CHAPTER IX
That evening Dion told Rosamund what Mrs. Clarke had said when he parted from her at Claridge’s.
“I promised her I’d find out which it was,” he added. “Do you remember what was said?”
After a minute of silence, during which Rosamund seemed to be considering something, she answered:
“Yes, I do.”
“Which was it?”
“Neither, Dion. Mrs. Clarke has made a mistake. She certainly spoke of some Turkish songs for me, but there was never any question of fixing a day for us to try them over together.”
“She thinks there was.”
“It’s difficult to remember exactly what is said, or not said, in the midst of a crowd.”
“But you remember?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’d rather not try them over?”
“After what you’ve told me about Constantinople I expect I should be quite out of sympathy with Turkish music,” she answered, lightly and smiling. “Let us be true to our Greek ideal.”
She seemed to be in fun, but he detected firmness of purpose behind the fun.
“What shall I say to Mrs. Clarke?” he asked.
“I should just leave it. Perhaps she’ll forget all about it.”
Dion was quite sure that wouldn’t happen, but he left it. Rosamund had determined not to allow Mrs. Clarke to be friends with her. He wished very much it were otherwise, not because he really cared for Mrs. Clarke, but because he liked her and Jimmy, and because he hated the idea of hurting the feelings of a woman in Mrs. Clarke’s rather unusual situation. He might, of course, have put his point of view plainly to Rosamund at once. Out of delicacy he did not do this. His great love for Rosamund made him instinctively very delicate in all his dealings with her; it told him that Rosamund did not wish to discuss her reasons for desiring to avoid Mrs. Clarke. She had had them, he believed, before Mrs. Clarke and she had met. That meeting evidently had not lessened their force. He supposed, therefore, that she had disliked Mrs. Clarke. He wondered why, and tried to consider Mrs. Clarke anew. She was certainly not a disagreeable woman. She was very intelligent, thoroughbred, beautiful in a peculiar way,—even Rosamund thought that,—ready to make herself pleasant, quite free from feminine malice, absolutely natural, interested in all the really interesting things. Beattie liked her; Daventry rejoiced in her; Mrs. Chetwinde was her intimate friend; Esme Darlington had even made sacrifices for her; Bruce Evelin——
There Dion’s thought was held up, like a stream that encounters a barrier. What did Bruce Evelin think of Mrs. Clarke? He had not gone to the trial. But since he had retired from practise at the Bar he had never gone into court. Dion had often heard him say he had had enough of the Law Courts. There was no reason why he should have been drawn to them for Mrs. Clarke’s sake, or even for Daventry’s. But what did he think of Mrs. Clarke? Dion resolved to tell him of the rather awkward situation which had come about through his own intimacy—it really amounted to that—with Mrs. Clarke, and Rosamund’s evident resolve to have nothing to do with her.
One day Dion went to Great Cumberland Place and told Bruce Evelin all the facts, exactly what Mrs. Clarke had said and done, exactly what Rosamund had said and done. As he spoke it seemed to him that he was describing a sort of contest, shadowy, perhaps, withdrawn and full of reserves, yet definite.
“What do you think of it?” he said, when he had told the comparatively little there was to tell.
“I think Rosamund likes to keep her home very quiet, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Even her friends complain that she shuts them out.”
“I know they do.”
“She may not at all dislike Mrs. Clarke. She may simply not wish to add to her circle of friends.”
“The difficulty is, that Mrs. Clarke is such friends with Beattie and Guy, and that I’ve got to know her quite well. Then there’s her boy; he’s taken a fancy to me. If Mrs. Clarke and Rosamund could just exchange calls it would be all right, but if they don’t it really looks rather as if Rosamund—well, as if she thought the divorce case had left a slur on Mrs. Clarke. What I mean is, that I feel Mrs. Clarke will take it in that way.”
“She may, of course.”
“I wonder why she is so determined to make friends with Rosamund,” blurted out Dion abruptly.
“You think she is determined?” said Bruce Evelin quietly.
“Yes. Telling you had made me feel that quite plainly.”
“Anyhow, she’ll be gone back to Constantinople in April, and then your little difficulty will come to an end automatically.”
Dion looked rather hard at Bruce Evelin. When he spoke to Rosamund of Mrs. Clarke, Rosamund always seemed to try for a gentle evasion. Now Bruce Evelin was surely evading the question, and again Mrs. Clarke was the subject of conversation. Bruce Evelin was beginning to age rather definitely. He had begun to look older since Beattie was married. But his dark eyes were still very bright and keen, and one could not be with him for even a few minutes without realizing that his intellect was sharply alert.
“Isn’t it strange that she should go back to live in Constantinople?” Dion said.
“Yes. Not many women in her position would do it.”
“And yet there’s reason in her contention that an innocent woman who allows herself to be driven away from the place she lived in is a bit of a coward.”
“Beadon Clarke’s transferred to Madrid, so Mrs. Clarke’s reason—it was a diplomatic one—for living in Constantinople falls to the ground.”
“Yes, that’s true. But of course her husband and she have parted.
“Naturally. So she has the world to choose from.”
“For a home, you mean? Yes. It’s an odd choice, Constantinople. But she’s not an ordinary woman.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Bruce Evelin.
Again Dion was definitely conscious of evasion. He got up to go away, feeling disappointed.
“Then you advise me to do nothing?” he said.
“What about, my boy?”
“About Mrs. Clarke.”
“What could you do?”
Dion was silent.
“I think it’s better to let women settle these little things among themselves. They have a deep and comprehensive understanding of trifles which we mostly lack. How’s Robin?”
Robin again! Was he always to be the buffer between 5 Little Market Street and Mrs. Clarke?
“He’s well and tremendously lively, and I honestly think he’s growing better looking.”
“Dear little chap!” said Bruce Evelin, with a very great tenderness in his voice. “Dion, we shall have to concentrate on Robin.”
Dion looked at him with inquiry.
“Poor Beattie, I don’t think she’ll have a child.”
“Beattie! Not ever?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Dion was shocked and startled.
“But I haven’t heard a word—” he began.
“No. Both Beattie and Guy feel it terribly. I had a talk with Beattie’s doctor to-day.”
“How dreadful! I’m sorry. But——” He paused.
He didn’t like to ask intimate questions about Beattie.
“I’m afraid it is so,” said Bruce Evelin. “You must let us all have a share in your Robin.”
He spoke very quietly, but there was a very deep, even intense, feeling in his voice.
“Poor Beattie!” Dion said.
And that, too, was an evasion.
He went away from Great Cumberland Place accompanied by a sense of walking, not perhaps in darkness, but in a dimness which was not delicately beautiful like the dimness of twilight, but was rather akin to the semi-obscurity of fog.
Not a word more was said about Mrs. Clarke between Rosamund and Dion, and the latter never let Mrs. Clarke know about the Turkish songs, never fulfilled his undertaking to go and see Jimmy again. In a contest he could only be on Rosamund’s side. The whole matter seemed to him unfortunate, even almost disagreeable, but, for him, there could be no question as to whether he wished Rosamund’s or Mrs. Clarke’s will to prevail. Whatever Rosamund’s reason was for not choosing to be friends with Mrs. Clark he knew it was not malicious or petty. Perhaps she had made a mistake about Mrs. Clarke. If so it was certainly an honest mistake. It was when he thought of his promise to Jimmy that he felt most uncomfortable about Rosamund’s never expressed decision. Jimmy had a good memory. He would not forget. As to Mrs. Clarke, of course she now fully understood that Mrs. Dion Leith did not want to have anything to do with her. She continued to go often to Beattie and Daventry, consolidated her friendship with them. But Dion never met her in De Lorne Gardens. From Daventry he learnt that Mrs. Clarke had been extraordinarily kind to Beattie when Beattie’s expectation of motherhood had faded away. Bruce Evelin’s apprehension was well founded. For reasons which Daventry did not enter into Beattie could never now hope to have a child. Daventry was greatly distressed about it, but rather for Beattie’s sake than for his own.
“I married Beattie because I loved her, not because I wanted to become a father,” he said.
After a long pause he added, almost wistfully.
“As to Beattie’s reasons for marrying me, well, Dion, I haven’t asked what they were and I never shall. Women are mysterious, and I believe it’s wisdom on our part not to try to force the locks and look into the hidden chambers. I’ll do what I can to make up to Beattie for this terrible disappointment. It won’t be nearly enough, but that isn’t my fault. Rosamund and you can help her a little.”
“How?”
“She—she’s extraordinarily fond of Robin.”
“Extraordinarily?” said Dion, startled almost by Daventry’s peculiar emphasis on the word.
“Yes. Let her see a good deal of Robin if you can. Poor Beattie! She’ll never have a child of her own to live in.”
Dion told Rosamund of this conversation, and they agreed to encourage Beattie to come to Little Market Street as often as possible. Nevertheless Beattie did not come very often. It was obvious that she adored Robin, who was always polite to her; but perhaps delicacy of feeling kept her from making perpetual pilgrimages to the shrine before which an incense not hers was forever ascending; or perhaps she met a gaunt figure of Pain in the home of her sister. However it was, her visits were rather rare, and no persuasion availed to make her come oftener. At this time she and Dion’s mother drew closer together, The two women loved and understood each other well. Perhaps between them there was a link of loneliness, or perhaps there was another link.
Early in April Dion received one morning the following letter:
“CLARIDGE’S HOTEL 6 April
“DEAR MR. LEITH,—I feel pretty rotten about you. I thought when once a clever boxer gave his honor on a thing it was a dead cert. The mater wouldn’t let me write before, though I’ve been at her over it every day for weeks. But now we’re going away, so she says I may write and just tell you. If you want to say good-by could you telephone, she says. P’raps you don’t. P’raps you’ve forgotten us. I can tell you Jenkins is sick about it all and your never going to the Gim. He said to me to-day, ‘I don’t know what’s come over Mr. Leith.’ No more do I. The mater says you’re a busy man and have a kid. I say a true friend is never too busy to be friendly. I really do feel rotten over it, and now we are going.—Your affectionate JIMMY.”
Dion showed Rosamund the letter, and telephoned to say he would call on the following day. Jimmy’s voice answered on the telephone and said:
“I say, you have been beastly to us. The mater says nothing, but we thought you liked us. Jenkins says that between boxers there’s always a—”
At this point Jimmy was cut off in the flow of his reproaches.
On arriving at Claridge’s Dion found Jimmy alone. Mrs. Clarke was out but would return in a moment. Jimmy received his visitor not stiffly but with exuberant and vociferous reproaches, and vehement demands to know the why and wherefore of his unsportsmanlike behavior.
“I’ve ordered you a real jam tea all the same,” he concluded, with a magnanimity which did him honor, and which, as he was evidently aware, proved him to be a true sportsman.
“You’re a trump,” said Dion, pulling the boy down beside him on a sofa.
“Oh, well—but I say, why didn’t you come?”
He stared with the mercilessly inquiring eyes of boyhood.
“I don’t think I ever said on my honor that I would come.”
“But you did. You swore.”
“No. I was afraid of the policeman.”
“I say, what rot! As if you could be afraid of any one! Why, Jenkins says you’re the best pupil he’s ever had. Why didn’t you? Don’t you like us?”
“Of course I do.”
“The mater says you’re married, and married men have no time to bother about other people’s kids. Is that true?”
“Well, of course there’s a lot to be done in London, and I go to business every day.”
“You’ve got a kid, haven’t you?”
“Yes!”
“It’s a boy, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I say, how old is it?”
“A year and a month old, or a little over.”
Jimmy’s face expressed satire.
“A year and a month!” he repeated. “Is that all? Then it can’t be much good yet, can it?”
“It can’t box or do exercise as you can. You are getting broad.”
“Rather! Box? I should think not! A kid of a year old boxing! I should like to see it with Jenkins.”
He begin to giggle. By the time Mrs. Clarke returned and they sat down to the real jam tea, the ice was in fragments.
“I believe you were right, mater, and it was all the kid that prevented Mr. Leith from sticking to his promise,” Jimmy announced, as he helped Dion to “the strawberry,” with a liberality which betokened an affection steadfast even under the stress of blighting circumstances.
“Of course I was right,” returned his mother gravely.
Dion was rather glad that she looked away from him as she said it.
Her manner to him was unchanged. Evidently she was a woman not quick to take offense. He liked that absence of all “touchiness” from her, and felt that a man could rest comfortably on her good breeding. But this very good breeding increased within him a sense of discomfort which amounted almost to guilt. He tried to smother it by being very jolly with Jimmy, to whom he devoted most of his attention. When tea was over Mrs. Clarke said to her son:
“Now, Jimmy, you must go away for a little while and let me have a talk with Mr. Leith.”
“Oh, mater, that’s not fair. Mr. Leith’s my pal. Aren’t you, Mr. Leith? Why, even Jenkins says—”
“I should rather think so. Why—”
“You shall see Mr. Leith again before he goes.”
He looked at his mother, suddenly became very grave, and went slowly out of the room. It was evident to Dion that Mrs. Clarke knew how to make people obey her when she was in earnest.
As soon as Jimmy had gone Mrs. Clarke rang for the waiter to take away the tea-table.
“Then we shan’t be bothered,” she remarked. “I hate people coming in and out when I’m trying to have a quiet talk.”
“So do I,” said Dion.
The waiter rolled the table out gently and shut the door.
Mrs. Clarke sat down on a sofa.
“Do light a cigar,” she said. “I know you want to smoke, and I’ll have a cigarette.”
She drew out of a little case which lay on a table beside her a Turkish cigarette and lit it, while Dion lighted a cigar.
“So you’re really going back to Constantinople?” he began. “Are you taking Jimmy with you?”
“Yes, for a time. My husband raises no objection. In a year I shall send Jimmy to Eton. Lady Ermyntrude is furious, of course, and has tried to stir up my husband. But her influence with him is dead. He’s terribly ashamed at what she made him do.”
“The action?”
“Yes. It was she who made him think me guilty against his real inner conviction. Now, poor man, he realizes that he dragged me through the dirt without reason. He’s ashamed to show his face in the Clubs, and nearly resigned from diplomacy. But he’s a valuable man, and they’ve persuaded him to go to Madrid.”
“Why go back to Constantinople?”
“Merely to show I’m not afraid to and that I won’t be driven from my purpose by false accusations.”
“And you love it, of course.”
“Yes. My flat will be charming, I think. Some day you’ll see it.”
Dion was silent in surprise.
“Don’t you realize that?” she asked, staring at him.
“I think it very improbable that I shall ever go back to Constantinople.”
“And I’m sure you will.”
“Why are you sure?”
“That I can’t tell you. Why is one sometimes sure that certain things will come about?”
“Do you claim to be psychic?” said Dion.
“I never make verbal claims. Now about Jimmy.”
She discussed for a little while seriously her plans for the boy’s education while he stayed with her. She had found a tutor, a young Oxford man, who would accompany them to Turkey, but she wanted Dion’s advice on certain points. He gave it, wondering all the time why she consulted him after his neglect of her and of her son, after his failure to accept invitations and to fulfil pledges (or to stick to the understandings which were almost pledges), after the tacit refusals of Rosamund. Did it not show a strange persistence, even a certain lack of pride in her? Perhaps she heard the haunting questions which he did not utter, for she suddenly turned from the topic of the boy and said:
“You’re surprised at my bothering you with all this when we really know each other so slightly. It is unconventional; but I shall never learn the way to conventionality in spite of all poor Esme’s efforts to shepherd me into the path he thinks narrow and I find broad—a way that leads to destruction. I feel you absolutely understand boys, and know by instinct the best way with them. That’s why I still come to you.”
She paused. She had deliberately driven home her meaning by a stress on one word. Now she sat looking at him, with a wide-eyed and deeply grave fixity, as if considering what more she should say. Dion murmured something about being very glad if he could help her in any way with regard to Jimmy.
“You can be conventional,” she remarked. “Well, why not? Most English people are perpetually playing for safety.”
“I wish you wouldn’t go back to Constantinople,” said Dion.
“Why?”
“I believe it’s a mistake. It seems to me like throwing down a defiance to your world.”
“But I never play for safety.”
“But think of the danger you’ve passed through.”
The characteristic distressed look deepened in her eyes till they seemed to him tragic. Nevertheless, fearlessness still looked out of them.
“What shall I gain by doing that?” she asked.
“Esme Darlington once said you were a wild mind in an innocent body. I believe he was right. But it seems to me that some day your wild mind may get you into danger again and that perhaps you won’t escape from it unscathed a second time.”
“How quiet and safe it must be at Number 5!” she rejoined, without any irony.
“You wouldn’t care for that sort of life. You’d find it humdrum,” said Dion, with simplicity.
“You never would,” she said, still without irony, without even the hint of a sneer. “And the truth is that the humdrum is created not by a way of living but by those who follow it. Your wife and the humdrum could never occupy the same house. I shall always regret that I didn’t see something of her. Do give her a cordial ‘au revoir’ from me. You’ll hear of me again. Don’t be frightened about me in your kind of chivalrous heart. I am grateful to you for several things. I’m not going to give the list now. That would either bore you, or make you feel shy. Some day, perhaps, I shall tell you what they are, in a caique on the sweet waters of Asia or among the cypresses of Eyub.”
With the last sentence she transported Dion, as on a magic carpet, to the unwise life. Her husky voice changed a little; her face changed a little too; the one became slower and more drowsy; the other less haggard and fixed in its expression of distress. This woman had her hours of happiness, perhaps even of exultation. For a moment Dion envisaged another woman in her. And when he had bidden her good-by, and had received the tremendous farewells of Jimmy, he realized that she had made upon him an impression which, though soft, was certainly deep. He thought of how a cushion looks when it lies on a sofa in an empty room, indented by the small head of a woman who has been thinking, thinking alone. For a moment he was out of shape, and Mrs. Clarke had made him so.
In the big hall, as he passed out, he saw Lord Brayfield standing in front of the bureau speaking to the hall porter.
“Some day, perhaps, I shall tell you what they are, in a caique on the sweet waters of Asia or among the cypresses of Eyub.”
Dion smiled as he recalled Mrs. Clarke’s words, which had been spoken fatalistically. Then his face became very grave.
Suddenly there dawned upon him, like a vision in the London street, one of the vast Turkish cemeteries, dusty, forlorn, disordered, yet full of a melancholy touched by romance; and among the thousands of graves, through the dark thickets of cypresses, he was walking with Mrs. Clarke, who looked exactly like Echo.
A newsboy at the corner was crying his latest horror—a woman found stabbed in Hyde Park. But to Dion his raucous and stunted voice sounded like a voice from the sea, a strange and sad cry lifted up between Europe and Asia.
BOOK III — LITTLE CLOISTERS
CHAPTER I
More than a year and a half passed away, and in the autumn of 1899 the Boer War broke out and the face of England was changed; for the heart of England began to beat more strongly than usual, and the soul of England was stirred. The winter came, and in many Englishmen a hidden conflict began; in their journey through life they came abruptly to a parting of the ways, stood still and looked to the right and the left, balancing possibilities, searching their natures and finding within them strange hesitations, recoils, affirmations, determined nobilities.
Dion had followed the events which led up to the fateful decision of Wednesday, October the eleventh, with intense interest. As the October days drew on he had felt the approach of war. It came up, this footfall of an enemy, it paced at his side. Would he presently be tried by this enemy, would it test him and find out exactly what metal he was made of? He wondered, but from the moment when the first cloud showed itself on the horizon he had a presentiment that this distant war was going to have a strong effect on his life.
On the afternoon of October the eleventh he walked slowly home from the City alone. There was excitement in the air. The voices of the newsvendors sounded fateful in his ears; the faces of the passers-by looked unusually eager and alert. As he made his way through the crowd he did not debate the rights and wrongs of the question about to be decided between Briton and Boer. His mind avoided thoughts about politics. For him, perhaps strangely, the issue had already narrowed down to a personal question: “What is this war going to mean to me?”
He asked himself this; he put the question again and again. Nevertheless it was answered somewhere within him almost as soon as it was put. If there came a call for volunteers he would be one of the many who would answer it. The call might not come, of course; the war might be short, a hole-and-corner affair soon ended. He told himself that, and, as he did so, he felt sure that the call would come.
He knew he would not hold back; but he knew also that his was not the eagerness to go of the man assumed by journalists to be the typical Englishman. He was not mad to plunge into the great game, reckless of the future and shouting for the fray. He was not one of the “hard-bitten raw-boned men with keen eyes and ready for anything” beloved of the journalists, who loom so large in the public eye when “big things are afoot.” On that autumn evening, as he walked homeward, Dion knew the bunkum that is given out to the world as truth, knew that brave men have souls undreamed of in newspaper offices. He perceived the figure of war just then as a figure terribly austere, grim, cold, harsh—a figure stripped of all pleasant flesh and sweet coloring, of all softness and warm humanity. It accompanied him like an iron thing which nevertheless was informed with life. Joy withered beside it, yet it had the power to make things bloom. Already he knew that as he had not known it before.
In the crowded Strand the voices of the newsvendors were insistently shrill, raucous, almost fierce. As he heard them he faced tests. Many things were going to be put to the test in the almost immediate future. Among them perhaps would be Rosamund’s exact feeling for him.
Upon the hill of Drouva they had slept in the same tent, husband and wife, more than three years ago; in green and remote Elis they had sat together before the Hermes, hidden away from the world and hearing the antique voices; in Westminster Robin was theirs; yet this evening, facing in imagination the tests of war, Dion knew that Rosamund’s exact feeling for him was still a secret from him. If he went to South Africa that secret must surely be revealed. Rosamund would inevitably find out then the nature of her feeling for him, how much she cared, and even if she did not tell him how much she cared he would know, he could not help knowing.
He knew with a terrible thoroughness this evening how much he cared for her.
He considered Robin.
Robin was now more than two and a half years old; a personage in a jersey and minute knickerbockers, full of dancing energy and spirits, full of vital interest in the smaller problems of life. He was a fidget and he was a talker. Out of a full mind he poured forth an abundant stream of words, carelessly chosen at times, yet on the whole apt to the occasion. His intelligence was marked, of course,—what very young child’s is not?—and he had inherited an ample store of the joie de vivre which distinguished his mother. The homeliness of feature which had marked him out in the baldhead stage of his existence had given place to a dawning of what promised to be later on distinct good looks. Already he was an attractive-looking child, with a beautiful mouth, a rather short and at present rather snub nose, freckled on the bridge, large blue eyes, and a forehead, temples and chin which hinted at Rosamund’s. His hair was now light brown, and had a bold, almost an ardent, wave in it. Perhaps Robin’s most marked characteristic at this time was ardor. Occasionally the mildly inquiring expression which Dion had been touched by in the early days came to his little face. He could be very gentle and very clinging, and was certainly sensitive. Often imagination, in embryo as it were, was shown by his eyes. But ardor informed and enveloped him, he swam in ardor and of ardor he was all compact. Even the freckles which disfigured, or adorned, the bridge of his nose looked ardent. Rosamund loved those freckles in a way she could never have explained, loved them with a strength and tenderness which issued from the very roots of her being. To her they were Robin, the dearest part of the dearest thing on earth. Many of her kisses had gone to those little freckles.
Dion might have to part not only from Rosamund but also from Robin.
He had become very fond of his little son. The detachment which had perhaps marked his mental attitude to the baby did not mark his mental attitude to the boy. In the Robin of to-day, the jerseyed and knickerbockered person, with the incessantly active legs, the eager eyes, the perpetually twittering voice, Dion was conscious of the spirit of progress. Already he was able to foresee the small school-boy, whom only a father could properly help and advise in regard to many aspects of the life ahead; already he was looking forward to the time when he could take a hand in the training of Robin. It would be very hard to go away from that little bit of quicksilver, very hard indeed.
But the thought which made his heart sink, which brought with it almost a sensation of mortal sickness to his soul, was the thought of parting from Rosamund. As he walked down Parliament Street he imagined the good-by to her on the eve of sailing for South Africa. That acute moment might never come. This evening he felt it on the way. Whatever happened it would be within his power to stay with Rosamund, for there was no conscription in England. If he went to South Africa then the action of leaving her would be deliberate on his part. Was there within him something that was stronger than his love for her? There must be, he supposed, for he knew that if men were called for, and if Rosamund asked, or even begged him not to go, he would go nevertheless.
Vaporous Westminster, dark and leaning to the great river, for how long he had not seen it, or realized what it meant to him! Custom had blinded his eyes and had nearly closed his mind to it. The day’s event had given him back sight and knowledge. This evening his familiarity with Westminster bred in him intensity of vision and apprehension. It seemed to him that scales had fallen from his eyes, that for the first time he really saw Parliament Street, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Bridge, the river. The truth was, that for the first time he really felt them, felt that he belonged to them and they to him, that their blackness in the October evening was part of the color of him, that the Westminster sounds, chimes, footfalls, the dull roar of traffic, human voices from street, from bridge, from river, harmonized with the voices in him, in the very depths of him. This was England, this closeness, this harmony of the outer to and with the inner, this was England saying to one of her sons, “You belong to me and I to you.” The race spoke and the land, they walked with Dion in the darkness.
For he did not go straight home. He walked for a long time beside the river. By the river he kissed Robin and he said good-by to Rosamund, by the river he climbed upon the troopship, and he saw the fading of England on the horizon, and he felt the breath of the open sea. And in the midst of a crowd of men going southward he knew at last what loneliness was. The lights that gleamed across the river were the last lights of England that he would see for many a day, perhaps forever; the chime from the clock-tower was the last of the English sounds. He endured in imagination a phantom bitterness of departure which seemed abominably real; then suddenly he was recalled from a possible future to the very definite present.
He met by the river two men, sleek people in silk hats, with plump hands—hands which looked as if they were carefully fed on very nutritious food every day by their owners—warmly covered. As they passed him one of those know-alls said to the other:
“Oh, it’ll only be a potty little war. What can a handful of peasants do against our men? I’ll lay you five to one in sovereigns two months will see it out.”
“I dare say you will,” returned the other, in a voice that was surely smiling, “but I won’t take you.”
“By Jove, what a plunger I am!” thought Dion. “Racing ahead like a horse that’s lost his wits. Ten to one they’ll never want volunteers.”
But Westminster still looked exceptional, full of the inner meaning, and somewhere within him a voice still said, “You will go.” Nevertheless he was able partly to put off his hybrid feeling, half-dread, half-desire. The sleek people in the silk hats had made their little effect on the stranger. “The man in the street is often right,” Dion said to himself; though he knew that the man in the street is probably there, and remains there, because he is so often wrong.
When he reached Little Market Street Dion told Rosamund there would be war in South Africa, but he did not even hint at his thought that volunteers might be called for, at his intention, if they were, to offer himself. To do that would not only be absurdly premature, but might even seem slightly bombastic, an uncalled-for study in heroics. He kept silence. The battles of Ladysmith, of Magersfontein, of Stormberg, of Colenso, unsettled the theories of sleek people in silk hats. England came to a very dark hour when Robin was playing with a new set of bricks which his Aunt Beattie had given him. Dion began to understand the rightness of his instinct that evening by the river, when Westminster had spoken to him and England had whispered in his blood. As he had thought of things, so they were going to be. The test was very great. It was as if already it stood by him, a living entity, and touched him with an imperious hand. Sometimes he looked at Rosamund and saw great stretches of sea rolling under great stretches of sky. The barrier! How would he be able to bear the long separation from Rosamund? The habit of happiness in certain circumstances can become the scourge of a man. Men who were unhappy at home could go to war with a lighter heart than he.
Just before Christmas the call for men came, and in Dion a hesitation was born. Should he go and offer himself at once without telling Rosamund, or should he tell her what he wished to do and ask her opinion? Suppose she were against his going out? He could not ask her advice if he was not prepared to take it. What line did he wish her to take? By what course of action would such a woman as Rosamund prove depth of love? Wouldn’t it be natural for a woman who loved a man to raise objections to his going out to fight in a distant country? Wouldn’t she prove her love by raising objections? On the other hand, wouldn’t a woman who loved a man in the greatest way be driven by the desire to see him rise up in an emergency and prove his manhood at whatever cost to her?
Dion wanted one thing of Rosamund at this moment, wanted it terribly, with longing and with fear,—the proof absolute and unhesitating of her love for him.
He decided to volunteer without telling her before hand that he meant to do so. He told no one of his intention except his Uncle Biron, whom he was obliged to consult as they were partners in business.
“You’re right, my boy,” said his uncle. “We’ll get on as best we can without you. We shall miss you, of course. Since you’ve been married your energy has been most praiseworthy, but, of course, the nation comes before the firm. What does your mother say?”
Dion was struck with a sense of wonder by this question. Why didn’t his uncle ask him what Rosamund had said?
“I haven’t spoken to her,” he answered.
“She’ll wish you to go in spite of all,” said his uncle gravely.
“I haven’t even spoken to Rosamund of my intention to enlist.”
His uncle looked surprised, even for a moment astonished, but he only said:
“She’s rather on heroic lines, I should judge. There’s something spacious in her nature.”
“Yes,” said Dion.
He pledged his uncle to silence. Then they talked business.
From that moment Dion wondered how his mother would take his decision. That he had not wondered before proved to himself the absorbing character of his love for his wife. He loved his mother very much, yet, till his uncle had spoken about her in the office, he had only thought about Rosamund in connection with his decision to enlist. The very great thing had swallowed up the big thing. There is something ruthless, almost at moments repellent, in the very great thing which rules in a man’s life. But his mother would never know.
That was what he said to himself, unconscious of the fact that his mother had known and had lived alone with her knowledge for years.
He offered himself for service in South Africa with the City Imperial Volunteers. The doctor passed him. He was informed that he would be sworn in at the Guildhall on 4th January. The great step was taken.
Why had he taken it without telling Rosamund he was going to take it?
As he came out into the dark winter evening he wondered about that almost vaguely. He must have had a driving reason, but now he did not know what it was. How was Rosamund going to take it? Suddenly he felt guilty, as if he had done her a wrong. They were one flesh, and in such a vital matter he had not consulted her. Wasn’t it abominable?
As soon as he was free he went straight home.
This time, as he walked homeward, Dion held no intercourse with Westminster. If he heard the chimes, the voices, the footfalls, he was not conscious of hearing them; if he saw the vapors from the river, the wreaths of smoke from the chimneys, the lights gleaming in the near houses and far away across the dark mystery of the water, he did not know that he saw them. In himself he was imprisoned, and against the great city in which he walked he had shut the doors.
He arrived at his house and put his hand in his pocket to get his latch-key. Before he was able to draw it forth the green door was opened and Beatrice came out.
“Dion!” she said, startled.
“You nearly ran over me!”
“What is it?” she asked. “What have you done?”
“But—”
“I know!” she interrupted.
She put out her hand and took hold of his coat sleeve. The action was startlingly impulsive in Beatrice, who was always so almost plaintive, so restrained, so dim.
“But you can’t!”
“I do. You are going to South Africa.”
He said nothing. How could he tell Beatrice before he told Rosamund?
“When are you going?”
“Is Rosamund in the house, Beattie?” he asked, very gently.
Beatrice flushed deeply, painfully, and took her hand from his sleeve.
“Yes. I’ve been playing with Robin, building castles with the new bricks. Good-by, Dion.”
She went past him and down the small street rather quickly. He stood for a moment looking after her; then he turned into the house. As he shut the door he heard a chord struck on the piano upstairs in Rosamund’s sitting-room. He took off his coat and hat and came into the little hall. As he did so he heard Rosamund’s voice beginning to sing Brahms’s “Wiegenlied” very softly. He guessed that she was singing to an audience of Robin. The bricks had been put away after the departure of Aunt Beattie, and now Robin was being sung towards sleep. How often would he be sung to by Rosamund in the future when his father would not be there to listen!
Robin was going to have his mother all to himself, and Rosamund was going to have her little son all to herself. But they did not know that yet. The long months of their sacred companionship stretched out before the father as he listened to the lullaby, which he could only just hear. Rosamund had mastered the art of withdrawing her voice and yet keeping it perfectly level.
When the song was finished, whispered away into the spaces where music disperses to carry on its sweet mission, Dion went up the stairs, opened the door of Rosamund’s room, and saw something very simple, and, to him, very memorable. Rosamund had turned on the music-stool and put her right arm round Robin, who, in his minute green jersey and green knickerbockers, stood leaning against her with the languid happiness and half-wayward demeanor of a child who has been playing, and who already feels the soothing influence of approaching night with its gift of profound sleep. Robin’s cheeks were flushed, and in his blue eyes there was a curious expression, drowsily imaginative, as if he were welcoming dreams which were only for him. With a faint smile on his small rosy lips he was listening while Rosamund repeated to him in English the words of the song she had just been singing. Dion heard her say: