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In the Wilderness

R >> Robert Hichens >> In the Wilderness




Rosamund just recognized them gravely; then she knelt down and prayed
earnestly, with her face hidden against her muff. She still heard the
little bell's insistent "Ping, ping, ping!" She pressed her shut eyes
so hard against the muff that rings of yellow light floated up in her
darkness, forming, retreating, melting away.

The bell ceased; the first notes of the organ sounded in a voluntary by
Mendelssohn, amiable and charming; the choir filed in as Rosamund rose
from her knees. In the procession the two last figures were Mr. Limer
and Mr.--or, as he was always called in Liverpool, Father--Robertson.

Mr. Limer was a short, squat, clean-shaven but hairy dark man, with
coal-black hair sweeping round a big forehead, a determined face and
large, indignant brown eyes. The Liverpool clergyman was of middle
height, very thin, with snow-white hair, dark eyes and eyebrows, and a
young almost boyish face, with straight, small features, and a luminous,
gentle and yet intense look. He seemed almost to glow, quietly,
definitely, like a lamp set in a dark place, and one felt that his glow
could not easily be extinguished. He walked tranquilly by the side of
Mr. Limer, and looked absolutely unselfconscious, quietly dignified and
simple.

When he went into the pulpit the lights were lowered and a pleasant
twilight prevailed. But the preacher's face was strongly illuminated.

Mr. Robertson preached on the sin of egoism, and took as the motto of
his sermon the words--"_Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat_." His method
of preaching was quiet, but intense; again the glow of the lamp. Often
there were passages which suggested a meditation--a soul communing with
itself fearlessly, with an unyielding, but never violent, determination
to arrive at the truth. And Rosamund, listening, felt as if nothing
could keep this man with the snow-white hair and the young face away
from the truth.

He ranged over a wide field--egoism being wide as the world--he exposed
many of the larger evils brought about by egoism, in connexion with the
Arts, with politics, with charity, with religious work in great cities,
with missionary enterprises abroad; he touched on some of the more
subtle forms of egoism, which may poison even the sources of love; and
finally he discussed the gains and the losses of egoism. "For," he said,
"let us be honest and acknowledge that we often gain, in the worldly
sense, by our sins, and sometimes lose by our virtues." Power of a kind
can be, and very often is, obtained by egoists through their egoism.
He discussed that power, showed its value and the glory of it. Then
he contrasted with it the power which is only obtained by those who,
completely unselfish, know not how to think of themselves. He enlarged
on this theme, on the Kingdom which can belong only to those who are
selfless. And then he drew to the end of his sermon.

"One of the best means I know," he said, "for getting rid of egoism is
this: whenever you have to take some big decision between two courses
of action--perhaps between two life courses--ask yourself, 'Which can I
share?'--which of these two paths is wide enough to admit of my treading
it with a companion, whose steps I can help, whose journey I can
enliven, whose weariness I can solace, and whose burden I can now and
then bear for a little while? And if only one of the paths is wide
enough, then choose that in preference to the other. I believe
profoundly in 'sharing terms.'"

He paused, gazing at the congregation with his soft and luminous eyes.
Then he added:

"_Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat_. When the insistent _I_ sleeps, only
then perhaps can the heart be truly awake, be really watchful. Then let
us send the insistent I to sleep, and let us keep it slumbering."

He half-smiled as he finished. There had been something slightly
whimsical about his final words, about his manner and himself when he
said them.

Silence and the fog, and Rosamund walking homewards with her hands deep
in her muff. All those bodies and minds and souls which had been in the
church had evaporated into the night. Mrs. Chetwinde and Esme Darlington
had wanted to speak to Rosamund, but she had slipped out of the church
quickly. She did not wish to talk to any one.

"_Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat_."

What an odd little turn, or twist, the preacher had given to the meaning
of those words! "Whenever you have to take some big decision between
two life courses, ask yourself, 'Which can I share?' and if you can only
share one, choose that."

Very slowly Rosamund walked on, bending a little above the big muff,
like one pulled forward by a weight of heavy thoughts. She turned a
corner. Presently she turned another corner and traversed a square,
which could not be seen to be a square. And then, quite suddenly, she
realized that she had not been thinking about her way home and that she
was lost in the impenetrable fog.

She stood still and listened. She heard nothing. Traffic seemed stopped
in this region. On her left there were three steps. She went up them and
was under the porch of a house. Light shone dully from within, and by it
she could just make out on the door the number "8." At least it seemed
to her that probably it was an "8." She hesitated, came down the steps,
and walked on. It was impossible to see the names of the streets and
squares. But presently she would come across a policeman. She went on
and on, but no policeman bulked shadowy against the background of night
and of the fog which at last seemed almost terrible to her.

Rosamund was not timid. She was constitutionally incapable of timidity.
Nor was she actively alarmed in a strong and definite way. But gradually
there seemed to permeate her a cold, almost numbing sensation of
loneliness and of desolation. For the first time in her life she felt
not merely alone but solitary, and not merely solitary but as if she
were condemned to be so by some power that was hostile to her.

It was a hideous feeling. Something in the fog and in the night made
an assault upon her imagination. Abruptly she was numbered among the
derelict women whom nobody wants, whom no man thinks of or wishes to be
with, whom no child calls mother. She felt physically and morally, "I
am solitary," and it was horrible to her. She saw herself old and alone,
and she shuddered.

How long she walked on she did not know, but when at last she heard
a step shuffling along somewhere in front of her, she had almost--she
thought--realized Eternity.

The step was not coming towards her but was going onwards slowly before
her. She hastened, and presently came up with an old man, poorly dressed
in a dreadful frock-coat and disgraceful trousers, wearing on his long
gray locks a desperado of a top hat, and carrying, in a bloated and
almost purple hand, a large empty jug.

"Please!" said Rosamund.

The old gentleman shuffled on.

"Could you tell me--_please_--can you tell me where we are?"

She had grasped his left coat-sleeve. He turned and, bending, she peered
into the face of a drunkard.

"Close to the 'Daniel Lambert,'" said an almost refined old voice.

And a pair of pathetic gray eyes peered up at her above a nose that was
like a conflagration.

"Where's that? What is it?"

"Don't you know the 'Daniel Lambert'?"

The voice sounded very surprised and almost suspicious.

"No."

"It's well known, very well known. I'm just popping round there to get a
little something--eh!"

The voice died away.

"I want to find Great Cumberland Place."

"Well, you're pretty close to it. The 'Daniel Lambert's' in the Edgware
Road."

"Could you find it?--Great Cumberland Place, I mean?"

"Certainly."

"I wish you would. I should be so grateful."

The gray eyes became more pathetic.

"Grateful to me--would you, miss? I'll go with you and very glad to do
it."

The old gentleman took Rosamund home and talked to her on the way.
When they parted she asked for his name and address. He hesitated for
a moment and then gave it: "Mr. Thrush, 2 Albingdon Buildings, John's
Court, near Edgware Road."

"Thank you. You've done me a good turn."

At this moment the front door was opened by the housemaid.

"Oh--miss!" she said.

Her eyes left Rosamund and fastened themselves, like weapons, on the
old gentleman's nose. He lifted his desperado of a hat and immediately
turned away, trying to conceal his jug under his left arm, but
inadvertently letting it protrude.

"Good night, and thank you very much indeed!" Rosamund called after him
with warm cordiality.

"I'm glad you've got back, miss. We were in a way. It's ever so late."

"I got lost in the fog. That dear old man rescued me."

"I'm very thankful, miss, I'm sure."

The girl seemed stiffened with astonishment. She shut the street door
automatically.

"He used to be a chemist once."

"Did he, miss?"

"Yes, quite a successful one too; just off Hanover Square, he told me.
He was going round to get something for his supper when we met."

"Indeed, miss?"

Rosamund went upstairs.

"Yes, poor old man," she said, as she ascended.

Like most people in perfect health Rosamund slept well; but that night
she lay awake. She did not want to sleep. She had something to decide,
something of vital importance to her. Two courses lay open to her. She
might marry Dion Leith, or she might resolve never to marry. Like most
girls she had had dreams, but unlike most girls, she had often dreamed
of a life in which men had no place. She had recently entered upon the
career of a public singer, not because she was obliged to earn money but
because she had a fine voice and a strong temperament, and longed for
self-expression. But she had always believed that her public career
would be a short one. She loved fine music and enjoyed bringing its
message home to people, but she had little or no personal vanity, and
the life of a public performer entailed a great deal which she already
found herself disliking. Recently, too, her successful career had
received a slight check. She had made her festival debut at Burstal in
"Elijah," and no engagements for oratorio had followed upon it. Some
day, while she was still young, she meant to retire, and then----

If she married Dion Leith she would have to give up an old dream. On the
other hand, if she married him, perhaps some day she would be a mother.
She felt certain--she did not know why--that if she did not marry Dion
Leith she would never marry at all.

She thought, she prayed, she thought again. Sometimes in the dark hours
of that night the memory of her sensation of loneliness in the fog
returned to her. Sometimes Mr. Robertson's "Which can I share?" echoed
within her, in the resonant chamber of her soul. He had been very quiet,
but he had made an enormous impression upon her; he had made her hate
egoism much more than she had hated it hitherto.

Even into the innermost sanctuary of religion egoism can perhaps find
a way. The thought of that troubled Rosamund in the dark. But when the
hour of dawn grew near she fell asleep. She had made up her mind, or,
rather, it had surely been made up for her. For a conviction had come
upon her that for good or for evil it was meant that her life should
be linked with Dion Leith's. He possessed something which she valued
highly, and which, she thought, was possessed by very few men. He
offered it to her. If she refused it, such an offering would probably
never be made to her again.

To be a lonely woman; to be a subtle and profound egoist; to be loved,
cherished, worshiped; to be a mother.

Many lives of women seemed to float before her eyes.

Just before she lost consciousness it seemed to her, for a moment, that
she was looking into the pathetic eyes of the old man whom she had met
in the fog.

"Poor old man!" she murmured.

She slept.

On the following morning she sent this note to Dion Leith:


"MY DEAR DION,--I will marry you.

"ROSAMUND."



CHAPTER III

In the following spring, Rosamund and Dion were married, and Dion took
Rosamund "to the land of the early morning."

They arrived in Greece at the beginning of May, when the rains were over
and the heats of summer were at hand. The bed of Ilissus was empty. Dust
lay white in the streets of Athens and along the road to Phaleron and
the sea. The low-lying tracts of country were desert-dry, and about
Athens the world was arrayed in the garb of the East. Nevertheless there
was still a delicate freshness in the winds that blew to the little city
from the purple Aegean or from the mountains of Argolis; stirring the
dust into spiral dances among the pale houses upon which Lycabettos
looks down; shaking the tiny leaves of the tressy pepper trees near the
Royal Palace; whispering the antique secrets of the ages into the ears
of the maidens who, unwearied and happily submissive, bear up the Porch
of the Erechtheion; stealing across the vast spaces and between the
mighty columns of the Parthenon. The dawns and the twilights had not
lost the pure savor of their almost frail vitality. The deepness of
slumber still came with the nights.

Greece was, perhaps, at her loveliest. And Greece was almost deserted by
travelers. They had come and gone with the spring, leaving the land to
its own, and to those two who had come there to drink deep at the wells
of happiness. And, a little selfish as lovers are, Rosamund and Dion
took everything wonderful and beautiful as their possession.

The yellow-green pines near the convent of Daphni threw patches of shade
on the warm earth because they wanted to rest there; the kingfisher
rose in low and arrow-like flight from the banks of Khephissus to make a
sweet diversion for them; they longed for brilliance, and the lagoons of
Salamis were dyed with a wonder of emerald; they asked for twilight, and
the deep and deserted glades of Academe gave it them in full measure.
All these possessions, and many others, they enjoyed almost as children
enjoy a meadow full of flowers when they have climbed over the gate
that bars it from the high road. But the Acropolis was the stronghold
of their joy. Only when their feet pressed its silvery grasses, and trod
its warm marble pavements, did they hold the world within their grasp.

For some days after their arrival in Greece they almost lived among the
ruins. The long-coated guardians smiled at them, at first with a sort
of faint amusement, at last with a friendly pleasure. And they smiled
at themselves. Each evening they said, "To-morrow we will do this--or
that," and each morning they said nothing, just looked at each other
after breakfast, read in each other's eyes the repetition of desire, and
set out on the dear dusty road with which they were already so familiar.

Had there ever before been a honeymoon bounded by the precipices of the
Acropolis? They sometimes discussed that important question, and always
decided against the impertinent possibility. "What we are doing has
never been done before." Dion went further than this, to "What I am
feeling has never been felt before." His youth asserted itself in
silent, determined statements which seemed to him to ring with authentic
truth.

It was a far cry from the downs of Chilton to the summit of the
Acropolis. Dion remembered the crowd assembled to hear "Elijah"; he felt
the ugly heat, the press of humanity. And all that was but the prelude
to this! Even the voice crying "Woe unto them!" had been the prelude
to the wonderful silence of Greece. He felt marvelously changed. And
Rosamund often seemed to him changed, too, because she was his own. That
wonderful fact gave her new values, spread about her new mysteries. And
some of these mysteries Dion did not attempt to fathom at first. Perhaps
he felt that some silences of love are like certain ceremony with a
friend--a mark of the delicacy which is the sign-manual of the things
that endure. In the beginning of that honeymoon there was a beautiful
restraint which was surely of good augury for the future. Not all
the doors were set violently open, not all the rooms were ruthlessly
visited.

Dion found that he was able to reverence the woman who had given herself
to him more after he had received the gift than before. And this was
very wonderful to him, was even, somehow, perplexing. For Rosamund
had the royal way of bestowing. She was capable of refusal, but not of
half-measures or of niggardliness. There was something primitive in
her which spoke truth with a voice that was fearless; and yet that
very primitiveness seemed closely allied with her purity. Dion only
understood what that purity was when he was married to her. It was like
the radiant atmosphere of Greece to him. Had not Greece led him to it,
made him desire it with all that was best in his nature? Now he had
brought it to Greece. Actually, day after day, he trod the Acropolis
with Rosamund.

Greece had already, he believed, put out a hand and drawn them more
closely together.

"Love me, love the land I love."

Laughingly, yet half-anxiously too, Dion had said that to Rosamund when
they left Brindisi and set sail for Greece. With her usual sincerity she
had answered:

"I want to love it. Do you wish me to say more than that, to make
promises I may not be able to keep?"

"No," he had answered. "I only want truth from you." And after a moment
he had added, "I shall never want anything from you but your truth."

She had looked at him rather strangely, like one moved by conflicting
feelings, and after a slight hesitation she had said:

"Dion, do you realize all the meaning in those words of yours?"

"Of course I do."

"Then if you really mean them you must be one of the most daring of
human beings. But I shall try a compromise with you. I shall try to give
you my best truth, never my worst. You deserve that, I think. Indeed, I
know you do."

And he had left it to her. Was he not wise to do that? Already he
trusted her absolutely, as he had never thought to trust any one.

"I could face any storm with you," he once said to Rosamund.

Rosamund had wanted to love Greece, and from the first moment of seeing
the land she had loved it.

In the beginning of their stay she had scarcely been able to believe
that she was really in Athens. A great name had aroused in her
imagination a conception of a great city. The soft familiarity, the
almost rustic simplicity and intimacy, the absolutely unpretentious
brightness and homely cheerfulness of the small capital of this unique
land had surprised, had almost confused her.

"Is this really Athens?" she had said, wondering, as they had driven
into what seemed a village set in bright bareness, sparsely shaded here
and there by small pepper-trees.

And the question had persisted in her mind, had almost trembled upon
her lips, for two or three days. But then had come a mysterious change,
brought about, perhaps, by affection. Quickly she had learnt to love
Athens, and then she had the feeling that if it had been in any way
different from what it was she could not have loved it. Its very
smallness delighted her, and she would not permit its faults to be
mentioned in her presence. Once, when Dion said that it was a great pity
the Athenians did not plant more trees, and a greater pity they so often
lopped off branches from the few trees they had, she exclaimed:

"You mustn't run down my Athens. It likes to give itself to the sun
generously. It's grateful, as it well may be, for all the sun has done
for it. Look at the color of that marble."

And Dion looked at the honey color, and the wonderful reddish-gold, and,
laughing, said:

"Athens is the one faultless city, and the dogs tell us so every night
and all night long."

"Dogs always bark when the moon is up," she answered, with a
semi-humorous gravity.

"As they bark in Athens?" he queried.

"Yes, of course."

"If I am ever criticized," he asked, "will you be my defender?"

"I shan't hear you criticized."

"How do you know that?"

"I do know it," she said, looking at him with her honest brown eyes;
"nobody will criticize you when I am there."

He caught hold of her hand.

"And you? Don't you often criticize me silently? I'm sure you do. Why
did you marry me, Rosamund?"

They were sitting on the Acropolis when he put that question. It was
a shining day. The far-off seas gleamed. There was a golden pathway to
Aegina. The brilliant clearness, not European but Eastern, did not
make the great view spread out beneath and around them hard. Greece
lay wrapped in a mystery of sunlight, different from, yet scarcely less
magical than, the mystery of shadows and the moon. Rosamund looked out
on the glory. She had taken off her hat, and given her yellow hair
to the sunlight. Without any head-covering she always looked more
beautiful, and, to Dion, more Greek than when her hair was concealed.
He saw in her then more clearly than at other times the woman of all the
ages rather than the woman of an epoch subject to certain fashions.
As he looked at her now, resting on a block of warm marble above the
precipice which is dominated by the little temple of Athena Nike, he
wondered, with the concealed humility of the great lover, how it was
that she had ever chosen to give herself to him. He had sworn to marry
her. He had not been weak in his wooing, had not been one of those men
who will linger on indefinitely at a woman's feet, ready to submit to
unnumbered refusals. But now there rose up in the depths of him the cry,
"What am I?" and the answer, "Only a man like thousands of other men, in
no way remarkable, in no way more worthy than thousands of others of the
gift of great happiness."

Rosamund turned from the shining view. There was in her eyes an unusual
vagueness.

"Why did you?"

"Why did I marry you, Dion?"

"Yes. When I found you with your 'Paradise' I don't think you meant ever
to marry me."

"I always liked you. But at first I didn't think of you in that way."

"But you had known for ages before Burstal----"

"Yes, of course. I knew the day I sang at Mr. Darlington's, at that
party he gave to introduce me as a singer. I knew first from your
mother. She told me."

"My mother?"

"By the look she gave me when you introduced me to her."

"Was it an----How d'you mean?"

"I can scarcely explain. But it was a look that asked a great many
questions. And they wouldn't have been asked if you hadn't cared for me,
and if she hadn't known it."

"What did you think when you knew?"

"That it was kind of you to care for me."

"Kind?"

"Yes. I always feel that about people who like me very much."

"And did you just go on thinking me kind until that day at Burstal?"

"I suppose so. But I felt very much at home with you."

"I don't know whether that's a compliment to a man who's still young, or
not?"

"Nor do I. But that's just how it was."

He said nothing for a little while. When he spoke again it was with some
hesitation, and his manner was almost diffident.

"Rosamund, that day at Burstal, were you at all inclined to accept me?"

"Yes; I think, perhaps, I was. Why?"

"Sometimes I have fancied there was a moment when----"

He looked at her and then, for once, his eyes fell before hers almost
guiltily. They sat in silence for a moment. Behind them, on a bench set
in the shadow of a mighty wall, was a guardian of the Acropolis, a thin
brown man with very large ears sticking out from his head. He had been
dozing, but now stirred, shuffled his feet, and suddenly cleared his
throat. Then he sighed heavily.

"And if there was, why did you think it came, Dion?" said Rosamund
suddenly, with an almost startling swiftness of decision.

Dion reddened.

"Why don't you like to tell me?"

"Oh, well--things go through the mind without our wishing them to. You
must know that, Rosamund. They are often like absurd little intruders.
One kicks them out if one can."

"What kind of intruder did you kick out, or try to kick out, at
Burstal?"

She spoke half-laughingly, but half-challengingly.

He drew a little nearer to her.

"Sometimes I have fancied that perhaps, that day at Burstal, you
suddenly realized that love might be a more powerful upholder of life
than ambition ever could be."

"Sometimes? And you thought it first on the downs, or at any rate after
the concert?"

"I think I did."

"Do you realize," she said slowly, and as if with an effort, "that you
and I have never discussed my singing in 'Elijah'?"

"I know we never have."

"Let us do it now," she continued, still seeming to make a strong
effort.

"But why should we?"

"I want to. Didn't I sing well?"

"I thought you sang wonderfully well."

"Then what was it that went wrong? I've never understood."

"Why should you think anything went wrong? The critics said it was a
remarkable performance. You made a great effect."

"I believe I did. But I felt for the first time that day that I was out
of sympathy with my audience. And then"--she paused, but presently added
with a certain dryness--"I was never offered any engagement to sing in
oratorio after Burstal."

"I believe a good many people thought your talent would show at its best
in opera."

"I shall never go on the stage. The idea is hateful to me, and always
has been. Would you like me to sing on the stage?"