Flowering Wilderness eotc-2

by John Galsworthy

  It was past six, and she went on to South Square. Getting unseen to her room, she had a long hot bath, put on a dinner frock, and resolutely went down. Only Fleur and Michael were there, and neither of them asked her any questions. It was clear to her that they knew. She got through the evening somehow. When she was going up, both of them kissed her, and Fleur said:

  “I’ve told them to put you a hot-water bottle; stuck against your back, it helps you to sleep. Good-night, bless you!”

  Again Dinny had the feeling that Fleur had once suffered as she was suffering now. She slept better than she could have hoped.

  With her early tea she received a letter with the heading of an hotel at Chingford.

  “MADAM,—

  “The enclosed letter addressed to you was found in the pocket of a gentleman who is lying here with a very sharp attack of malaria. I am posting it on to you, and am

  “Truly yours,

  “ROGER QUEAL, M.D.”

  She read the letter… “Whatever I do, forgive, and believe that I have loved you. Wilfrid.” And he was ill! All the impulses which sprang up she instantly thrust back. Not a second time would she rush in where angels feared to tread! But, hurrying down, she telephoned to Stack the news that he was lying at the Chingford hotel with an attack of malaria.

  “He’ll want his pyjamas and his razors, then, miss. I’ll take ’em down to him.”

  Forcing back the words: “Give him my love,” she said instead, “He knows where I am if there is anything I can do.”

  The blacker bitterness of her mood was gone; yet she was as cut off from him as ever! Unless he came or sent for her she could make no move; and deep down she seemed to know that he would neither come nor send. No! He would strike his tent and flit away from where he had felt too much.

  Towards noon Hubert came to say good-bye. It was at once clear to her that he, too, knew. He was coming back for the rest of his leave in October, he said. Jean was to stay at Condaford till after her child was born in November. She had been ordered to be out of the summer heat. He seemed to Dinny that morning like the old Hubert again. He dwelt on the advantage of being born at Condaford. And, endeavouring to be sprightly, she said:

  “Quaint to find you talking like that, Hubert. You never used to care about Condaford.”

  “It makes a difference to have an heir.”

  “Oh! It’ll be an heir, will it?”

  “Yes, we’ve made up our minds to a boy.”

  “And will there be a Condaford by the time he comes into it?”

  Hubert shrugged. “We’ll have a try at keeping it. Things don’t last unless you set yourself to keep them.”

  “And not always then,” murmured Dinny.

  CHAPTER 31

  Wilfrid’s words: “You can tell her family I’m going away,” and Dinny’s: “It’s finished,” had travelled, if not like wildfire, throughout the Cherrell family. There was no rejoicing as over a sinner that repenteth. All were too sorry for her, with a sorrow nigh unto dismay. Each wanted to show sympathy, none knew how. Sympathy smelling of sympathy was worse than none. Three days passed, during which not one member of the family succeeded in expressing anything. Then Adrian had a brainwave: He would ask her to eat something with him, though why food should be regarded as consolatory neither he nor anyone else had ever known. He appointed a café which had perhaps more repute than merit.

  Since Dinny was not of those young women who make the ravages of life into an excuse for French-varnishing their surfaces, he had every opportunity to note her pallor. He forbore to comment. Indeed, he found it difficult to talk at all, for he knew that, though men, when enthralled by women, remain devoted to their mental mainsprings, women, less bodily enthralled, stay mentally wrapped up in the men they love. He began, however, to tell her how someone had tried to ‘sell him a pup.’

  “He wanted five hundred pounds, Dinny, for a Cromagnon skull found in Suffolk. The whole thing looked extraordinarily genuine. But I happened to see the county archaeologist. ‘Oh!’ he said: ‘So he’s been trying to palm that off on you, has he? That’s the well-known “pup.” He’s dug it up at least three times. The man ought to be in gaol. He keeps it in a cupboard and every five or six years digs a hole, puts it in, takes it out, and tries to sell it. It possibly IS a Cromagnon skull, but he picked it up in France, about twenty years ago. It would be unique, of course as a British product.’ Thereon I went off to have another look at where it was found last time. And it was plain enough, when you already knew it, that he’d put the thing in. There’s something about antiques that saps what the Americans call one’s MORAL.”

  “What sort of man was he, uncle?”

  “An enthusiastic-looking chap, rather like my hairdresser.”

  Dinny laughed. “You ought to do something, or he WILL sell it next time.”

  “The depression is against him, my dear. Bones and first editions are extraordinarily sensitive. He’ll have to live a good ten years to get anything like a price.”

  “Do many people try to palm things off on you?”

  “Some succeed, Dinny. I regret that ‘pup,’ though; it was a lovely skull. There aren’t many as good nowadays.”

  “We English certainly are getting uglier.”

  “Don’t you believe it. Put the people we meet in drawing-rooms and shops into cassocks and cowls, armour and jerkins, and you’ll have just the faces of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.”

  “But we do despise beauty, Uncle. We connect it with softness and immorality.”

  “Well, it makes people happy to despise what they haven’t got. We’re only about the third—no, the fourth—plainest people in Europe. But take away the Celtic infusions, and I admit we’d be the first.”

  Dinny looked round the café. Her survey added nothing to her conclusions, partly because she took but little in, and partly because the lunchers were nearly all Jews or Americans.

  Adrian watched her with an ache. She looked so bone-listless.

  “Hubert’s gone, then?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “And what are you going to do, my dear?”

  Dinny sat looking at her plate. Suddenly she raised her head and said:

  “I think I shall go abroad, Uncle.”

  Adrian’s hand went to his goatee.

  “I see,” he said, at last. “Money?”

  “I have enough.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “By yourself?”

  Dinny nodded.

  “The drawback to going away,” murmured Adrian, “is the having to come back.”

  “There doesn’t seem to be anything much for me to do just now. So I think I’ll cheer people up by not seeing them for a bit.”

  Adrian debated within himself.

  “Well, my dear, only you can decide what’s best for you. But if you felt like a long travel, it strikes me that Clare might be glad to see you in Ceylon.”

  Seeing by the surprised movement of her hands that the idea was new to her, he went on:

  “I have a feeling that she may not be finding life very easy.”

  Her eyes met his.

  “That’s what I thought at the wedding, Uncle; I didn’t like his face.”

  “You have a special gift for helping others, Dinny; and whatever’s wrong about Christianity, it’s not the saying ‘To give is more blessed than to receive.’”

  “Even the Son of Man liked His little joke, Uncle.”

  Adrian looked at her hard, and said:

  “Well, if you do go to Ceylon, mind you eat your mangoes over a basin.”

  He parted from her a little later and, too much out of mood to go back to work, went to the Horse Show instead.

  CHAPTER 32

  At South Square The Daily Phase was among those journals which politicians take lest they should miss reading correctly the temperature of Fleet Street. Michael pushed it over to Fleur at breakfast.

  During the six days since Dinny’s arr
ival neither of them had said a word to her on the subject of Wilfrid; and it was Dinny who now said: “May I see that?”

  Fleur handed her the paper. She read, gave a little shudder, and went on with her breakfast. Kit broke the ensuing hush by stating Hobbs’ average. Did Aunt Dinny think he was as great as W. G. Grace?

  “I never saw either of them, Kit.”

  “Didn’t you see W. G.?”

  “I think he died before I was born.”

  Kit scrutinised her doubtfully.

  “Oh!”

  “He died in 1915,” said Michael: “You’d have been eleven.”

  “But haven’t you really seen Hobbs, Auntie?”

  “No.”

  “I’VE seen him three times. I’m practising his hook to leg. The Daily Phase says Bradman is the best batsman in the world now. Do you think he’s better than Hobbs?”

  “Better news than Hobbs.”

  Kit stared.

  “What is ‘news’?”

  “What newspapers are for.”

  “Do they make it up?”

  “Not always.”

  “What news were you reading just now?”

  “Nothing that would interest you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Kit, don’t worry!” said Fleur.

  “May I have an egg?”

  “Yes.”

  The hush began again, till Kit stopped his eggspoon in midair and isolated a finger:

  “Look! The nail’s blacker than it was yesterday. Will it come off, Auntie?”

  “How did you do that?”

  “Pinched it in a drawer. I didn’t cry.”

  “Don’t boast, Kit.”

  Kit gave his mother a clear upward look and resumed his egg.

  Half an hour later, when Michael was just settling down to his correspondence, Dinny came into his study.

  “Busy, Michael?”

  “No, my dear.”

  “That paper! Why can’t they leave him alone?”

  “You see The Leopard is selling like hot cakes. Dinny, how do things stand now?”

  “I know he’s been having malaria, but I don’t even know where or how he is.”

  Michael looked at her face, masked in its desperate little smile, and said, hesitatingly:

  “Would you like me to find out?”

  “If he wants me, he knows where I am.”

  “I’ll see Compson Grice. I’m not lucky with Wilfrid himself.”

  When she was gone he sat staring at the letters he had not begun to answer, half dismayed, half angered. Poor dear Dinny! What a shame! Pushing the letters aside, he went out.

  Compson Grice’s office was near Covent Garden, which, for some reason still to be discovered, attracts literature. When Michael reached it, about noon, that young publisher was sitting in the only well-furnished room in the building, with a newspaper cutting in his hand and a smile on his lips. He rose and said: “Hallo, Mont! Seen this in The Phase?”

  “Yes.”

  “I sent it round to Desert, and he wrote that at the top and sent it back. Neat, eh!”

  Michael read in Wilfrid’s writing:

  “Whene’er the lord who rules his roosts

  Says: ‘Bite!’ he bites, says: ‘Boost!’ he boosts.”

  “He’s in town, then?”

  “Was half an hour ago.”

  “Have you seen him at all?”

  “Not since the book came out.”

  Michael looked shrewdly at that comely fattish face. “Satisfied with the sales?”

  “We’re in the forty-first thousand, and going strong.”

  “I suppose you don’t know whether Wilfrid is returning to the East?”

  “Haven’t the least little idea.”

  “He must be pretty sick with the whole thing.”

  Compson Grice shrugged.

  “How many poets have ever made a thousand pounds out of a hundred pages of verse?”

  “Small price for a soul, Grice.”

  “It’ll be two thousand before we’ve done.”

  “I always thought it a mistake to print The Leopard. Since he did it I’ve defended it, but it was a fatal thing to do.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  “Obviously. It’s done you proud.”

  “You can sneer,” said Grice, with some feeling, “but he wouldn’t have sent it to me if he hadn’t wished it to come out. I am not my brother’s keeper. The mere fact that it turns out a scoop is nothing to the point.”

  Michael sighed.

  “I suppose not; but this is no joke for him. It’s his whole life.”

  “Again, I don’t agree. That happened when he recanted to save himself being shot. This is expiation, and damned good business into the bargain. His name is known to thousands who’d never heard of it.”

  “Yes,” said Michael, brooding, “there is that, certainly. Nothing like persecution to keep a name alive. Grice, will you do something for me? Make an excuse to find out what Wilfrid’s intentions are. I’ve put my foot into it with him and can’t go myself, but I specially want to know.”

  “H’m!” said Grice. “He bites.”

  Michael grinned. “He won’t bite his benefactor. I’m serious. Will you?”

  “I’ll try. By the way, there’s a book by that French Canadian I’ve just published. Top-hole! I’ll send you a copy—your wife will like it.” ‘And,’ he added to himself, ‘talk about it.’ He smoothed back his sleek dark hair and extended his hand. Michael shook it with a little more warmth than he really felt and went away.

  ‘After all,’ he thought, ‘what is it to Grice except business? Wilfrid’s nothing to him! In these days we have to take what the gods send.’ And he fell to considering what was really making the public buy a book not concerned with sex, memoirs, or murders. The Empire! The prestige of the English! He did not believe it. No! What was making them buy it was that fundamental interest which attached to the question how far a person might go to save his life without losing what was called his soul. In other words, the book was being sold by that little thing—believed in some quarters to be dead—called Conscience. A problem posed to each reader’s conscience, that he could not answer easily; and the fact that it had actually happened to the author brought it home to the reader that some awful alternative might at any moment be presented to himself. And what would he do then, poor thing? And Michael felt one of those sudden bursts of consideration and even respect for the public which often came over him and so affected his more intelligent friends that they alluded to him as ‘Poor Michael!’

  So meditating, he reached his room at the House of Commons, and had settled down to the consideration of a private bill to preserve certain natural beauties when a card was brought to him:

  General Sir Conway Cherrell

  “Can you see me?”

  Pencilling: “Delighted, sir!” he handed the card back to the attendant and got up. Of all his uncles he knew Dinny’s father least, and he waited with some trepidation.

  The General came in, saying:

  “Regular rabbit-warren this, Michael.”

  He had the confirmed neatness of his profession, but his face looked worn and worried.

  “Luckily we don’t breed here, Uncle Con.”

  The General emitted a short laugh.

  “No, there’s that. I hope I’m not interrupting you. It’s about Dinny. She still with you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The General hesitated, and then, crossing his hands on his stick, said firmly:

  “You’re Desert’s best friend, aren’t you?”

  “Was. What I am now, I really don’t know.”

  “Is he still in town?”

  “Yes; he’s been having a bout of malaria, I believe.”

  “Dinny still seeing him?”

  “No, sir.”

  Again the General hesitated, and again seemed to firm himself by gripping his stick.

  “Her mother and I, you know, only want what’s best for her. We
want her happiness; the rest doesn’t matter. What do you think?”

  “I really don’t believe it matters what any of us think.”

  The General frowned.

  “How do you mean?”

  “It’s just between those two.”

  “I understood that he was going away.”

  “He said so to my father, but he hasn’t gone. His publisher told me just now that he was still at his rooms this morning.”

  “How is Dinny?”

  “Very low in her mind. But she keeps her end up.”

  “He ought to do something.”

  “What, sir?”

  “It’s not fair to Dinny. He ought either to marry her or go right away.”

  “Would you find it easy, in his place, to make up your mind?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  Michael made a restless tour of his little room.

  “I think the whole thing is way below any question of just yes or no. It’s a case of wounded pride, and when you’ve got that, the other emotions don’t run straight. You ought to know that, sir. You must have had similar cases, when fellows have been court-martialled.”

  The word seemed to strike the General with the force of a revelation. He stared at his nephew and did not answer.

  “Wilfrid,” said Michael, “is being court-martialled, and it isn’t a short sharp business like a real court-martial—it’s a desperate long-drawn-out affair, with no end to it that I can grasp.”

  “I see,” said the General, quietly: “But he should never have let Dinny in for it.”

  Michael smiled. “Does love ever do what’s correct?”

  “That’s the modern view, anyway.”