Flowering Wilderness

But Hilary carved away at his Roman galley. Those classical studies he had so neglected had led up to his becoming a parson, and he could no longer understand why. What sort of young man could he have been to think he was fit for it? Why had he not taken to forestry, become a cowboy, or done almost anything that kept him out of doors instead of in the slummy heart of a dim city? Was he or was he not based on revelation? And, if not, on what was he based? Planing away at an after-deck such as that whence those early plumbers, the Romans, had caused so many foreigners to perspire freely, he thought: ‘I serve an idea, with a superstructure which doesn’t bear examination.’ Still, the good of mankind was worth working for! A doctor did it in the midst of humbug and ceremony. A statesman, though he knew that democracy, which made him a statesman, was ignorance personified. One used forms in which one didn’t believe, and even exhorted others to believe in them. Life was a practical matter of compromise. ‘We’re all Jesuits,’ he thought, ‘using doubtful means to good ends. I should have had to die for my cloth, as a soldier dies for his. But that’s neither here nor there!’

The telephone bell rang, and a voice said:

“The Vicar!… Yes, sir!… That girl. Too far gone to operate. So if you’d come, sir.”

Hilary put down the receiver, snatched his hat, and ran out of the house. Of all his many duties the deathbed was least to his taste, and, when he alighted from the taxi before the hospital, the lined mask of his face concealed real dread. Such a child! And nothing to be done except patter a few prayers and hold her hand. Criminal the way her parents had let it run on till it was too late. But to imprison them for it would be to imprison the whole British race, which never took steps to interfere with its independence till the last minute, and that too late!

“This way sir,” said a nurse.

In the whiteness and order of a small preliminary room Hilary saw the little figure, white-covered, collapsed, and with a deathly face. He sat down beside it, groping for words with which to warm the child’s last minutes.

‘Shan’t pray,’ he thought, ‘she’s too young.’

The child’s eyes, struggling out of their morphined immobility, flitted with terror round the room and fixed themselves, horror-stricken, first on the white figure of the nurse, then on the doctor in his overalls. Hilary raised his hand.

“D’you mind,” he said, “leaving her with me a moment?”

They passed into an adjoining room.

“Loo!” said Hilary softly.

Recalled by his voice from their terrified wandering, the child’s eyes rested on his smile.

“Isn’t this a nice clean place? Loo! What d’you like best in all the world?”

The answer came almost inaudibly from the white puckered lips: “Pictures.”

“That exactly what you’re going to have, every day—twice a day. Think of that. Shut your eyes and have a nice sleep, and when you wake the pictures will begin. Shut your eyes! And I’ll tell you a story. Nothing’s going to happen to you. See! I’m here.”

He thought she had closed her eyes, but pain gripped her suddenly again; she began whimpering and then screamed.

“God!” murmured Hilary. “Another touch, doctor, quick!”

The doctor injected morphia.

“Leave us alone again.”

The doctor slipped away, and the child’s eyes came slowly back to Hilary’s smile. He laid his fingers on her small emaciated hand.

“Now, Loo, listen!

“‘The Walrus and the Carpenter were walking hand in hand, They wept like anything to see such quantities of sand. “If seven maids with seven brooms could sweep for half a year, Do you suppose,” the Walrus said, “that they could get it clear?” “I doubt it,” said the Carpenter, and shed a bitter tear!’”

On and on went Hilary, reciting ‘The Mad Hatter’s Tea-party.’ And, while he murmured, the child’s eyes closed, the small hand lost warmth.

He felt its cold penetrating his own hand and thought: ‘Now, God, if you are—give her pictures!’

CHAPTER 15

When Di

‘I can’t wait till Thursday,’ she thought; ‘I must go up. If only I had money, in case—!’ She rummaged out her trinkets and took hasty stock of them. The two gentlemen of South Molton Street! In the matter of Jean’s emerald pendant they had behaved beautifully. She made a little parcel of her pledgeable ornaments, reserving the two or three she normally wore. There were none of much value, and to get a hundred pounds on them, she felt, would strain benevolence.

At breakfast they all behaved as if nothing had happened. So then, they all knew the worst!

‘Playing the angel!’ she thought.

When her father a

He looked at her, rather like a monkey questioning man’s right not to be a monkey too. Why had she never before noticed that his brown eyes could have that flickering mournfulness?

“Very well,” he said.

“Shall I drive you?” asked Jean.

“Thankfully accepted,” murmured Di

Nobody said a word on the subject occupying all their thoughts.

In the opened car she sat beside her father. The may-blossom, rather late, was at its brightest, and its scent qualified the frequent drifts of petrol fume. The sky had the high brooding grey of rain withheld. Their road passed over the Chilterns, through Hampden, Great Missenden, Chalfont, and Chorley Wood; land so English that no one, suddenly awakened, could at any moment of the drive have believed he was in any other country. It was a drive Di

“Where d’you want to be set down, Di

“Mount Street.”

“You’re staying up, then?”

“Yes, till Friday.”

“We’ll drop you, and I’ll go on to my Club. You’ll drive me back this evening, Jean?”

Jean nodded without turning and slid between two vermilion-coloured buses, so that two drivers simultaneously used the same qualitative word.

Di

“Can I telephone, Blore?”