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Flowering Wilderness
CHAPTER 1
In 1930, shortly after the appearance of the Budget, the eighth wonder of the world might have been observed in the neighbourhood of Victoria Station—three English people, of wholly different type, engaged in contemplating simultaneously a London statue. They had come separately, and stood a little apart from each other in the south-west corner of the open space clear of the trees, where the drifting late afternoon light of spring was not in their eyes. One of these three was a young woman of about twenty-six, one a youngish man of perhaps thirty-four, and one a man of between fifty and sixty. The young woman, slender and far from stupid-looking, had her head tilted slightly upward to one side, and a faint smile on her parted lips. The younger man, who wore a blue overcoat with a belt girt tightly round his thin middle, as if he felt the spring wind chilly, was sallow from fading sunburn; and the rather disdainful look of his mouth was being curiously contradicted by eyes fixed on the statue with real intensity of feeling. The elder man, very tall, in a brown suit and brown buckskin shoes, lounged, with his hands in his trouser pockets, and his long, weathered, good-looking face masked in a sort of shrewd scepticism.
In the meantime the statue, which was that of Marshal Foch on his horse, stood high up among those trees, stiller than any of them.
The youngish man spoke suddenly.
“He delivered us.”
The effect of this breach of form on the others was diverse; the elder man’s eyebrows went slightly up, and he moved forward as if to examine the horse’s legs. The young woman turned and looked frankly at the speaker, and instantly her face became surprised.
“Aren’t you Wilfrid Desert?”
The youngish man bowed.
“Then,” said the young woman, “we’ve met. At Fleur Mont’s wedding. You were best man, if you remember, the first I’d seen. I was only sixteen. You wouldn’t remember me—Di
The youngish man’s mouth lost its disdain.
“I remember your hair perfectly.”
“Nobody ever remembers me by anything else.”
“Wrong! I remember thinking you’d sat to Botticelli. You’re still sitting, I see.”
Di
The said eyes had been turned again upon the statue.
“He DID deliver us,” said Desert.
“You were there, of course.”
“Flying, and fed up to the teeth.”
“Do you like the statue?”
“The horse.”
“Yes,” murmured Di
“The whole thing’s workmanlike, like Foch himself.”
Di
“I like the way it stands up quietly among those trees.”
“How is Michael? You’re a cousin of his, if I remember.”
“Michael’s all right. Still in the House; he has a seat he simply can’t lose.”
“And Fleur?”
“Flourishing. Did you know she had a daughter last year?”
“Fleur? H’m! That makes two, doesn’t it?”
“Yes; they call this one Catherine.”
“I haven’t been home since 1927. Gosh! It’s a long time since that wedding.”
“You look,” said Di
“When I’m not in the sun I’m not alive.”
“Michael once told me you lived in the East.”
“Well, I wander about there.” His face seemed to darken still more, and he gave a little shiver. “Beastly cold, the English spring!”
“And do you still write poetry?”
“Oh! you know of that weakness?”
“I’ve read them all. I like the last volume best.”
He gri
The tall man, who had moved to the other side of the statue, was coming back.
“Somehow,” murmured Di
The tall man came up to them.
“The hocks aren’t all that,” he said.
Di
“I always feel so thankful I haven’t got hocks. We were just trying to decide whether we knew you. Weren’t you at Michael Mont’s wedding some years ago?”
“I was. And who are you, young lady?”
“We all met there. I’m his first cousin on his mother’s side, Di
The tall man nodded.
“Oh! Ah! My name’s Jack Muskham, I’m a first cousin of his father’s.” He turned to Desert. “You admired Foch, it seems.”
“I did.”
Di
“Well,” said Muskham, “he was a soldier all right; and there weren’t too many about. But I came here to see the horse.”
“It is, of course, the important part,” murmured Di
The tall man gave her his sceptical smile.
“One thing we have to thank Foch for, he never left us in the lurch.”
Desert suddenly faced round:
“Any particular reason for that remark?”
Muskham shrugged his shoulders, raised his hat to Di
When he had gone there was a silence as over deep waters.
“Which way were you going?” said Di
“Any way that you are.”
“I thank you kindly, sir. Would an aunt in Mount Street serve as a direction?”
“Admirably.”
“You must remember her, Michael’s mother; she’s a darling, the world’s perfect mistress of the ellipse—talks in stepping stones, so that you have to jump to follow her.”
They crossed the road and set out up Grosvenor Place on the Buckingham Palace side.
“I suppose you find England changed every time you come home, if you’ll forgive me for making conversation?”
“Changed enough.”
“Don’t you ‘love your native land,’ as the saying is?”
“She inspires me with a sort of horror.”
“Are you by any chance one of those people who wish to be thought worse than they are?”
“Not possible. Ask Michael.”
“Michael is incapable of slander.”
“Michael and all angels are outside the count of reality.”
“No,” said Di
“That is his contradictory trouble.”
“Why do you run England down? It’s been done before.”
“I never run her down except to English people.”
“That’s something. But why to me?”
Desert laughed.
“Because you seem to be what I should like to feel that England is.”
“Flattered and fair, but neither fat nor forty.”
“What I object to is England’s belief that she is still ‘the goods.’”
“And isn’t she, really?”
“Yes,” said Desert, surprisingly, “but she has no reason to think so.”
Di
She remarked, more simply:
“If England is still ‘the goods,’ has no reason to think so and yet does, she would seem to have intuition, anyway. Was it by intuition that you disliked Mr. Muskham?” Then, looking at his face, she thought: ‘I’m dropping a brick.’
“Why should I dislike him? He’s just the usual insensitive type of hunting, racing man who bores me stiff.”
‘That wasn’t the reason,’ thought Di
“And do you really like wandering about in the East?”