mentioned immense bargains in Whitechapel Market, cajoled and flashed his eyes. He returned with six fine oranges and two pence in change. The old man wrinkled his forehead, looked at the two-pence, counted the oranges, wondered if the boy expected a tip, and abruptly put the pennies in his own pocket. The next day he had
twopence-halfpenny change! (St. Clemens had found a halfpenny on the pavement.)

Old Ludwig smiled to himself, delighted, as a rich man often is, in an infinitesimal advantage, but said nothing to the good merchant.

At the end of the week, St. Clemens received, his pay, five shillings. As he went home, uncommonly rich, he pondered over the problem of the oranges. Should he steal three and buy three on Monday? He was a good thief, but he thought it inadvisable to run the risk of a scandal so early in the day. His father, on the Monday morning next, gave him two shillings out of five, for lunches during the week.

On Monday St. Clemens brought back with his oranges eightpence change! This surprised Ludwig out of his calculating calm:

“Did you steal them, boy?”

“I found a good place, sir.”

But he would not say where. St. Clemens smiled boldly at Ludwig and a small flush appeared on his smooth brown cheeks.

“How do you do it? You might tell an old businessman like myself!”

“I smoodge and I hedge!” said the child.

“You're a pretty smart boy, aren't you?” said the old man insolently.

“I'd like to be as smart as you, sir,” said the boy.

The old man laughed in the corners of his eyes and let the boy go. When he returned on Tuesday with his oranges and his eightpence, the old man took the boy over into the trading division and shouted jovially.

“Look at St. Clemens, you fellows: he saves me eightpence on a shilling a day: not one of you has his merchanting ability. Take him on here with you, Jefferson, and teach him the business: he'll make a wonderful trader.”

St. Clemens became a wonderful trader, the quickest man by far on the floor of the exchange, the most perspicacious of buyers, the most sagacious of diviners of men. He became general manager
of the firm and in the course of time was able to repay himself the “small change” he had put, out of his lunch-money, into rich old Ludwig's pockets. Thus, the prophecy of the oranges was fulfilled: now as to the lemons.

The firm which St. Clemens manages has branches all over the world, in Shanghai, Bombay, Karachi, New York, San Francisco and South American towns. St. Clemens made a tour, some years ago, of the Eastern branches, travelling through India by rail and meeting all the officials of the Company.

He was given a great reception at Karachi and treated like a prince. On the dinner table in front of him was placed, curiously enough, a large and handsome épergne of lemons, with the smoothest skins and finest colour he had ever seen. He thought the natives must be addicted to lemon-squashes.

When he was leaving, at the station, a young native girl, dressed in white muslin and ribbons, with ivory teeth laughing through a black smile, presented him with a branch of a lemon-tree bearing ripe fruit.

He passed through India and at every large station a representative of the Company came to the train-window to pay him their respects.

Sometimes they had arranged a native band to serenade him while the train dallied: the officials were in uncreased white, the station-master ran obsequiously hither and thither, and young girls in white dresses, or handsome boys in embroidered tunics and striped skirts with slick black hair, came forward, smiling and bowing, and on each occasion gave him a basket of fine lemons, or a branch of a lemon-tree laden with fruit, or even a coronet of lemon-blossoms, fragile, perfumed, white tinged with pink. Presently St. Clemens said to one of the white managers:

“What does the lemon signify? I don't like them particularly!”

“Mr Smith, the lemons in this country are the symbol and prophecy of fertility: the native officials are doing you great honour
and giving you these lemons so that your wife will bear you numerous stalwart sons.”

St. Clemens laughed a great laugh and squared his shoulders, for he had in himself the attributes of a great lemon-tree, and at the next station he smiled at the offerer of lemons and thanking him, added,

“You are very kind, but I have no wife: I should like to have all these sons, but you must first give me a wife!”

The Indian manager thanked St. Clemens, bowed and retired.

At the next station he got off, for he had to inspect the Company's offices. When he reached his suite in the town's largest hotel, he noticed a grave and ceremonious bustle, and presently a native gentleman in rich dress was ushered in, with servants and secretaries. He bowed to St. Clemens, and after paying him a thousand compliments in a fine English, told him that he had been informed of his desires, and that, if all were in order, he offered him his daughter, Lemonias, an accomplished virgin of beauty and charm, and in addition, a dowry of a certain magnitude, with pearls and diamonds left by her mother, a number of silk dresses, houses in Bombay, cotton- and rice-fields. In return, the English gentleman, whose wealth and influence was known and respected, would merely make the usual settlements, and provide for his wife's welfare and her children's heritages, in the usual way.

St. Clemens was so thoroughly taken aback by this offer that he made some temporising compliments, retired, and besought his secretary to find out how this embarrassing mistake had occurred. The secretary came running.

“Mr Smith, it is native courtesy again! At the last station, you asked them to give you a wife to beget those lemon-sons with, and they have no sense of humour: they fixed up a match right away.”

St. Clemens roared.

“They're smart, those sons of canine granddams: so the local competitor wants to hook up with Ludwig Tripos, the old thief!” Then his natural gallantry getting the upper hand, he enquired,

“Say, tell me, is she a pretty girl, Lemonias: have you seen her? What's she like? I won't look at any pig in a poke.”

The secretary stared,

“You're not thinking of marrying her, Mr Smith?”

“Why not? I have a natural affinity for pearls, cotton-fields and swans swimming on lakes of rupees: provided the girl's presentable and young—why not?”

“But, Mr Smith, the lemons—”

“Haw, haw, what a lemon-tree—”

“But she's black!”

“Have you seen her? Besides, with the native laws, perhaps here a wife and in England a leman—”

“But the marriage settlement!”

“Hm, hm: well, find out what she's like! Her old man's a pale lemon colour, not dark at all—”

The secretary presently learned that the girl had had a white mother and a white grandmother and was herself indistinguishable from girls of white blood, except by the lustre of her eyes and hair: that she was a beauty, a scholar in Oriental languages, young and charming.

St. Clemens went to visit his proposed father-in-law and waited some time in a garden beneath a flowering tree beside a well. A slight breeze moved the tree and ever and anon it dropped its petals on the water: they floated together and made a little island of half-drowned flowers. St. Clemens leaned over the pool and amongst the branches of the tree he saw reflected another floating islet, a beautiful face, pale and passionate, surrounded by leaves. He looked up, and the girl dropped to the ground, and said,

“I am Lemonias,” in a cold but submissive voice.

St. Clemens married her, and his return journey was strewn with orange and lemon flowers.

Two years later he had a son, a beautiful child, but with a complexion slightly tinged with olive: the father, undisturbed, laughed and said,

“What can I do? I cut open a lemon in the East and there found his mother sitting in pearls and silks: this is her pepin. What matters to me is not his rind, but his seeds, juice and natural oils.”

He loves passionately his magically-derived son. He had him baptised in St. Clement Danes, and when the bells rang out the familiar tune, an angelic smile spread over his grand-vizier face, and St. Clemens said,

“My love, all my fortune and happiness came from these bells: their strange vibrations penetrated to the far east, and fluttered a charming flower on to my shoulder from a tree.”

And his wife replied with an acid word, for she had been enamoured of a pale East India Man, a cherub-faced subaltern from Harrow, with no money, little family and no brain, for very naturally she preferred lemons.

A
FTER
supper, when they were together, the Centenarist began to tell them what he had read in the old books of scripture and romance.

“It is a pity the Old Man is not here,” said the Centenarist, “for I had imagined a sermon on death, hellfire and the devil, which I am sure he would like.”

“Say on,” said the Festival Director: “no doubt there are some of us who complain at present when we find ourselves in an apartment without central heating, forgetting that one day there may be too much.”

I
N
an islet of Lough Deargh in Ireland was a cavern leading into a labyrinth of caves, called “St. Patrick's Purgatory”. In the twelfth, thirteenth and later centuries, the pilgrim, after a ritual of fasting, confession and masses, drank of a cup of wine containing a drug
secretly put there by the priests, and was led to the mouth of the cave with a staff and a rosary. He wandered in the labyrinth and was terrified by flaming masks, bogies, whistles, serpents, curtains of thick spiderwebs which clung to his breast and face, cloths which hung about the height of his forehead softly blown by the vapours of the cavern, and other inventions of his ghostly counsellors. At length, overcome by fatigue and the hot vapours, he sank down and fell into dreams which presented to him in more or less lively colours his preconceptions of hell. No doubt the secret chamber, in which the preparatory mass was held, was painted with a vigorous brush to represent scenes of the underworld. Moreover, it seems certain from the testimony of the pilgrims, and the stories told about the place, that those who went into St. Patrick's Purgatory actually suffered physical torments: some were scourged, bitten, scored by knives, some had the marks of prongs and others were lacerated with cords or had their feet torn. They easily imagined that they had descended living, to inferno. These torments suffered while living, were supposed to remit a great portion of the torments to come, and were paid for handsomely by the credulous. Sometimes the pilgrim did not awake in the cavern, but died, suffocated by the vapours, or terrified by the apparitions.

From such priestly ingenuity, and from other caverns, hot springs and smoky fissures in the earth, from volcanoes and earthquakes, we conceived the underworld. There are races which have imagined hell as a cool and silent place, as in an ancient story I will tell you.

In this tale, a youth learned that a certain cave led to the land of the dead. He entered it, and after passing a long time through darkness, perceived a violet light and next a green, and last a yellow light, sunlight. He came out into a beautiful land, silent, green, with luxuriant meadows and forests, with singing birds and houses of crystals. There, among hosts of shades with downcast, musing, or innocently gay eyes, he met friends and relatives, and with them his mother, now dark-haired and roundfaced, like a young girl. They smiled at him and some held his hands. They never ate, and they spoke among themselves,
when he was at a distance, in a language incomprehensible to him, and always, it seemed, of grave or celestial matters. Sometimes they would all fall silent as they stood about, while the birds burst out singing; at those times he would see the ground alive with strange animals; griffins, green and red, swayed in the branches of the trees, eating melons and grapes; huge crowned snakes, marked with a thousand different patterns, like Persian carpets, brilliant, harmless, would pass through the grass and meadow-flowers. The shades caressed the beasts as they passed. He understood, although no-one spoke to him, that his mother wished to keep him there. He said to her:

“I must go back; here, dearest mother, you remain fair and young, but I lose the precious years of life. Soon, according to the days of hell, I will come down: now, let me return.”

Then he understood that he could not return unless someone would venture down in his place, and he said to his mother:

“There is one who will think of coming to look for me, that is Pauli, my servant, who is my age, and who has often said he would lay down his life for me if necessary.”

The mother-shade was permitted to go up into the earth and try to persuade someone to return to replace her son. She went to Pauli the servant, but he had fallen in love with a young girl and would not quit the earth. But she soon returned, and the youth perceived that he was free to leave the land of the dead.