Robert Hichens

“ Rosamund saw herself now as the mother of a tall son, hardened a little by public-school life, a cricketer, a rower, a swimmer; perhaps intellectual too, the winner of a scholarship. There were so many hearts and minds that the mother of a son must learn to keep, to companion, to influence, to go forward with: the heart and the mind of the child, the schoolboy, the undergraduate, the young man out in the world taking up his life-task—a soldier perhaps, or a man of learning, a pioneer, a carver of new ways for the crowd following behind. ”

“ Of one thing he was certain; that he would never see Elis, would never see Hermes and the child again, unless Rosamund was with him. She had made the green wilderness to blossom as the rose. She only could make his life to blossom. He depended upon her terribly—terribly. Always that love of his was growing. People, especially women, often said that the love of a man was quickly satisfied, more quickly than a woman’s, that the masculine satisfaction was soon followed by satiety. Love such as that was only an appetite, a species of lust. Such a woman as Rosamund could not awaken mere lust. ”

“ That purely instinctive action was the beginning of Dion’s punishment. A cry, the movement of a body, and everything which meant life to him, everything for which he had lived, was gone. But he followed Rosamund with a sort of blind obstinacy, driven as she was by instinct. Dimly he knew that he was a man who only merited compassion, all the compassion of the world. He had no horror of himself, but only a horror of that Fate to which mortals have to submit and which had overtaken him in a shining moment of happiness. ”

“ The curious peace of any religious life was certainly not for her, yet to-day she felt weary of the life in her world. And she wished she could have in her existence peace of some kind; she wished that she were not a perpetual wanderer. She remembered some of those with whom from time to time, she had linked herself—her husband, Hadi Bey, Dumeny, Brayfield, Dion Leith. Now she was struggling, and so far in vain, to thrust Dion out of her life. If she succeeded—what then? Where was stability in her existence? Her love for Jimmy was the only thing that lasted, and that often made her afraid now. ”

“ For a long while these two watched Hermes and the child in the silence of Elis, bound together by an almost perfect sympathy. And they understood as never before the beauty of calm—calm of the nerves, calm of the body, calm of the mind, the heart and the soul; peace physical, intellectual and moral. In looking at the Hermes they saw, or seemed to themselves to see, the goal, what struggling humanity is meant for—the perfect poise, all faculties under effortless control, and so peace.
“We must be meant for that,” Dion said to himself. “Shall we reach that goal, and take a child with us?” ”

“ Now, as she sat in the garden, with the image of the migratory birds in her mind, she thought, “The birds do that. They give themselves to the sky, and God does the rest. He knows the way by which each human soul can best go back to that from which once it issued forth.” Perhaps as a Sister, leading the hidden secluded life, she could not have found the way; perhaps she had to find it in the world, through Dion with whom she had united herself, or through Robin to whom she had given birth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A small sigh came from Robin. To his father and mother it came like the whisper of happiness, that good fairy which men cannot quite get rid of, try as they may. Two small hands went down to the little gaiters and felt them carefully. Then Robin looked up again, this time at his father, and smiled. Instinctively he connected his father with these wonderful appurtenances, although his mother had bought them and put them on him. With that smile he gave the day to his father, and Dion took it with just a glance at Rosamund—a glance which deprecated and which accepted. ”

“ Clarke, and at last, obedient to his insistent demand, she came and did her best for him, came, he imagined, from Constantinople, to keep him company in this night of crisis.
As Daventry had described her, as Bruce Evelin had, with casual allusions and suggestive hints, built her up before Dion in the talk after dinner that night, so she was now in the little room: a woman of intellect and of great taste, with an intense love for, and fine knowledge of, beautiful things: a woman who was almost a sensualist in her adoration for fine and rare things. ”

“ How could any shadow stand in the presence of the Hermes? The divine calm within this chamber had a power which was akin to the power of nature in the twilight of a windless evening, or of a beautiful soul at ease in its own simplicity. It purified. Dion could not imagine any man being able to look at the Hermes and feel the attraction of sin. Rosamund was right, he thought. Surely men have to go and fetch their sins. Their goodness is given to them. The mother holds it, and is aware of it, when her baby is put into her arms for the first time. ”

“ And she wondered whether Rosamund, in her Sisterhood, was happier than she was in the world. In the Sisterhood there must surely be peace—monotony, drudgery, perhaps, but peace.
Santa Sophia, with its vast spaces, its airy dome, its great arches and galleries, its walls of variegated marble, its glittering mosaics and columns of porphyry, to-day made her realize that in her life of adventure and passion she was driven, as if by a demon with a whip, and that her horrible situation with Dion was but the culmination of a series of horrible situations. ”

“ Behind them the bare hills showed no sign of life. The solitude was profound but not startling. It seemed in place, necessary and beautiful. In the emptiness there was something touching, something reticently satisfying. It was a land and seascape delicately purged.
“Greece and solitude,” said Rosamund. “I shall always connect them together. I shall always love each for the other’s sake.”
In the silence which followed the words the far-off lowing of oxen came to them over the flats. Rosamund shut her eyes, Dion half shut his, and the empty world was a shining dream. ”

“ A fly with shining wings journeyed among the leaves of the myrtles, a beetle crept over the hot sandy ground leaving a minute pattern behind it; and Rosamund and Dion forgot all about Artemisia, as they brooded, wide-eyed, over the activities of the dwellers in the waste. At such moments they realized the magic of life, as they had never realized it in the turmoil of London. The insect with its wings that caught the sun, the intent and preoccupied little traveler whose course could be deflected by a twig, revealed the wonder that is lost and forgotten in the crowded highways of men. ”

“ Yet he saw all around him people closely companioned by sorrow and did not think that strange. Sorrow even approached very near to Rosamund and to him in that very month of January, for Beatrice had a miscarriage and lost her baby. She said very little about it, but Dion believed that she was really stricken to the heart. He was very fond of Beatrice, he almost loved her; yet her sorrow was only a shadow passing by him, not a substance pressing upon him. And that fact, which he realized, made him know how little even imagination and quiet affection can help men feel the pains of others. ”

“ A faced bronzed dark to red and gold, With mountain eyes that seem to hold The freshness of the world of old; A shepherd’s crook, a coat of fleece, A grazing flock—the sense of peace, The long sweet silence—this is Greece.”
The accompaniment continued for a moment alone, whispering remoteness. Then, like a voice far off in a blue distance, there came again from Rosamund, more softly and with less pressure:
“——The sense of peace, The long sweet silence—this is Greece! This is Greece!”
It was just then that Dion saw Mrs. Clarke. She had, perhaps, been sitting down ”

“ For Beattie’s sake far more than for his own he longed to have a child in his home, a child of hers and his. But that would never be. And so Beattie gave all the mother-love that was in her to Robin, but much of it secretly. Guy knew that, and believed he knew the secret of her reticence even with Robin. She loved Robin, as it were, from a distance; only his mother must love him cheek to cheek, lips to lips, heart to heart, and his father as men love the sons they think of as the bravery and strength of the future. ”

“ The twigs crackled, making an almost irritable music of dryness. Again the lowing of cattle came over that old battlefield from the edge of the sea. And just then, at that very moment, Dion knew that his great love could not stand still, that, like all great things, it must progress. And the cry, that intense human cry, “Whither?” echoed in the deep places of his soul. Whither were he and his great love going? To what end were they journeying? For a moment sadness invaded him, the sadness of one who thinks and is very ignorant. Why cannot a man think deeply without thinking of an end? ”

“ Then he looked down at Rosamund, saw her pale yellow hair, the back of her neck, in which, somehow, purity was manifested, and thought:
“I might perhaps get there through her, but only through her.”
She turned round, looked at him and smiled.
“Isn’t he divine? And the child’s attitude!”
Dion moved and sat down beside her.
“If this is Paganism,” she continued, “it’s the same thing as Christianity. It’s what God means. Men try to separate things that are all one. I feel that when I look at Hermes. Oh, how beautiful he is! And his beauty is as much moral as physical. ”

“ It seemed as if Jimmy had seen through Dion’s insincerity in the garden at Buyukderer. Yet there was nothing to show that he had not accepted his mother’s insincerity in Sonia’s room at its face value. Even Mrs. Clarke had not been able to understand exactly what was in her boy’s mind. But Jimmy’s hostility to Dion had troubled her obscurely, and had added to her growing weariness of this intrigue something more vital. Her intelligence divined, rather than actually perceived, the coming into her life of a definite menace to her happiness, if happiness it could be called. ”

“ All the windows of the drawing-room looked into Hyde Park, on to the damp grass, the leafless trees, the untenanted spaces of autumn.
Dion went to the fireplace, which faced the far doorway. There was not a sound in the room; not a sound came to it just then from without. He could scarcely believe he was in Knightsbridge. Not even a clock was ticking on the mantelpiece above the fire, in which ship logs were burning. The flames which came from them were of various shades of blue, like magical flames conjured up by a magician. He looked round. He had never seen a room like this before. ”

“ Could a woman like Rosamund be driven by an instinct blindly? She was such a perfect type of womanhood. It would be almost a tragedy if she—such a woman—died childless. Perhaps instinct had obscurely warned her of that, had taught her where to look for a mate. He, Dion, had always lived purely. That day she had acknowledged that she had divined it. Was that, perhaps, her real, her instinctive reason for marrying him? But a man wants to be married for one thing only, because the woman longs for him. And Dion was just an ordinary man with very strong feelings. ”

“ She crushed its petals and flung them away on the sill of the window.
While Mrs. Clarke was sitting by the fountain in the garden of the Villa Hafiz, Dion was sleepless in his bedroom at the Hotel Belgrad. He was considering whether he should end his life or whether he should change the way of his life. He was not conscious of struggle. He did not feel excited. But he did feel determined. The strength he possessed was asserting itself. It had slumbered within him; it had not died.
Either he would die now or he would genuinely live, would lay a grip on life somehow. ”

“ There was a great stillness in her big eyes. All the vital exuberance of body and spirit mingled together had vanished from her abruptly. Nothing of the Amazon who had captured the heart of Dirmikis remained. As Dion looked at her now, he simply could not see the beautiful schoolgirl of sixteen, the blonde gipsy who had bent forward, cigarette in mouth, to his match, who had leaned back and blown rings to the moon above Drouva. Had she ever set the butt of a gun against her shoulder? Something in this woman’s eyes made him suddenly feel as if he ought to leave her alone. ”

“ Dion leaned forward. His brown face was twitching.
“Suppose you had to choose between Jimmy and me!”
He was thinking of Robin and Rosamund. A child had conquered him once. Now once again a child—for Jimmy was no more than a child as yet, although he thought himself important and almost a young man—intruded into his life with a woman.
“I shall not have to choose. But I have told you that a child is not enough for the happiness of a woman like me. You know what I am, and you must know I am speaking the truth.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nature had long since taken the ruins to her gentle breast; she took Rosamund and Dion with them. In her green lap she sheltered them; with her green hills and her groves of pine trees she wrapped them round; with her tall grasses, her bushes, her wild flowers and her leaves she caught at and caressed them. A jackal whined in its lair near the huge limestone blocks of the temple of Zeus. Green lizards basked on the pavements which still showed the little ruts constructed to save the feet of contending athletes from slipping. All along the green valley the birds flew and sang ”

“ He was amazed and he was horrified by the power and intensity of the love within him. In this moment he knew it for an undying thing. Nothing could kill it, no act of Rosamund’s, no act of his. Even lust had not suffocated the purity of it, even satiety of the flesh had not lessened the yearning of it, or availed to deprive it of its ardent simplicity, of its ideal character. In it there was still the child with his wonder, the boy with his stirring aspirations towards life, the man with his full-grown passion. ”

“ His intimate knowledge of what Rosamund was companioned him at this moment—that knowledge which no separation, which no hatred even, could ever destroy. She was fastidiously pure. She could never be anything else. He could not conceive of her ever drawing near to, and associating herself deliberately with, bodily degradation. He thought of her as he had known her, with her relations, her friends, with himself, with Robin. Always in every relation of life a radiant purity had been about her like an atmosphere; always she had walked in rays of the sun. Until Robin had died! ”

“ The child’s new adoration of his father had made her care more for Dion, and even more for Robin; for she felt that Robin was unconsciously loving in his father a strength and a nobility which were new in Dion, which had been born far away across the sea. War destroys, and all the time war is destroying it is creating. Robin was holding a little bit of what the South African War had created as he held his father’s hand. For are not the profound truths of the soul conveyed through all its temple?
“Happiness is a mystery,” thought Rosamund. ”

“ Already Rosamund and Dion had spent many hours here, sometimes sitting on the bench, more often resting on the warm ground in the sunshine, among the fragments of ruin and the speary, silver-green grasses. Now Rosamund sat down and Dion stood by her side.
“Rosamund, those maidens are my ideal of womanhood shown in marble,” he said.
“They are almost miraculously beautiful. And one scarcely knows why. But I know that every time I see them the mystery of their beauty seems more ineffable to me, and the meaning of it seems more profound. How did men get so much meaning into marble?” ”

“ A woman’s love of God had made Dion in his bitterness antichristian. It was an enormously vital book, and called to the vitality which misery had not killed within him. There were passages in it which seemed to have been written specially for him—passages that went into him like a sword and drew blood from out of the very depths of him.
“Better the worm of Izrail than Death that walks in form of life”—that was for him. He had substituted for death, swift, easy, a mere nothing, the long, slow terrific something. Death that walks in form of life. ”

“ Clarke knew very well that most men can only be held when they do not know that they are held, but Dion, in his present condition, was not like any other man she had known. More than once in the earliest stages of their intimacy she had had really to fight to keep him near her, and so he knew how arbitrary she could be when her nature was roused.
Sometimes he hated her with intensity, for she had set herself to destroy the fabric of his spirit, which not even Rosamund had been able entirely to destroy by her desertion of him. ”

“ Rosamund began almost to hate herself. Was she capable of any sort of treachery? Swiftly she began to dwell upon all the dear goodness of Dion, upon his love, his admiration, his perpetual thoughtfulness, his unselfishness, his straight purity, his chivalry, his unceasing devotion. He was a man to trust implicitly. That was enough. She trusted him and loved him. She thanked God that he was back in England. She had missed him more, much more than she had realized; she was quite sure of that now that she had recalled things. One happiness is apt to oust the acute memory of another. ”

“ Beatrice Daventry had shown no bitterness. She loved and understood her sister too well to rage against her for anything that she did or left undone. But this very love of her sister, so clearly shown, had made her condemnation of Rosamund’s action the more impressive. And her pity for Dion was supreme. Through Beatrice Father Robertson had gained an insight into Dion’s love, and into another love, too; but of that he scarcely allowed himself even to think. There are purities so intense that, like fire, they burn those who would handle them, however tenderly. ”