A Lodge in the Wilderness

CHAPTER I-3

“For my part,” said Lady Amysfort, “I think it simply Toryism under a new name—the Toryism of our great men, Bolingbroke, Pitt, Canning, Disraeli. Toryism was never Conservatism, remember. It was a positive creed, both destructive and constructive. Liberalism is a doctrine of abstractions, right or wrong, which bear no true relation to national life. Toryism has always held by the instincts and traditions of the people, and when our island became an empire it became naturally Imperialism.”

“As a Liberal Imperialist, Caroline,” said the Duchess with some asperity, “I profoundly disagree. I wish George were here to say what I think of your history.”

Mr Lowenstein’s restless eyes had been wandering from one speaker to the other, and he had several times opened his mouth as if to say something. Now he was about to begin when Miss Haystoun forestalled him.

“I should like to define it in very old words,” she said shyly, in her low intense voice. “It is the spirit which giveth life as against the letter which killeth. It means a renunciation of old forms and conventions, and the clear-eyed facing of a new world in the knowledge that when the half-gods go the true gods must come.”

“That is beautifully said,” murmured Mr Lowenstein.

“Indeed, Marjory, I think it is almost blasphemous.” The Duchess, who had been fretting for some time under the turn the conversation had taken, had at last succeeded in catching Lady Amysfort’s eye, and the ladies rose to leave. Immediately the men reassorted themselves according to their preference. Astbury took his port round to the vacant chair next Mr Wakefield; Carey, Lord Appin, and Lord Launceston formed a coterie by themselves; Graham and Considine revelled silently in the novel luxury of good cigars, and Hugh joined Lowenstein, by whom he was cross-examined concerning the names of his fellow-guests.

It was not Carey’s habit to linger at table, and the sound of a beautiful voice singing a song of Schubert drew the men soon to the inner hall, where Mrs Deloraine sat at the piano. At each end of the apartment log-fires burned brightly; outside the white verandah gleamed chill in the frosty moonlight; and the place was lit only by the hearths and two tall silver lamps beside the piano. A soft aromatic scent—the mingling of flowers and wood-smoke—filled the air.

Lord Appin took his place beside Mrs Deloraine. Carey stood in the centre of a great fireplace, and the others resorted to chairs and couches. Hugh, finding a very soft rug, settled himself at Lady Flora’s feet.

The lady at the piano finished “Der Wanderer” and began the song from La Princesse Lointaine. It was a melody of her own making, very wild and tender, and in the dim light her wonderful voice held the listeners like a spell.

“Car c’est chose suprême

D’aimer sans qu’on vous aime,

D’aimer toujours, quand même,

Sans cesse,

D’une amour incertaine,

Plus noble d’être vaine,

Et j’aime la lointaine

Princesse!”

When she ceased there was silence for a little. The place and time were so strange—there among delicate furniture and all the trappings of a high civilisation, looking out over the primeval wilds. Savage beasts roamed a mile off in that untamed heart of the continent. The most sophisticated members of the company felt the glamour of the unknown around them. Lord Launceston rose quietly and walked to the window, where he gazed abstractedly at the starry sky; Lady Lucy was looking into the red glow of the fire; Marjory Haystoun and Lady Flora sat, chin on hand, in a kind of dream. Only Graham and Considine were unconscious of the spell. Months of hunting and going to bed at sundown had spoiled them for civilised hours, and they had dropped off peacefully to sleep in their chairs.

Carey broke the silence. “Here we are in Prester John’s country,” he said. “He may have had a daughter called Melissinde, and she may have been the Far- away Princess to some Portuguese adventurer who left his ship at Mombasa and wandered up into the hills. Do you realise how strange it is to be sitting here? Thirty years ago this was bush, with lions roaring in it, and the pioneers who may have camped here were three hundred miles from a white man, with hostile tribes around them, and the Lord knows what in front. I remember when I first came it was from the west. I had been trekking for months in Uganda, right across from Albert Edward and the Semliki to what is now Port Florence. I had had a bad dose of fever, and when we crawled up into the foothills I was as weak as a cat. We stayed here for a bit to recruit our strength, and, when I could stand, I went one evening, just about sunset, and looked down into the Tropics. That hour is as clear to me as if it had been yesterday. There was a fresh, clean wind blowing, which put life into my bones, and I stood on the edge and looked down thousands of feet over the little hill-tops to the great forest and on to the horizon, which was all red and gold. I knew that there was fever and heat and misery down below, but in the twilight it was transfigured, and seemed only a kind of fairyland designed for happiness. I was a poor man then, poor and ambitious, hungering for something, I did not know what. It was not wealth, for I never wanted wealth for its own sake. It was a purpose in life I sought, and in that moment I found it. For I realised that the great thing in the world is to reach the proper vantage-ground. I learned that things are not what they seem to the fighter in the midst of them; that the truth can only be known to the man on the hill-top. I realised that the heavenly landscape below me was far more the real Africa than the place of dust and fever I had left. And in that hour I saw my work, and, I think, too, the ideal of our race. If we cannot create a new heaven, we can create a new earth. ‘The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for us; the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.’”

The Duchess got up. “Marjory,” she said, “you are nodding, and as for Alastair and Sir Edward, they have been asleep for the last half-hour. I think we are all ready for bed after our long journey.”

As Hugh lit her candle at the foot of the staircase, she whispered to him confidentially, “When Francis begins to talk in blank verse, I always feel a little nervous. I think it is quite time for the women to say good-night.”