Flowering Wilderness eotc-2 Read online

  “Can the leopard change its spots?”

  It was the story of a young monk, secretly without faith, sent on a proselytising expedition. Seized by infidels, and confronted with the choice between death or recantation, he recants and accepts the religion of his captors. The poem was seared with passages of such deep feeling that they hurt her. It had a depth and fervour which took her breath away; it was a paean in praise of contempt for convention faced with the stark reality of the joy in living, yet with a haunting moan of betrayal running through it. It swayed her this way and that; and she put it down with a feeling almost of reverence for one who could so express such a deep and tangled spiritual conflict. With that reverence were mingled a compassion for the stress he must have endured before he could have written this and a feeling, akin to that which mothers feel, of yearning to protect him from his disharmonies and violence.

  They had arranged to meet the following day at the National Gallery, and she went there before time, taking the poems with her. He came on her in front of Gentile Bellini’s ‘Mathematician.’ They stood for some time looking at it without a word.

  “Truth, quality, and decorative effect. Have you read my stuff?”

  “Yes. Come and sit down, I’ve got them here.”

  They sat down, and she gave him the envelope.

  “Well?” he said; and she saw his lips quivering.

  “Terribly good, I think.”

  “Really?”

  “Even truly. One, of course, is much the finest.”

  “Which?”

  Dinny’s smile said: “You ask that?”

  “The Leopard?”

  “Yes. It hurt me, here.”

  “Shall I throw it out?”

  By intuition she realised that on her answer he would act, and said feebly: “You wouldn’t pay attention to what I said, would you?”

  “What you say shall go.”

  “Then of course you can’t throw it out. It’s the finest thing you’ve done.”

  “Inshallah!”

  “What made you doubt?”

  “It’s a naked thing.”

  “Yes,” said Dinny, “naked—but beautiful. When a thing’s naked it must be beautiful.”

  “Hardly the fashionable belief.”

  “Surely a civilised being naturally covers deformities and sores. There’s nothing fine in being a savage that I can see, even in art.”

  “You run the risk of excommunication. Ugliness is a sacred cult now.”

  “Reaction from the chocolate box,” murmured Dinny.

  “Ah! Whoever invented those lids sinned against the holy ghost—he offended the little ones.”

  “Artists are children, you mean?”

  “Well, aren’t they? or would they carry on as they do?”

  “Yes, they do seem to love toys. What gave you the idea for that poem?” His face had again that look of deep waters stirred, as when Muskham had spoken to them under the Foch statue.

  “Tell you some day, perhaps. Shall we go on round?”

  When they parted, he said: “To-morrow’s Sunday. I shall be seeing you?”

  “If you will.”

  “What about the Zoo?”

  “No, not the Zoo. I hate cages.”

  “Quite right. The Dutch garden near Kensington Palace?”

  “Yes.”

  And that made the fifth consecutive day of meeting.

  For Dinny it was like a spell of good weather, when every night you go to sleep hoping it will last, and every morning wake up and rub your eyes seeing that it has.

  Each day she responded to his: “Shall I see you tomorrow?” with an “If you will;” each day she concealed from everybody with care whom she was seeing, and how, and when; and it all seemed to her so unlike herself that she would think: ‘Who is this young woman who goes out stealthily like this, and meets a young man, and comes back feeling as if she had been treading on air? Is it some kind of a long dream I’m having?’ Only, in dreams one didn’t eat cold chicken and drink tea.

  The moment most illuminative of her state of mind was when Hubert and Jean walked into the hall at Mount Street, where they were to stay till after Clare’s wedding. This first sight for eighteen months of her beloved brother should surely have caused her to feel tremulous. But she greeted him steady as a rock, even to the power of cool appraisement. He seemed extremely well, brown, and less thin, but more commonplace. She tried to think that was because he was now safe and married and restored to soldiering, but she knew that comparison with Wilfrid had to do with it. She seemed to know suddenly that in Hubert there had never been capacity for any deep spiritual conflict; he was of the type she knew so well, seeing the trodden path and without real question following. Besides, Jean made all the difference! One could never again be to him, or he to her, as before his marriage. Jean was brilliantly alive and glowing. They had come the whole way from Khartoum to Croydon by air with four stops. Dinny was troubled by the inattention which underlay her seeming absorption in their account of life out there, till a mention of Darfur made her prick her ears. Darfur was where something had happened to Wilfrid. There were still followers of the Mahdi there, she gathered. The personality of Jerry Corven was discussed. Hubert was enthusiastic about ‘a job of work’ he had done. Jean filled out the gap. The wife of a Deputy Commissioner had gone off her head about him. It was said that Jerry Corven had behaved badly.

  “Well, well!” said Sir Lawrence, “Jerry’s a privateer, and women ought not to go off their heads about him.”

  “Yes,” said Jean. “It’s silly to blame men nowadays.”

  “In old days,” murmured Lady Mont, “men did the advancing and women were blamed; now women do it and the men are blamed.”

  The extraordinary consecutiveness of the speech struck with a silencing effect on every tongue, until she added: “I once saw two camels, d’you remember, Lawrence, so pretty.”

  Jean looked rather horrified, and Dinny smiled.

  Hubert came back to the line. “I don’t know,” he said; “he’s marrying our sister.”

  “Clare’ll give and take,” said Lady Mont. “It’s only when their noses are curved. The Rector,” she added to Jean, “says there’s a Tasburgh nose. You haven’t got it. It crinkles. Your brother Alan had it a little.” And she looked at Dinny. “In China, too,” she added. “I said he’d marry a purser’s daughter.”

  “Good God, Aunt Em, he hasn’t!” cried Jean.

  “No. Very nice girls, I’m sure. Not like clergymen’s.”

  “Thank you!”

  “I mean the sort you find in the Park. They call themselves that when they want company. I thought everybody knew.”

  “Jean was rectory-bred, Aunt Em,” said Hubert.

  “But she’s been married to you two years. Who was it said: ‘And they shall multiply exceedin’ly’?”

  “Moses?” said Dinny.

  “And why not?”

  Her eyes rested on Jean, who flushed. Sir Lawrence remarked quickly: “I hope Hilary will be as short with Clare as he was with you and Jean, Hubert. That was a record.”

  “Hilary preaches beautifully,” said Lady Mont. “At Edward’s death he preached on ‘Solomon in all his glory.’ Touchin’! And when we hung Casement, you remember—so stupid of us!—on the beam and the mote. We had it in our eye.”

  “If I could love a sermon,” said Dinny, “it would be Uncle Hilary’s.”

  “Yes,” said Lady Mont, “he could borrow more barley-sugar than any little boy I ever knew and look like an angel. Your Aunt Wilmet and I used to hold him upside down—like puppies, you know—hopin’, but we never got it back.”

  “You must have been a lovely family, Aunt Em.”

  “Tryin’. Our father that was not in Heaven took care not to see us much. Our mother couldn’t help it—poor dear! We had no sense of duty.”

  “And now you all have so much; isn’t it queer?”

  “Have I a sense of duty, Lawrence?”

  “Emph
atically not, Em.”

  “I thought so.”

  “But wouldn’t you say as a whole, Uncle Lawrence, that the Cherrells have too much sense of duty?”

  “How can they have TOO much?” said Jean.

  Sir Lawrence fixed his monocle.

  “I scent heresy, Dinny.”

  “Surely duty’s narrowing, Uncle? Father and Uncle Lionel and Uncle Hilary, and even Uncle Adrian, always think first of what they ought to do. They despise their own wants. Very fine, of course, but rather dull.”

  Sir Lawrence dropped his eyeglass.

  “Your family, Dinny,” he said, “perfectly illustrate the mandarin. They hold the Empire together. Public schools, Osborne, Sandhurst; oh! ah! and much more. From generation to generation it begins in the home. Mother’s milk with them. Service to Church and State– very interesting, very rare now, very admirable.”

  “Especially when they’ve kept on top by means of it,” murmured Dinny.

  “Shucks!” said Hubert: “As if anyone thought of that in the Services!”

  “You don’t think of it because you don’t have to; but you would fast enough if you did have to.”

  “Somewhat cryptic, Dinny,” put in Sir Lawrence; “you mean if anything threatened them, they’d think: ‘We simply mustn’t be removed, we’re It.’”

  “But are they It, Uncle?”

  “With whom have you been associating, my dear?”

  “Oh! no one. One must think sometimes.”

  “Too depressin’,” said Lady Mont. “The Russian revolution, and all that.”

  Dinny was conscious that Hubert was regarding her as if thinking: ‘What’s come to Dinny?’

  “If one wants to take out a linch-pin,” he said, “one always can, but the wheel comes off.”

  “Well put, Hubert,” said Sir Lawrence; “it’s a mistake to think one can replace type or create it quickly. The sahib’s born, not made– that is, if you take the atmosphere of homes as part of birth. And, if you ask me, he’s dying out fast. A pity not to preserve him somehow; we might have National Parks for them, as they have for bisons.”

  “No,” said Lady Mont, “I won’t.”

  “What, Aunt Em?”

  “Drink champagne on Wednesday, nasty bubbly stuff!”

  “Must we have it at all, dear?”

  “I’m afraid of Blore. He’s so used. I might tell him not, but it’d be there.”

  “Have you heard of Hallorsen lately, Dinny?” asked Hubert suddenly.

  “Not since Uncle Adrian came back. I believe he’s in Central America.”

  “He WAS large,” said Lady Mont. “Hilary’s two girls, Sheila, Celia, and little Anne, five—I’m glad you’re not to be, Dinny. It’s superstition, of course.”

  Dinny leaned back and the light fell on her throat.

  “To be a bridesmaid once is quite enough, Aunt Em…”

  When next morning she met Wilfrid at the Wallace Collection, she said:

  “Would you by any chance like to be at Clare’s wedding tomorrow?”

  “No hat and no black tails; I gave them to Stack.”

  “I remember how you looked, perfectly. You had a grey cravat and a gardenia.”

  “And you had on sea-green.”

  “Eau-de-nil. I’d like you to have seen my family, though, they’ll all be there; and we could have discussed them afterwards.”

  “I’ll turn up among the ‘also ran’ and keep out of sight.”

  ‘Not from me,’ thought Dinny. So she would not have to go a whole day without seeing him!

  With every meeting he seemed less, as it were, divided against himself; and sometimes would look at her so intently that her heart would beat. When she looked at him, which was seldom, except when he wasn’t aware, she was very careful to keep her gaze limpid. How fortunate that one always had that pull over men, knew when they were looking at one, and was able to look at them without their knowing!

  When they parted this time, he said: “Come down to Richmond again on Thursday. I’ll pick you up at Foch—two o’clock as before.”

  And she said: “Yes.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Clare Cherrell’s wedding, in Hanover Square, was ‘fashionable’ and would occupy with a list of names a quarter of a column in the traditional prints. As Dinny said:

  “So delightful for them!”

  With her father and mother Clare came to Mount Street from Condaford overnight. Busy with her younger sister to the last, and feeling an emotion humorously disguised, Dinny arrived with Lady Cherrell at the Church not long before the bride. She lingered to speak to an old retainer at the bottom of the aisle, and caught sight of Wilfrid. He was on the bride’s side, far back, gazing at her. She gave him a swift smile, then passed up the aisle to join her mother in the left front pew. Michael whispered as she went by:

  “People HAVE rolled up, haven’t they?”

  They had. Clare was well known and popular, Jerry Corven even better known, if not so popular. Dinny looked round at the “audience”—one could never credit a wedding with the word congregation. Irregular and with a good deal of character, their faces refused generalisation. They looked like people with convictions and views of their own. The men conformed to no particular type, having none of that depressing sameness which used to characterise the German officer caste. With herself and her mother in the front pew were Hubert and Jean, Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Em; in the pew behind sat Adrian with Diana, Mrs. Hilary, and Lady Alison. Dinny caught sight of Jack Muskham at the end of two or three rows back, tall, well-dressed, rather bored-looking. He nodded to her, and she thought: Odd, his remembering me!

  On the Corven side of the aisle were people of quite as much diversity of face and figure. Except Jack Muskham, the bridegroom, and his best man, hardly a man gave the impression of being well-dressed or of having thought about his clothes. But from their faces Dinny received the impression that they were all safe in the acceptance of a certain creed. Not one gave her the same feeling that Wilfrid’s face brought of spiritual struggle and disharmony, of dreaming, suffering, and discovery. ‘I’m fanciful,’ she thought. And her eyes came to rest on Adrian, who was just behind her. He was smiling quietly above that goatee beard of his, which lengthened his thin brown visage. ‘He has a dear face,’ she thought, ‘not conceited, like the men who wear those pointed beards as a rule. He always will be the nicest man in the world.’ And she whispered: “Fine collection of bones here, Uncle.”

  “I should like your skeleton, Dinny.”

  “I mean to be burned and scattered. H’ssh!”

  The choir was coming in, followed by the officiating priests. Jerry Corven turned. Those lips smiling like a cat’s beneath that thin-cut moustache, those hardwood features and daring, searching eyes! Dinny thought with sudden dismay: ‘How could Clare! But after all I’d think the same of any face but one, just now. I’m going potty.’ Then Clare came swaying up the aisle on her father’s arm! ‘Looking a treat! Bless her!’ A gush of emotion caught Dinny by the throat, and she slipped her hand into her mother’s. Poor mother! She was awfully pale! Really the whole thing was stupid! People WOULD make it long and trying and emotional. Thank goodness Dad’s old black tail-coat really looked quite decent—she had taken out the stains with ammonia; and he stood as she had seen him when reviewing troops. If Uncle Hilary happened to have a button wrong, Dad would notice it. Only there wouldn’t be any buttons. She longed fervently to be beside Wilfrid away at the back. He would have nice unorthodox thoughts, and they would soothe each other with private smiles.

  Now the bridesmaids! Hilary’s two girls, her cousins Monica and Joan, slender and keen, Little Celia Moriston, fair as a seraph (if that was female), Sheila Ferse, dark and brilliant; and toddly little Anne—a perfect dumpling!

  Once on her knees, Dinny quietened down. She remembered how they used to kneel, night-gowned, against their beds, when Clare was a tiny of three and she herself a ‘big girl’ of six. She used to hang on to the bed-edge by t
he chin so as to save the knees; and how ducky Clare had looked when she held her hands up like the child in the Reynolds picture! ‘That man,’ thought Dinny, ‘will hurt her! I know he will!’ Her thoughts turned again to Michael’s wedding all those ten years ago. There she had stood, not three yards from where she was kneeling now, alongside a girl she didn’t know—some relative of Fleur’s. And her eyes, taking in this and that with the fluttered eagerness of youth, had lighted on Wilfrid standing sideways, keeping watch on Michael. Poor Michael! He had seemed rather daft that day, from excessive triumph! She could remember quite distinctly thinking: ‘Michael and his lost angel!’ There had been in Wilfrid’s face something which suggested that he had been cast out of happiness, a scornful and yet yearning look. That was only two years after the Armistice, and she knew now what utter disillusionment and sense of wreckage he had suffered after the war. He had been talking to her freely the last two days; had even dwelled with humorous contempt on his infatuation for Fleur eighteen months after that marriage which had sent him flying off to the East. Dinny, but ten when the war broke out, remembered it chiefly as meaning that mother had been anxious about father, had knitted all the time, and been a sort of sock depot; that everybody hated the Germans; that she had been forbidden sweets because they were made with saccharine, and finally the excitement and grief when Hubert went off to the war and letters from him didn’t often come. From Wilfrid these last few days she had gathered more clearly and poignantly than ever yet what the war had meant to some who, like Michael and himself, had been in the thick of it for years. With his gift of expression he had made her feel the tearing away of roots, the hopeless change of values, and the gradual profound mistrust of all that age and tradition had decreed and sanctified. He had got over the war now, he said. He might think so, but there were in him still torn odds and ends of nerves not yet mended up. She never saw him without wanting to pass a cool hand over his forehead.