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In the Wilderness

R >> Robert Hichens >> In the Wilderness








BOOK II -- ECHO



CHAPTER I

Robin, whose other name was Gabriel, arrived at the "little house," of
which Rosamund had spoken to Dion upon the hill of Drouva, early in the
following year, on the last night of February to be exact. For a long
time before his coming his future home had been subtly permeated by an
atmosphere of expectancy.

No. 5 Little Market Street was in Westminster, not far from the river
and the Houses of Parliament, yet in a street which looked almost
remote, and which was often very quiet although close to great arteries
of life. Dion sometimes thought it almost too dusky a setting for his
Rosamund, but it was she who had chosen it, and they had both become
quickly fond of it. It was a house with white paneling, graceful
ceilings and carved fireplaces, and a shallow staircase of oak. There
was a tiny but welcoming hall, and the landing on the first floor
suggested potpourri, chintz-covered settees, and little curtains of
chintz moved by a country wind coming through open windows. There were,
in fact, chintz-covered settees, and there was potpourri. Rosamund had
taken care about that; she had also taken care about many other little
things which most London housewives, perhaps, think unworthy of their
attention. Every day, for instance, she burnt lavender about the house,
and watched the sweet smoke in tiny wreaths curling up from the small
shovel, as she gently moved it to and fro, with a half smile of what she
called "rustic satisfaction." She laid lavender in the cupboards and in
the chests of drawers, and, when she bought flowers, chose by preference
cottage garden flowers, if she could get them, sweet williams, pansies,
pinks, wallflowers, white violets, stocks, Canterbury bells. Sometimes
she came home with wild flowers, and had once given a little dinner
with foxgloves for a table decoration. An orchid, a gardenia, even a
hyacinth, was never to be seen in the little house. Rosamund confessed
that hyacinths had a lovely name, and that they suggested spring, but
she added that they smelt as if they had always lived in hothouses, and
were quite ready to be friends with gardenias.

She opened her windows. In this she was almost too rigorous for her
maid-servants, who nevertheless adored her. "Plenty of warmth but plenty
of air," was her prescription for a comfortable and healthy house, "and
not too much or too many of anything." Dust, of course, was not to be
known of in her dwelling, but "blacks" were accepted with a certain
resignation as a natural chastening and a message from London.
"They aren't our fault, Annie," she had been known to observe to the
housemaid. "And dust can't be anything else, however you look at it, can
it?" And Annie said, "Well, no, ma'am!" and, when she came to think of
it, felt she had not been a liar in the moment of speaking.

Rosamund never "splashed," or tried to make a show in her house, and
she was very careful never to exceed their sufficient, but not large,
income; but the ordinary things, those things which of necessity come
into the scheme of everyday life, were always of the very best when she
provided them. Dion declared, and really believed, perhaps with reason,
that no tea was so fragrant, no bread and butter so delicious, no toast
so crisp, as theirs; no other linen felt so cool and fresh to the body
as the linen on the beds of the little house; no other silver glittered
so brightly as the silver on their round breakfast-table; no other
little white window curtains in London managed to look so perennially
fresh, and almost blithe, as the curtains which hung at their windows.
Rosamund and Annie might have conversations together on the subject of
"blacks," but Dion never saw any of these distressing visitants.
The mere thought of Rosamund would surely keep them at a more than
respectful distance.

She proved to be a mistress of detail, and a housekeeper whose
enthusiasm was matched by her competence. At first Dion had been rather
surprised when he followed from afar, as is becoming in a man, this
development. Before they settled down in London he had seen in Rosamund
the enthusiastic artist, the joyous traveler, the good comrade, the gay
sportswoman touched with Amazonian glories; he had known in her the deep
lover of pure beauty; he had divined in her something else, a little
strange, a little remote, the girl to whom the "Paradiso" was a
door opening into dreamland, the girl who escaped sometimes almost
mysteriously into regions he knew nothing of; but he had not seen in her
one capable of absolutely reveling in the humdrum. Evidently, then, he
had not grasped the full meaning of a genuine _joie de vivre_.

To everything she did Rosamund brought zest. She kept house as she sang
"The heart ever faithful," holding nothing back. Everything must be
right if she could get it right; and the husband got the benefit,
incidentally. Now and then Dion found himself mentally murmuring that
word. A great love will do such things unreasonably. For Rosamund's
_joie de vivre_, that gift of the gods, caused her to love and rejoice
in a thing for the thing's own sake, as it seemed, rather than for the
sake of some one, any one, who was eventually to gain by the thing.
Thus she cared for her little house with a sort of joyous devotion and
energy, but because it was "my little house" and deserved every care
she could give it. Rather as she had spoken of the small olive tree on
Drouva, of the Hermes of Olympia, even of Athens, she spoke of it, with
a sort of protective affection, as if she thought of it as a living
thing confided to her keeping. She possessed a faculty not very common
in women, a delight in doing a thing for its own sake, rather than for
the sake of some human being--perhaps a man. If she boiled an egg--she
went to the kitchen and did this sometimes--she seemed personally
interested in the egg, and keenly anxious to do the best by it; the
boiling must be a pleasure to her, but also to the egg, and it must,
if possible, be supremely well done. As the cook once said, after a
culinary effort by Rosamund, "I never seen a lady care for cooking and
all such-like as she done. If she as much as plucked a fowl, you'd swear
she loved every feather of it. And as to a roast, she couldn't hardly
seem to set more store by it if it was her own husband."

Such a spirit naturally made for comfort in a house, and Dion had never
before been so comfortable. Nevertheless--and he knew it with a keen
savoring of appreciation--there was a Spartan touch to be felt in the
little house. Comfort walked hand in hand with Rosamund, but so did
simplicity; she was what the maids called "particular," but she was not
luxurious; she even disliked luxury, connecting it with superfluity,
for which she had a feeling amounting almost to repulsion. "I detest the
sensation of sinking down in _things_," was a favorite saying of hers;
and the way she lived proved that she spoke the sheer truth.

All through the house, and all through the way of life in it, there
prevailed a "note" of simplicity, even of plainness. The odd thing,
perhaps, was that it pleased almost every one who visited the young
couple. A certain well-known man, noted as a Sybarite, clever, decadent
and sought after, once got into the house, he pretended by stealth,
and spent half an hour there in conversation with Rosamund. He came way
"acutely conscious of my profound vulgarity," as he explained later to
various friends. "Her house revealed to me the hideous fact that all the
best houses in London smack of cocotte-try; the trail of cushions and
liqueurs is over them all. Mrs. Leith's house is a vestal, and its lamp
is always trimmed." Daventry's comment on this was: "Trimmed--yes, but
trimmings--no!"

Even Esme Darlington highly approved of the "charming sobriety of No. 5
Little Market Street," although he had had no hand in its preparation,
no voice in the deciding of its colors, its stuffs, its rugs, or its
stair-rods. He was even heard to declare that "our dear Rosamund is
almost the only woman I know who has the precious instinct of reticence;
an instinct denied, by the way, even to that delightful and marvelous
creature Elizabeth Browning--_requiescat_."

The "charming sobriety" was shown in various ways; in a lack of those
enormous cushions which most women either love, or think necessary, in
all sitting-rooms; in the comparative smallness of such sofas as were to
be seen; in the moderation of depth in arm-chairs, and in the complete
absence of footstools. Then the binding of the many books, scattered
about here and there, and ranged on shelves, was "quiet"; there was no
scarlet and gold, or bright blue and gold; pictures were good but few;
not many rugs lay on the polished wooden floors, and there was no
litter of ornaments or bibelots on cabinets or tables. A couple of small
statuettes, copies of bronzes in the Naples Museum, and some bits of
blue-and-white china made their pleasant effect the more easily because
they had not to fight against an army of rivals. There was some good
early English glass in the small dining-room, and a few fine specimens
of luster ware made a quiet show in Dion's little den. Apart from the
white curtains, and outer curtains of heavier material, which hung at
all the windows, there were no "draperies." Overmantels, "cosy-corners,"
flung Indian shawls, "pieces" snatched from bazaars, and "carelessly"
hung over pedestals and divans found no favor in Rosamund's eyes.
There was a good deal of homely chintz about which lit up the rather
old-fashioned rooms, and colors throughout the house were rather soft
than hard, were never emphatic or designed to startle or impress.

Rosamund, indeed, was by far the most vivid thing in the house, and
some people--not males--said she had taken care to supply for herself
a background which would "throw her up." These people, if they believed
what they said, did not know her.

She had on the first floor a little sitting-room all to herself; in this
were now to be found the books which had been in her bedroom in Great
Cumberland Place; the charwoman's black tray with the cabbage rose,
the mug from Greenwich, the flesh-colored vase, the china cow, the toy
trombone, and other souvenirs of her girlhood to which Rosamund "held."
On the brass-railed shelf of the writing-table stood a fine photogravure
of the Hermes of Olympia with little Dionysos on his arm. Very often,
many times every day, Rosamund looked up at Hermes and the Child from
account books, letters or notes, and then the green dream of Elis fell
about her softly again; and sometimes she gazed beyond the Hermes, but
instead of the wall of the chamber she saw, set in an oblong frame, and
bathed in green twilight, a bit of the world of Pan, with a branch of
wild olive flickering across the foreground; or, now and then, she saw
a falling star, dropping from its place in the sky down towards a green
wilderness, and carrying a wish from her with it, a wish that was surely
soon to be granted. Her life in the little house had been a happy life
hitherto, but--she looked again at the little Dionysos on the arm of
Hermes, nestling against his shoulder--how much happier it was going to
be, how much happier! She was not surprised, for deep in her heart she
always expected happiness.

People had been delightful to her and to Dion. Indeed, they had flocked
to the small green door (the Elis door) of 5 Little Market Street in
almost embarrassing numbers. That was partly Mr. Darlington's fault.
Naturally Rosamund's and Bruce Evelin's friends came; and of course
Dion's relations and friends came. That would really have been enough.
Rosamund enjoyed, but was not at all "mad about," society, and had no
wish to give up the greater part of her time to paying calls. But
Mr. Darlington could not forbear from kind efforts on behalf of his
delightful young friends, that gifted and beautiful creature Rosamund
Leith, and her pleasant young husband. He, who found time for
everything, found time to give more than one "little party, just a few
friends, no more," specially for them; and the end of it was that
they found themselves acquainted with almost too many interesting and
delightful people.

At first, too, Rosamund continued to sing at concerts, but at the end of
July, after their return from Greece, when the London season closed,
she gave up doing so for the time, and accepted no engagements for the
autumn. Esme Darlington was rather distressed. He worked very hard in
the arts himself, and, having "launched" Rosamund, he expected great
things of her, and wished her to go forward from success to success.
Besides "the money would surely come in very handy" to two young
people as yet only moderately well off. He did not quite understand the
situation. Of course he realized that in time young married people
might have home interests, home claims upon them which might necessitate
certain changes of procedure. The day might come--he sincerely hoped it
would--when a new glory, possibly even more than one, would be added to
the delightful Rosamund's crown; but in the meanwhile surely the autumn
concerts need not be neglected. He had heard no hint as yet of any--h'm,
ha! He stroked his carefully careless beard. But he had left town in
August with his curiosity unsatisfied, leaving Rosamund and Dion behind
him. They had had their holiday, and had stayed steadily on in Little
Market Street through the summer, taking Saturday to Monday runs into
the country; more than once to the seacoast of Kent, where Bruce Evelin
and Beatrice were staying, and once to Worcestershire to Dion's mother,
who had taken a cottage there close to the borders of Warwickshire. The
autumn had brought people back to town, and it was in the autumn that
Rosamund withdrew from all contact with the hurly-burly of London. She
had no fears at all for her body, none of those sick terrors which some
women have as their time draws near, no premonitions of disaster or
presages of death, but she desired to "get ready," and her way of
getting ready was to surround her life with a certain stillness, to
build about it white walls of peace. Often when Dion was away in the
City she went out alone and visited some church. Sometimes she spent an
hour or two in Westminster Abbey; and on many dark afternoons she made
her way to St. Paul's Cathedral where, sitting a long way from the
choir, she listened to evensong. The beautiful and tenderly cool singing
of the distant boys came to her like something she needed, something to
which her soul was delicately attuned. One afternoon they and the men,
who formed the deeply melodious background from which their crystalline
voices seemed to float forward and upward, sang "The Wilderness" of
Wesley. Rosamund listened to it, thankful that she was alone, and
remembering many things, among them the green wilderness beneath the
hill of Drouva.

Very seldom she spoke to Dion about these excursions of hers. There was
something in her feeling for religion which loved reserve rather than
expression; she who was so forthcoming in many moments of her life, who
was genial and gay, who enjoyed laughter and was always at home with
humanity, knew very well how to be silent. There was a saying she cared
for, "God speaks to man in the silence;" perhaps she felt there was a
suspicion of irreverence in talking to any one, even to Dion, about
her aspiration to God. If, on his return home, he asked her how she had
passed the day, she often said only, "I've been very happy." Then he
said to himself, "What more can I want? I'm able to make her happy."

One windy evening in January, when an icy sleet was driving over the
town, as he came into the little hall, he found Rosamund at the foot of
the staircase, with a piece of mother's work in her hand, about to go
into the drawing-room which was on the ground floor of the house.

"Rose," he said, looking down at the little white something she was
holding, "do you think we shall both feel ever so much older in March?
It will be in March, won't it?"

"I think so," she answered, with a sort of deeply tranquil gravity.

"In March when we are parents?"

"Are you worrying about that?" she asked him, smiling now, but with, in
her voice, a hint of reproach.

"Worrying--no. But do you?"

"Let us go into the drawing-room," she said.

When they were there she answered him:

"Absolutely different, but not necessarily older. Feeling older must be
very like feeling old, I think--and I can't imagine feeling old."

"Because probably you never will."

"Have you had tea, Dion?"

"Yes, at the Greville. I promised I'd meet Guy there to-day. He spoke
about Beattie."

"Yes?"

"Do you think Beattie would marry him if he asked her?"

"I don't know."

She sat down in the firelight near the hearth, and bent a little over
her work on the tiny garment, which looked as if it were intended for
the use of a fairy. Dion looked at her head with its pale hair. As he
leaned forward he could see all the top of her head. The firelight made
some of her hair look quite golden, gave a sort of soft sparkle to the
curve of it about her broad, pure forehead.

"Guy's getting desperate," he said. "But he's afraid to put his fortune
to the test. He thinks even uncertainty is better than knowledge of the
worst."

"Of one thing I'm certain, Dion. Beattie doesn't love Guy Daventry."

"Oh well, then, it's all up."

Rosamund looked up from the little garment.

"I didn't say that."

"But if Beattie--but Beattie's the soul of sincerity."

"Yes, I know; but I think she might consent to marry Guy Daventry."

"But why?"

"I don't know exactly. She never told me. I just feel it."

"Oh, if you feel it, I'm sure it is so. But how awfully odd. Isn't it?"

"Yes, it really is rather odd in Beattie. Do you want Beattie to marry
Guy Daventry?"

"Of course I do. Don't you?"

"Dear Beattie! I want her to be happy. But I think it's very difficult,
even when one knows some one very, very well, to know just how she can
get happiness, through just what."

"Rose, have I made you happy?"

"Yes."

"As happy as you could be?"

"I think, perhaps, you will have--soon."

"Oh, you mean----?"

"Yes."

She went on stitching quietly. Her hands looked very contented. Dion
drew up a little nearer to the fire with a movement that was rather
brusk. It just struck him that his walk home in the driving sleet had
decidedly chilled his body.

"I believe I know what you mean about Beattie," he said, after a pause,
looking into the fire. "But do you think that would be fair to Guy?"

"I'm not quite sure myself what I mean, honestly, Dion."

"Well, let's suppose it. If it were so, would it be fair?"

"I think Beattie's so really good that Mr. Daventry, as he loves her,
could scarcely be unhappy with her."

Dion thought for a moment, then he said:

"Perhaps with Guy it wouldn't be unfair, but, you know, Rose, that sort
of thing wouldn't do with some men. Some men could never stand being
married for anything but the one great reason."

He did not explain what that reason was, and Rosamund did not ask. There
was a sort of wide and sweet tranquillity about her that evening. Dion
noticed that it seemed to increase upon her, and about her, as the days
passed by. She showed no sign of nervousness, had evidently no dread at
all of bodily pain. Either she trusted in her splendid health, or she
was so wrapped up in the thought of the joy of being a mother that
the darkness to be passed through did not trouble her; or perhaps--he
wondered about this--she was all the time schooling herself, looking up,
in memory, to the columns of the Parthenon. He was much more strung up,
much more restless and excitable than she was, but she did not seem to
notice it. Always singularly unconscious of herself she seemed at this
period to be also unobservant of those about her. He felt that she was
being deliberately egoistic for a great reason, that she was caring for
herself, soul and body, with a sort of deep and quiet intensity because
of the child.

"She is right," he said to himself, and he strove in all ways in his
power to aid her beautiful selfishness; nevertheless sometimes he felt
shut out; sometimes he felt as if already the unseen was playing truant
over the seen. He was conscious of the child's presence in the little
house through Rosamund's way of being before he saw the child. He
wondered what other women were like in such periods, whether Rosamund
was instinctively conforming to an ancient tradition of her sex, or
whether she was, as usual, strongly individualistic. In many ways she
was surely not like other women, but perhaps in these wholly natural
crises every woman resembled all her sisters who were traveling towards
the same sacred condition. He longed to satisfy himself whether this was
so or not, and one Saturday afternoon, when Rosamund was resting in her
little sitting-room with a book, and the Hermes watching over her, he
bicycled to Jenkins's gymnasium in the Harrow Road, resolved to put in
forty minutes' hard work, and then to visit his mother. Mrs. Leith and
Rosamund seemed to be excellent friends, but Dion never discussed his
wife with his mother. There was no reason why he should do so. On this
day, however, instinctively he turned to his mother; he thought that she
might help him towards a clearer knowledge of Rosamund.

Rosamund had long ago been formally made known to Bob Jenkins, Jim's
boxing "coach," who enthusiastically approved of her, though he had
never ventured to put his opinion quite in that form to Dion. Even
Jenkins, perhaps, had his subtleties, those which a really good heart
cannot rid itself of. Rosamund, in return, had made Dion known to her
extraordinary friend, Mr. Thrush of Abingdon Buildings, John's Court,
near the Edgware Road, the old gentleman who went to fetch his sin every
evening, and, it is to be feared, at various other times also, in a jug
from the "Daniel Lambert." Dion had often laughed over Rosamund's "cult"
for Mr. Thrush, which he scarcely pretended to understand, but Rosamund
rejoiced in Dion's cult for the stalwart Jenkins.

"I like that man," she said. "Perhaps some day----" She stopped there,
but her face was eloquent.

In his peculiar way Jenkins was undoubtedly Doric, and therefore
deserving of Rosamund's respect. Of Mr. Thrush so much could hardly be
said with truth. In him there were to be found neither the stern majesty
and strength of the Doric, nor the lightness and grace of the Ionic.
As an art product he stood alone, always wearing the top hat, a figure
Degas might have immortalized but had unfortunately never seen. Dion
knew that Mr. Thrush had once rescued Rosamund in a fog and had conveyed
her home, and he put the rest of the Thrush matter down to Rosamund's
genial kindness towards downtrodden and unfortunate people. He loved her
for it, but could not help being amused by it.

When Dion arrived at the gymnasium, Jenkins was giving a lesson to a
small boy of perhaps twelve years old, whose mother was looking eagerly
on. The boy, clad in a white "sweater," was flushed with the ardor of
his endeavors to punch the ball, to raise himself up on the bar till
his chin was between his hands, to vault the horse neatly, and to turn
somersaults on the rings. The primrose-colored hair on his small round
head was all ruffled up, perspiration streamed over his pink rosy
cheeks, his eyes shone with determination, and his little white teeth
were gritted as, with all the solemn intensity of childhood, he strove
to obey on the instant Jenkins's loud words of command. It was obvious
that he looked to Jenkins as a savage looks to his Tribal God. His
anxious but admiring mother was forgotten; the world was forgotten;
Jenkins and the small boy were alone in a universe of grip dumb-bells,
heavy weights, "exercisers," boxing-gloves, horizontal bars, swinging
balls and wooden "horses." Dion stood in the doorway and looked on till
the lesson was finished. It ended with a heavy clap on the small boy's
shoulders from the mighty paw of Jenkins, and a stentorian, "You're
getting along and no mistake, Master Tim!"

The face of Master Tim at this moment was a study. All the flags of
triumph and joy were hung out in it and floated on the breeze; a
soul appeared at the two windows shining with perfect happiness;
and, mysteriously, in all the little figure, from the ruffled
primrose-colored feathers of hair to the feet in the white shoes, the
pride of manhood looked forth through the glowing rapture of a child.

"What a jolly boy!" said Dion to Jenkins, when Master Tim and his mother
had departed. "It must be good to have a boy like that."

"I hope you'll have one some day, sir," said Jenkins, speaking heartily
in his powerful voice, but looking, for the moment, unusually severe.

He and Bert, his wife, had had one child, a girl, which had died of
quinsy, and they had never had another.

"Now I'm ready for you, sir!" he added, with a sort of outburst of
recovery. "I should like a round with the gloves to-day, if it's all the
same to you."