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Frederick Niecks - "Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician"

Justin Huntly McCarthy - "If I Were King"

Victor Hugo - "Han d'Islande"

Unknown - "The Bible, King James version, Book 13: 1 Chronicles"

In the Wilderness

R >> Robert Hichens >> In the Wilderness




Did Rosamund ever have such thoughts? Dion longed to ask her. Was she
sleeping perhaps now? She was lying very still. If they ever had a child
its coming would mark a great step onwards along the road, the closing
of a very beautiful chapter in their book of life. It would be over,
their loneliness in love, man and woman in solitude. Even the sexual tie
would be changed. All the world would be changed.

He lay flat on the ground, stretched out, his elbows firmly planted, his
chin in his palms, his face set towards the plain and the sea.

What he looked at seemed gently to chide him. There were such a
brightness and simplicity and such a delicious freedom from all
complication in this Grecian landscape edged by the wide frankness of
the sea that he felt reassured. Edging the mound there were wild aloes
and the wild oleander. A river intersected the plain which in many
places was tawny yellow. Along the river bank grew tall reeds, sedges
and rushes. Beyond the plain, and beyond the blue waters, rose the
Island of Euboea, and ranges of mountains, those mountains of Greece
which are so characteristic in their unpretentious bareness, which
neither overwhelm nor entice, but which are unfailingly delicate,
unfailing beautiful, quietly, almost gently, noble. In the distance,
when he turned his head, Dion could see the little Albanian village of
Marathon, a huddle of tiny houses far off under the hills. He looked at
it for a moment, then again looked out over the plain, rejoicing in
its emptiness. Along the sea edge the cattle were straying, but their
movements were almost imperceptible. Still they were living things and
drew Dion's eyes. The life in them sent out its message to the life in
him, and he earnestly watched them grazing. Their vague and ruminating
movements really emphasized the profound peace which lay around Rosamund
and him. To watch them thus was a savoring of peace. For every contented
animal is a bearer of peaceful tidings. In the Garden of Eden with the
Two there were happy animals. And Dion recalled the great battle which
had dyed red this serene wilderness, a battle which was great because
it had been gently sung, lifted up by the music of poets, set on high
by the lips of orators. He looked over the land and thought: "Here
Miltiades won the name which has resounded through history. To that
shore, where I see the cattle, the Persians were driven." And it
seemed to him that the battle of Marathon had been fought in order that
Rosamund and he, in the nineteenth century, might be drawn to this place
to meet the shining afternoon. Yes, it was fought for that, and to make
this place the more wonderful for them. It was their Garden of Eden
consecrated by History.

What a very small animal that was which had strayed away from its kind
over the tawny ground where surely there was nothing to feed upon! The
little dark body of it looked oddly detached as it moved along. And
now another animal was following it quickly. The arrival of the second
darkness, running, made Dion know that the first was human, the guardian
of the beasts, no doubt.

So Eden was invaded already! He smiled as he thought of the serpent. The
human being came on slowly, always moving in the direction of the mound,
and always accompanied by its attendant animal--a dog, of course. Soon
Dion knew that both were making for the mound. It occurred to him
that Rosamund was in the private room of him who was approaching, was
possibly sound asleep there.

"Rosamund!" he almost whispered.

There was no answer.

"Rosamund!" he murmured, looking upward to his roof, which was her
floor.

"Hush!" came down to him through the brushwood. "I'm willing it to come
to us."

"What--the guardian of the cattle?"

"Guardian of the ----! It's a child!"

"How do you know?"

"I do know. Now you're not to frighten it."

"Of course not!"

He lay very still, his chin in his palms, watching the on-comers. How
had she known? And then, seeing suddenly through her eyes, he knew that
of course it was a child, that it could not be anything else. All its
movements now proclaimed to him its childishness, and he watched it with
a sort of fascination.

For he had never seen Rosamund with a child. That would be for him a new
experience with something, perhaps, prophetic in it.

Child and animal approached steadily, keeping an undeviating course, and
presently Dion saw a very small, but sturdy, Greek boy of perhaps ten
years old, wearing a collarless shirt, open at a deep brown throat,
leggings of some thin material, boots, and a funny little patched brown
coat and pointed hood made all in one, and hanging down with a fulness
almost of skirts about the small determined legs. The accompanying dog
was a very sympathetic, blunt-nosed, round-headed, curly-coated type,
whose whiteness, which positively invited the stroking hand, was broken
by two great black blotches set all askew on the back, and by a black
patch which ringed the left eye and completely smothered the cocked-up
left ear. The child carried a stick, which nearly reached to his
shoulder, and which ended in a long and narrow crook. The happy dog,
like its master, had no collar.

When these two reached the foot of the tumulus they stood still and
stared upwards. The dog uttered a short gruff bark, looked at the boy,
wagged a fat tail, barked again, abruptly depressed the fore part of its
body till its chin was against the ground between its paws, then jumped
into the air with a sudden demeanor of ludicrously young, and rather
uncouth, waggishness, which made Dion laugh.

The small boy replied with a smile almost as sturdy as his legs, which
he now permitted to convey him with decisive firmness through the wild
aloes and oleanders to the summit of the tumulus. He stood before Dion,
holding his crooked staff tightly in his right hand, but his large dark
eyes were directed upwards. Evidently his attention was not to be
given to Dion. His dog, on the contrary, after a stare and two muffled
attempts at a menacing bark, came to make friends with Dion in a way
devoid of all dignity, full of curves, wrigglings, tail waggings and
grins which exposed rows of smiling teeth.

"Dion!" came Rosamund's voice from above.

"Yes?"

"Do show him the way up. He wants to come up."

Dion got up, took the little Greek's hand firmly, led him to the foot
of the ladder, and pointed to Rosamund who leaned from her brushwood
chamber and held out inviting hands, smiling, and looking at the child
with shining eyes. He understood that he was very much wanted, gravely
placed his staff on the ground, laid hold of the ladder, and slowly
clambered up, with the skirts of his coat sticking out behind him. His
dog set up a loud barking, scrambled at the ladder, and made desperate
efforts to follow him.

"Help him up, Dion!" came the commanding voice from above.

Dion seized the curly coat of the dog--picked up handfuls of dog. There
was a struggle. The dog made fierce motions as if swimming, and whined
in a thin and desperate soprano. Its body heaved upwards, its forepaws
clutched the edge of the brushwood floor, and it arrived.

"Bravo!" cried Rosamund, as she proceeded to settle down with her
guests. "But why don't I know Greek?"

"It doesn't matter," Dion murmured, standing with his hands on the
ladder. "You know their language."

Rosamund was sitting now, half-curled up, with her back against the
brushwood wall. Her light sun-helmet lay on the floor. In her ruffled
hair were caught two or three thin brown leaves, their brittle edges
curled inwards. The little boy, slightly smiling, yet essentially
serious, as are children tested by a great new experience, squatted
close to her and facing her, with one leg under him, the other leg
stretched out confidentially, as much as to say, "Here it is!" The dog
lay close by panting, smiling, showing as much tongue and teeth as
was caninely possible in the ardor of feeling tremendously uplifted,
important, one of the very few.

And Rosamund proceeded to entertain her guests.

What did she do? Sometimes, long afterwards in England, Dion, recalling
that day--a very memorable day in his life--asked himself the question.
And he could never remember very much. But he knew that Rosamund showed
him new aspects of tenderness and fun. What do women who love and
understand little boys do to put them at their ease, to break down their
small shynesses? Rosamund did absurd things with deep earnestness and
complete concentration. She invented games, played with twigs and straws
which she drew from the walls of her chamber. She changed the dog's
appearance by rearrangements of his ears, to which he submitted with
a slobbering ecstasy, gazing at her with yellow eyes which looked
flattened in his head. Turned quite back, their pink insides exposed
to view, the ears changed him into a brand-new dog, at which his master
stared with an amazement which soon was merged in gratification. With a
pocket-handkerchief she performed marvels of impersonation which the boy
watched with an almost severe intentness, even putting out his tongue
slowly, and developing a slight squint, when the magician rose to the
top of her powers. She conjured with a silver coin, and of course let
the child play with her watch. She had realized at a glance that those
things which would be considered as baby nonsense by an English boy of
ten, to this small dweller on the plain of Marathon were full of the
magic of the unknown. And at last:

"Throw me up an orange, Dion!" she cried. "I know there are two or three
left in the pannier."

Dion bent down eagerly, rummaged and found an orange.

"Here!" he said. "Catch!"

He threw it up. She caught it with elaboration to astonish the boy.

"What are you going to do?" asked Dion.

"Throw me up your pocket-knife and you'll see."

Again he threw and she caught, while the boy's mouth gaped.

"Now then!" cried Rosamund.

She set to work, and almost directly had introduced her astounded guest
of the Greek kingdom to the famous "Crossing the Channel" tragedy.

So great was the effect of this upon little Miltiades,--so they both
always called the boy when talking of him in after times,--that he began
to perspire, and drops of saliva fell from the corners of his small and
pouting mouth in imitation of the dreadfully human orange by which he
was confronted. Thereupon Rosamund threw off all ceremony and frankly
played the mother. She drew the boy, smiling, sideways to her, wiped his
mouth with her handkerchief, gently blew his small nose and gave him a
warm kiss.

"There!" she said.

And upon this the child made a remark.

Neither of them ever knew what it meant. It was long, and sounded
like an explanation. Having spoken, Miltiades suddenly looked shy. He
wriggled towards the top of the ladder. Dion thought that Rosamund would
try to stop him from leaving her, but she did not. On the contrary,
she drew up her legs and made way for him, carefully. The child deftly
descended, picked up his staff and turned. The dog, barking joyously,
had leaped after him, and now gamboled around him. For a moment the
child hesitated, and in that moment Dion popped the remains of their
lunch into his coat pockets; then slowly he walked to the side of the
tumulus by which he had come up. There he stood for two or three minutes
staring once more up at Rosamund. She waved a friendly hand to him,
boyishly, Dion thought. He smiled cautiously, then confidentially,
suddenly turned and bolted down the slope uttering little cries--and so
away once more to the far-off cattle on the old battlefield, followed by
his curly dog.

When Dion had watched him into the distance, beyond which lay the
shining glory of the sea, and looked up to Rosamund again, she was
pulling the little dry leaves from her undulating hair.

"I'm all brushwood," she said, "and I love it."

"So do I."

"I ought to have been born a shepherdess. Why do you look at me like
that?"

"Perhaps because I'm seeing a new girl who's got even more woman in her
than I knew till to-day."

"Most women are like that, Dion, when they get the chance."

"To think you knew all those tricks and never told me!"

"Help me down."

He stretched out his arms to her. When she was on the ground he still
held her for a moment.

"You darling!" he whispered. "Never shall I forget this day at Marathon,
the shining, the child, and you--you!"

They did not talk much on the long ride homeward. The heat was great,
but they were not afraid of it, for the shining fires of this land on
the edge of the east cherished and did not burn them. The white dust lay
deep on the road, and flew in light clouds from under the feet of their
horses as they rode slowly upwards, leaving the blue of their pastoral
behind them, and coming into the yellow of the pine woods. Later, as
they drew nearer to Athens, the ancient groves of the olives, touched
with a gentle solemnity, would give them greeting; the fig trees and
mulberry trees would be about them, and the long vineyards watched over
by the aristocratic cypress lifting its dark spire to the sun. But now
the kingdom of the pine trees joyously held them. They were in the happy
woods in which even to breathe was sheer happiness. Now and then they
pulled up and looked back to the crescent-shaped plain which held a
child instead of armies. They traced the course of the river marked
out by the reeds and sedges. They saw the tiny dark specks, which were
cattle grazing, with the wonder of blue beyond them. In these moments,
half-unconsciously, they were telling memory to lay in its provision
for the future. Perhaps they would never come back; never again would
Rosamund rest in her brushwood chamber, never again would Dion hear the
dry music above him, and feel the growth of his love, the urgency of
its progress just as he had felt them that day. They might be intensely
happy, but exactly the same happiness would probably not be theirs again
through all the years that were coming. The little boy and his dog had
doubtless gone out of their lives for ever. Their good-by to Marathon
might well be final. They looked back again and again, till the blue
of the sea was lost to them. Then they rode on, faster. The horses
knew they were going homeward, and showed a new liveliness, sharing the
friskiness of the little graceful trees about them. Now and then the
riders saw some dusty peasants--brown and sun-dried men wearing the
fustanella, and shoes with turned-up toes ornamented with big black
tassels; women with dingy handkerchiefs tied over their heads;
children who looked almost like the spawn of the sun in their healthy,
bright-eyed brownness. And these people had cheerful faces. Their rustic
lot seemed enviable. Who would not shed his sorrows under these pine
trees, in the country where the solitudes radiated happiness, and even
bareness was like music? Here was none of the heavy and exotic passion,
none of the lustrous and almost morbid romance of the true and distant
East, drowsy with voluptuous memories. That setting was not for
Rosamund. Here were a lightness, a purity and sweetness of Arcadia, and
people who looked both intelligent and simple.

At a turn of the road they met some Vlachs--rascally wanderers, lean as
greyhounds, chicken-stealers and robbers in the night, yet with a sort
of consecration of careless cheerfulness upon them. They called out.
In their cries there was the sound of a lively malice. Their brown feet
stirred up the dust and set it dancing in the sunshine, a symbol surely
of their wayward, unfettered spirits. A little way off, on a slope among
the trees, their dark tents could be partially seen.

"Lucky beggars!" murmured Dion, as he threw them a few small coins,
while Rosamund smiled at them and waved her hand in answer to their
greetings. "I believe it's the ideal life to dwell in the tents."

"It seems so to-day."

"Won't it to-morrow? Won't it when we are in London?"

"Perhaps more than ever then."

Was she gently evading an answer? They had reached the brow of the hill
and put their horses to a canter. The white dust settled over them. They
were like millers on horseback as they left the pine woods behind them.
But the touch of the dust was as the touch of nature upon their faces
and hands. They would not have been free of it as they rode towards
Athens, and came to the region of the vineyards, of the olive groves and
the cypresses. Now and then they passed ramshackle cafes made of boards
roughly nailed together anyhow, with a straggle of vine sprawling over
them, and the earth for a flooring. Tables were set out before them,
or in their shadows; a few bottles were visible within; on benches or
stools were grouped Greeks, old and young, busily talking, no doubt
about politics. Carts occasionally passed by the riders, sending out
dust to mingle with theirs. Turkeys gobbled at them, dogs barked in
front of one-storied houses. They saw peasants sitting sideways on
pattering donkeys, and now and then a man on horseback. By thin runlets
of water were women, chattering as they washed the clothes of their
households. Then again, the horses came into the bright and solitary
places where the cheerful loneliness of Greece held sway.

And so, at last they cantered into the outskirts of Athens when the
evening was falling. Another day had slipped from them. But both felt it
was a day which they had known very well, had realized with an unusual
fulness.

"It's been a day of days!" Dion said that evening.

And Rosamund nodded assent.

A child had been in that day, and, with a child's irresistible might,
had altered everything for them. Now Dion knew how Rosamund would be
with a child of her own, and Rosamund knew that Dion loved her more
deeply because he had seen her with a child. A little messenger had
come to them over the sun-dried plain of Marathon bearing a gift of
knowledge.

The next day they spent quietly. In the morning they visited the
National Museum, and in the late afternoon they returned to the
Acropolis.

In the Museum Rosamund was fascinated by the tombs. She, who always
seemed so remote from sorrow, who, to Dion, was the personification of
vitality and joyousness, was deeply moved by the record of death, by
the wonderfully restrained, and yet wonderfully frank, suggestion of the
grief of those who, centuries ago, had mingled their dust with the dust
of the relations, the lovers, the friends, whom they had mourned for.

"What a lesson this is for me!" she murmured at last, after standing for
a long while wrapped in silence and contemplation.

"Why for you, specially?" he asked.

She looked up at him. There were tears in her eyes. He believed she
was hesitating, undecided whether to let him into a new chamber of her
being, or whether to close a half-opened door against him.

"It's very difficult to submit, I think, for some of us," she answered,
after a pause, slowly. "Those old Greeks must have known how to do it."

"To submit to sorrow?"

"Yes, to a great sorrow. Such a thing is like an attack in the dark. If
I am attacked I want to strike back and hurt."

"But whom could you reasonably hurt on account of a death that came in
the course of nature? That's what you mean, isn't it?"

"Yes."

After a slight hesitation she said:

"Do you mean that you don't think we can hurt God?"

"I wonder," Dion answered.

"I don't. I know we can."

She looked again at the tomb before which they were standing. It showed
a woman seated and stretching out her right arm, which a woman friend
was touching. In the background was another, contemplative, woman and
a man wearing a chaplet of leaves, his hand lifted to his face. For
epitaph there was one word cut in marble.

"It means farewell, doesn't it?" asked Rosamund.

"Yes."

"Perhaps you'll smile, but I think these tombs are the most beautiful
things I have seen in Greece. It's a miracle--their lack of violence.
What a noble thing grief could be. That little simple word. It's great
to be able to give up the dearest thing with that one little word. But I
couldn't--I couldn't."

"How do you know?"

"I know, because I didn't."

She said nothing more on the subject that morning, but when they were
on the Acropolis waiting, as so often before, for the approach of the
evening, she returned to it. Evidently it was haunting her that day.

"I believe giving up nobly is a much finer thing than attaining nobly,"
she said. "And yet attaining wins all the applause, and giving up, if it
gets anything, only gets that ugly thing--pity."

"But is pity an ugly thing?" said Dion.

He had a little stone in his hand, and, as he spoke, he threw it gently
towards the precipice, taking care not to send it over the edge.

"I think I would rather have anything on earth from people than their
pity."

"Suppose I were to pity you because I loved you?"

He picked up another stone and held it in his hand.

"I should hate it."

He had lifted his hand for the throw, but he kept hold of the stone.

"What, pity that came straight out of love?"

"Any sort of pity."

"You must be very proud--much prouder than I am then. If I were unhappy
I should wish to have pity from you."

"Perhaps you have never been really unhappy."

Dion laid the stone down. He thought hard for a moment.

"Without any hope at all of a change back to happiness--no, actually I
never have."

"Ah, then you've never had to brace up and see if you could find a
strong voice to utter your 'farewell'!"

She spoke with firmness, a firmness that rang like true metal struck
with a hammer and giving back sincerity.

"That sounds tremendously Doric," he said.

His lips were smiling, but there was an almost surprised expression in
his eyes.

"Dion, do you know you're intuitive to-day?"

"Ah, your training--your training!"

"Didn't you say we should have to be Doric ourselves if----?"

"Come, Rosamund, it's time for the Parthenon."

Once more they went over the uneven ground to stand before its solemn
splendor.

"Shall we have learnt before we go?" said Dion.

"It's strange, but I think the tombs teach me more. They're more within
my reach. This is so tremendous that it's remote. Perhaps a man, or--or
a boy----"

She looked at him.

"A boy?"

"Yes."

He drew her down. She clasped her hands, that looked to him so capable
and so pure, round her knees.

"A boy? Go on, Rose."

"He might learn his lesson here, with a man to help him. The Parthenon's
tremendously masculine. Perhaps women have to learn from the gentleness
of those dear tombs."

Never before had she seemed to him so soft, so utterly soft of nature.

"You've been thinking a great deal to-day of our boy, haven't you?" he
said.

"Yes."

"Suppose we did have a boy and lost him?"

"Lost him?"

Her voice sounded suddenly almost hostile.

"Such a thing has happened to parents. It might happen to us."

"I don't believe it would happen to me," Rosamund said, with a sort of
curious, almost cold decision.

"But why not?"

"What made you think of such a thing?"

"I don't know. Perhaps it was because of what you said this morning
about grief, and then about bracing up and finding a firm voice to utter
one's 'farewell.'"

"You don't understand what a woman would feel who lost her child."

"Are you sure that you do?"

"Partly. Quite enough to----Don't let us speak about it any more."

"No. There's nothing more futile than imagining horrors that are never
coming upon us."

"I never do it," she said, with resolute cheerfulness. "But we shall
very soon have to say one 'farewell.'"

"To the Parthenon?"

"Yes."

"Say it to-night!"

She turned round to face him.

"To-night? Why?"

"For a little while."

A sudden happy idea had come to him. A shadow had fallen over her for
a moment. He wanted to drive it away, to set her again in the full
sunshine for which she was born, and in which, if he could have his
will, she should always dwell.

"You wanted to take me away somewhere."

"Yes. You must see a little more of Greece before we go home. Say your
'farewell,' Rosamund."

She did not know what was in his mind, but she obeyed him, and, looking
up at the great marble columns, glowing with honey-color and gold in the
afternoon light, she murmured:

"Farewell."

On the following day they left Athens and set out on the journey to
Olympia.



CHAPTER V

"Why are you bringing me to Olympia?"

That question, unuttered by her lips, was often in Rosamund's eyes as
they drew near to the green wilds of Elis. Of course they had always
meant to visit Olympia before they sailed away to England, but she knew
very well that Dion had some special purpose in his mind, and that it
was closely connected with his great love of her. She had understood
that on the Acropolis, and her "farewell" had been an act of submission
to his will not wholly unselfish. Her curiosity was awake.

What was the secret of Olympia?

They had gone by train to Patras, slept there, and thence rode
on horseback to Pyrgos through the vast vineyards of the
Peloponnesus--vineyards that stretched down to the sea and were dotted
with sentinel cypresses. The heat was much greater than it had been in
Athens. Enormous aloes hedged gardens from which came scents that seemed
warm. The sandy soil, turned up by the horses' feet, was hot to the
touch. The air quivered, and was shot with a music of insects faint but
pervasive.