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Read Ebook: In the Wilderness by Hichens Robert
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Ebook has 6676 lines and 221820 words, and 134 pages
"But could you?"
"I don't know. Probably not. I've never tried."
"But you don't hate the idea?"
His voice was almost violent.
"No; if--if I were living in a certain way."
"What way?"
But she did not answer his question.
"I dare say I might dislike living alone. I've never done such a thing, therefore I can't tell."
"You're an enigma," he exclaimed. "And you seem so--so--you have this extraordinary, this abnormal power of attracting people to you. You are friends with everybody."
"Indeed I'm not."
"I mean you're so cordial, so friendly with everybody. Don't you care for anybody?"
"I care very much for some people."
"And yet you could live alone! Shut in here for days with a book"--at that moment he was positively jealous of old Dante, gone to his rest five hundred and seventy-four years ago--"you're perfectly happy."
"The 'Paradiso' isn't an ordinary book," she said, very gently, and looking at him with a kind, almost beaming expression in her yellow-brown eyes.
"I don't believe you ever read an ordinary book."
"I like to feed on fine things. I'm half afraid of the second-rate."
"I love you for that. Oh, Rosamund, I love you for so many things!"
He got up and stood by the fire, turning his back to her for a moment. When he swung round his face was earnest but he looked calmer. She saw that he was making a strong effort to hold himself in, that he was reaching out after self-control.
"I can't tell you all the things I love you for," he said, "but your independence of spirit frightens me. From the very first, from that evening when I saw you in the omnibus at the Milan Station over a year ago, I felt your independence."
"Did I manifest it in the omnibus to poor Beattie and my guardian?" she asked, smiling, and in a lighter tone.
"I don't know," he said gravely. "But when I saw you the same evening walking with your sister in the public garden I felt it more strongly. Even the way you held your head and moved--you reminded me of the maidens of the Porch on the Acropolis. I connected you with Greece and all my--my dreams of Greece."
"Perhaps if you hadn't just come from Greece--"
"Wasn't it strange," he said, interrupting her but quite unconscious that he did so, "that almost the first words I heard you speak were about Greece? You were telling your sister abut the Greek divers who come to Portofino to find coral under the sea. I was sitting alone in the garden, and you passed and I heard just a few words. They made me think of the first Greek Island I ever saw, rising out of the sunset as I voyaged from Constantinople to the Piraeus. It was wonderfully beautiful and wonderfully calm. It was like a herald of all the beauty and purity I found in Greece. It was--like you."
"How you hated Constantinople!" she said. "I remember you denouncing its noise and its dirt, and the mongrel horrors of Pera, to my guardian in the hotel where we made friends. And he put in a plea for Stamboul."
"Yes, I exaggerated. But Constantinople stood to me for all the uproar of life, and Greece for the calm and beauty and happiness, the great Sanity of the true happiness."
He looked at her with yearning in his dark eyes.
"For all I want in my own life," he added.
He paused; then an expression of strong, almost hard resolution made his face look suddenly older.
"Why did you ask me just that day, after 'Woe unto them'?"
"I felt I must," he answered, but with a slight awkwardness, as if he were evading something and felt half-guilty. "To-day I decided I would ask you again, for the last time."
"No, never. If you say 'Wait, and come later on and ask me,' I shall not come."
She got up restlessly. She was obviously moved.
"Dion, I can't tell you to-day."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. I just feel I can't. It's no use."
"When did you mean to tell me?"
"I don't know."
"Did you mean ever to allude to the matter again, if I hadn't?"
"Yes, I should have told you, because I knew you were waiting. I--I--often I have thought that I shall never marry any one."
She looked into the fire. Her face had become almost mysterious.
"Some women don't need--that," she murmured.
The fire played over her pale yellow hair.
"Abnormal women!" he exclaimed violently.
She turned.
She stopped.
"What?" he said.
"Don't let us talk of these things. But you must not judge any woman without knowing what is in her heart. Even your own mother, with whom you have lived alone ever since your father's death--do you know very much of her? We can't always show ourselves plainly as we are. It may not be our fault."
"You will marry. You must marry."
"Why--must?"
He gazed at her. As she met his eyes she reddened slightly, understanding his thought, that such a woman as she was ought not to avoid the great vocation of woman. But there was another vocation, and perhaps it was hers. She felt confused. Two desires were struggling within her. It was as if her nature contained two necessities which were wholly irreconcilable the one with the other.
"You can't tell me?" he said, at last.
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