In the Wilderness

by Robert Hichens

Of her struggle, of her frustration, of her mental torment in this connexion she had never spoken to Father Robertson. Even in confession she had been silent. He knew of her mother-agony; he did not know of the stranger, more subtle agony beneath it. He did not know that whereas the one agony with the lapse of time was not passing away—it would never do that—but was becoming more tender, more full of tears and of sweet recollections, the other agony grew harsher, more menacing.

Rosamund had gradually come to feel that Robin had been taken out of her arms for some great, though hidden, reason. And because of this feeling she was learning to endure his loss with a sort of resignation. She often thought that perhaps she had been allowed to have this consolation because she had made an immense effort. When Robin died she had driven Dion, who had killed her child, out of her life, but she had succeeded in saying to God, “Thy will be done!” She had said it at first as a mere formula, had repeated it obstinately again and again, without meaning it at all, but trying to mean it, meaning to mean it. She had made a prodigious, a truly heroic effort to conquer her powerfully rebellious nature, and, in this effort, she had been helped by Father Robertson. He knew of the anger which had overwhelmed her when her mother had died, of how she had wished to hurt God. He knew that, with bloody sweat, she had destroyed that enemy within her. She had wished to submit to the will of God when Robin had been snatched from her, and at last she had actually submitted. It was a great triumph of the spirit. But perhaps it had left her exhausted. At any rate she had never been able to forgive God’s instrument, her husband. And so she had never been able to know the peace of God which many of these women by whom she was surrounded knew. In her misery she contemplated their calm. To labor and to pray—that seemed enough to many of them, to most of them. She had known calm in the garden at Welsley; in the Sisterhood she knew it not.

The man who was always with her assassinated calm. She felt strangely from a distance the turmoil of his spirit. She knew of his misery occultly. She did not deduce it from her former knowledge of what he was. And his suffering made her suffer in a terrible way. He was her victim and she was his.

Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.

In the Sisterhood Rosamund had learnt, always against her will and despite the utmost effort of her obstinacy, the uselessness of that command; she had learnt that those whom God hath really joined together cannot be put asunder by man—or by woman. Dion had killed her child, but she had not been able to kill what she was to Dion and what Dion was to her. Through the mingling of their two beings there had been born a mystery which was, perhaps, eternal like the sound of the murmur in the pine trees above the Valley of Olympia.

She could not trample it into nothingness.

At first, after the tragedy of which Robin had been the victim, Rosamund had felt a horror of Dion which was partly animal. She had fled from him because she had been physically afraid of him. He had been changed for her from the man who loved her, and whom she loved in her different way, into the slayer of her child. She knew, of course, quite well that Dion was not a murderer, but nevertheless she thought of him as one thinks of a murderer. The blood of her child was upon his hands. She trembled at the thought of being near him. Nevertheless, because she was not mad, in time reason asserted itself within her. Dion disappeared out of her life. He did not put up the big fight for the big thing of which Lady Ingleton had once spoken to her husband. His type of love was far too sensitive to struggle and fight on its own behalf. When he had heard the key of his house door turned against him, when, later, Mr. Darlington with infinite precautions had very delicately explained to him why it had been done, Rosamund had attained her freedom. He had waited on for a time in England, but he had somehow never been able really to hope for any change in his wife. His effort to make her see the tragedy in its true light had exhausted itself in the garden at Welsley. Her frantic evasion of him had brought it to an end. He could not renew it. Even if he had been ready to renew it those about Rosamund would have dissuaded him from doing so. Every one who was near her saw plainly that “for the present”—as they put it—Dion must keep out of her life.

And gradually Rosamund had lost that half-animal fear of him, gradually she had come to realize something of the tragedy of his situation. A change had come about in her almost in despite of herself. And yet she had never been able to forgive him for what he had done. Her reason knew that she had nothing to forgive; her religious sense, her conception of God, obliged her to believe that Dion had been God’s instrument when he had killed his child; but something within her refused him pardon. Perhaps she felt that pardon could only mean one thing—reconciliation. And now had come Lady Ingleton’s revelation. Instinctively as Rosamund left Father Robertson’s little room she had tried to hide her face. She had received a blow, and the pain of it frightened her. She was startled by her own suffering. What did it mean? What did it portend? She had no right to feel as she did. Long ago she had abandoned the right to such a feeling.

The information Lady Ingleton had brought outraged Rosamund. Anger and a sort of corrosive shame struggled for the mastery within her.

She felt humiliated to the dust. She felt dirty, soiled.