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Walter E. Traprock - "The Cruise of the Kawa"

Georg Ebers - "An Egyptian Princess, Volume 4."

Gilbert Parker - "The Right of Way, Volume 5."

Nathaniel Hawthorne - "Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Volume 2."

In the Wilderness

R >> Robert Hichens >> In the Wilderness




"I think you're very complex," Dion said, still thinking of Dumeny.

"Because I make friends in so many directions?"

"Well--yes, partly," he answered, wondering if she was reading his
thought.

"Jimmy's not a friend but my boy. I know very well Monsieur Dumeny, for
instance, whom you saw, and I dare say wondered about, at the trial; but
I couldn't bear that my boy should develop into that type of man. You'll
say I am a treacherous friend, perhaps. It might be truer to say I was
born acquisitive and too mental. I never really liked Monsieur Dumeny;
but I liked immensely his musical talent, his knowledge, his sure taste,
and his power of making almost everything flower into interestingness.
Do you know what I mean? Some people take light from your day; others
add to its light and paint in wonderful shadows. If I went to the
bazaars alone they were Eastern shops; if I went with Dumeny they were
the Arabian Nights. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"The touch of his mind on a thing gave it life. It stirred. One could
look into its heart and see the pulse beating. I care to do that, so I
cared to go about with Monsieur Dumeny. But one doesn't love people for
that sort of thing. In the people one loves one needs character, the
right fiber in the soul. You ought to know that."

"Why?" he asked, almost startled.

"I was introduced to your wife just now."

"Oh!"

There was a pause. Then Dion said:

"I'm glad you have met."

"So am I," said Mrs. Clarke, in a voice that sounded more husky even
than usual. "She sang that Greek song quite beautifully. I've just been
telling her that I want to show her some curious songs I have heard in
Turkey, and Asia Minor, at Brusa. There was one man who used to sing to
me at Brusa outside the Mosquee Verte. Dumeny took down the melody for
me."

"Did you like the 'Heart ever faithful'?"

"Of course it's excellent in that sledge-hammer sort of way, a superb
example of the direct. Stamboul is very indirect. Perhaps it has colored
my taste. It's full of mystery. Bach isn't mysterious, except now and
then--in rare bits of his passion music, for instance."

"I wonder if my wife could sing those Turkish songs."

"We must see. She sang that Greek song perfectly."

"But she's felt Greece," said Dion. "And I think there's something in
her that----"

"Yes?"

"I only mean," he said, with reserve in his voice, "that I think there's
something of Greece in her."

"She's got a head like a Caryatid."

"Yes," he said, with much less reserve. "Hasn't she?"

Mrs. Clarke had paid his Rosamund two noble compliments, he thought; and
he liked her way of payment, casual yet evidently sincere, the simple
utterance of two thoughts in a mind that knew. He felt a sudden glow of
real friendship for her, and, on the glow as it were, she said:

"Jimmy's quite mad about you."

"Still?" he blurted out, and was instantly conscious of a false step.

"He's got an extraordinary memory for a biceps, and then Jenkins talks
about you to him."

As they went on talking people began coming up from the black-and-white
dining-room. Dion said he would come to see Jimmy again, would visit the
gymnasium in the Harrow Road one day when Jimmy was taking his lesson.
Did Jimmy ever go on a Saturday? Yes, he was going next Saturday at
four. Dion would look in next Saturday. Now Mrs. Clarke and Rosamund had
met, and Mrs. Clarke evidently admired Rosamund in two ways, Dion felt
quite different about his acquaintance with her. If it had already been
agreed that Mrs. Clarke should show Rosamund Turkish songs, there was
no need for further holding back. The relief which had come to him made
Dion realize how very uncomfortable he had been about Mrs. Clarke in
the immediate past. He was now thoroughly and cordially at his ease with
her. They talked till the big drawing-room was full again, till Rosamund
reappeared in the midst of delightful friends; talked of Jimmy's future,
of the new tutor who must be found,--a real man, not a mere bloodless
intellectual,--and, again, of Constantinople, to which Mrs. Clarke would
return in April, against the advice of her friends, and in spite of Esme
Darlington's almost frantic protests, "because I love it, and because I
don't choose to be driven out of any place by liars." Her last remark to
him, and he thought it very characteristic of her, was this:

"Liberty's worth bitterness. I would buy it at the price of all the
tears in my body."

It was, perhaps, also very characteristic that she made the statement
with a perfectly quiet gravity which almost concealed the evidently
tough inflexibility beneath.

And then, when people were ready to go, Rosamund sung Brahm's
"Wiegenlied."

Dion stood beside Bruce Evelin while Rosamund was singing this. She sang
it with a new and wonderful tenderness which had come to her with Robin,
and in her face, as she sang, there was a new and wonderful tenderness.
The meaning of Robin in Rosamund's life was expressed to Dion by
Rosamund in this song as it had never been expressed before. Perhaps
it was expressed also to Bruce Evelin, for Dion saw tears in his eyes
almost brimming over, and his face was contracted, as if only by a
strong, even a violent, effort he was able to preserve his self-control.

As people began to go away Dion found himself close to Esme Darlington.

"My dear fellow," said Mr. Darlington, with unusual abandon, "Rosamund
has made a really marvelous advance--marvelous. In that 'Wiegenlied' she
reached high-water mark. No one could have sung it more perfectly. What
has happened to her?"

"Robin," said Dion, looking him full in the face, and speaking with
almost stern conviction.

"Robin?" said Mr. Darlington, with lifted eyebrows.

Then people intervened.

In the carriage going home Rosamund was very happy. She confessed to the
pleasure her success had given her.

"I quite loved singing to-night," she said. "That song about Greece was
for you."

"I know, and the 'Wiegenlied' was for Robin."

"Yes," she said.

She was silent; then her voice came out of the darkness:

"For Robin, but he didn't know it."

"Some day he will know it."

Not a word was said about Mrs. Clarke that night.

On the following day, however, Dion asked Rosamund how she had liked
Mrs. Clarke.

"I saw you talking to her with the greatest animation."

"Was I?" said Rosamund.

"And she told me it had been arranged that she should--no, I don't mean
that; but she said she wanted to show you some wonderful Turkish songs."

"Did she? What a beautiful profile she has!"

"Ah, you noticed that!"

"Oh yes, directly."

"Didn't she mention the Turkish songs?"

"I believe she did, but only in passing, casually. D'you know, Dion,
I've got an idea that Greece is our country, not Turkey at all. You hate
Constantinople, and I shall never see it, I'm sure. We are Greeks, and
Robin has to be a Greek, too, in one way--a true Englishman, of course,
as well. Do you remember the Doric boy?"

And off went the conversation to the hills of Drouva, and never came
back to Turkey.

When Friday dawned Dion thought of his appointment for Saturday
afternoon at the gymnasium in the Harrow Road, and began to wish he had
not made it. Rosamund had not mentioned Mrs. Clarke again, and he began
to fear that she had not really liked her, although her profile was
beautiful. If Rosamund had not liked Mrs. Clarke, his cordial enthusiasm
at Mrs. Chetwinde's--in retrospect he felt that his attitude and manner
must have implied that--had been premature, even, perhaps, unfortunate.
He wished he knew just what impression Mrs. Clarke had made upon
Rosamund, but something held him back from asking her. He had asked her
already once, but somehow the conversation had deviated--was it to Mrs.
Clarke's profile?--and he had not received a direct answer. Perhaps that
was his fault. But anyhow he must go to the gymnasium on the morrow.
To fail in doing that after all that had happened, or rather had not
happened, in connexion with Mrs. Clarke would be really rude. He did
not say anything about the gymnasium to Rosamund on Friday, but on the
Saturday he told her what had been arranged.

"Her son, Jimmy Clarke, has taken a boyish fancy to me, it seems. I said
I'd look in and see his lesson just for once."

"Is he a nice boy?"

"Yes, first-rate, I should think, rather a pickle, and likely to develop
into an athlete. The father is awfully ashamed now of what he did--that
horrible case, I mean--and is trying to make up for it."

"How?" said Rosamund simply.

"By giving her every chance with the boy."

"I'm glad the child likes you."

"I've only seen him once."

"Twice won't kill his liking," she returned affectionately.

And then she went out of the room. She always had plenty to do. Small
though he was, Robin was a marvelous consumer of his mother's time.

When Dion got to the gymnasium Mrs. Clarke and Jimmy were already there,
and Jimmy, in flannels and a white sweater, his dark hair sticking up in
disorder, and his face scarlet with exertion, was performing feats with
an exerciser fixed to the wall, while Mrs. Clarke, seated on a hard
chair in front of a line of heavy weights and dumb-bells, was looking
on with concentrated attention. Jenkins was standing in front of
Jimmy, loudly directing his movements with a stentorian:
"One--two--one--two--one--two! Keep it up! No slackening! Put some guts
into it, sir! One--two--one--two!"

As Dion came in Mrs. Clarke looked round and nodded; Jimmy stared,
unable to smile because his mouth and lower jaw were working, and he had
no superfluous force to spare for polite efforts; and Jenkins uttered a
gruff, "Good day, sir."

"How are you, Jenkins?" returned Dion, in his most off-hand manner.

Then he jerked his hand at Jimmy with an encouraging smile, went over to
Mrs. Clarke, shook her hand and remained standing beside her.

"Do you think he's doing it well?" she murmured, after a moment.

"Stunningly."

"Hasn't he broadened in the chest?"

"Rather!"

She looked strangely febrile and mental in the midst of the many
appliances for developing the body. Rosamund, with her splendid physique
and glowing health, would have crowned the gymnasium appropriately,
have looked like the divine huntress transplanted to a modern city
where still the cult of the body drew its worshipers. The Arcadian
mountains--Olympia in Elis,--Jenkins's "gym" in the Harrow
Road--differing shrines but the cult was the same. Only the conditions
of worship were varied. Dion glanced down at Mrs. Clarke. Never had she
seemed more curiously exotic. Yet she did not look wholly out of place;
and it occurred to him that a perfectly natural person never looks
wholly out of place anywhere.

"Face to the wall, sir!" cried Jenkins.

Jimmy found time for a breathless and half-inquiring smile at Dion as he
turned and prepared for the most difficult feat.

"His jaw always does something extraordinary in this exercise," said
Mrs. Clarke. "It seems to come out and go in again with a click. Jenkins
says it's because Jimmy gets his strength from there."

"I know. Mine used to do just the same."

"Jimmy doesn't mind. It amuses him."

"That's the spirit!"

"He finishes with this."

"Already?" said Dion, surprised.

"You must have been a little late. How did you come?"

"On my bicycle. I had a puncture. That must have been it. And there was
a lot of traffic."

"Keep it up, sir!" roared Jenkins imperatively. "What's the matter with
that left arm?"

Click went Jimmy's lower jaw.

"Dear little chap!" muttered Dion, full of sympathetic interest. "He's
doing splendidly."

"You really think so?"

"Couldn't be better."

"You understand boys?"

"Better than I understand women, I expect," Dion returned, with a sudden
thought of Rosamund at home and the wonderful Turkish songs Mrs. Clarke
wished to show to her.

Mrs. Clarke said nothing, and just at that moment Jenkins announced:

"That'll do for to-day, sir."

In a flood of perspiration Jimmy turned round, redder than ever, his
chest heaving, his mouth open, and his eyes, but without any conceit,
asking for a word of praise from Dion, who went to clap him on the
shoulder.

"Capital! Hallo! What muscles we're getting! Eh, Jenkins?"

"Master Jimmy's not doing badly, sir. He puts his heart into it. That I
must say."

Jimmy shone through the red and the perspiration.

"He sticks it," continued Jenkins, in his loud voice. "Without grit
there's nothing done. That's what I always tell my pupils."

"I say"--began Jimmy, at last finding a small voice--"I say, Mr. Leith,
you haven't hurried over it."

"Over what?"

"Letting me see you again. Why, it's--"

"Run along to the bath, sir. You've got to have it before you cool
down," interposed the merciless Jenkins.

And Jimmy made off with an instant obedience which showed his private
opinion of the god who was training him.

When he was gone Jenkins turned to Dion and looked him over.

"Haven't seen much of you, sir, lately," he remarked.

"No, I've been busy," returned Dion, feeling slightly uncomfortable as
he remembered that the reason for his absence from the Harrow Road was
listening to the conversation.

"Going to have a round with the gloves now you are here, sir?" pursued
Jenkins.

Dion looked at Mrs. Clarke.

"Well, I hadn't thought of it," he said, rather doubtfully.

"Just as you like, sir."

"Do, Mr. Leith," said Mrs. Clarke, getting up from the hard chair, and
standing close to the medicine ball with her back to the vaulting-horse.
"Jimmy and I are going in a moment. You mustn't bother about us."

"Well, but how are you going home?"

"We shall walk. Of course have your boxing. It will do you good."

"You're right there, ma'am," said Jenkins, with a sort of stern
approval. "Mr. Leith's been neglecting his exercises lately."

"Oh, I've been doing a good deal in odd times with the Rifle Corps."

"I don't know anything about that, sir."

"All right, I'll go and change," said Dion, who always kept a singlet
and flannels at the gymnasium. "Then----" he turned to Mrs. Clarke as if
about to say good-by.

"Oh, Jimmy will want to see you for a moment after his bath. We'll say
good-by then."

"Yes, I should like to see him," said Dion, and went off to the dressing
cubicles.

When he returned ready for the fray, with his arms bared to the
shoulder, he found Jimmy, in trousers and an Eton jacket, with still
damp hair sleeked down on his head, waiting with his mother, but not to
say good-by.

"We aren't going," he announced, in a voice almost shrill with
excitement, as Dion came into the gymnasium. "The mater was all for a
trot home, but Jenkins wishes me to stay. He says it'll be a good lesson
for me. I mean to be a boxer."

"Why not?" observed the great voice of Jenkins. "It's the best sport in
the world bar none."

"There!" said Jimmy. "And if I can't be anything else I'll be a bantam,
that's what I'll be."

"Oh, you'll grow, sir, no doubt. We may see you among the heavy-weights
yet."

"What's Mr. Leith? Is he a heavy-weight?" vociferated Jimmy. "Just look
at his arms."

"You'll see him use them in a minute," observed Jenkins, covering Dion
with a glance of almost grim approval, "and then you can judge for
yourself."

"You can referee us, Jimmy," said Dion, smiling, as he pulled on the
gloves.

"I say, by Jove, though!" said Jimmy, looking suddenly overwhelmed and
very respectful.

He shook his head and blushed, then abruptly grinned.

"The mater had better do that."

They all laughed except Mrs. Clarke. Even Jenkins unbent, and his
bass "Ha ha!" rang through the large vaulted room. Mrs. Clarke smiled
faintly, scarcely changing the expression of her eyes. She looked
unusually intent and, when the smile was gone, more than usually grave.

"I hope you don't mind our staying just for a few minutes," she said to
Dion. "You see what he is!"

She looked at her boy, but not with deprecation.

"Of course not, but I'm afraid it will bore you."

"Oh no, it won't. I like to see skill of any kind."

She glanced at his arms.

"I'll get out of your way. Come, Jimmy!"

She took him by the arm and went back to the hard chair, while Dion and
Jenkins in the middle of the floor stood up opposite to one another.

"Have you got a watch, Master Jimmy?" said Jenkins, looking over his
shoulder at his pupil.

"Rather!" piped Jimmy.

"Well, then, you'd better time us if you don't referee us."

Jimmy sprang away from his mother.

"Keep out of our road, or you may chance to get a kidney punch that'll
wind you. Better stand here. That's it. Three-minute rounds. Keep your
eye on the watch."

"Am I to say 'Go'?" almost whispered Jimmy, tense with a fearful
importance such as Caesar and Napoleon never felt.

"Who else? You don't expect us to order ourselves about, do you?"

After a pause Jimmy murmured, "No" in a low voice. So might a mortal
whisper a reply when interrogated from Olympus as to his readiness to be
starter at a combat of the immortal gods.

"Now, then, watch in hand and no favoritism!" bellowed Jenkins, whose
sense of humor was as boisterous as his firmness was grim. "Are we
ready?"

Dion and he shook hands formally and lifted their arms, gazing at each
other warily. Mrs. Clarke leaned forward in the chair which stood among
the dumb-bells. Jimmy perspired and his eyes became round. He had his
silver watch tight in his right fist. Jenkins suddenly turned his head
and stared with his shallow and steady blue eyes, looking down from
Olympus upon the speck of a mortal far below.

"Go!" piped Jimmy, in the voice of an ardent, but awestruck mouse.

Homeric was that combat in the Harrow Road; to its starter and
timekeeper a contest of giants, awful in force, in skill, in agility, in
endurance. Dion boxed quite his best that day, helped by his gallery. He
fought to win, but he didn't win. Nobody won, for there was no knock-out
blow given and taken, and, when appealed to for a decision on points,
Jimmy, breathing stertorously from excitement, was quite unable to give
the award. He could only stare at the two glorious heroes before him and
drop the silver watch, glass downwards of course, on the floor, where
its tinkle told of destruction. Later on, when he spoke, he was able to
say:

"By Jove!" which he presently amplified into, "I say, mater, by
Jove--eh, wasn't it, though?"

"Not so bad, sir!" said Jenkins to Dion, after the latter had taken the
shower bath. "You aren't as stale as I expected to find you, not near as
stale. But I hope you'll keep it up now you've started with it again."

And Dion promised he would, put his bicycle on the top of a fourwheeler,
sent it off to Westminster, and walked as far as Claridge's with Mrs.
Clarke and Jimmy.

The boy made him feel tremendously intimate with Mrs. Clarke. The
hero-worship he was receiving, the dancing of the blood through his
veins, the glow of hard exercise, the verdict of Jenkins on his physical
condition--all these things combined spurred him to a joyous exuberance
in which body and mind seemed to run like a matched pair of horses in
perfect accord. Although not at all a conceited man, the feeling that
he was being admired, even reverenced, was delightful to him, and warmed
his heart towards the jolly small boy who kept along by his side through
the busy streets. He and Jimmy talked in a comradely spirit, while
Mrs. Clarke seemed to listen like one who has things to learn. She was
evidently a capital walker in spite of her delicate appearance. To-day
Dion began to believe in her iron health, and, in his joy of the body,
he liked to think of it. After all delicacy, even in a woman, was a
fault--a fault of the body, a sort of fretful imperfection.

"Are you strong?" he said to her, when Jimmy's voice ceased for a moment
to demand from him information or to pour upon him direct statement.

"Oh yes. I've never been seriously ill in my life. Don't I look strong?"
she asked.

"I don't think you do, but I feel as if you are."

"It's the wiry kind of strength, I suppose."

"The mater's a stayer," quoth Jimmy, and forthwith took up the wondrous
tale with his hero, who began to consult him seriously on the question
of "points."

"If you'd had to give a decision, Jimmy, which of us would have got it,
Jenkins or I?"

Jimmy looked very grave and earnest.

"It's jolly difficult to tell a thing like that, isn't it?" he said,
after a longish pause. "You see, you're both so jolly strong, aren't
you?"

His dark eyes gazed at the bulk of Dion.

"Well, which is the quicker?" demanded Dion.

But Jimmy was not to be drawn.

"I think you're both as quick as--as cats," he returned diplomatically,
seeking anxiously for the genuine sporting comparison that would be
approved at the ring-side. "Don't you, mater?"

Mrs. Clarke huskily agreed. They were now nearing Claridge's, and Jimmy
was insistent that Dion should come in and have a real jam tea with
them.

"Do, Mr. Leith, if you have the time," said Mrs. Clarke, but without any
pressure.

"The strawberry they have is ripping, I can tell you!" cried Jimmy, with
ardor.

But Dion refused. Till he was certain of Rosamund's attitude he felt he
simply couldn't accept Mrs. Clarke's hospitality. He was obliged to get
home that day. Mrs. Clarke did not ask why, but Jimmy did, and had to
be put off with an evasion, the usual mysterious "business," which, of
course, a small boy couldn't dive into and explore.

Dion thought Mrs. Clarke was going to say good-by without any mention of
Rosamund, but when they reached Claridge's she said:

"Your wife and I didn't decide on a day for the Turkish songs. You
remember I mentioned them to you the other night? I can't recollect
whether she left it to me to fix a time, or whether I left it to her.
Can you find out? Do tell her I was stupid and forgot. Will you?"

Dion said he would.

"I think they'll interest her. Now, Jimmy!"

But Jimmy hung on his god.

"I say, you'll come again now! You promise!"

What could Dion do?

"You put your honor into it?" pursued Jimmy, with desperate earnestness.
"You swear?"

"If I swear in the open street the police will take me up," said Dion
jokingly.

"Not they! One from the shoulder from you and I bet they lose enough
claret to fill a bucket. You've given your honor, hasn't he, mater?"

"Of course we shall see him again," said Mrs. Clarke, staring at Dion.

"What curious eyes she has!" Dion thought, as he walked homeward.

Did they ever entirely lose their under-look of distress?



CHAPTER IX

That evening Dion told Rosamund what Mrs. Clarke had said when he parted
from her at Claridge's.

"I promised her I'd find out which it was," he added. "Do you remember
what was said?"

After a minute of silence, during which Rosamund seemed to be
considering something, she answered:

"Yes, I do."

"Which was it?"

"Neither, Dion. Mrs. Clarke has made a mistake. She certainly spoke of
some Turkish songs for me, but there was never any question of fixing a
day for us to try them over together."

"She thinks there was."

"It's difficult to remember exactly what is said, or not said, in the
midst of a crowd."

"But you remember?"

"Yes."

"Then you'd rather not try them over?"

"After what you've told me about Constantinople I expect I should be
quite out of sympathy with Turkish music," she answered, lightly and
smiling. "Let us be true to our Greek ideal."

She seemed to be in fun, but he detected firmness of purpose behind the
fun.

"What shall I say to Mrs. Clarke?" he asked.

"I should just leave it. Perhaps she'll forget all about it."

Dion was quite sure that wouldn't happen, but he left it. Rosamund had
determined not to allow Mrs. Clarke to be friends with her. He wished
very much it were otherwise, not because he really cared for Mrs.
Clarke, but because he liked her and Jimmy, and because he hated the
idea of hurting the feelings of a woman in Mrs. Clarke's rather unusual
situation. He might, of course, have put his point of view plainly to
Rosamund at once. Out of delicacy he did not do this. His great love for
Rosamund made him instinctively very delicate in all his dealings with
her; it told him that Rosamund did not wish to discuss her reasons for
desiring to avoid Mrs. Clarke. She had had them, he believed, before
Mrs. Clarke and she had met. That meeting evidently had not lessened
their force. He supposed, therefore, that she had disliked Mrs. Clarke.
He wondered why, and tried to consider Mrs. Clarke anew. She was
certainly not a disagreeable woman. She was very intelligent,
thoroughbred, beautiful in a peculiar way,--even Rosamund thought
that,--ready to make herself pleasant, quite free from feminine malice,
absolutely natural, interested in all the really interesting things.
Beattie liked her; Daventry rejoiced in her; Mrs. Chetwinde was her
intimate friend; Esme Darlington had even made sacrifices for her; Bruce
Evelin----

There Dion's thought was held up, like a stream that encounters a
barrier. What did Bruce Evelin think of Mrs. Clarke? He had not gone
to the trial. But since he had retired from practise at the Bar he had
never gone into court. Dion had often heard him say he had had enough
of the Law Courts. There was no reason why he should have been drawn
to them for Mrs. Clarke's sake, or even for Daventry's. But what did he
think of Mrs. Clarke? Dion resolved to tell him of the rather awkward
situation which had come about through his own intimacy--it really
amounted to that--with Mrs. Clarke, and Rosamund's evident resolve to
have nothing to do with her.