I. A. R. Wylie

“ Boldwyn that the whole town clamored sinisterly at his heels. He felt like a helpless victim of a bloodthirsty revolutionary mob driven to slaughter. He cursed himself for having shown that handful of money. He knew that they could kill him—no one would ever know how. His body cast into the torrent at the Thousand Mills would be out to sea in an hour.
Then suddenly it was over. They were in the market-place. There were the lights of the Miranda. There was the guardia regia, as shabby and as placid as ever. And Mr. Boldwyn alive and safe. ”

“ Yes; after that night either the captain or I had to predominate in Dudich. I think in time we shall reach an understanding. Captain Guffry will realize that sheer brute force is not the only force in the world.”
“You infernal little bully!” I thought. And I could have patted the Miranda on the deck, for she, at any rate, was beyond his mastery. She was rolling like the drunkenest sailor that had ever reeled down Dudich High Street in its palmy days, and I could see the greenish pallor creep back into Mr. Boldwyn's cheeks. ”

“ But Santa Monica was a tougher enemy than the old captain. For one thing, the inhabitants neither knew nor cared that Mr. Boldwyn was the friend of a director or that he ran a parish like a regiment or that he had written a commentary on the Fourth Gospel. To them he was simply a member of that pathetically mad but opulent tribe of Inglese, who bulged with lire and who at any moment might burst like a cloud and scatter manna over them. They never lost hope. ”

“ WE HAD reached the point where the highroad drops down into the plain of Pompeii, and there was the bay before us like a floor of sapphire. Mr. Boldwyn brushed the perspiration from his face. He did see that it was beautiful, and I think he was glad to be sure that its beauty was a snare and a delusion. ”

“ Boldwyn as he was, I can forgive his feelings toward Santa Monica. As we approached, it was like lifting a veil from a face that you had supposed beautiful and meeting the lewd glance of some scandalous old harridan. The jasper-paved streets were cobbled and strewn with refuse. Its houses looked at once to be indestructible and on the brink of tumbling about their own ears. They climbed the hills in straggling terraces; they grew out of the rocks ”

“ He repeated the gesture as slowly the Miranda turned her blunt nose to the night and the sea, and the little group waved meekly back to him. I could see Mrs. Boldwyn, now only a fragile shadow in the murky lights of the quay, urging on the white baby rabbits to greater endeavor and perhaps telling them not to cry because daddy would be home soon. But I don't think they were crying. I don't think they felt like that. Only, Mrs. Boldwyn——
And yet, somehow, the trio made an oddly forlorn, pathetic little group. It was so late. The white baby rabbits ought to have been in bed long since. ”

“ I had not realized before how a single man who is absolutely in the right and has nothing on his conscience can impose his will ruthlessly on a whole community. In three days, every one except the Miranda herself was behaving according to Mr. Boldwyn's standards. The sea-yarns with which Captain Guffry had adorned our meals died at birth. ”

“ Thinking of the white baby rabbits and their mamma made me run quite fast.
The rest is Mr. Boldwyn's story as he told it to me under the stars.
Mr. Boldwyn has been ashore every day. He loathed the place. Its dirt, its smells, its undisciplined, happy-go-lucky ways revolted him. I think he went to the tawdry Byzantine cathedral just to see the people spit on the marble pavement and to feel that such things could never happen in his parish. Besides, the place had challenged him, just as Captain Guffry had done, and he would never have believed in himself again if he had funked the issue. ”

“ Mr. Boldwyn gave no sign at all. He made a correct little bow all round, and then said grace—in Latin. Nobody had asked him to, and nobody had expected it of him. Somehow, it was altogether out of keeping with the Miranda's tradition.
We were talking rather noisily at the time, to cover over the captain's patent discomfiture, but at the first sound of “Infunde, quæsumus, Domine Deus,” we might all of us have been shot dead. Even the head steward, a self-opinionated creature who liked to do things in his own time, stood paralysed, with the soup from half a dozen plates splashing over him. ”

“ Shthis night I have seen God.”
“He's very drunk,” said Captain Guffry tenderly. “It's that vino what-you-call-it. A little goes a long way.”
It was stifling in the cabin, so we laid Mr. Boldwyn near the fo'c's'le with his back to a case of macaroni and the wind in his face. And I stayed all night with him while the Miranda steamed homeward with the grim glare of Vesuvius staining her silver track. And Mr. Boldwyn held my hand and told me everything that had happened and cried a good deal. ”

“ Before this mob of good-for-nothings whom he had despised he had been branded. He waited for their howl of exultant laughter. The sound of it and of their hatred and mockery would hound him to the end of his days. The poison of it would never be exorcised from his blood. He loathed himself. In his shame, he loathed the whole world. ”

“ For it is amazing and terrifying to see how one responsible man in a small town can set the tone. In the old days it was not possible to go out at night, even in the respectable residential quarters, without meeting some drunken seaman reeling his way back to his ship. Well, all that is changed now. Even on the water-front, which was considered an impregnable fortress, we have set our flag. We have a mission-hall there, where we have weekly meetings—” He paused and then added, “It was there, in fact, that I met Captain Guffry for the first time.” ”

“ I think most of us gathered that, angry as he was, Captain Guffry managed to suppress some very important factor in the situation. And I certainly had noticed Mr. Boldwyn's smile when they met at dinner—not so much a smile as a faint tightening of the small mouth that suggested a subacid benevolency not at all lovable. One felt that he had cracked a rather mean little clerical joke at Captain Guffry's expense.
“A spy,” Captain Guffry rumbled; “a dirty, mealy-faced, flint-hearted spy! I know him. Friend of a director of the company. Sky-pilot to poor old Dudich. Calls himself a Christian! ”

“ The guardia regia, who understood authority but no English, thereupon seized the one-eyed, open-mouthed painter of post-cards by the collar.
THE court of Santa Monica is just a fair-sized room which smells, like most official rooms all the world over, of stale tobacco, dusty deeds and fusty clothes. On that particular evening it smelled worse than usual, for the good reason that half Santa Monica was there. Those who had not been able to squeeze over the threshold hung outside the windows, peering through the bars like monkeys. ”

“ However strong and courageous they may be—and I take it that courage and strength are two of the virtues you have in mind—they are at the mercy of their vices and, for that matter, at the mercy of pure virtue. ”

“ He looked like a very large man who had been caught by a very small man doing something supremely silly, and his swearing ostentatiously a moment afterward at the head steward only heightened the impression. ”

“ It's the usual thing, ain't it?”
Captain Guffry gaped. He must have seen even then that, as a friend of a director, Mr. Boldwyn had the whip-hand. Then suddenly his expression changed. It became positively malevolent.
He rammed his tobacco home with a wicked thumb.
“We'll be in the thick of it going through the bay,” he said. “Anything that little whelk wants on Sunday he can have.”
It was an excellent joke. We roared in unison, and among ourselves Mr. Boldwyn remained the “whelk”—well, until Santa Monica, at any rate. As a description, it was so absolutely right. ”

“ With a man like Guffry, one has to hit straight from the shoulder. He did not like it. He promised that he would break up my meetings in the future, and he kept his word. The next night the hall was invaded by a gang of roughs, and the police had to come to the protection of my female helpers. ”

“ At any rate, I often stay with the Boldwyn family. They are still at Dudich. The white baby rabbits have become quite charmingly aggressive children with a marked tendency to trample on their parents. ”