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Lyndon Orr - "Famous Affinities of History (Complete)"

Archbishop Wake - "Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Volume 5, St. Paul"

Gilbert Parker - "The Right of Way, Volume 1."

Anthony Trollope - "The Golden Lion of Granpere"

In the Wilderness

R >> Robert Hichens >> In the Wilderness




Her eyes shone.

"I can see him already with a gun in his hand old enough to shoot
with you," she added. "We must bring him up to be a thorough little
sportsman; like that Greek boy Dirmikis."

They talked about Robin's future till dinner was over. Dion loved their
talk, but he could not help seeing that in Rosamund's forecast town life
held no place at all. In everything, or in almost everything, that
she said the country held pride of place. There was not one word about
Jenkins's gymnasium, or the Open Air Club with its swimming facilities,
or riding in the Park, or fencing at Bernardi's. Rosamund seemed tacitly
to assume that everything which was Doric was connected with country
life.

On the following morning she hastened out "to buy riding gaiters for
Robin." She had his "size" with her.

Not a word had been said about Dion's visit to Mrs. Clarke. Rosamund's
lack of all curiosity in regard to Mrs. Clarke and himself gave him the
measure of her faith in him. Few women, he thought, would be able
to trust a man so completely. And this trust was the more remarkable
because he felt positive that Rosamund distrusted Mrs. Clarke. She had
never said so, but he considered that by her conduct she had proved her
distrust.

It was a great virtue in Rosamund, that power she had to trust where
trust was deserved.

Dear, kind Job Crickendon wrote that Master Robin could ride his pony,
Jane, and welcome. The letter arrived on Saturday. Rosamund read it
aloud to Dion.

"The people about here are the dearest people I've ever come across,"
she said. "So different from people in London."

"Why, what's the matter with people in London?" asked Dion.

"Oh, I don't know; they're more artificial. They think so much about
clothes, and hats, and the way their hair's done."

"The men!"

"I was talking of the women."

"But is Job Crickendon a woman?"

"Don't be absurd, Dion. You know what I mean. The country brings out the
best that is in people."

"That's a bad look out for me, who've lived nearly all my life in
London."

"You would be yourself anywhere. Now about Robin. I've got the gaiters.
They're not exactly riding gaiters--they don't make them for such little
boys--but they'll do beautifully. But I don't want to tell Robin
till Monday morning. You see he's got a very exciting day before him
to-morrow, and I think to know about Monday on top of it might be almost
too much for him."

"But what excitement is there to-morrow?"

She looked at him reproachfully.

"Mr. Thrush!"

"Oh, of course. And is Robin coming to the Cathedral?"

"Yes, for once. It's a terribly long service for a child, but Robin
would break his heart if he didn't see Mr. Thrush walk in the procession
for the first time."

"Then we won't tell him till Monday morning. I'll hire a dog-cart and we
can all drive out together."

Again she gave him the tender look, but she did not then explain what it
meant.

That evening they dined with Canon Wilton, who had a surprise in store
for them. Esme Darlington had come down to stay with him over Sunday,
and to have a glimpse of his dear young friends in Little Cloisters.

The dinner was a delightful one. Mr. Darlington was benignly talkative
and full of kindly gossip; Canon Wilton almost beamed upon his guests;
after dinner Rosamund sang song after song while the three men listened
and looked. She sang her very best for them, and when she was winding
a lace shawl about her hair preparatory to the little walk home, Canon
Wilton thanked her in a way that brought the blood to her cheeks.

"You've made me very happy to-night," he said finally. And his strong
bass voice was softer than usual.

"I'm glad."

"Not only by your singing," he added.

She looked at him inquiringly. His eyes had gone to Dion.

"Not only by that."

And then he spoke almost in a murmur to her.

"He's come back worth it," he said. "Good night. God bless you both."

The following day was made memorable by the "installation" of Mr. Thrush
as a verger of Welsley Cathedral.

The Cathedral was not specially crowded for the occasion, but there was
a very fair congregation when Rosamund, Dion and Robin (in a sailor suit
with wide blue trousers) walked in together through the archway in the
rood-screen. One of the old established vergers, a lordly person with
a "presence" and the air of a high dignitary, met them as they stepped
into the choir, and wanted to put them into stalls; but Rosamund begged
for seats in a pew just beyond the lectern, facing the doorway by which
the procession came into the choir.

"Robin would be swallowed up in a stall," she whispered to Dion.

And they both looked down at the little chap tenderly, and met his blue
eyes turned confidingly, yet almost anxiously too, up to them. He was
wondering about all this whispering with the verger, and hoping that
nothing had happened to Mr. Thrush.

They found perfect seats in a pew just beyond the deanery stalls. Far
up in the distance above them one bell, the five minutes' bell, was
chiming. Its voice recalled to Rosamund the "ping-ping" of the bell
of St. Mary's Church which had welcomed her in the fog. How much had
happened since then! Robin was nestling against her. He sat between her
and his father, and was holding his father's hand. By dividing Dion from
her he united her with Dion. She thought of the mystery of the Trinity,
and then of their mystery, the mystery of father, mother and child.
To-day she felt very happy, and happy in an unusual way. In her
happiness she know that, in a sort of under way, she had almost dreaded
Dion's return. She had been so peacefully content, so truly at rest and
deeply serene in the life at Welsley with Robin. In her own heart she
could not deny that she had loved having her Robin all to herself;
and she had loved, too, the long hours of solitude during which,
in day-dreams, she had lived the religious life. A great peace had
enveloped those months at Welsley. In them she had mysteriously grown
into a closer relation with her little son. She had often felt in those
months that this mysterious nearness could never have become quite what
it had become to her unless she had been left alone with Robin. It was
their solitude which had enabled her to concentrate wholly on Robin, and
it was surely this exclusive concentration on Robin which had drawn him
so very close to her. All the springs of his love had flowed towards
her.

She had been just a wee bit frightened about Dion's return.

And that was why at this moment, when the five minutes' bell was
ringing, she felt so happy. For Dion's return had not made any
difference; or, if it had made a difference, she did not actively regret
it. The child's new adoration of his father had made her care more for
Dion, and even more for Robin; for she felt that Robin was unconsciously
loving in his father a strength and a nobility which were new in Dion,
which had been born far away across the sea. War destroys, and all the
time war is destroying it is creating. Robin was holding a little bit of
what the South African War had created as he held his father's hand. For
are not the profound truths of the soul conveyed through all its temple?

"Happiness is a mystery," thought Rosamund.

And then she silently thanked God that this mystery was within herself,
and that she felt it in Robin and in Dion.

She looked down at her little son, and as she met his soft and yet
ardent eyes,--full of innocent anxiety, and almost of awe, about Mr.
Thrush,--she blessed the day when she had decided to marry Dion, when
she had renounced certain dreams, when she had taken the advice of the
man who was now her friend and had resolved to tread that path of life
in which she could have a companion.

Her companion had given her another companion. In the old gray
Cathedral, full of the silent voices of men who had prayed and been
gathered to their rest long since, Rosamund looked down the way of
happiness, and she could not see its end.

The five minutes' bell stopped and Robin sat up very straight in the
pew. The Bishop's wife proceeded to her stall with a friend. Robin
stared reverently, alert for the tribute to Mr. Thrush. Miss Piper
glided in sideways, holding her head down as if she were searching for
a dropped pin on the pavement. She, too, was an acquaintance of Robin's,
and he whispered to his mother:

"Miss Piper's come to see Mr. Thrush."

"Yes, darling."

What a darling he was in his anxiety for his old friend! She looked at
the freckles on the bridge of his little nose and longed to kiss them.
This was without doubt the most wonderful day in Robin's life so far.
She looked ahead and saw how many wonderful days for Robin! And over his
fair hair she glanced at Dion, and she felt Dion's thought hand in hand
with hers.

A long sigh came from the organ, and then Mr. Dickinson was at work
preluding Mr. Thrush. Distant steps sounded on the pavement behind
the choir screen coming from some hidden place at the east end of the
Cathedral. The congregation stood up. All this, in Robin's mind, was
for Mr. Thrush. Still holding his father's hand tightly he joined in the
congregation's movement. The solemnly pacing steps drew nearer. Robin
felt very small, and the pew seemed very deep to him now that he was
standing up. There was a fat red footstool by his left leg. He peeped at
his father and whispered:

"May I, Fa?"

Dion bent down, took him under the arms and lifted him gently on to the
footstool just as the vergers appeared with their wands, walking nobly
at the head of the procession.

At Welsley the ordinary vergers did not march up the choir to the return
stalls, but divided and formed up in two lines at the entrance, making
a dignified avenue down which the choristers and the clergy passed with
calm insouciance into the full view of the waiting congregation. Only
two picked men, with wands of silver, preceded the dignitaries to their
massive stalls. Mr. Thrush was--though not in Robin's eyes--an
ordinary verger. He would not therefore penetrate into the choir. But,
mercifully, he with one other had been placed in the forefront of the
procession. He led the way, and Robin and his parents had a full and
satisfying view of him as the procession curved round and made for the
screen. In his dark and flowing robe he came on majestical, holding
his wand quite perfectly, and looking not merely self-possessed but--as
Rosamund afterwards put it--"almost uplifted."

Robin began to breathe hard as he gazed. From Mr. Thrush's shoulders the
robe swung with his lordly movements. He reached the entrance. It seemed
as if nothing could prevent him from floating on, in all the pride and
dignity of his new office, to the very steps of the Dean's stall. But
discipline held him. He stood aside; he came to rest with his wand
before him; he let the procession pass by, and then, almost mystically,
he evaporated with his brother vergers.

Rosamund sent a quick look to Dion, a look of subdued and yet bright
triumph. Then she glanced down at Robin. She had been scarcely less
excited, less strung up, than he. But she had seen the fruit of her
rehearsals and now she was satisfied. Robin, she saw, was more than
satisfied. His eyes were round with the glory of it all.

That was the happiest Sunday Dion had ever spent, and it was fated to
close in a happiness welling up out of the very deeps of the heart.

Canon Wilton and Esme Darlington came in to tea, and Mr. Thrush was
entertained at a sumptuous repast in the nursery "between the services."
Robin presided at it with anxious rapture, being now just a little in
awe of his faithful old friend. His nurse, who approved of Mr. Thrush,
and was much impressed by the fact that after two interviews with the
Dean he had been appointed to a post in the Cathedral, sat down to it
too; and Rosamund and Dion looked in to congratulate Mr. Thrush, and to
tell him how delighted they were with his bearing in the procession
and his delicately adroit manipulation of his wand. Mr. Thrush received
their earnest congratulations with the quiet dignity of one who felt
that they did not spring from exaggeration of sentiment. Like all great
artists he knew when he had done well. But when Rosamund and Dion were
about to retire, and to leave him with Robin and the nurse to the tea
and well-buttered toast, he suddenly emerged into an emotion which did
him credit.

"Madame!" He said to Rosamund, in a rather hoarse and tremulous voice.

"Now don't trouble to get up again, dear Mr. Thrush. Yes, what is it?"

Mr. Thrush looked down steadily at the "round" which glistened on his
plate. Something fell upon it.

"Oh, Mr. Thrush----!" began Robin, and paused in dismay, looking up at
his mother.

"Madame," said Mr. Thrush again, still looking at the "round," "I
haven't felt as I do now since I stood behind my counter just off
Hanover Square, respected. Yes," he said, and his old voice quavered
upwards, gaining in strength, "respected by all who knew me. _She_
was with me then, and now she isn't. But I feel--I feel--I'm respected
again."

Something else fell upon the toast.

"And it's all your doing, madam. I--all I can say is that I--all I can
say----" His voice failed.

Rosamund put her hand on his shoulder.

"There, Mr. Thrush, there! I know, I know just how it is."

"Madame," said Mr. Thrush, with quavering emphasis, "one can depend upon
you, a man can depend upon you. What you undertake you carry through,
even if it's only the putting on his feet of--of--I never thought to be
a verger, never. I never could have looked up to such a thing but for
you. But Mr. Dean he said to me, 'Mr. Thrush, when Mrs. Leith speaks up
for a man, even an archbishop has to listen.'"

"Thank you, Mr. Thrush. Robin, give Mr. Thrush the brown sugar. He
always likes brown sugar in his tea."

"It's more nourishing, madam," said Mr. Thrush, with a sudden change
from emotion to quiet self-confidence. "It does more work for the
stomach. A chemist knows."

"Dear old man!" said Rosamund, when she and Dion were outside in the
passage. "To say all that before nurse--it was truly generous."

And she frankly wiped her eyes. A moment later she added:

"I pray he doesn't fall back into his little failing!"

She looked at Dion interrogatively. He looked at her, understanding, he
believed, the inquiry in her eyes. Before he could say anything the kind
and careful voice of Mr. Darlington was heard below, asking:

"Is Mrs. Dion Leith at home?"

Mr. Darlington was delighted with Little Cloisters. He said it had a
"flavor which was quite unique," and was so enthusiastic that Rosamund
became almost excited. Dion saw that she counted Mr. Darlington as an
ally. When Mr. Darlington's praises sounded she could not refrain from
glancing at her husband, and when at length their guests got up to
go "with great reluctance," she begged them to come and dine on the
following night.

Mr. Darlington raised his ragged eyebrows and looked at Canon Wilton.

"I'm by way of going back to town to-morrow afternoon," he began
tentatively.

"Stay another night and let us accept," said Canon Wilton heartily.

"But I'm dining with dear Lavinia Berkhamstead, one of my oldest
friends. It's not a set dinner, but I should hardly like--"

"For once!" pleaded Rosamund.

Mr. Darlington wavered. He looked round the room and then at Rosamund
and Dion.

"It's most attractive here," he murmured, "and Lady Berkhamstead lives
in the Cromwell Road, at the far end. I wonder--"

"It's settled!" Rosamund exclaimed. "Dinner at half-past seven. We keep
early hours here, and Dion goes shooting to-morrow with Robin and may
get sleepy towards ten o'clock."

After explanations about Robin, Mr. Darlington gracefully yielded. He
would wire to dear Lavinia Berkhamstead and explain matters.

As he and Canon Wilton walked back to the Canon's house he said;

"What dear people those are!"

"Yes, indeed," said the Canon.

"Happiness has brought out the very best in them both. Leith is a fine
young fellow, and she, of course, is unique, a piece of radiance, as her
beautiful mother was. It does one good to see such a happy household."

He gently glowed, and presently added:

"You and I, dear Canon, have missed something."

After a moment the Canon's strong voice came gravely out of the winter
darkness:

"You think great happiness the noblest education?"

Mr. Darlington began to pull his beard.

"You mean, my dear Wilton----?"

"Do you think the education of happiness is the education most likely to
bring out the greatest possibilities of the soul?"

This was the sort of very definite question that Mr. Darlington
preferred to get away from if possible, and he was just preparing to
"hedge," when, fortunately, they ran into the Dean, and the conversation
deviated to a discussion concerning the effect the pursuit of scientific
research was likely to have upon religious belief.

After supper that evening--supper instead of dinner on Sundays was the
general rule in Welsley--Dion lit his pipe. It had been a very happy
day. He wished the happiness to last till sleep came to Rosamund and
to him; nevertheless he was resolved to take a risk, and to take it now
before they went to bed, while they still had two quiet hours before
them. He looked at Rosamund and reluctance surged up in him, but he beat
it back. Something told him that he had been allowed to come back from
South Africa in order that he might build firm foundations. The perfect
family life must be set upon rock. He meant to get through to the rock
if possible. Rosamund and he were beginning again. Now surely was the
day of salvation if he played the man, the man instead of merely the
lover.

"This has been one of the happiest days of my life," he said.

He was standing by the fire. Rosamund was sitting on a low chair doing
some embroidery. Gold thread gleamed against a rough cream-colored
ground in her capable hands.

"I'm so thankful you like Welsley," she said.

"Won't you hate leaving Welsley?" he asked.

Rosamund went on quietly working for a moment. Perhaps she bent a little
lower over the embroidery.

"I've made a great many friends here," she said at length, "and----"

She paused.

"Yes--do tell me, Rose."

"There's something here that I care for very much."

"Is it the atmosphere of religion? There's a great deal here that
suggests the religious life."

"Yes; it's what I care for."

"I was almost afraid of meeting you here when I came back, Rose. I
remembered what you had once told me, that you had had a great longing
to enter the religious life. I was half afraid that, living here all
alone with Robin, you might have become--I don't know exactly how to
put it--become cloistral. I didn't want to find you a sort of nun when I
came back."

He spoke with a gentle lightness.

"It might have been so, mightn't it?"

She remembered her dreams in the walled-in garden almost guiltily.

"No," she said steadily--and as she spoke she felt as if she were firmly
putting those dreams behind her forever. "Motherhood changes a woman
more than men can ever know."

"I--I know it's all right. Then you won't hate me for taking you both
back to Little Market Street in a few days?"

He saw the color deepen in her face. For an instant she went on working.
Then she put the work down, sat back in the low chair, and looked up at
him.

"No, of course we must go back. And I was very happy in Little Market
Street."

And then quickly, before he could say anything, she began to recall
the pleasant details of their life in Westminster, dwelling upon every
household joy, and everything that though "Londony" had been delightful.
Having conquered, with an effort which had cost her more than even Dion
knew, a terrible reluctance she gave herself to her own generous impulse
with enthusiasm. Rosamund could not do things by halves. She might
obstinately refrain from treading a path, but if once she had set her
feet on it she hurried eagerly along it. Something to-night had made her
decide on treading the path of unselfishness, of generosity. When Dion
lit his pipe she had not known she was going to tread it. It seemed to
her almost as if she had found herself upon the path without knowing how
she had got there. Now without hesitation she went forward.

"It was delightful in Westminster," she concluded, "and it will be
delightful there again."

"And all your friends here? And Mr. Thrush?"

"I don't know what Mr. Thrush will do," she said, with a change to deep
gravity.

The two lines showed in her pure forehead.

"I'm so afraid that without me he will fall back. But perhaps I can run
down now and then just for the day to keep him up to his promise, poor
dear old man."

"And your friends?"

"Oh, well--of course I shall miss them. But I suppose there is always
something to miss. There must be a crumpled rose leaf. I am far more
fortunate than almost any woman I know."

Dion put down his pipe.

"I simply can't do it," he said.

"What?"

"Take you away from here. It seems your right place. You love it; Robin
loves it. What's to be done? Shall I run up and down?"

"You can't. It's too far."

"I have to read the papers somewhere. Why not in the train?"

"Three hours or more! It's impossible. If only Welsley were nearer
London! But, then, it wouldn't be Welsley."

"Now I know you'll go I can't take you away."

"Did you--what did you think I should do?"

"How could I tell?"

He sat down and took her hands.

"Rose, you've made this the happiest day of my life."

"Do you mean because----?"

She stopped. Her face became very grave, almost severe. She looked at
him, but he felt that she was really looking inward upon herself. When
at last he let go her hands she said:

"Dion, you are very different from what you were when you went to the
war. If I seem different, too, it's because of that, I think."

"War changes women, perhaps, as well as men," he said tenderly.

They sat by the fire in the quiet old room and talked of the future
and of all the stages of Robin: as schoolboy, as youth, as budding
undergraduate, as man.

"Perhaps he'll be a soldier-man as his father has been," said Rosamund.

"Do you wish it?"

She looked at him steadily for a moment. Then she said:

"Yes, if it helps him as I think it has helped you. I expect when men go
to fight for their country they go, perhaps without knowing it, to fight
just for themselves."

"I believe everything we do for others, without any thought of
ourselves, we do for ourselves," he said, very seriously.

"Altruism! But then I ought to live in London for you, and you in
Welsley for me."

They both laughed. Nothing had been absolutely decided; and yet it
seemed as if through that laughter a decision had been reached about
everything really important.



CHAPTER IX

A dogcart from Harrington's had been ordered to be "round" the next
day at noon. Dion had decided against a long day's shooting on Robin's
account. He must not tire the little chap. In truth it would be
impossible to take the shooting seriously, with Robin there all the
time, clinging on to Jane and having to be looked after.

"It's going to be Robin's day," Dion said the next morning. "When are
you going to tell him?"

"Directly after breakfast. By the way, Dion,"--she spoke carelessly, and
was opening a letter while she spoke,--"I'm not coming."

"Oh, but you must!"

"No; I'll stay quietly here. I have lots of things to do."

"But Robin's first day as a sportsman!"

"He isn't going to shoot," she said with a mother's smile.

"Why won't you come? You've got some very special reason."

"Perhaps I have, but I'm not going to tell it. Women aren't wanted
everywhere. Sometimes a couple of men like to be alone."

"Robin's a man now?"

"Yes, a little man. I do hope the gaiters will fit him. I haven't dared
to try them on yet. And I've got him the dearest little whip you ever
saw."

"Jane will have to look to her paces. I'm sorry you're not coming,
Rose."

But he did not try to persuade her. He believed that she had a very
sweet reason behind her abstention. She had had Robin all to herself for
many months; perhaps she thought the father ought to have his turn now,
perhaps to-day she was handing over her little son to his father for the
education which always comes from a man. Her sudden unselfishness--Dion
believed it was that--touched him to the heart. But it made him long to
do something, many things, for her.

"I'm determined that you and Welsley shan't part from each other
forever," he said. "We'll hit on some compromise. This house is on our
hands, anyhow, till the spring."

"Perhaps we could sublet it," said Rosamund, trying to speak with brisk
cheerfulness.

"We'll talk it over again to-night."

"And now for Robin's gaiters!"

They fitted perfectly; "miraculously" was Rosamund's word for the way
they fitted.

"His legs might a-been poured into them almost, a-dear," was nurse's
admirably descriptive comment on the general effect produced.

Robin looked at his legs with deep solemnity. When the great project
for this day of days had been broken to him he had fallen upon awe. His
prattling ardors had subsided, stilled by a greater joy than any that
had called them forth in his complex past of a child. Now he gazed at
his legs, which were stretched out at right angles to his body on a
nursery chair, as if they were not his. Then he looked up at his mother,
his father, nurse; then once more down at his legs. His eyes were
inquiring. They seemed to say, "Can it be?"