In the Wilderness

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IN THE WILDERNESS

By Robert Hichens

BOOK I--HERMES AND THE CHILD

CHAPTER I

Amedeo Dorini, the hall porter of the Hotel Cavour in Milan, stood on
the pavement before the hotel one autumn afternoon in the year 1894,
waiting for the omnibus, which had gone to the station, and which was
now due to return, bearing--Amedeo hoped--a load of generously inclined
travelers. During the years of his not unpleasant servitude Amedeo had
become a student of human nature. He had learnt to judge shrewdly and
soundly, to sum up quickly, to deliver verdicts which were not unjust.
And now, as he saw the omnibus, with its two fat brown horses, coming
slowly along by the cab rank, and turning into the Piazza that is
presided over by Cavour's statue, he prepared almost mechanically to
measure and weigh evidence, to criticize and come to a conclusion.

He glanced first at the roof of the omnibus to take stock of the luggage
pile there. There was plenty of it, and a good deal of it was leather
and reassuring. Amedeo had a horror of tin trunks--they usually gave
such small tips. Having examined the luggage he sent a searching glance
to two rows of heads which were visible inside the vehicle. The brawny
porters hurried out, the luggage chute was placed in position, the
omnibus door was opened, and the first traveler stepped forth.

A German of the most economical type, large, red and wary, with a mouth
like a buttoned-up pocket, was followed by a broad-waisted wife, with
dragged hair and a looped-up gown. Amedeo's smile tightened. A Frenchman
followed them, pale and elaborate, a "one-nighter," as Amedeo instantly
decided in his mind. Such Frenchmen are seldom extravagant in hotels.
This gentleman would want a good room for a small price, would be
extremely critical about the cooking, and have a wandering eye and a
short memory for all servants in the morning.

An elderly Englishwoman was the fourth personage to appear. She was
badly dressed in black, wore a tam-o'-shanter with a huge black-headed
pin thrust through it, clung to a bag, smiled with amiable patronage as
she emerged, and at once, without reason, began to address Amedeo and
the porters in fluent, incorrect, and too carefully pronounced Italian.
Amedeo knew her--the Tabby who haunts Swiss and Italian hotels, the
eternal Tabby drastically complete.

A gay Italian is gaiety in flight, a human lark with a song. But a
gloomy Italian is oppressive and almost terrible. Despite the training
of years Amedeo's smile flickered and died out. A ferocious expression
surged up in his dark eyes as he turned rather bruskly to scrutinize
without hope the few remaining clients. But suddenly his face cleared as
he heard a buoyant voice say in English:

"I'll get out first, Godfather, and give you a hand."

On the last word, a tall and lithe figure stepped swiftly, and with a
sort of athletic certainty, out of the omnibus, turned at once towards
it, and, with a movement eloquent of affection and almost tender
reverence, stretched forth an arm and open hand.

A spare man of middle height, elderly, with thick gray hair, and a
clean-shaven, much-lined face, wearing a large loose overcoat and soft
brown hat, took the hand as he emerged. He did not need it; Amedeo
realized that, realized also that he was glad to take it, enjoyed
receiving this kind and unnecessary help.

"And now for Beatrice!" he said.

And he gave in his turn a hand to the girl who followed him.

There were still two people in the omnibus, the elderly man's Italian
valet and an Englishman. As the latter got out, and stretched his limbs
cramped with much sitting, he saw Amedeo, with genuine smiles, escorting
the two girls and the elderly man towards the glass-roofed hall, on the
left of which was the lift. The figure of the girl who had stepped out
first was about to disappear. As the Englishman looked she vanished.
But he had time to realize that a gait, the carriage of a head and its
movement in turning, can produce on an observer a moral effect. A joyous
sanity came to him from this unknown girl and made him feel joyously
sane. It seemed to sweep over him, like a cool and fresh breeze of the
sea falling through pine woods, to lift from him some of the dust of
his journey. He resolved to give the remainder of the dust to the public
garden, told his name, Dion Leith, to the manager, learnt that the room
he had ordered was ready for him, had his luggage sent up to it, and
then made his way to the trees on the far side of the broad road which
skirts the hotel. When he was among them he took off his hat, kept it
in his hand, and, so, strolled on down the almost deserted paths. As
he walked he tasted the autumn, not with any sadness, but with an
appreciation that was almost voluptuous. He was at a time of life and
experience, when, if the body is healthy, the soul is untroubled by
care, each season of the year holds its thrill for the strongly beating
heart, its tonic gift for the mind. Falling leaves were handfuls of gold
for this man. The faint chill in the air as evening drew on turned his
thoughts to the brightness and warmth of English fires burning on the
hearths of houses that sheltered dear and protected lives. The far-off
voices of calling children, coming to him from hidden places among the
trees, did not make him pensive because of their contrast with things
that were dying. He hailed them as voices of the youth which lasts in
the world, though the world may seem to be old to those who are old.

Dion Leith had a powerful grip on life and good things. He was young,
just twenty-six, strong and healthy, though slim-built in body,
alert and vigorous in mind, unperturbed in soul, buoyant and warmly
imaginative. Just at that moment the joy of life was almost at full
flood in him, for he had recently been reveling in a new and glorious
experience, and now carried it with him, a precious memory.

He had been traveling, and his wanderings had given him glimpses of two
worlds. In one of these worlds he had looked into the depths, had felt
as if he realized fully for the first time the violence of the angry and
ugly passions that deform life; in the other he had scaled the heights,
had tasted the still purity, the freshness, the exquisite calm, which
are also to be found in life.

He had visited Constantinople and had sailed from it to Greece. From
Greece he had taken ship to Brindisi, and was now on his way home to
England.

What he had thought at the time to be an ill chance had sent him on his
way alone. Guy Daventry, his great friend, who was to go with him, had
been seized by an illness. It was too late then to find another man
free. So, reluctantly, and inclined to grumble a little at fate, Dion
had set off in solitude.

He knew now that his solitude had given him keen sensations, which
he could scarcely have felt with the best of friends. Never, in any
company, had he been so repelled, enticed, disgusted, deeply enchanted,
as on these lonely wanderings which were now a part of his life.

How he had hated Constantinople, and how he had loved Greece! His
expectation had been betrayed by the event. He had not known himself
when he left England, or the part of himself which he had known had been
the lesser part, and he had taken it for the greater. For he had set out
on his journey with his hopes mainly fixed on Constantinople. Its road
of wildness and tumult, its barbaric glitter, its crude mixture of
races, even its passions and crimes--a legend in history, a solid fact
of to-day--had allured his mind. The art of Greece had beckoned to him;
its ancient shrines had had their strong summons for his brain; but
he had scarcely expected to love the country. He had imagined it as
certainly beautiful but with an austere and desolate beauty that would
be, perhaps, almost repellent to his nature. He had conceived of it as
probably sad in its naked calm, a country weary with the weight of a
glorious past.

But he had been deceived, and he was glad of that. Because he had been
able to love Greece so much he felt a greater confidence in himself.
Without any ugly pride he said to himself: "Perhaps my nature is a
little bit better, a little bit purer than I had supposed."

As the breeze in the public garden touched his bare head, slightly
lifting his thick dark hair, he remembered the winds of Greece; he
remembered his secret name for Greece, "the land of the early morning."
It was good to be able to delight in the early morning--pure, delicate,
marvelously fresh.

He at down on a bench under a chestnut tree. The children's voices had
died away. Silence seemed to be drawing near to the garden. He saw a
few moving figures in the shadows, but at a distance, fading towards the
city.

The line of the figure, the poise of the head of that girl with whom he
had driven from the station, came before Dion's eyes.

CHAPTER II

One winter day in 1895--it was a Sunday--when fog lay thickly over
London, Rosamund Everard sat alone in a house in Great Cumberland Place,
reading Dante's "Paradiso." Her sister, Beatrice, a pale, delicate
and sensitive shadow who adored her, and her guardian, Bruce Evelin, a
well-known Q.C. now retired from practice, had gone into the country to
visit some friends. Rosamund had also been invited, and much wanted, for
there was a party in the house, and her gaiety, her beauty, and her fine
singing made her a desirable guest; but she had "got out of it." On this
particular Sunday she specially wished to be in London. At a church not
far from Great Cumberland Place--St. Mary's, Welby Street--a man was
going to preach that evening whom she very much wanted to hear. Her
guardian's friend, Canon Wilton, had spoken to her about him, and had
said to her once, "I should particularly like _you_ to hear him." And
somehow the simple words had impressed themselves upon her. So, when
she heard that Mr. Robertson was coming from his church in Liverpool to
preach at St. Mary's, she gave up the country visit to hear him.

Beatrice and Bruce Evelin had no scruples in leaving her alone for a
couple of days. They knew that she, who had such an exceptional faculty
for getting on with all sorts and conditions of men and women, and
who always shed sunshine around her, had within her a great love of,
sometimes almost a thirst for, solitude.

"I need to be alone now and then," they had heard her say; "it's like
drinking water to me."

Sitting quietly by the fire with her delightful edition of Dante, her
left hand under her head, her tall figure stretched out in a low chair,
Rosamund heard a bell ring below. It called her from the "Paradiso." She
sprang up, remembering that she had given the butler no orders about not
wishing to be disturbed. At lunch-time the fog had been so dense that
she had not thought about possible visitors; she hurried to the head of
the staircase.

"Lurby! Lurby! I'm not at--"

It was too late. The butler must have been in the hall. She heard the
street door open and a man's voice murmuring something. Then the door
shut and she heard steps. She retreated into the drawing-room, pulling
down her brows and shaking her head. No more "Paradiso," and she loved
it so! A moment before she had been far away.

The book was lying open on the arm-chair in which she had been sitting.
She went to close it and put it on a table. For an instant she looked
down on the page, and immediately her dream returned. Then Lurby's dry,
soft voice said behind her:

"Mr. Leith, ma'am."

"Oh!" She turned, leaving the book.

Directly she looked at Dion Leith she knew why he had come.

"I'm all alone," Rosamund said. "I stayed here, instead of going to
Sherrington with Beattie and my guardian, because I wanted to hear a
sermon this evening. Come and sit down by the fire."

"What church are you going to?"

"St. Mary's, Welby Street."

"Shall I go with you?"

Rosamund had taken up the "Paradiso" and was shutting it.

"I think I'll go alone," she said gently but quite firmly.

"What are you reading?"

"Dante's 'Paradiso.'"

She put the book down on a table at her elbow.

"I don't believe you meant me to be let in," he said bluntly.

"I didn't know it was you. How could I know?"

"And if you had known?"

She hesitated. His brows contracted till he looked almost fierce.

"I'm not sure. Honestly I'm not sure. I've been quite alone since
Friday, when they went. And I'd got it into my head that I wasn't going
to see any one till to-morrow, except, of course, at the church."

Dion felt chilled almost to the bone.

"I can't understand," he almost burst out, in an uncontrolled way that
surprised himself. "Are you completely self-sufficing then? But it isn't
natural. Could you live alone?"

"I didn't say that."

She looked at him steadily and calmly, without a hint of anger.

"But could you?"

"I don't know. Probably not. I've never tried."

"But you don't hate the idea?"

His voice was almost violent.

"No; if--if I were living in a certain way."

"What way?"

But she did not answer his question.

"I dare say I might dislike living alone. I've never done such a thing,
therefore I can't tell."

"You're an enigma," he exclaimed. "And you seem so--so--you have this
extraordinary, this abnormal power of attracting people to you. You are
friends with everybody."

"Indeed I'm not."

"I mean you're so cordial, so friendly with everybody. Don't you care
for anybody?"

"I care very much for some people."

"And yet you could live alone! Shut in here for days with a book"--at
that moment he was positively jealous of old Dante, gone to his rest
five hundred and seventy-four years ago--"you're perfectly happy."

"The 'Paradiso' isn't an ordinary book," she said, very gently,
and looking at him with a kind, almost beaming expression in her
yellow-brown eyes.

"I don't believe you ever read an ordinary book."

"I like to feed on fine things. I'm half afraid of the second-rate."

"I love you for that. Oh, Rosamund, I love you for so many things!"

He got up and stood by the fire, turning his back to her for a moment.
When he swung round his face was earnest but he looked calmer. She
saw that he was making a strong effort to hold himself in, that he was
reaching out after self-control.

"I can't tell you all the things I love you for," he said, "but your
independence of spirit frightens me. From the very first, from that
evening when I saw you in the omnibus at the Milan Station over a year
ago, I felt your independence."

"Did I manifest it in the omnibus to poor Beattie and my guardian?" she
asked, smiling, and in a lighter tone.

"I don't know," he said gravely. "But when I saw you the same evening
walking with your sister in the public garden I felt it more strongly.
Even the way you held your head and moved--you reminded me of the
maidens of the Porch on the Acropolis. I connected you with Greece and
all my--my dreams of Greece."

"Perhaps if you hadn't just come from Greece--"

"Wasn't it strange," he said, interrupting her but quite unconscious
that he did so, "that almost the first words I heard you speak were
about Greece? You were telling your sister abut the Greek divers who
come to Portofino to find coral under the sea. I was sitting alone in
the garden, and you passed and I heard just a few words. They made me
think of the first Greek Island I ever saw, rising out of the sunset
as I voyaged from Constantinople to the Piraeus. It was wonderfully
beautiful and wonderfully calm. It was like a herald of all the beauty
and purity I found in Greece. It was--like you."

"How you hated Constantinople!" she said. "I remember you denouncing its
noise and its dirt, and the mongrel horrors of Pera, to my guardian in
the hotel where we made friends. And he put in a plea for Stamboul."

"Yes, I exaggerated. But Constantinople stood to me for all the uproar
of life, and Greece for the calm and beauty and happiness, the great
Sanity of the true happiness."

He looked at her with yearning in his dark eyes.

"For all I want in my own life," he added.

He paused; then an expression of strong, almost hard resolution made his
face look suddenly older.

"You told me at Burstal, on the Chilton Downs, after your debut in
'Elijah,' that you would give me an answer soon. I have waited a good
while--some weeks----"

"Why did you ask me just that day, after 'Woe unto them'?"

"I felt I must," he answered, but with a slight awkwardness, as if he
were evading something and felt half-guilty. "To-day I decided I would
ask you again, for the last time."

"You would never----"

"No, never. If you say 'Wait, and come later on and ask me,' I shall not
come."

She got up restlessly. She was obviously moved.

"Dion, I can't tell you to-day."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I just feel I can't. It's no use."

"When did you mean to tell me?"

"I don't know."

"Did you mean ever to allude to the matter again, if I hadn't?"

"Yes, I should have told you, because I knew you were waiting.
I--I--often I have thought that I shall never marry any one."

She looked into the fire. Her face had become almost mysterious.

"Some women don't need--that," she murmured.

The fire played over her pale yellow hair.

"Abnormal women!" he exclaimed violently.

She turned.

"Hush! You don't know what you are saying. It isn't abnormal to wish to
dedicate----"

She stopped.

"What?" he said.

"Don't let us talk of these things. But you must not judge any woman
without knowing what is in her heart. Even your own mother, with whom
you have lived alone ever since your father's death--do you know very
much of her? We can't always show ourselves plainly as we are. It may
not be our fault."

"You will marry. You must marry."

"Why--must?"

He gazed at her. As she met his eyes she reddened slightly,
understanding his thought, that such a woman as she was ought not to
avoid the great vocation of woman. But there was another vocation, and
perhaps it was hers. She felt confused. Two desires were struggling
within her. It was as if her nature contained two necessities which were
wholly irreconcilable the one with the other.

"You can't tell me?" he said, at last.

"Not now."

"Then I am going, and I shall never ask you again. But I shall never be
able to love any one but you."

He said nothing more, and went away without touching her hand.

Words of Dante ran in Rosamund's head, and she repeated them to herself
after Dion had gone.

"_La divina volontate_!" She believed in it; she said to herself that
she trusted it absolutely. But how was she to know exactly what it
was? And yet, could she escape from it even if she wished to? Could she
wander away into any path where the Divine Will did not mean her to set
foot? Predestination--free will. "If only I were not so ignorant," she
thought.

Soon after six she went up to her bedroom to put on her things for
church.

Her bedroom was very simple, and showed plainly an indifference to
luxury, a dislike of show and of ostentation in its owner. The walls and
ceiling were white. The bed, which stood against the wall in one corner,
was exceptionally long. This fact, perhaps, made it look exceptionally
narrow. It was quite plain, had a white wooden bedstead, and was covered
with a white bedspread of a very ordinary type. There was one arm-chair
in the room made of wickerwork with a rather hard cushion on the seat,
the sort of cushion that resolutely refuses to "give" when one sits
down on it. On the small dressing-table there was no array of glittering
silver bottles, boxes and brushes. A straw flagon of eau-de-Cologne was
Rosamund's sole possession of perfume. She did not own a box of powder
or a puff. But it must be acknowledged that she never looked "shiny."
She had some ivory hair-brushes given to her one Christmas by Bruce
Evelin. Beside them was placed a hideous receptacle for--well, for
anything--pins, perhaps, buttons, small tiresomenesses of that kind.
It was made of some glistening black material, and at its center there
bloomed a fearful red cabbage rose, a rose all vulgarity, ostentation
and importance. This monstrosity had been given to Rosamund as a
thank-offering by a poor charwoman to whom she had been kind. It had
been in constant use now for over three years. The charwoman knew this
with grateful pride.

Upon the mantelpiece there were other gifts of a similar kind: a
photograph frame made of curly shells, a mug with "A present from
Greenwich" written across it in gold letters, a flesh-colored glass
vase with yellow trimmings, a china cow with its vermilion ears cocked
forward, lying down in a green meadow which just held it, and a toy
trombone with a cord and tassels. There were also several photographs of
poor people in their Sunday clothes. On the walls hung a photograph of
Cardinal Newman, a good copy of a Luini Madonna, two drawings of heads
by Burne-Jones, a small painting--signed "G. F. Watts"--of an old tree
trunk around which ivy was lovingly growing, and one or two prints.

The floor was polished and partially covered by three good-sized mats.
There was a writing-table on one side of the room with an ebony-and-gold
crucifix standing upon it. Opposite to it, on the other side of the
room near the fireplace, was a bookcase. On the shelves were volumes of
Shakespeare, Dante, Emerson, Wordsworth, Browning, Christina Rossetti,
Newman's "Dream of Gerontius" and "Apologia," Thomas a Kempis, several
works on mystics and mysticism, a life of St. Catherine of Genoa,
another of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius Loyola's "Spiritual
Exercises," Pascal's "Letters," etc., etc. Over the windows hung
gray-blue curtains.

Into this room Rosamund came that evening; she went to a wardrobe and
began to take down a long sealskin coat. Just then her maid appeared--an
Italian girl whom she had taken into her service in Milan when she had
studied singing there.

"Shan't I come with you, Signorina?" she asked, as she took the jacket
from her mistress and held it for Rosamund to put on.

"No, thank you, Maria. I'm going to church, the Protestant church."

"I could wait outside or come back to fetch you."

"It's not far. I shall be all right."

"But the fog is terrible. It's like a wall about the house."

"Is it as bad as that?"

She went to one of the windows, pulled aside the curtains, lifted the
blind and tried to look out. But she could not, for the fog pressed
against the window panes and hid the street and the houses opposite.

"It is bad."

She dropped the blind, let the curtains fall into place and turned
round.

"But I'd rather go alone. I can't miss the way, and I'm not a nervous
person. You'd be far more frightened than I." She smiled at the girl.

Apparently reassured, or perhaps merely glad that her unselfishness was
not going to be tested, Maria accompanied her mistress downstairs and
let her out. It was Lurby's "evening off," and for once he was not
discreetly on hand.

Church bells were chiming faintly in this City of dreadful night as
Rosamund almost felt her way onward. She heard them and thought they
were sad, and their melancholy seemed to be one with the melancholy of
the atmosphere. Some one passed by her. She just heard a muffled sound
of steps, just discerned a shadow--that was all.

To-morrow she must give an answer to Dion Leith. She went on slowly in
the fog, thinking, thinking. Two vertical lines showed in her usually
smooth forehead.

It was nearly half-past six when she turned into Welby Street. The
church was not a large one and there was no parish attached to it. It
was a proprietary chapel. The income of the incumbent came from pew
rents. His name was Limer, and he was a first-rate preacher of the
sensational type, a pulpit dealer in "actualities." He was also an
excellent musician, and took great pains with his choir. In consequence
of these talents, and of his diligent application of them, St. Mary's
was generally full, and all its pews were let at a high figure.
To-night, however, because of the fog, Rosamund expected to find few
people.

One bell was mournfully ringing as she drew near and presently saw a
faint gleaming of light through long narrow windows of painted glass.
"Ping, ping, ping!" It was a thin little summons to prayer. She passed
through a gateway in some railings of wrought ironwork, crossed a
slippery pavement and entered the church.

It was already more than three parts full, and there was a large
proportion of men in the congregation. A smart-looking young man,
evidently a gentleman, who was standing close to the door, nodded to
Rosamund and whispered:

"I'll put you into Lady Millingham's seat. You'll find Mrs. Chetwinde
and Mr. Darlington there."

"Oh, I'd rather--" began Rosamund.

But he had already begun to move up the aisle, and she was obliged to
follow him to a pew close to the pulpit, in which were seated a smartly
dressed woman with a vague and yet acute expression, pale eyes and
a Burne-Jones throat; and a thin, lanky and immensely tall man of
uncertain age, with pale brown, very straight hair, large white ears,
thick ragged eyebrows, a carefully disarranged beard and mustache, and
an irregular refined face decorated with a discreet but kind expression.
These were Mrs. Willie Chetwinde, who had a wonderful house in Lowndes
Square, and Mr. Esme Darlington, bachelor, of St. James's Square, who
was everybody's friend including his own.